Small Head Shelf

 

Here are what I call my "Small Heads". They're my older 90s-00s Barbie dolls.

(If doll nudity bothers you, you're weird and I don't want you looking at my girls anyway.)

I managed to articulate a good set but a lot still have older bodies :)

Mattel REWIND

 Sigh.

Everything Mattel does nowadays is sh*t. For real. Like stinky doo-doo. 💩

For instance, they come up with a great concept to go back in time or REWIND and pull out some goodies out of their massive vault. 

And what are they re-booting? 

        Fashion Fever? 

            S.I.S. dolls? 

                DOTW dolls? 

                    Teen Skipper? 

                        Byron Lars? 

                            The Basics?

No, no, no, no, no, and hell no.😞

Mattel decided to go back to the worst era of fashion (80s) with the worst face mold (Superstar). Ugh.

There truly is no hope for this doll brand.

My Top Shelf Dolls

 

Here are my model muses, pivotals, celebrity dolls, and a few collectors dolls.

Judging by Mattel's current direction, this era of beautiful dolls is over.😭

Mattel just be hiring anybody around there, huh?

Where does Mattel find these people who apparently never played with Barbie as a child and who are trying to destroy the Barbie brand???

This one terrible "face designer" Minhtam Nguyen is personally responsible for many of the newer ugly face molds I really dislike.

Her two great unforgiveable sins are that she is happy to feminize Ken and turn him into Carlyle Nuera and that she seems to me to be a bit of a r****t. Look how she perceives Black people - exaggerated big lips which stretch from one side of the face to the next, long, bright-colored weave, and ratchet clothes. 

Nothing positive has come out of her being hired by Mattel. Ugh.

Uninspired by uninspiring dolls

 I haven't been posting regularly for a number of reasons.

First, I haven't been inspired... all the crap that Mattel puts out would only inspire me to flush it down the loo.

Second, I feel very alone and alienated as a collector. Barbie collectors seem to like the plain, stiff-body "Fashionistas", 'meh' BMR1959 dolls, and ugly Barbie Extra dolls now on the market. Even the Zara Barbie dolls are "blah" to me. 

Images below are from IG:

Third, I'm like, "What's the point?". Hardly anybody posts on Flickr anymore and IG is flooded with dolls I don't much care for (*cough* "Fashionistas" *cough*). Only a handful of collectors seems to share my passion for an era when Barbie was great and the name was actually a respected brand instead of the joke it is today.

But recently I saw three dolls which caught my eye... 

Papusile.mele says they're collector dolls, but if that's true, Barbie Collector is also in the toilet. I mean, they're cute but they're just...I don't know... OK... Not sure they merit the furor of collectors. Mattel has set the bar so low, the dolls they should be putting out are being hailed as the best thing since sliced bread. Sad.

Gil Plazola

I saw this morning that this well-known repaint artist in the doll community had passed. How sad. 

His work was beautiful and I am posting a link to a few repaints he would have done.

Below are two samples of his work (and what Barbie *should* look like!):

Find pictures here

Still here...

I had planned to post on this blog weekly but COVID-19 and Lazy Mattel seem to be conspiring against me. 

How, you ask?

Well, as a bad asthmatic I feel like a sitting duck, waiting to catch the virus and die.  Morbid but true. 

And as for LM, their post-2014 ugly dolls, fashions, and playsets are everywhere and leave me dry and uninspired.

But, ironically these two things also drive me to want to post even more!

I must share my beautiful collection with people who will appreciate it. And I say that without bragging - it took me several years and the equivalent of house prices to get the dolls on my forever-expanding wishlist. Also, my biggest fear, should I succumb to this dreaded virus is that my family just chucks all my dolls in the garbage the minute I'm gone. Yes, really. They will throw them out.

Secondly I must make my voice heard for collectors like me who are appalled at the garbage Mattel is peddling to us. I never imagined that in 2021 Barbie would revert to smiley-faced, stiff-bodied, horribly-styled dolls. It's like they went back to the 70s and 80s for style and the 80s and 90s for generic, overused faces. For some reason, Mattel despise their adult collectors and basically ignore them.

So keep watching this space. I have so many thoughts on Barbie to share.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times @Mattel... A rant

Mattel to me is such a contradiction in terms of its Barbie brand. At a time when it seemed to be moving forward in the right direction, for every one step forward, it took three giant leaps backward.

The Positives:

First of all, let's congratulate the brand on its move to diversify its dolls. Many little children the world over are now able to see themselves represented in real (not just token) ways as Barbie has moved beyond the lily-white-blonde archetype with one token Black friend (either Shani/Christie1/Nichelle/Christie2/Asha/Adria), Hispanic friend (Teresa), and Asian friend (either Kira/Lea) each to a wide array of races, colours, shapes, and sizes.

Photos below courtesy of Kattis Dolls.

