My Sister's Barbies

I'm sure Rachel had about 87 dolls over the course of her childhood, but these are the ones I can remember. The 90's were a fun time to play with Barbies- I mean look at the totally rad mini-dress that Totally Hair Barbie is sporting, and that hair-- all the way to her toes!
This is actually the best-selling Barbie of all time. 10 million dolls were sold, along with a tube of Dep gel meant to tame those locks.

Gel or no gel, I am sure this is how she looked at the end of the first day!

This is another doll I remember from Rachel's collection. I think Beach Blast Barbie was unique because she was oh so cancerously tan. And that crimped, bleached-out hair? Why, she was every girl's dream, especially us pale white girls of European decent.

I think this Animal Lovin' Nikki was one of the early ones Rachel received as a kid. I totally loved that built-in gold belt on the skirt! Flashy!

And those pink earrings didn't stand a chance. Funny how earrings always came on the doll in the package but later disappeared....

Ah, Ken. Ken, Ken, Ken, Ken....the poor overwhelmed solitary male of the group. He probably got married to every Barbie between the two of us on at LEAST a daily basis. Technically he was given to me as a gift, but he was related to Rachel and her collection later through marriage. Er, marriages.
I think it was YEARS before Ken owned any dress clothes. (Who wanted to buy clothes for Ken? Men's clothes?!? BORE-ING!) So he usually sported a "beachy casual" look at his weddings.


This is where all of our dolls lived; a cardboard townhouse. This isn't the exact one that we shared; ours had a pink elevator and the background panels reflected an early 80s motif rather than a 70s motif, but I assure you, that comfortable-looking plastic furniture that came with it was darn near indestructible!

A Trickle at First...

In 2000, I added these three dolls from the "Celestial Collection" to the lonely Snow White doll sitting on my shelf. I purchased the Sun Goddess and Star Goddess with gift certificates I had earned from JCPenney, back in the good old days when Barbies were featured in the Christmas catalogs. The Moon Goddess appeared one day on QVC when Jeremy and I were flipping through the channels, and he nonchalantly stated that I should buy the doll since "it would complete the collection." In two years, I had collected 4 dolls. It was beginning to look like something was happening.

In 2001, I moved to Virginia and I started a new full-time job. I came across "Barbie 2001" in Wal-Mart, and feeling rich with that first paycheck in my pocket, I bought that doll immediately.


I discovered eBay and the Barbie Collector website in 2002. That, my friends, was the beginning of the end. My Barbie world exploded, and I was immediately inundated with images and descriptions of dozens upon dozens of collectible dolls designed and released each year by Mattel. In addition, I stumbled upon the website's forums that included discussions of current and past dolls, photos of dolls other collectors had purchased and customized, and links to other doll-related sites....and I never looked back.

11 years and 200-something dolls later, my tastes have changed wildly, my selectivity has increased dramatically, and my adoration for Barbie and her fashions has intensified exponentially. I now also collect clothing for Barbie made by other designers, such as Randall Craig Ready to Wear and Dressmaker Details. I am a card-carrying member of a bona-fide doll club recognized by Mattel in Richmond, recently registered to attend the 2011 Barbie Convention in Ft. Lauderdale Florida (after waiting more than a year for registration to open!), and have brought two of my closest friends over to the Dark Side with me.

How it All Started

This was the first: My First Barbie, 1982. Creative name, eh? She came with long blonde hair, a pink gingham skirt, pink swimsuit, and these weird lace things that "customized" Barbie's look. They could decorate her legs, arms, or even her pigtails. (Hey it was the early 80's, they did lots of interesting things with lace.) I am sure they got lost the minute the doll came out of the package. This particular doll seemed to suffer from some sort of leg separation anxiety, and had to be replaced at least once after those legs popped off.

A couple of years ago, I purchased this doll mint in the box from eBay. I wonder about the person who had this doll stored away somewhere for the past few decades....
The second doll that I remember Mom purchasing for me was Peaches 'N Cream Barbie; this time for my 6th birthday. The doll came with an appropriately overly-ruffled dress, true to high fashion in the mid '80s. The faux-crystal beading on the top of the dress was worn to a nub by the time I outgrew playing with that doll, and both straps on the bodice disintegrated pretty much immediately in the eager, grubby hands of a child who liked to play with her dolls outside, in the bathtub, and everywhere else.

Mattel reproduced this doll in new packaging for their 2010 line, and when the doll was first sneaked on the collector website, I have to admit I got all geeked out about it. And of course I got my eager, grubby hands on one as soon as I could.

But THIS was the doll that really started it all, and I plead total innocence, because it was given to me. This was clearly another case of family members urging me into Barbie collecting. I was powerless to resist, really.

At Christmastime in 1998, I saw this Snow White doll in a toy store and was seized with the impulse to take it home with me. As a poor college student/newlywed, the $20 price tag for "something I would just LOOK at" seemed out of the question. It had been YEARS since I had been given a Barbie or bought one on my own, so Barbie was securely in my past.
But.
I didn't forget about this doll. I couldn't. I didn't know why! The next year, the exact same doll came out again (this NEVER happens, by the way) and I saw it in one of those Black Friday circulars. I not-so-subtly mentioned to my husband that the doll was available again, for some rock-bottom price, and it would be ever-so-wonderful if he would wait in some insanely long line at KayBee Toys, bleary-eyed and delirious at 5 a.m. to see if he could get it for me for Christmas.
He told me they were out....but somehow that doll was under the tree on Christmas morning.

This is the First One

It all happened like this:

On September 6, 1982, my mother presented me with a pink package, the likes of which I had never seen before. "Recommended ages 3 and up" was printed benevolently on the back of the box, and had likely served as a siren song to my unsuspecting mother, who grew up in a home without sisters or even a real Barbie to call her own. She had been waiting for this moment for who knows how long! This blog is for the woman who never really outgrew her adoration for Barbie, and loves Barbie vicariously through her daughters and granddaughter.