I don't know why so many adults think kids are brainless idiots. I didn't wan't to be barbie, I wanted to dress them extremely campy and make telenovelas
Omg yes! I think a lot of judgements comes from adults who are very judgmental in general and see everything in black and white. My friends gramma told me that Barbies look like hookers and I just saw them as cool independent 20yo fashionable girls.
Yass, telenovelas and Pinoy teleseryes! My mum used to watch the Ugly Betty show, which was funny as hell since it was based on Yo Soy Betty La Fea, the world’s most successful telenovela ever made.
Poor parenting leads to these kinds of problems. If the kids have good parents? Good REAL role models? They wouldn't put their entire personality into a... toy, cartoon, fictional character on television. I'm convinced the "perpetually online" life is a real issue. Toys back then were just meant as a tool for entertainment and imagination. Just listening to Karolina: "They were businesswomen, they had lovers, drama..." her imagination filled in the blanks. Nowadays? People can't even relate to another human being unless they look, act, think, and feel just like they do... 😮💨
I saw a Mattel employee say that the most difficult aspect of introducing new body types for Barbie was the clothes, which had to be universal and fit every doll. That would explain the baggy, loose t-shirts and shapeless dresses - by the way, a perfect representation of chain store plus size fashion XD
It kind of is an inherent problem with introducing size diversity to a *fashion* doll. Including prosthetic legs, Down’s syndrome, blindness, vitiligo and every skin color under the sun doesn’t impact the core appeal of the doll, but dolls with different hip widths and leg lengths just inherently does. In the 60s, Midge was marketed specifically as a friend who could wear all of Barbie’s clothes (as opposed to Ken and Skipper, who needed their own wardrobes), but with four different body types now not even *Barbie* can wear all of Barbie’s clothes. Imo the preferable solution would have been to strongly and consistently market the different dolls and outfits as different sizes (which could also introduce kids to the concept of clothes levels), but clearly Mattel chose to go all Syndrome on us instead with those godawful bag dresses. When everyone is Barbie, no one is. (On a side note: as a tall girl, I would personally give Mattel permission to reduce the Barbie body types to 3 if it meant proper fashion. We are not a marginalized demographic in desperate need of representation, and Barbie was already tall anyway.)
This sounds like the kind of excuse given when stores are asked why the plus-size range is so small. These are bs excuses from a multimillion dollar company. Wider hips means they can’t design cute outfits? BFFR.
There is some of that. But not entirely. There are structured dresses but they have a sneaky empire waist that hits midway between the under bust and what passes for a waist on these dolls.
Omg the Barbie Drama! That’s the only way I would play! Someone was always falling off a cliff or getting kidnapped. We went dark in the 80s! It was a soap opera.
😂😂 my Barbies were always super heroes, traveling to space, or putting on full productions of Phantom of the Opera. People who didn't have fun with Barbies were doing it wrong 😜
All of mine were in the hospital, stabbed in the stomach until either cured or dead. Also, her puppy died and came back to life after being put in her microwave and then died again.
1. we need a tv show based on your childhood barbie plots. 2. I thinks what saddens me equally to the fashion downgrade is the makeup downgrade. like why does EVERY single barbie these days HAVE to follow the ~clean girl~ aesthetic? 3. THANK YOU FOR MAKING THIS.
Yesss especially the makeup one. I was born in 2002 so Monster High was my childhood. Gen 1 was amazing! they had bright eyeshadows, big eyelashes, full lips and a cunty facial expression. I like gen 3 fashion but they look.. too cute. And too clean for monsters
@@Thebutterflyguy yeah, like someone in California would say "oh I went to the next county" although when I lived in Humboldt County, sometimes people would drive to Oregon to shop at Fred Meyer because it was only 90 miles and way better than Target.
Di you guys not understand the concept of vacations abroad? She didn’t just drive to a German supermarket. It is pretty clear in my European mind. Also, you do have borders as well.
The biggest atrocity is that the legs aren't made of bendable rubber anymore but hard plastic 🤢. What's the point in a doll that has no weight to it and cannot even sit in a chair?!
But that’s where the weird double joint made-to-move limbs come into their own- but the best ones were the early 2000s single hinged joints (usually advertised as 100 moves) were best. They also had nicer hands and proper Barbie high-heel feet.
I really don't understand why they assume kids won't care about the fashions. They're really undermining childrens intelligence! I was OBSESSED with barbies fashions and my nieces are obsessed with monster high and LOL dolls for their fashions. They can absolutely tell when a doll looks good and when it doesn't.
Yes! I grew up watching my mom getting ready and how she styled her outfits, and I recreated that with my Barbies, making me want to be a fashion designer (still to.this day I would love to be one).
@@montse3139 Exactly this! And we clearly remember the ones that looked good, because they are incredibly wanted by collectors today. Playline dolls! That's how much of an inpact they had - they're still rooted in our memories and even our future goals (I want to do costume design!)
@@montse3139 there's a whole niche of sewing for Barbie, from every day fashion, to haute couture to OOAK (one of a kind). rerooting, repainting, customising - sky is the limit. I am learning sewing and repaint, did a template for shoes and and trying to learn the whole customisation thing because it's fun.
As a parent, I have to make my daughter Barbie clothes. I totally agree with you. I was depressed shopping for her dolls. The fashion sucks. As a good example, my princess dolls as a girl had decent dresses with multiple layered fabrics, glitter, embellishments… my daughter bought an Anna and Elsa doll set for $30 and the clothes have no hems, printed images on the cheapest fabric imaginable, single layer, it’s ugly and sad. Like dollar tree quality. For $30.
I swear most everything is made so badly these days. The past 20 years, things have gone downhill in quality, yet the prices keep rising. I swear companies are pinching pennies more and more yet also charging us and more.
ugh yessssss! bring back fashion, glamour, and dramaaaaa! I think this is why i only barbies i gravitate towards to are the Silkstone Barbies! they were servingggggg, but they got discontinued, and i think theyre trying to bring it back, but even the newer ones doesn't have the same jenesaisquoi 😔
what, I thought that was normal? a friend of mine had the kids barbies (I don't know what they are called) and a Ken, so we played single parents and the children wanted their parents to get together. So they drugged them, put them in a warehouse, took their clothes, tied them together and put them in a barrel for them to fall in love. Later on I also got a Ken. Or "families" (two adults in relationships) lives next to each other and everyone was cheating and having affairs
It’s pretty normal. I couldn’t get myself to play with normal dolls but I did similar stuff with dinosaurs, dragons, and My Little Pony (with me assigning genders by which side of the body their cutie marks were on because I didn’t like that mine were all girls and thought Wisteria would look better with a mohawk).
What's puzzling is that the good Barbie clothes roughly coincide with the era when everybody's mom sewed. The options were endless then. A quick google of "vintage Barbie sewing patterns" turns up Barbie versions of 50's Dior, 60's dresses ranging from Carnaby Street to Jackie Kennedy, glam fishtail dresses and red carpet worthy gowns. The kids had everything in those days. Now they have Barbies who apparently shop at Dollar General. And yeah - our Barbies had affairs, too. I remember not having enough Kens for our soapy story line and using a plastic King Kong, lol.
My mom's a professional sewist and she made so many outfits for my barbie! Also she was always so impressed with the clothing the doll came with, considering the small size and amount of detail on the outfit.
I asked my Mum for so long for a male Sindy/Barbie doll - what I really wanted was an Action Man but I never got one. She was so pissed when I gave my Sindy a crew cut so I could have a male character for my storylines 😅 She still remembers it with irritation now and I still can't understand what the harm was in buying me a male doll? or giving the crew cut.
I think Mattel confuses good fashion with “acceptable body standards.” They might think that if a doll isn’t slender and tall, then it can’t wear good fashion, because it would make them look unrealistic. They completely don’t misunderstand the difference 🙄
100% agree. My barbie era was 1992-1997. It was cutting edge y2k, blow up couches, heart shaped sunglasses and white jeans. Those Barbies were legit. They also served up diversity. But all of the diverse dolls were still cute and appealing. Kelly doll had like 200 different friends you could buy for like 5$ each. You're telling me that girls couldn't find one of those 200 or so choices that looked kind of like them? Plus, I never wanted one to look like me- I wanted ones that looked like my cool older cousins 😂
Ahhh, that was when Barbie was getting to be bad quality! (I guess that's what "legit" means, based on context clues, that you're saying it was the era of cheaply-made dolls.) If you'd been born a decade or two earlier, you would've seen the truly quality years for all kinds of dolls. I still have all of mine, and the kids in my family prefer playing with my old dolls instead of any new dolls they could get!
