Although there are many different models and country variants of the Barbie typewriters, and the internal PCB was redesigned a number of times, the encryption/decryption facilities seem to be present on all electronic models. The crypto facilities can be accessed by pressing SHIFT and LOCK in combination with one of the highlighted keys in the diagram below. As the keyboard layout can be different for each country, please use the black numbers as a reference.





The encryption facilities of the Barbie Typewriter consist of a mono alphabet substitution cipher, also known as MASC, with 4 different keys (i.e. 4 different transposed alphabets) which we will call KEY 1 thru 4. When coding a message, the desired KEY is selected with the first 4 buttons on the top row of the keyboard. Note that the black numbers are shown here for clarity only. They are not printed on the keyboard. To start coding, three keys have to be pressed simultaneously:





Once the KEY has been selected, the plaintext message can be entered on the keyboard and the ciphertext message will appear on the paper. The paper may now be sent to the recipient by means of regular mail other otherwise. The recipient should now select the appropriate KEY for decoding by using the corresponding key combination shown below:





Once the KEY for decoding has been selected, the recipient should enter the ciphertext message on the keyboard and, if all goes well, the original plaintext message will appear on the paper. In order to return to normal use of the typewriter, use the following key combination:





