1960’s Barbies Meet the New Generation
Posted on August 19th, 2017
1960’s trunk on left. Barbie home on right & storage cube above.
One fun aspect of having a granddaughter is rediscovering dolls through her eyes. Aurora is a big Barbie fan, so she was excited to learn that I had played Barbies when I was her age. Big difference in 1960’s Barbie fun and 2017 Barbie fun: whereas I have one well worn Barbie with a box of handmade clothes and a Barbie trunk, Aurora has at least 7. I’ve learned that Mattel markets a new doll for each outfit rather than selling outfits for the one or two dolls they expect girls to own.
You can see that I wallpapered my doll’s trunk with fashion pics cut from magazines. She also had all manner of re-purposed items including Cracker Jack’s prizes and pictures of food cut out of magazines and mounted on cardboard. As I’m typing this post, I realize that I was all about crafts from an early age!
My sister sent me her old Barbie and her daughters’ Barbies & Ken for Aurora. As you can see from the photo below, she has an entire village of dolls that now resides in one of our guest bedrooms. It has been officially named Barbie Land. (I do convince her to pick them all up once a week so that I can vacuum!)
The blessing of a granddaughter after raising two sons is that I actually have the time to lay in the floor and play dolls with her. It’s a treat that would have been hard to manage when I was teaching high school English!
I remember too well playing Barbie’s we were so bad we stuck pins in their ears for earings and now they are rusty there…bad Di. Hugs, Di
No need to feel guilt, as you were actually playing with them. I don’t get the whole collector mania. The girl across the street from us had to put her dolls back in their original boxes after we played, and her mom supervised us! My sister and I once dug a huge hole in the back yard and filled it with water so they could go swimming. Ours fit the definition of real according the The Velveteen Rabbit!