As someone who worked for Mattel (in another IP) most of the employees at our level were continuously baffled by corporate decisions. They did so many things that we knew immediately were going to be bad and sure enough they caused backlash and cost them more money in the end. Mattel is all about squeezing every penny they can nowadays, the quality is down and the prices are up.
Why is that the case with every company?? At my workplace we also often go "oh no, the customers won't like that" and we're always right. CEOs everywhere are so out of touch
As a Barbie collector you know it's getting serious when even Karolina is talking about the Barbie deyassification. I definitely agree that for some of the cuter stuff you have to go with collector dolls, but a lot of times even the quality of those aren't as great as they used to be (ESPECIALLY the Holiday Barbie line). Not to say there aren't putting out good stuff at all, but it's definitely scarce right now and it's pretty disappointing to see.
I remember when my neice got into barbie, I hadn't actually held a barbie doll in years by that time and I was INSULTED by the awful feel of the fabric. I swear the fashion used to make sense and was actually well hemmed with ink printed patterns instead of plastic vinyl print tiger stripes and glued on ruffles, I get its a "production cost" thing but honestly it's getting ROUGH
I’ve noticed this with another Mattel doll brand. The fabric feels like the worst quality fabric, the designs are meant to skimp on cloth, and there are fewer pieces and accessories per set. I don’t want to pay up for their corner cutting
@@amandastjohn4735 Have you shopped around for miniature notions recently? There isn't that much available in sizes small enough for Barbies (even larger doll stuff is limited), so it's really not as simple as taking a trip to your local store (assuming you're actually lucky enough to have one anymore) and you better get comfortable with printing your own patterned cloth if you want something in an appropriate scale.
Yes, the quality of Barbies today is really poor. My Barbies from the 80s and early 90s could bend their knees is 3 different angles. 😆 Now they can barely sit.
@@sarahjensen6667 TBF this gen does have Made to Move dolls which have the most articulated joints of any Barbie...That's the only good thing they've done 😭
When I played with Barbies, a lot of the clothes I had were ones my grandma has made by hand in the sixties, so they were fifties/sixties styles. I didn't think about how cool that was at the time, but I still have some because I appreciate the style so much more now!
Baby, my first Barbie could very well be older than your mother... I got her in 1959. Yeah, she had the cotton floss hair and the end of her ponytail was glued into a flat flip. But I loved her and thought she was so cool! And her clothes were lovely and well made. She had this sleek, sleeveless brown dress with a knit sweater sleeveless cardigan; then there was the white tea dress with the remind ruffles; the blue and white striped sun dress with the elegant sunhat. And accessories? Purses, shoes, hats, a gold lamé clutch, the pink sports car (though my Barbie drove a shoebox that looked like an old truck. Come to think of it, I did find an old Tonka pickup that someone had ripped the cab top off of and Barbie drove that for years.) And the furniture! I hah the canopy bed, I still have the Suzy goose ckoset. My parents found a Barbie-sized kitchen with pots, pans silverware, packages of food, a kitchen table and chairs, a turkey that turned on the spit inside the oven while the burners lit up. If you filled the reservoir above the sink, you had running water, and there was a refrigerator too. I think there may even have been a dishwasher, though it's been so many years since I gave it to the little girl who lived across the street. I also had Ken, his best friend, Alan, and Barbie's bff, Midge. Scooter and Skipper rounded out the family. I had the red velvet evening coat with white satin lining and matching hat (pill box hat, like Jackie Kennedy's) and Skipper's matching ensemble. and their clothes were so elegant. Not the guys though. I'm afraid that Ken and Alan dressed like 1960s college boys. I even saved my money and bought a fold-up Barbie dream house. Oh, the fun we had! And you're right, our Barbies lived drama-filled lives: staring in movies, traveling the world, being in fashion shows, dating down with Ken and Alan, neither of whom had a sports coat, much less a suit! I learned to sew lovely gowns for the Barbies, but the guys were SOL! 😆😅😆😂 Thank you for letting me remember all of this. My Barbie dolls were wonderful fun! And noe I have goes of Barbies and plenty of time, perhaps I should make some pretty dresses for them and start giving them away...
You can give Barbie a diverse set of body types and represent different disabilities and cultures, WITHOUT making their outfits suck! Every doll deserves to slay!
90s and early 2000 Barbie were actually diverse and pictured different cultures through their series of Barbie world ( which wasn’t expensive like the sh dolls nowadays ). Nowadays is just woke culture who ruined everything including this brand .
I think you're right about Barbie being a fantasy. Play is how children learn. And just like you described your avalanche revealing Ken's affair with Chelsea, playing with dolls helps children explore adult themes in a safe and risk free way. Playing with baby dolls helps children understand about parenthood, which can be really helpful to explain to kids when a new sibling is coming along. Playing with fashion dolls like Barbie, Bratz or those other modern brands I'm too old to have heard of, helps children understand the adult world, a big part of which is work, romantic relationships and how we present ourselves and are perceived by others around us. When you're too young to experiment with fashion and makeup, exploring it through play is how you learn about it. Without that play element we end up in the situation we're in now with under 10s using anti-aging skincare and making makeup routine tiktoks.
"we are in a Barbie fashion crisis" is not something you hear everyday hahahahaha but also, completely agree! I never really cared (or could afford) Barbie, but the 80's Barbie and the Rockers: Out of This World fiilm is something that to this day is the best Barbie film fashion wise ever!
It's all about the low budget, before Mattel used to put more quality and budget in their dolls, but since 2015 they have had to cut it due to "financial problems", if you see the designs of some fashionistas, some designs are not that bad, but at the same time When it comes to moving from the design to the final doll, Mattel always changes the design in order to spend as little as possible on fabric, although it is not as if it uses the best fabrics.
You hit the nail on the head, the fantasy element is completely gone. Granted, children will come up with their own scenarios (my sister and I made our dolls pirates and man-eating mermaids, one was always a mummy that we kept in a sarcophagus) but please give us something to work with.
Yeah, I'm sick and tired of the tyranny of "relatable" being imposed on kids, and by "relatable" I mean this idiotic insistence that if it isn't centered on the most generic middle-class american lifestyle possible, parents and corporations apparently think it's going to destroy kids minds.
That's why I play chinese gachas. Pretty characters with pretty clothes, I don't want realistic and boring, I want pretty fantasy, there's already real life and I don't want realism forced into my fantasy. Also I had a dictator-Barbie and it was fun as hell to play her sometimes, they were all some sort of insane magical villainesses/heroines and I regret nothing lol
I gotta mention horrible color palettes they use for Barbie now. The colors they used to pick worked together for the outfits and aesthetic the doll had. Now all of them look like they where picked at random with all the over saturated basic colors and gross neons that don't go together at all. Don't even get me started on the molded in tops and crappy cheap skirts where if you lose them the doll is a lost cause 😭 It honestly feels like they're tryna make Barbie seem more childish and immature despite still looking like an adult woman. Some of these clothes they design look like a 5 year old's discount Halloween costume with all the cheapness and disgusting color choices. I feel like a few brands like Barbie are always trying so hard to be realistic and modern it gets uninteresting real quick. Worst part is I finally reach an age where I have my own money to just go ahead and buy the barbie stuff i want just for the quality to take a nose dive and have it not be worth it 😔
4 месяца назад+29
I agree, they definitely went down the kids fashion route with the random color combos 😭
I remember receiving Odette, the Swan Lake Barbie for Christmas one year, it was a magical moment!! Her dress was everything, she had a fabulous crown and wings with lights... I really wish they would relaunch all princess barbies even if only for a limited time
One thing that I haven't seen mentioned much: people of all body types DESERVE to feel good in pretty, campy, and fashionable clothing! Im sure they would also appreciate that for their dolls, instead of getting stuck with the overall baggy, blasé, or lazy outfits.
I thought when Mattel introduced different body types for the dolls it would be a money maker for them because the different body types would mean making the clothes in different sizes. The result being if you wanted your differently sized dolls to be able to change clothes, you'd have to buy three times the wardrobe options. But instead of making excellent clothes in different sizes, they've just made crappy clothes in a one-size fits most option. It makes sense on a family spending budget but not on a fun, fantasy, imagination aspect which is part of buying toys in the first place.
It cost them more to produce more doll body bases so they had to recoup the losses somehow if they wanted to keep the profits going forever upwards in this late stage capitalist nightnare.
I think the fashion getting worse is part of why I started playing with Monster High dolls and Ever After High dolls. They have these fun, interesting designs and many accessories. And the characters themselves are interesting. Some of the best doll clothes I got for Barbies were from the thrift store.