    Barbie's token Black friend

Barbie's token Hispanic friend

Barbie's token Asian friend

As a Black doll-buyer I was fed up of every Black doll on the market at that time having the Asha face mold, or later, the Christie face mold and, much later, the Adria face mold. These were just iterations of the same character although I suppose Black consumers were to be glad that at least the Black dolls no longer looked like White dolls with White features dyed dark brown. Asha and Christie now had predominant Afro features although Mattel forgot to do away with the unrealistic long, wavy hair.

Fast forward to today and Barbie has evolved so that there is a much wider variety of dolls.  

There are also several different dolls of color - dolls of varying shades of Black and mixed-with-Black, and with Afro-kinky blowouts, cornrows, short hairstyles, and braids! There is even a doll with Vitiligo! 

My favourites from The Doll Evolves line are Rainbow Bright (with no matching articulated body anywhere to be found!!) and the 'Albino' doll. (I put Albino in quotes because I'm not convinced Mattel got that completely right, but hey, at least they attempted it!)

Secondly, kudos to Mattel for recognising that there are other colors out there beside pink. Young collectors today will never know the feeling of being fed up with all of Barbie's clothes and playsets painted in that nauseating pink color.

Thirdly - and I cautiously give them props for this because in my opinion they haven't gone far enough - Barbie is venturing into other careers beyond doctor, nurse, vet, and policewoman or, at the other end of the spectrum, ice skater or princess. I mean they're still promulgating these professions but they've now added others to the mix. I was so happy to see Barbie in the roles of ambulance driver and barista. This coffee shop playset is definitely on my wishlist! 

I'm still waiting, though, for a mechanic Barbie or at least Ken (just because I have been searching for years for a 1/6 scale roller thingee that they lie on to check under cars!)

But see, they made three great steps in the right direction: the diversification of dolls, the jettisoning of 'hurt-my-eyes-make-me-vomit' pink, and the expansion into other careers.

But Mattel, Mattel, Mattel... Can't you stay on the path of progress?? Must you always give with one hand and take with the other??

The Negatives:

Not only did The Doll Evolves line usher in a wave of diversity, it also heralded a backward step in terms of lack of articulation. So although I was glad to see curvy, tall and short bodies, these new bodies are the ugliest ones ever produced by Mattel, (just behind the 'Hobbit' bodies). Stiff arms and legs have reverted Barbie to mannequin status. 

At first I spent so much effort and money trying to find articulated matches for these dolls but then I just stopped buying them altogether. Trying to diversify my Barbie community by adding the new faces wasn't worth the trouble.

And too, and perhaps my greatest beef with Mattel, the Barbie brand has returned to a smiley face doll. If you've read any of my previous posts, you would know how much I hate smiley faces. So instead of modern dolls with expression and a little 'tude, we get dolls which seem to me to be a host of airheaded, blithering idiots. THIS IS MY OPINION - DON'T @ ME DEFENDING THESE STUPID SMILEY FACES!! I'm not saying their faces need to look like Fashion Royalty dolls, (because frankly I hate those  mean-looking dolls) but they convey a fierceness Mattel dolls have lost. Even their collector lines are showing up with these goofy-toothy grins. Ugh.

Don't even get me started on the ugly, bug-eyed Chelsea dolls... what the hell happened to the cute-as-a-button Kelly dolls?

Thirdly, what is with these face-ups nowadays???? I'm not talking about lack of eyeshadow and lip color which I already gripe about continually - I'm referring to the fact that Mattel now seems to have employed 5-year olds to paint Barbie's face with crayons!! 'Cause that's what it looks like to me.

I know the vast majority of Barbie collectors on IG are new to collecting, a lot of them (re-)discovering Barbie with The Doll Evolves line, but come on! How can you accept Barbie going from a face like the blonde Goddess from the Barbie Basics line to the petite AA BMR1959 line? How can you mess up the Claudette face mold, Mattel? A face which looks good in any shade and Mattel manages to 'uglify' what should have been a fierce, spunky Nicki Minaj look-a-like in a petite, dark-chocolate-coated package.

That was the last straw for me. I am not buying any more Mattel dolls. I do not support this new direction. The brand has completely overlooked on purpose its adult collectors who valued style, quality and elegance in their dolls.

I Can't Seem To Bond With These Dolls...

Have you ever bought a doll only to discover that you don't much like it? That has happened to me a few times. I snatched up dolls I thought I really wanted or I thought were going to sell out fast, only for me to realize I don't like them.

Now the dilemma - still add them to my doll community with minor roles or sell them? (I've never sold a doll before because the shipping costs where I live are prohibitive.) I'm between 2 minds...

Here are some of the dolls I can't seem to bond with:

This fashionista was cute in the promo pics but, having her in hand, I'm not a fan.

I was so sure I was going to love this girl. Before I got her I had been liking pictures of her that other people posted online. Then I got her and... meh. I even put her on an mtm body to see if my liking for her would increase with articulation but to no avail.

This doll is my most disappointing purchase. I like the Bambi facemold just fine. A doll with a short haircut? Yes! Bangs? Sure. But somehow Mattel managed to mess this face up. I don't know what it is...maybe her eyes are too big for her face. Whatever it is, I can't seem to grow fond of her.

Which dolls do you regret buying?