Barbie and Me

Well, unless you’ve been hiding out in a cave all summer (and I wouldn’t blame you if you were!), you probably know there’s a Barbie movie coming out this week. I’m not sure, but I think the marketing budget for this movie might be infinite.

All this talk of Barbie, naturally made me think of my own Barbie dolls growing up. I didn’t always have Barbie dolls as a kid. I believe I was in second grade before I owned a Barbie doll. We weren’t deprived of toys, far from it. In fact, as it happens my father worked for a toy company, specifically the American division of the British Company Lesney Products which at the time made Matchbox Cars and Ginny Dolls. So, I had plenty of both of those growing up.

Ginny, for those not familiar with her, was very similar to Barbie’s younger sister Skipper in terms of size and approximate age range. Ginny dolls were nowhere near as popular as Barbies when I was growing up, but since Dad worked for the company that manufactured them we had plenty of them along with lots and lots of Matchbox cars.

What we didn’t have in our house were Barbie dolls or Hot Wheels cars since those were made by the competition. It was no surprise that Dad would be loyal to the company he worked for, but probably we should have been suspicious that Santa Claus apparently shared this loyalty. (Somehow we remained ignorant about Santa’s true identity, even during the year Dad was working for Goody Products maker of assorted hair care items and our stockings were loaded up with barrettes and hairbrushes.)

Well, eventually Dad went to work for an investment banking firm and the Barbie ban was officially lifted in our home. So, my sister and I both wound up with a few of the buxom, flaxen haired dolls. In our household Barbie also had a few Ginny doll little sisters. As it happens there was a fair amount of cross-toy-line antics when we played Barbies. While we had a few Barbies apiece we each had just one Ken doll. So, to avoid the girls fighting over Ken, our Barbies regularly went on dates with Michael Jackson (It was the 1980s. So, my sister had a Michael Jackson doll.) as well as Aquaman and Captain America (because my grandmother had picked up some 1970s Mego dolls at a garage sale.)

Barbie’s dating life wasn’t the only thing that benefitted from garage sales. My other grandparents’ neighbors had a garage sale, and weren’t able to sell their 1970s era Barbie Dream Home and all its furnishings, and knowing that my grandparents had granddaughters, it was gifted to us. Our Barbies really lived pretty good, I must say. In fact, I’m still jealous of all that awesome retro furniture!

For those of you wondering how it is possible that Barbie had chairs that weren’t pink. Well, these were simpler times and less pink ones. Our secondhand Barbie Dream House was white, yellow and orange. While I do love the color pink, I don’t really associate it with Barbie the way the younger generations do.

Barbie along with her clothes and accessories have had a lot of different looks over the years, but there’s always been a “you can be anything” message associated with the doll, and in the case of our own Barbie dolls the message was that you can score a fabulous deal on an older home and date pop stars and superheroes. What a life!

— Alissa