I’m seeing this in my young cousins too-they’re WAY more interested in Monster High, and it’s easy to understand why. Barbie has fallen so far :’( I miss going to Walmart and Toys ‘R’ Us as a kid and looking at the collector Barbies and MyScene dolls
I'm always so happy to hear about other people's unhinged Barbie playing storylines. My Barbies run a foster home in post-apo village and had to hunt dinosaurs for meat and to protect the children.
here's some for you: I mostly played with Playmobil (my parents wouldn't buy me Barbies, but i didn't mind because I preferred stories about people kidnapping sentient animals for deliberately-badly-designed half-Lego zoos and the animals escaping to a utopia until I got bored and started the cycle again), but my cousins had Barbies, and I distinctly remember one day when we found a foam sword and sacrificed one of them. Her head wouldn't stay on anyway, and we already had the dark blanket fort, so I figured we might as well do a human sacrifice.
Ours ran a romantic holiday villa called Barbie Huts and would go swimming and make out under the waterfall, which was actually the garden hose. Part of their trip away usually entailed 4wd adventures with their Jeep tied to the back of my bike 🚲
My daughter wanted a Barbie and I was so DISSAPOINTED by the selection. I found one of those limited edition ballgown holiday releases, coughed up the money and took her out of the collectors box.
THANK YOU for taking it out of the box for your child to play with!! My mom finally got me a holiday version when I was 12 and wouldn't let me take it out of the box. If I wanted to look at it through a box, I just wandered the toy aisle. Well it ended up in the attic where all the heat fluctuations ruined the box anyway and all that achieved was giving me a gift I couldn't enjoy. Your child will enjoy it a MILLION times more by being able to PLAY with it.
I was very disappointed too. As an adult I just went nostalgic and expected to get a KNEE-BENDING Barbie for myself and you can imagine my confusion when I saw they were ALL PLASTIC and didn't even have long hair!
Our fashion options today are accessible and cost affordable! Now, we don’t have to jump on the bandwagon of luxury brands, which makes you believe you have nothing to wear or can’t afford anything, but today the options are endless and your home IS your castle. Just use your imagination and have playfulness in your life! Then you’ll be a Barbie! 😉🥰
Omg the way you played with them is so relatable, my cousin gave me her huge Sylvanian families dollhouse with all the trimming and I use to spend and hour setting it up to then just play ‘earthquake’ and shake it and make them try to save each other 😅 children can be twisted
😂 who didnt Play that way. I lost ma barbie's ring and she had hole in her hand so I painted it black. From now on she was the one bitten by cobra 😅 also we leaded masses for our dolls which always ended in the huge fight between barbies 😂
@@lollylula6399 Yes 😂 we (my Sister and I) Played some kind of Cinderella. But the stepmother and her daighters had fake boobs (we made them out of playdoh). During the ball prince noticed fake boobs and decided to threw them to dungeons 😂
oh man I'm one minute into this video and it's already brought back memories... my sister and I had a few Barbies and twice as many Steffi dolls (they were much cheaper than Barbies and we're also Polish) and they all had the same face so we made them into a family who owned a drug cartel in virtually every scenario, we called them Strips Sisters (no idea why)
At my Grandmother’s, we had a bin of Barbie’s she had collected for us from rummage sales- these were mostly holiday Barbie’s of years past, so we had the Good Stuff (tm). All of the Barbie’s were constantly wearing beautiful ball gowns, and our singular poor Ken was wearing shorts but not a shirt because he didn’t have one. I miss them!!!
Im 60 and loved Barbies when i was little. They always reminded me of the very extravagant women in the movies. To me, the most important thing to have for playing with Barbies is imagination. Mattel gave you the doll and fancy clothes and houses and cars and her boyfriend but without imagination they were nothing.
Yep, I am 57. I was crushed when Mattel said Ken was not her boyfriend. I choose to ignore their opinion. We used to take empty drawers out of a dresser in our basement and arrange them on the floor to make the rooms of a house, since we didn't have a Barbie dream house. We had plenty of fun with those imaginative setups though.
The quality has gone way down. The outfits I had as a kid had real stitches in it and if it was a pair of overalls over a top that was two separate pieces. Now it’s one (polyester? Nylon?) piece that has the fabric pattern etc printed onto it. 😕 My guess is that since they decided to make different model sizes for the dolls that made the production price go up and also all the outfits won’t fit on all the dolls which drives up the price and since they still want to make money the clothing is suffering. I dunno why not do both? Can’t we still have better clothes? How much does it really cost to have different clothing sizes and different molds? 🤷🏻♀️ Just my theories nothing concrete.
A lot of the time they partially don't even have actual clothes anymore, and instead the clothes are made from moulded plastic stuck to their body! It makes me so mad honestly
It's always funny when I get reminded that while we boys went "big red robot good, big grey robot bad, they punch each other" often girls went on elaborate dark storylines with their dolls and My Little Pony figures. Toy companies are just odd at times, from what I gather they do a lot of focus testing that often end up being misleading in a way or another. But also apparently toys sell less across the board and the cost of some materials went up due to oil prices making plastics more expensive, and I guess everything else got cheapened out in a way to cut costs and maximize the profit margins.
I know, right? My mom's barbie dresses were *so* much cooler than even mine were. They had real buttons with real button holes, for goodness sake. Edit: we didn't go from 90's barbie style to today's garbage. We degraded from 60's barbie style (working buttons and realistic closures and pockets and all) to 90's velcro closures, fake buttons and pockets, etc.
I inherited some 60's & 70's Sindy clothes (I'm from the UK so Sindy was our Barbie) & they all had poppers and buttons and were sewed properly! and had real lace and looked like mini real life clothes. it was really awesome.
2000s Barbie was a step up from 90s Barbie (I straddled the eras, and Generation Girl were leaps and bounds beyond what I’d had as a little girl), but 60s Barbie is the pinnacle of quality. Got to go through my mom’s collection recently and they are *immaculate*
The vintage 60s stuff is amazing. Prior to worrying about choking hazards, we got barbie curlers and dishes and all manner of realistic Sixth scale miniatures.
My parents are older, and my mom had Barbies in the 60s. My friends loved coming over to my house because I had such high-quality Barbie clothes inherited from my mom. Most of them were based on actual designer wear and were in decent shape even 40 years later. Even what was in stores in the 2000s was better than what's out there now but yeah we've downgraded from the originals.
Omg thank you for making this video!!! You hit the nail on the head with every point and I’m so glad that someone with a big platform has spoken about how Barbie went from stylish, chic & glamorous, to juvenile, cheaply made & pedestrian. I’m a fashion illustrator/designer and I’ve been speaking about this for a while now, & have even expressed this to Mattel directly, using my social media platform & design skills to showcase how far Barbie’s style card has declined in recent years. Many doll collectors and Barbie fans have felt this way for a decade now since they rebranded in 2016 to be more “diverse” & “inclusive”, which is great & all, but it feels more performative than anything else, bc the Barbie team has not had a leading black designer alongside their other non-black designers for many years, which is incredibly disappointing & they’ve made no efforts to seek out more diverse designers to bring into their team. What’s the point of designing a plethora of black Barbie dolls including celebrities & historical figures etc, yet you don’t have any black designers to take on those projects? It has to be given solely to a white or non-black designer, and there are certain things culturally, that just won’t be understood to execute things in the best way. Aside from that, the heavy focus on making the brand diverse for good press coverage, has made Mattel forget everything else that made Barbie special. Everything else is now an afterthought. As you said…where is the glamour? The fantasy? The high quality dolls and fashions?? Diverse Barbie deserves to be high quality, look glamorous/stylish too! Kids nowadays unfortunately don’t get the amazing playline Barbie dolls from the 90s & early/mid 00s anymore & it’s a real shame. It definitely has a lot to do with Mattel being scared to ruffle feathers with ignorant adults that have had weird critiques against Barbie being glamorous & leaning into hyper femininity, when there’s nothing wrong with that. At one point in time, they were unapologetic about it, especially when they were competing with Bratz & created My Scene. They really took risks and were unafraid to take the fashion and makeup to the next level, actually reflecting what was hot on the runway and what teens & older girls were wearing, with different fabrics & textures, and amazing attention to detail. Nowadays, the dolls outfits are based on trends that are years late and are made from cheap fabrics like printed denim plastered with tacky food prints or cheesy slogans. There is nothing wrong with a doll wearing makeup and a mini skirt, and weird adults that try to sexualise a doll & project their own insecurities onto a plastic toy, are NOT who Mattel should be catering or pandering to. Barbie is a fashion doll first and foremost, but the fashion element has been lost for a while. I really hope one day, they focus back on what made Barbie so iconic in the first place. Even the collector Barbie dolls are not as high quality or well designed as they used to be. It seems like in recent years, it’s been more about cutting costs and making things as cheaply as possible, instead of making incredibly well made and stylish dolls like they did 20 years ago. If you put a Fashion Fever Barbie next to a modern day Fashionista, that Fashion Fever doll will wipe the floor with the Fashionista in every sense! If anything, I feel for the Barbie designers, some who have been there for 30+ years and have seen their vision become more watered down in recent years, but they have no choice but to go along with the constraints and restrictions. You best believe they wish Barbie could go back to her roots too! Many of the designers feel the same as us.
