The Barbie merch explosion is 'heaven' for collectors of the iconic doll
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Perhaps you’ve heard: There’s a Barbie movie coming out next week. Mattel and Warner Bros’ full-scale marketing push surrounding the film started earlier this summer and has driven even industry types to the brink of insanity. (“Is anyone else feeling bullied into being excited about the Barbie movie?” tweeted actress J. Smith-Cameron, who played Gerri on “Succession,” last week.)
Mattel has inked more than 100 brand collaborations to promote the film, which means stores — even ones you wouldn’t expect — are suddenly a lot pinker. Hot Topic, Gap and Bloomingdale’s are selling Barbie-branded jackets and T-shirts; Joybird is offering hot-pink Barbie Dreamhouse-inspired couches; and Pinkberry is promoting Barbie Land Berry Pink frozen yogurt complete with sparkly sprinkles. For the average consumer, it may all be a bit much. But there is one group that is relishing the Barbie merch explosion: Barbie collectors.
“This film is like Jesus coming to Earth or something, the Second Coming,” said Simon Farnworth, a 53-year-old Barbie collector from outside London who sells new and vintage dolls on his website, Simon’s Collectibles. “It’s the most exciting thing to ever happen to a Barbie collector, I think.”
And with the film and the merch come the most important offering of all: new dolls. On June 1, Mattel released a collection of “Barbie The Movie” dolls and accessories that collectors have snapped up enthusiastically. There are four dolls designed to look like the film’s star, Margot Robbie, that cost $25 to $50, including a Perfect Day look (a baby-pink gingham dress with pearls) and a Pink Western vibe (a hot-pink two-piece cowgirl outfit). Fans can also buy a President Barbie based on Issa Rae’s character in the film, a few Ken dolls, and two models of baby-pink Barbie Corvettes.
The film’s impending release “has definitely influenced people to collect more,” said Melissa Hunter, a 55-year-old Barbie collector from Woodbridge, N.J., who posts doll reviews for 752,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel. “I mean, of the doll collectors I know, everybody bought all of the dolls from the movies as soon as they could, and everybody bought at least one of the cars. … The looks that they did for the dolls are so perfect and span so many different generations of Barbies, that as a collector, it’s just heaven.”
Hunter is equally thrilled about the movie, which was directed by Greta Gerwig. “I think it’s going to do a lot for the reputation of Barbie,” she said. “People are going to see that Mattel and the brand do have a little tongue-in-cheek understanding of Barbie history and how she’s changed over the decades.”
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Matt Vaughn, a 29-year-old Barbie collector from Orange County, Calif., who posts about his collection on his TikTok account, @thedollaisle, started planning his Barbie shopping as soon as the movie dolls were announced. And he bought every doll he could the day they were released from retailers. “I was crazy enough to then buy duplicates of two of the dolls so that I could display them in the [additional] outfits,” he said, referring to the movie-inspired “fashion packs” available for purchase. “I even gave one of them a haircut to match the movie to make it more accurate.”
Before the dolls were officially released, Vaughn also bought what is called a “blind listing” — a listing with no details — on Amazon that fans were speculating would be the Perfect Day Barbie. “And then it came in the mail, and that’s what it was!” he said.
That particular doll has caused some controversy in the collecting community. Images of a prototype leaked online before its release, and fans were, let’s say, unimpressed. “Everyone was hating on the doll to begin with,” Farnworth said. “This happens a lot, where you get leaked images and they’re not taken in a very good position or very good lighting, and one person says one thing, and then everyone sort of jumps on that.”
“It didn’t look like Margot Robbie, and it wasn’t an attractive face,” Hunter recalled. But once the official promotional images of the doll came out and people started receiving the doll in the mail, the community breathed a sigh of relief. “In person, she looks just like her,” Hunter explained.
All of the Robbie-inspired dolls are now sold out on the Mattel Creations website, the official retailer of collectible Barbies, although dedicated buyers can still find the Perfect Day doll at Target and Macy’s. The Pink Western doll, however, is now scarce. “I’ve seen ones being sold for $110 or $120” — more than double the list price — “because you can’t get ahold of them,” Farnworth said.
Vaughn said he thinks Mattel geared this particular line of dolls toward collectors, rather than your average kid in the toy aisle. “The price point is a little steep for the common parent to buy their kids,” he noted. These days, regular Barbie dolls sell for $5 to $15 on Amazon.
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Although the dolls are perhaps the most exciting category of Barbie merch for collectors, some fans have made a game of collecting other hard-to-find collaborations, such as the Barbie-branded popcorn buckets and bedazzled cups exclusive to Cinemark theaters. The popular YouTuber Trisha Paytas, whose appreciation of Barbie World is such that she named her first daughter Malibu Barbie Paytas-Hacmon, posted several videos in which she drives around to different theaters before eventually securing the goods.
The buzz around the movie could drive up the value of some vintage Barbie dolls, too, at least temporarily. Farnworth and Hunter speculated that fans may try to purchase the vintage dolls that Robbie and her stylist Andrew Mukamal have taken as inspiration for the actress’s red-carpet looks. Robbie’s Los Angeles premiere look, for example, was based on the Solo in the Spotlight doll first released in 1960, and her London premiere gown was inspired by the Enchanted Evening doll, also released in 1960. The latter doll is listed for sale for $485 by one Etsy seller.
But these collectors said that they ultimately do not buy Barbies with an eye toward resale value. The “Barbie The Movie” dolls may never be worth much more than their list price, but that’s not the point. “I’m just a collector — I just like to have them for me,” Vaughn said.
My name is Allie Jones, and starting July 16, I’ll be writing Unboxed, a pop-up newsletter from The Washington Post all about the Barbie movie. Sign up now, and together we’ll tackle crucial questions such as: Can there be too much Barbie merch? Why is this movie banned in Vietnam? And is any of this…for kids? It’s going to be a blast!
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Source: The Washington Post