4 месяца назад+35
I had no idea about the designer thing, that's ridiculous!
It sounds like they should have just kept a classic Barbie, all the same body shape, so they could focus on the fashion while running a separate inclusive line. I’m sure having to make clothes in all different sizes has contributed to the decline in interesting outfits for cost savings reasons.
You put everything that was on my mind so well. I was a huge Barbie fan growing up. Now when I want to buy them for my daughter, it’s not the same. If I want to buy a “nice” Barbie, it’s unaffordable!
Barbie is how I learned to sew! The lady who cared for me when I was a kid was a seamstress who made gowns for bridal parties and competitive ballroom dancing. She would give me scraps if the luxurious fabrics she was using and show me how to replicate the pattern she was making in the right size for the Barbie. Then I would handsew while she would sew on the machine. So while "playing" I learned pattern drafting, curved seams, fitted bodice, inset sleeves, assembly order, blind-stitched hems, how to use a scrap of tulle as stiffening under lace, and so much more. When I moved to the machine to "learn to sew", really I just needed to learn how to use the machine. I got new Barbie for my daughter and none of the clothes I'd sewn fit her. I had to draft all new patterns, and they just don't look the same. We go all over the eastern part of the country (USA) to vintage toy shows to get toys for our kids. The new toys seem to discourage imagination
Playing with Barbies shaped my fashion sense too: my Barbie had a pair of pointed toe high heel ankle boots in a light brown colour, and honestly I've been looking for a human-sized pair ever since 😩
I think that like everything else, Barbies and their clothes are made as quickly and cheaply as possible. Like fast fashion, fast furniture, fast Barbie. There are probably way less people designing them and they have way less time to get them manufactured and shipped out.
And they probably bank on their good name to carry them. Parents and even grandparents remember Barbie from their childhood, so they buy Barbies for their kids and grandkids. Let's see how long that will last.
@griffindiary6692 Well, my granddaughter is too young for fashion dolls and maybe won't care to play with dolls. But, I've already bought four of the Rainbow High dolls. I really like how they look. The huge head clearly makes them a doll, and the body is more pear shaped as many females are.
I played with Barbies in the 1960s and 1970s. I LOVED the clothes, especially the astronaut spacesuit! Barbie was originally described as a teenage fashion model. Now she's a Walmart shopper.
My sister and I made clothes for our barbies. And so much drama was on! Our barbies would rest while we were in school. And once we are home - it's soap opera time! We loved our dolls and Disney princesses and never ever thought we should look like them. I like barbies from old days as well. They let you dream.
I really think they could've prioritized BOTH Diversity AND Fashion, it upsets me most people think esp the Mattel Designers it seems, people in different Body types cannot be serving fashion divas
Reminds me of the whole fiasco with the new Victoria's Secret "fashion" show in 2023. This seems to be the common view of fashion industry execs, i.e., you can either have diversity or stylish clothes, but not both. 🙄
Cause you are creating a manufacturing nightmare in production logistics….. like it or not…. The thick dolls are never the big sellers, they are the ones that can be found on clearance and on sales…. Why is Mattel gonna throw money down the toilet for product that doesn’t sell just so some cartoon avatars can clap about “the diversity”….
My guess is that it's a combination of Mattel trying to make one-size-fits-all-dolls clothes while having a diverse range of body types and cost cutting measures. I remember in the 00s that Barbie clothes started going down in quality. Shirts with a pattern only had the pattern in the front. Details like pockets and buttons were printed on. Form fitting corset tops were molded directly on the doll in plastic instead of being actual items of clothing.
This is such a great point!! The fantasy of childhood is almost nonexistent anymore and Barbie dolls is a great example of that. I wish for children to have their fantasy and not have reality thrust in their faces too soon.
I had a Barbie with a reversible dress that I absolutely loved! I think it was the Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus doll. She came with a tiara and earrings too! I loved playing with my barbies' fashions, mixing and matching tops and bottoms and accessories! And I could tell when something didn't look right.
I LOVED 80s-90s Barbie!!! Her clothes and accessories were amazing!! My doll stories were much like Karolina’s being very melodramatic/soap operas. “I can’t marry the Duke for my heart belongs to the prince” or “I must get ready for the Prom and look better than (insert villain/rivals name)” lol
4:10 Same. I don't think children will naturally compare their bodies to their doll's proportions. If they do, that comparison culture and body obsession came from somewhere else (friends, movies, pink magazines, etc). Either way, more natural dolls, in my opinion, is preferred, in terms of body proportions and makeup
Hey….. I wasn’t “traumatized” Cause I wasn’t an athletic, muscular cat man as a child….. and year of going to Halloween at Disney have shown me children don’t pick “what represents” them……. I literally have seen Black Snow Whites and Blonde Falcons
When I was a kid, when my friends wanted representation, they bought American Girl dolls. When they wanted fantasy, they bought Barbies and Monster High. (I didn't play with dolls, but my friends did.) Barbie needs to get back to their roots and start doing what made them a household name to begin with.
Exactly. I can tell you from experience it definitely wasn't Barbie because I can look at her and think of my childhood and the stories I created. But when I look at a model in a bikini, that's when the "I'm not as pretty as her, not as slim as her" thoughts pop up and I have to fight it for a couple of weeks to get over it. It was never Barbie.
i mean barbie is part of pop culture, especially the popularity it had back then. so it was more of a combination of everything in your environment. i can see kids hanging on to that. thats why bratz blew up so much bc the dolls had different skin tones and different facial features whereas 90% of barbies you saw on the shelf were skinny white blonde girl with blue eyes
I wonder if now, because of the ever present comparison through social media and life-like animation, kids actually do compare themselves to dolls and animated characters more? "When we were kids" is based on a pre-internet reality. 😅 We simply only saw who was in our social circle and maybe a movie or TV-show every now and then. But the thought of comparing myself to a doll or someone in the TV never even crossed my mind. They weren't real. Today though, because we are intensely interconnected and consume a lot more people-centred media, these strangers in the TV and inanimate objects do come to life in a way. Maybe we truly can't judge what doll do to a kid these days? I would love to read some studies about this!
Barbie being considered a bad influence reminds me of video games in the 2000s. People thought kids would be violent because games had violence. But when I played mortal kombat, I knew it wasn't real. I just wanted to perform martial arts combos with hot guys. Sure it was bloody.
Rock'n'Roll, Satanic Panic, and Video Games making serial k*ill*rs. They won the war in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. Unfortunately? Looming at music, movies, games and art in general? They've lost the war. Everything just feels very hollow, lifeless, and bland.
@@ivyannanet Egging a child on that is already violent, does not help. They need clear instructions on how to respect other humans and people. If all they learn is videogames and they have the tendency to be violent, it will solidify their initial thoughts that treating eachother as such, is okay. Once your basic 'foundation' of respecting humans and animals has been taught and you understand, let's say at 12 or 13, you could try and see what happens when you play a game that involves a different approach. And if it makes you hungry for real life action or hurting others, you know that you'd need to stop.
@@Widdekuu91 If only the rest of us didn't need to suffer all the time because of some people simply refusing to parent their child. The solution isn't making gaming or Barbie dolls unenjoyable for the rest of us, it's making people actually parent their kids. Or at least it should be the solution.
'Who doesn't want a doll that looks like them?' Am I the only one who did not want to have barbies that were similar to me? The Barbie I played with was not supposed to be me. Just as Karolina said, I was a little girl, but my barbies represented imaginary grown women who had affairs, and had their own lives.
Myscene had such cool clothes! Seriously, I only got 1 of those dolls, Barbie from the bling bling collection or whatever the name was (I remember I wanted Nolee but whoever gifted the doll to me didn't find that one). I had so many barbies with beautiful clothes, but myscene were on another level! Little me was amazed with all the sparkles and pretty dresses, and even their makeup :3 My niece has rainbow high dolls and they look pretty good! The only bad thing is that barbie clothes and rainbow high clothes don't really fit on each other's dolls, because of the different body proportions... My niece took some of my barbies and their clothes home, but she can't really interchange the clothes with her dolls :(
I used to sew and crochet Barbie clothes, but most people didn't want to pay even a minimum wage price for them, even back in the 90s. Once they changed the body shape (which seriously did not bother me as a kid...I knew it wasn't realistic), even the new sewing patterns were blah fashion. I wasn't even going to play around with adapting the crochet patterns, so I just stopped doing it for pay.
The closest thing I can find to a "princess" Barbie, has molded plastic tops and disintegrating clothtable "skirts" with the most horrendous patterns printed on with cheap colors. And the skirt isn't even big and poofy
it def feels like Mattel went "Oh you want more diverse Barbies? Here you go. Oh you wanted **pretty** diverse Barbies?" as if both wasn't very much a real and very in-demand option. The whole "pick just one" attitude is NOT a good look. It's giving "only the idealized body deserves to look good, everyone else can get by with cheap crap, and they should be grateful we even bothered to include them."
It's all about the cost. That's why we are getting what we are getting. They are making most clothes to fit ALL the dolls rather than tailored, unique clothes.
All of this!!! As an older Barbie collector that’s pretty much seen 4 decades of the brand, this past decade is by far the worse in terms of fashion, makeup, packaging, and overall aesthetic for the play line, the dolls marketed to children. I remember back in the day feeling excitement walking down the Barbie aisle. That is no longer the case and that is sad.
I think it's down to them changing the body types of the dolls. Its easier to make boxy crap fit all the different body types they made ratger than have unique outfits that fit & flatter each doll. I personally liked how the barbies used to be shaped when I got them because it matched with my own body type. Felt awful having people rip into them as being "incredibly unrealistic" when all she was was an hourglass figure with long legs relative to torso. With the shift to diversify & make the dolls more "representative" they actually stopped producing dolls with the hourglass proportions. Apparently I'm not a realistic enough body type. I must not exist.
I remember having one without a head and chewed legs that walked around the doll house naked as a tormented spirit. It haunted the house of my other Barbies.
i was born in the very early 2000s in a diverse country, and i went to an all girls school. trust me when i say nobody cared about the diversity or bodies that much. i think it was grown adults making a fuss that really pushed barbie down. these people were not buying them, some didnt even have kids. why not ask what the kids want to see? back then we all wanted to be the single black character bc they stood out to us. bratz having a girl for each major race didnt worry us at all.
Great video!! Just one thing I thought I would also point out: that holiday Barbie pictured at 7:27 was designed with the help of AI and the packaging art itself is all AI. Can't even design their own dolls let alone give them high quality fashion!
I was not a girly girl but I loved my 80's and 90's Barbie's fashions. They would go on adventures but keep their clothes nice. haha. They were so fluro, bright, bold and over the top, layered to the max. I still have them and just gave them a clean before sticking them back into storage. I have crystal Barbie! And Totally Hair, Benetton, Beach Blast and Super Star. Now they have different bodies I assume its easier just to trot out bland costumes that can be size adjusted.
I'm pleased to learn that chewing on Barbie shoes is an intergenerational and international thing. (I was doing it in the late 70s/early 80s.) And I still look back fondly on my Peaches n Cream Barbie.
I had a Cali Girl barbie, she had a vanilla scent, the most prettiest face and gorgeous skin color. She was my favorite, shaped my life I swear... Yeah, her feet didn't fit Barbie shoes, but I could put on different clothing on her, sew my own or just pinch it with hair clips... Me and my cousins gathered to create new clothes for them, later on started creating our own fashion magazine at home. I was the illustrator. Now I'm working as a graphic designer... The complete lack of care for kids' toys or products angers me everyday.
I think you just unlocked a core memory. I too had a Barbie that was vanilla scented. She was Cali themed -- think surf, sand, sun. A beautiful olive tan skin tone. She was my favorite.
This change was most likely in the works since around early 2010s. Barbie was losing sales each year, the pop feminist blaming disney princesses and dolls was stronger than ever, and mattel had to do something, especially after the 2014 swimsuit magazine controversy. They opted for making barbie diverse, but also removing all the fantasy aspect of barbie. Barbie brand also has a huge recognition and devoted collectors, so they can release the most mediocre doll ever and it'll still sell.
Glad I’m not the only one who had dramatic soap operas with her Barbies. I had a headless Barbie that served as my murder victim in all my mystery stories.
My niece got a eighties/nineties Barbie from me (second hand but still looking great) and I was happy she said that that Barbie is her favorite because "she has the prettiest face" We're getting clothes from flea markets for her because plain real life clothes just don't inspire kids + I am spending hours sewing gowns and poofy dresses for that Barbie now. The horrible plastic-ey low quality clothes nowadays can rot in the shelves of the stores imo. :D But I must say I really like today's "Made to Move" labeled Barbies with all the pose-ability they come with - and of course the diversity of the dolls. It made me want better clothes for this generations' kids - because we had them back in the day, and I loved them! Awesome that you picked this topic!
Well done. I couldn't agree more. I still have some of the first outfits from the original Barbie and the quality in construction is so different from modern Barbie clothes. The original outfits had linings and little buttons...if you could blow them up to adult size you could wear them yourself and alot of the accessories were fabric, not cheap plastic. As a kid I used to make outfits for my Barbies and I would always strive for that kind of quality.
honestly the biggest factor is probably just the price, collectors have been complaining for a long time about printed fabrics, lack of accessories and sculped unremovable tops which all are just cheaper to produce. also the fashion in pricier dolls is just outdated by the time they're even advertised. im not sure if i remember correctly but i think mattel rly started strugling when one of the most influencial designers retired
also u mentioned dolls like rainbow high or lol omg but they are a fair bit more expensive and as far as i know rainbow high recently started making clothes of lower quality than they used to when the dolls launched so they were probably too pricey to make despite that
I think the barbie fashion crisis has also a lot to do with increasing the profit margin. The clothes from the 2000s are way more detailed, not only trough accessories but also through bows diffrent fabriks, small pockets...
I was a kid in the late 50's-early 60's. The Barbie fashion was elegant, well put together outfits, Barbie couture. There was a booklet that listed the outfits, we yearned for these clothes. They had names! "Solo in the spotlight" more like collectors Barbies today.
I think it's very rooted in gender essentialism, trying to turn Barbie into an "average girl" to avoid being misogynistic/sexist but it backfired because girls who like pink and fashion exist and that's okay. Also because Barbie has so many expectations to uphold and it sucks that Barbie can't be a girl that likes fashion.
My first Barbie was one of the early ones in the black and white striped swimsuit, with red hair. That was in the early 60s. Grandma gave her to me. Then later on in 1969-1970 I had one named Stacey I think. That had some cool clothes of the time. Short dresses. One in a metallic silver, and colors fabric. Just some cute clothes that were in fashion then. The only Barbie I have now is a Catwoman one. And some cheap one I bought for figure drawing. I admire mom's and grandma's that would sew special dresses for their daughter's Barbies. I remember seeing Barbie doll dress patterns in the back of the pattern counter books when I started to sew myself.
American Girls Dolls went down in quality after Mattel bought them. They are too concerned with making a buck than they are about quality. Barbie has been owned by Mattel since 1964. So, the era you enjoyed was still Mattel, but maybe over all Mattel’s focus changed in general around the time they bought AG.
I was born in the 70's and some of my oldest Barbie/Sindy/Fashion doll clothes needed you to take the head off of your doll to dress her., like some close fitted knit sweaters with high necklines but also a few halterneck dresses without clumsy buttons. You just took the head off to dress your doll and put it back again. And never have I ever thought that would apply to my own body or wardrobe! :D
The problem is Carlyle Nuera, the current Barbie designer. He is absolutely terrible and his designs are hideous... Also the quality standards now are way lower than in the '80s/'90s and '00s because of budget constraints and that now Barbies are targeted at small toddlers instead of young children and teenagers, because they only play with computers and smartphones sadly...
"We are in a barbie fashion crisis and something needs to be done about it!". LOVE this, plus I learned a new word, never heard of deyassification before. Entertaining and educational rant.
As someone who loved playing with Barbies in 90s, and who still loves checking out Barbie shelves in toy shops, I would say, the fashion issue comes from the quality issue and saving money on production issue. They're cutting corners on all the details possible. I have Barbie jeans from the late 90s made from actual lightweight denim, with teeny tiny buttons, contrasting seams on the sides and pockets were actually slit, so Barbie could put her hands in them. Now unless you buy expensive collectors editions, regular Barbie jeans are just cheapest polyester with buttons, seams and denim textures printed on them. All the details that can be printed are printed or omitted. There's as little decoration as possible, and the outfits are made from as little pieces as possible, so there's not too many seams and the construction is as easy as possible. Maybe they're trying to reflect the real life fast fashion, or maybe they're just trying to save money. But unless you go for more expensive lines, collectors editions or other Mattel dolls, you're not getting the same quality and creativity anymore T_T
As a Barbie collector I can’t describe how grateful I am that you use your platform to talk about this topic. Most people don’t even know that Barbie isn’t even glamorous anymore 😅
I think you are correct about one thing. Barbie should be about *Fantasy*, if not *Aspirational.* The dolls should inspire imagination, not be a constant reminder of how reality is "unfair". I wonder if modern Barbie is a result of the MyTwinn doll of the 1980s to 1990s? Parents could custom order a doll to look like their child. Selection of skin tones, eye color, hair color, and even freckles can be painted on. Parents could even buy an outfit for their child that looked identical to the one they select for the doll. Having a doll that looks like you surely can't be good for long term mental state. How can one be aspirational or imaginative with a doll that looks exactly like you?
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
I don't know why so many adults think kids are brainless idiots. I didn't wan't to be barbie, I wanted to dress them extremely campy and make telenovelas
Omg yes! I think a lot of judgements comes from adults who are very judgmental in general and see everything in black and white. My friends gramma told me that Barbies look like hookers and I just saw them as cool independent 20yo fashionable girls.
Yass, telenovelas and Pinoy teleseryes! My mum used to watch the Ugly Betty show, which was funny as hell since it was based on Yo Soy Betty La Fea, the world’s most successful telenovela ever made.
Poor parenting leads to these kinds of problems. If the kids have good parents? Good REAL role models? They wouldn't put their entire personality into a... toy, cartoon, fictional character on television.
I'm convinced the "perpetually online" life is a real issue. Toys back then were just meant as a tool for entertainment and imagination. Just listening to Karolina: "They were businesswomen, they had lovers, drama..." her imagination filled in the blanks.
Nowadays? People can't even relate to another human being unless they look, act, think, and feel just like they do... 😮💨
@@drakynochHonestly, you've got a point. People project onto fiction super hard now, because they're so disconnected from the real world
Because the same adults blame Barbie for their failed lives.
I saw a Mattel employee say that the most difficult aspect of introducing new body types for Barbie was the clothes, which had to be universal and fit every doll. That would explain the baggy, loose t-shirts and shapeless dresses - by the way, a perfect representation of chain store plus size fashion XD
It kind of is an inherent problem with introducing size diversity to a *fashion* doll. Including prosthetic legs, Down’s syndrome, blindness, vitiligo and every skin color under the sun doesn’t impact the core appeal of the doll, but dolls with different hip widths and leg lengths just inherently does. In the 60s, Midge was marketed specifically as a friend who could wear all of Barbie’s clothes (as opposed to Ken and Skipper, who needed their own wardrobes), but with four different body types now not even *Barbie* can wear all of Barbie’s clothes.
Imo the preferable solution would have been to strongly and consistently market the different dolls and outfits as different sizes (which could also introduce kids to the concept of clothes levels), but clearly Mattel chose to go all Syndrome on us instead with those godawful bag dresses.
When everyone is Barbie, no one is.
(On a side note: as a tall girl, I would personally give Mattel permission to reduce the Barbie body types to 3 if it meant proper fashion. We are not a marginalized demographic in desperate need of representation, and Barbie was already tall anyway.)
This sounds like the kind of excuse given when stores are asked why the plus-size range is so small. These are bs excuses from a multimillion dollar company. Wider hips means they can’t design cute outfits? BFFR.
There is some of that. But not entirely. There are structured dresses but they have a sneaky empire waist that hits midway between the under bust and what passes for a waist on these dolls.
Fashion packs need to be a thing again
@@mossfrog9720 Yes! I got a few Barbies for my girls and then tried to find clothing sets to change up their outfits. Couldn't find anything!
Omg the Barbie Drama! That’s the only way I would play! Someone was always falling off a cliff or getting kidnapped. We went dark in the 80s! It was a soap opera.
But fuuuuuun soap opera.
😂😂 my Barbies were always super heroes, traveling to space, or putting on full productions of Phantom of the Opera.
People who didn't have fun with Barbies were doing it wrong 😜
I used to play barbies with my sister, and we essentially made medical dramas. I would always make her ken doll die.
i'd play as though they were a royal family in a dynasty bc i had a castle dollhouse. i had no clue what game of thrones was
All of mine were in the hospital, stabbed in the stomach until either cured or dead.
Also, her puppy died and came back to life after being put in her microwave and then died again.
1. we need a tv show based on your childhood barbie plots.
2. I thinks what saddens me equally to the fashion downgrade is the makeup downgrade. like why does EVERY single barbie these days HAVE to follow the ~clean girl~ aesthetic?
3. THANK YOU FOR MAKING THIS.
Wow I was just thinking about what your opinion would be about this. And here you are!😂😂
As someone who never wears makeup I couldn't even find a quality doll who would represent that and which one I would like.
Yes! Blue eyeshadow with a thick crease and lashes for days. Subtle was not the goal.
Yesss especially the makeup one. I was born in 2002 so Monster High was my childhood. Gen 1 was amazing! they had bright eyeshadows, big eyelashes, full lips and a cunty facial expression. I like gen 3 fashion but they look.. too cute. And too clean for monsters
@@denizkaragullu6239Monster High G3 looks more like a Barbie line
1:42 "so I went to another one in a different country" that is the most European thing I have ever heard
Real 😂
damn muricans
@@Thebutterflyguy yeah, like someone in California would say "oh I went to the next county" although when I lived in Humboldt County, sometimes people would drive to Oregon to shop at Fred Meyer because it was only 90 miles and way better than Target.
Ik i was thinking that 😂 europeans go to different countries like americans go to different states. The countries are so small and close together.
Di you guys not understand the concept of vacations abroad? She didn’t just drive to a German supermarket. It is pretty clear in my European mind. Also, you do have borders as well.
The biggest atrocity is that the legs aren't made of bendable rubber anymore but hard plastic 🤢. What's the point in a doll that has no weight to it and cannot even sit in a chair?!
What?? How does she get in her white Barbie Fararri convertible?? I need to speak to someone about this.
But that’s where the weird double joint made-to-move limbs come into their own- but the best ones were the early 2000s single hinged joints (usually advertised as 100 moves) were best. They also had nicer hands and proper Barbie high-heel feet.
I really love the weight of the older dolls, but I must admit it's way easier to put pants on them now lol. I don't have to squeeze as much.
How are they going to power kick if their knees don't bend?
They changed the material because those develop mold.
I really don't understand why they assume kids won't care about the fashions. They're really undermining childrens intelligence! I was OBSESSED with barbies fashions and my nieces are obsessed with monster high and LOL dolls for their fashions. They can absolutely tell when a doll looks good and when it doesn't.
Yes! I grew up watching my mom getting ready and how she styled her outfits, and I recreated that with my Barbies, making me want to be a fashion designer (still to.this day I would love to be one).
@@montse3139 Exactly this! And we clearly remember the ones that looked good, because they are incredibly wanted by collectors today. Playline dolls! That's how much of an inpact they had - they're still rooted in our memories and even our future goals (I want to do costume design!)
And it's not just the fashion. The dolls themselves are of really bad quality.
And getting to wear the hair accessories yourself! I would spend hours LOOKING at barbie and myscene dolls at brochures bc of the clothes.
@@montse3139 there's a whole niche of sewing for Barbie, from every day fashion, to haute couture to OOAK (one of a kind). rerooting, repainting, customising - sky is the limit. I am learning sewing and repaint, did a template for shoes and and trying to learn the whole customisation thing because it's fun.
Barbie now shops at Shein and Temu 😢
She really fell on hard times. Probably had to sell the dreamhouse.
With a touch of LuLaRoe that was donated to the local Salvation Army store
If she did at least she would still slay in brand dupes! Shes shopping at tj maxx and marshalls!😭
THIS THREAD IS TAKING ME OUT 😭🤣🤣🤣
no taste: ( poor Barbie
As a parent, I have to make my daughter Barbie clothes. I totally agree with you. I was depressed shopping for her dolls. The fashion sucks. As a good example, my princess dolls as a girl had decent dresses with multiple layered fabrics, glitter, embellishments… my daughter bought an Anna and Elsa doll set for $30 and the clothes have no hems, printed images on the cheapest fabric imaginable, single layer, it’s ugly and sad. Like dollar tree quality. For $30.
So was i it was horrible and everything is sky high to buy online
I swear most everything is made so badly these days. The past 20 years, things have gone downhill in quality, yet the prices keep rising. I swear companies are pinching pennies more and more yet also charging us and more.
ugh yessssss! bring back fashion, glamour, and dramaaaaa! I think this is why i only barbies i gravitate towards to are the Silkstone Barbies! they were servingggggg, but they got discontinued, and i think theyre trying to bring it back, but even the newer ones doesn't have the same jenesaisquoi 😔
Omg it's the ooak goddess
barbie turned into fast fashion :(
I was scrolling and scrolling and hoping no one made this comment yet. 😹
But it's just so true.
Barbie from Shein
@@CanonessEllinor More like Temu 💀
I was hoping she’d be exempt from fast fashion. Barbie should not have to have real world concerns like this lol.
@@craisins95 haha seriously. it's a fantasy
Karolina wasn’t playing with dolls, she held scriptwriting workshops.
yes! haha
what, I thought that was normal?
a friend of mine had the kids barbies (I don't know what they are called) and a Ken, so we played single parents and the children wanted their parents to get together. So they drugged them, put them in a warehouse, took their clothes, tied them together and put them in a barrel for them to fall in love.
Later on I also got a Ken. Or "families" (two adults in relationships) lives next to each other and everyone was cheating and having affairs
so did i and my lil sisters, it was so FUN that way. and yes they did have affairs lol
It’s pretty normal. I couldn’t get myself to play with normal dolls but I did similar stuff with dinosaurs, dragons, and My Little Pony (with me assigning genders by which side of the body their cutie marks were on because I didn’t like that mine were all girls and thought Wisteria would look better with a mohawk).
What's puzzling is that the good Barbie clothes roughly coincide with the era when everybody's mom sewed. The options were endless then. A quick google of "vintage Barbie sewing patterns" turns up Barbie versions of 50's Dior, 60's dresses ranging from Carnaby Street to Jackie Kennedy, glam fishtail dresses and red carpet worthy gowns. The kids had everything in those days. Now they have Barbies who apparently shop at Dollar General.
And yeah - our Barbies had affairs, too. I remember not having enough Kens for our soapy story line and using a plastic King Kong, lol.
My mom's a professional sewist and she made so many outfits for my barbie! Also she was always so impressed with the clothing the doll came with, considering the small size and amount of detail on the outfit.
I need to look that up. Thanks. I remember seeing Barbie doll dress patterns in the pattern counter books back then.
King Kong having an affair with Barbie......op, your mind. oh my god. amazing!!!
Our Ken dolls just played multiple roles to round out stories as needed. Also, I didn't know they made sewing patterns for Barbies. That's super cool!
I asked my Mum for so long for a male Sindy/Barbie doll - what I really wanted was an Action Man but I never got one. She was so pissed when I gave my Sindy a crew cut so I could have a male character for my storylines 😅 She still remembers it with irritation now and I still can't understand what the harm was in buying me a male doll? or giving the crew cut.
I think Mattel confuses good fashion with “acceptable body standards.” They might think that if a doll isn’t slender and tall, then it can’t wear good fashion, because it would make them look unrealistic. They completely don’t misunderstand the difference 🙄
Nah... they just want a bigger profit
100% agree. My barbie era was 1992-1997. It was cutting edge y2k, blow up couches, heart shaped sunglasses and white jeans. Those Barbies were legit. They also served up diversity. But all of the diverse dolls were still cute and appealing. Kelly doll had like 200 different friends you could buy for like 5$ each. You're telling me that girls couldn't find one of those 200 or so choices that looked kind of like them? Plus, I never wanted one to look like me- I wanted ones that looked like my cool older cousins 😂
Ahhh, that was when Barbie was getting to be bad quality! (I guess that's what "legit" means, based on context clues, that you're saying it was the era of cheaply-made dolls.) If you'd been born a decade or two earlier, you would've seen the truly quality years for all kinds of dolls. I still have all of mine, and the kids in my family prefer playing with my old dolls instead of any new dolls they could get!
As someone who worked for Mattel (in another IP) most of the employees at our level were continuously baffled by corporate decisions. They did so many things that we knew immediately were going to be bad and sure enough they caused backlash and cost them more money in the end. Mattel is all about squeezing every penny they can nowadays, the quality is down and the prices are up.
Why is that the case with every company?? At my workplace we also often go "oh no, the customers won't like that" and we're always right. CEOs everywhere are so out of touch
Yup
@@griffindiary6692my guess would be white male privilege- are all the CEOs white males? They succeed even when they’re mediocre…
Oh boy you guys where right
Yeah, this sounds like my job. 😅
As a Barbie collector you know it's getting serious when even Karolina is talking about the Barbie deyassification. I definitely agree that for some of the cuter stuff you have to go with collector dolls, but a lot of times even the quality of those aren't as great as they used to be (ESPECIALLY the Holiday Barbie line). Not to say there aren't putting out good stuff at all, but it's definitely scarce right now and it's pretty disappointing to see.
And Mattel tried to cancel the Silkstone series
The holiday Barbie line is terrible! Even the new collector dolls the clothes are cheap. I think 2009-2010 is when things went way downhill.
Exactly, Karolina was the last person I thought I'd see talk about Barbie, goes to show how this is truly a *TRAVESTY*
Couldn't agree more with this
The holiday Barbies have been awful for like 10 years now. It’s a real shame…
I remember when my neice got into barbie, I hadn't actually held a barbie doll in years by that time and I was INSULTED by the awful feel of the fabric. I swear the fashion used to make sense and was actually well hemmed with ink printed patterns instead of plastic vinyl print tiger stripes and glued on ruffles, I get its a "production cost" thing but honestly it's getting ROUGH
@@LethalyALotus Luckily, your local craft store has the solution in the fabric pattern section.
I’ve noticed this with another Mattel doll brand. The fabric feels like the worst quality fabric, the designs are meant to skimp on cloth, and there are fewer pieces and accessories per set. I don’t want to pay up for their corner cutting
@@amandastjohn4735 Have you shopped around for miniature notions recently? There isn't that much available in sizes small enough for Barbies (even larger doll stuff is limited), so it's really not as simple as taking a trip to your local store (assuming you're actually lucky enough to have one anymore) and you better get comfortable with printing your own patterned cloth if you want something in an appropriate scale.
Yes, the quality of Barbies today is really poor. My Barbies from the 80s and early 90s could bend their knees is 3 different angles. 😆 Now they can barely sit.
@@sarahjensen6667 TBF this gen does have Made to Move dolls which have the most articulated joints of any Barbie...That's the only good thing they've done 😭
When I played with Barbies, a lot of the clothes I had were ones my grandma has made by hand in the sixties, so they were fifties/sixties styles. I didn't think about how cool that was at the time, but I still have some because I appreciate the style so much more now!
Baby, my first Barbie could very well be older than your mother... I got her in 1959. Yeah, she had the cotton floss hair and the end of her ponytail was glued into a flat flip. But I loved her and thought she was so cool! And her clothes were lovely and well made. She had this sleek, sleeveless brown dress with a knit sweater sleeveless cardigan; then there was the white tea dress with the remind ruffles; the blue and white striped sun dress with the elegant sunhat. And accessories? Purses, shoes, hats, a gold lamé clutch, the pink sports car (though my Barbie drove a shoebox that looked like an old truck. Come to think of it, I did find an old Tonka pickup that someone had ripped the cab top off of and Barbie drove that for years.) And the furniture! I hah the canopy bed, I still have the Suzy goose ckoset. My parents found a Barbie-sized kitchen with pots, pans silverware, packages of food, a kitchen table and chairs, a turkey that turned on the spit inside the oven while the burners lit up. If you filled the reservoir above the sink, you had running water, and there was a refrigerator too. I think there may even have been a dishwasher, though it's been so many years since I gave it to the little girl who lived across the street. I also had Ken, his best friend, Alan, and Barbie's bff, Midge. Scooter and Skipper rounded out the family. I had the red velvet evening coat with white satin lining and matching hat (pill box hat, like Jackie Kennedy's) and Skipper's matching ensemble. and their clothes were so elegant. Not the guys though. I'm afraid that Ken and Alan dressed like 1960s college boys. I even saved my money and bought a fold-up Barbie dream house. Oh, the fun we had! And you're right, our Barbies lived drama-filled lives: staring in movies, traveling the world, being in fashion shows, dating down with Ken and Alan, neither of whom had a sports coat, much less a suit! I learned to sew lovely gowns for the Barbies, but the guys were SOL! 😆😅😆😂 Thank you for letting me remember all of this. My Barbie dolls were wonderful fun! And noe I have goes of Barbies and plenty of time, perhaps I should make some pretty dresses for them and start giving them away...
What a wonderful childhood. Thank you for sharing❤
"the fancy high heels that were so good to chew on" I'm weeping
She sees us and she knows us lmao
I still remember the taste.
The shape was amazing to chew on
I'm salivating just thinking about those little plastic shoes and their mouthfeel
The texture were just so chewable
You can give Barbie a diverse set of body types and represent different disabilities and cultures, WITHOUT making their outfits suck! Every doll deserves to slay!
90s and early 2000 Barbie were actually diverse and pictured different cultures through their series of Barbie world ( which wasn’t expensive like the sh dolls nowadays ). Nowadays is just woke culture who ruined everything including this brand .
I agree. Blaming 'diversity' is just a lazy excuse. Those clothes would not look good on anyone, ever.
Amen to that! Every Barbie deserves to look amazing.
Now kids get dolls who look like them but they are so badly dressed.
It's sad.
It's honestly insulting. "Oh, you're a different body shape to normal? Too hard to make clothes for you. Here, wear this shapeless bag."
I just have to say: I am Lauren, too…
I think you're right about Barbie being a fantasy. Play is how children learn. And just like you described your avalanche revealing Ken's affair with Chelsea, playing with dolls helps children explore adult themes in a safe and risk free way. Playing with baby dolls helps children understand about parenthood, which can be really helpful to explain to kids when a new sibling is coming along. Playing with fashion dolls like Barbie, Bratz or those other modern brands I'm too old to have heard of, helps children understand the adult world, a big part of which is work, romantic relationships and how we present ourselves and are perceived by others around us. When you're too young to experiment with fashion and makeup, exploring it through play is how you learn about it. Without that play element we end up in the situation we're in now with under 10s using anti-aging skincare and making makeup routine tiktoks.
Yes!! Great comment!
That hits it perfectly!!!
such a great point, the need to escape has gotten worse with young girls playing with their faces instead
"we are in a Barbie fashion crisis" is not something you hear everyday hahahahaha but also, completely agree! I never really cared (or could afford) Barbie, but the 80's Barbie and the Rockers: Out of This World fiilm is something that to this day is the best Barbie film fashion wise ever!
It's all about the low budget, before Mattel used to put more quality and budget in their dolls, but since 2015 they have had to cut it due to "financial problems", if you see the designs of some fashionistas, some designs are not that bad, but at the same time When it comes to moving from the design to the final doll, Mattel always changes the design in order to spend as little as possible on fabric, although it is not as if it uses the best fabrics.
You hit the nail on the head, the fantasy element is completely gone. Granted, children will come up with their own scenarios (my sister and I made our dolls pirates and man-eating mermaids, one was always a mummy that we kept in a sarcophagus) but please give us something to work with.
Yeah, I'm sick and tired of the tyranny of "relatable" being imposed on kids, and by "relatable" I mean this idiotic insistence that if it isn't centered on the most generic middle-class american lifestyle possible, parents and corporations apparently think it's going to destroy kids minds.
My Barbies were glamorous spies, and sometimes seductive vampires!
That's why I play chinese gachas. Pretty characters with pretty clothes, I don't want realistic and boring, I want pretty fantasy, there's already real life and I don't want realism forced into my fantasy. Also I had a dictator-Barbie and it was fun as hell to play her sometimes, they were all some sort of insane magical villainesses/heroines and I regret nothing lol
@@AuraAdAstra Nikki dress-up game?
I gotta mention horrible color palettes they use for Barbie now. The colors they used to pick worked together for the outfits and aesthetic the doll had. Now all of them look like they where picked at random with all the over saturated basic colors and gross neons that don't go together at all. Don't even get me started on the molded in tops and crappy cheap skirts where if you lose them the doll is a lost cause 😭
It honestly feels like they're tryna make Barbie seem more childish and immature despite still looking like an adult woman. Some of these clothes they design look like a 5 year old's discount Halloween costume with all the cheapness and disgusting color choices. I feel like a few brands like Barbie are always trying so hard to be realistic and modern it gets uninteresting real quick.
Worst part is I finally reach an age where I have my own money to just go ahead and buy the barbie stuff i want just for the quality to take a nose dive and have it not be worth it 😔
I agree, they definitely went down the kids fashion route with the random color combos 😭
💯.same
Yes, and yes! The color palettes are horrendous!
It's the Lularoe era of Mattel. 😊
they're e.i. lazy or they're just in for the money from customers
I remember receiving Odette, the Swan Lake Barbie for Christmas one year, it was a magical moment!! Her dress was everything, she had a fabulous crown and wings with lights... I really wish they would relaunch all princess barbies even if only for a limited time
I would DIE to own all of the old movie barbies honestly
I still have the Fairy Queen from Swan Lake and I treasure it ❤
That was my favourite doll as a kid!
i used to have BOTH the Princess & Pauper dolls! i miss them...
I had the Nutcracker one! With the pink tutu dress. I loved how articulate that one was.
One thing that I haven't seen mentioned much: people of all body types DESERVE to feel good in pretty, campy, and fashionable clothing! Im sure they would also appreciate that for their dolls, instead of getting stuck with the overall baggy, blasé, or lazy outfits.
Yes! I used to be a fat girl, I would have liked fancy dress in my size!
I thought when Mattel introduced different body types for the dolls it would be a money maker for them because the different body types would mean making the clothes in different sizes. The result being if you wanted your differently sized dolls to be able to change clothes, you'd have to buy three times the wardrobe options. But instead of making excellent clothes in different sizes, they've just made crappy clothes in a one-size fits most option. It makes sense on a family spending budget but not on a fun, fantasy, imagination aspect which is part of buying toys in the first place.
It cost them more to produce more doll body bases so they had to recoup the losses somehow if they wanted to keep the profits going forever upwards in this late stage capitalist nightnare.
I think the fashion getting worse is part of why I started playing with Monster High dolls and Ever After High dolls. They have these fun, interesting designs and many accessories. And the characters themselves are interesting. Some of the best doll clothes I got for Barbies were from the thrift store.
The Descendants dolls are awesome too!
I’m seeing this in my young cousins too-they’re WAY more interested in Monster High, and it’s easy to understand why. Barbie has fallen so far :’( I miss going to Walmart and Toys ‘R’ Us as a kid and looking at the collector Barbies and MyScene dolls
I'm always so happy to hear about other people's unhinged Barbie playing storylines.
My Barbies run a foster home in post-apo village and had to hunt dinosaurs for meat and to protect the children.
Wow 😂 I love it
Hunting dinosaurs for meat 😂😂😂 I used to pretend to be a dinosaur
Wow, mine just went on camping trips and climbed the cupboard-mountains while being half naked since I NEVER had enough clothing for all 30 of them...
here's some for you: I mostly played with Playmobil (my parents wouldn't buy me Barbies, but i didn't mind because I preferred stories about people kidnapping sentient animals for deliberately-badly-designed half-Lego zoos and the animals escaping to a utopia until I got bored and started the cycle again), but my cousins had Barbies, and I distinctly remember one day when we found a foam sword and sacrificed one of them. Her head wouldn't stay on anyway, and we already had the dark blanket fort, so I figured we might as well do a human sacrifice.
Ours ran a romantic holiday villa called Barbie Huts and would go swimming and make out under the waterfall, which was actually the garden hose. Part of their trip away usually entailed 4wd adventures with their Jeep tied to the back of my bike 🚲
My daughter wanted a Barbie and I was so DISSAPOINTED by the selection. I found one of those limited edition ballgown holiday releases, coughed up the money and took her out of the collectors box.
THANK YOU for taking it out of the box for your child to play with!! My mom finally got me a holiday version when I was 12 and wouldn't let me take it out of the box. If I wanted to look at it through a box, I just wandered the toy aisle. Well it ended up in the attic where all the heat fluctuations ruined the box anyway and all that achieved was giving me a gift I couldn't enjoy. Your child will enjoy it a MILLION times more by being able to PLAY with it.
I was very disappointed too.
As an adult I just went nostalgic and expected to get a KNEE-BENDING Barbie for myself and you can imagine my confusion when I saw they were ALL PLASTIC and didn't even have long hair!
YES thank you for letting her play with it! I had to save mine and it was worth nothing 30 years later. I wanted to play with it so bad.
1980’s Barbie Fashion hit different 😂 We watched soaps like The Young & the Restless and our play drama was much more intense 😂❤
👆this right here! Plus we had Barbie and the Rockers! Concerts, crazy fans and intense music lol❤
On point! It’s like we live in a nanny state (world) where we’re told danger’s everywhere, we can’t have fun or opinions, and fantasy is bad. 😢
Barbie is fantasy, she owns a big house in Malibu, how could us be like her in this economy
HAHAHA EXACTLY 💯
Our fashion options today are accessible and cost affordable! Now, we don’t have to jump on the bandwagon of luxury brands, which makes you believe you have nothing to wear or can’t afford anything, but today the options are endless and your home IS your castle. Just use your imagination and have playfulness in your life! Then you’ll be a Barbie! 😉🥰
Omg the way you played with them is so relatable, my cousin gave me her huge Sylvanian families dollhouse with all the trimming and I use to spend and hour setting it up to then just play ‘earthquake’ and shake it and make them try to save each other 😅 children can be twisted
😂 who didnt Play that way. I lost ma barbie's ring and she had hole in her hand so I painted it black. From now on she was the one bitten by cobra 😅 also we leaded masses for our dolls which always ended in the huge fight between barbies 😂
@@AnkaKaszanka9410 am I reading you right - you held mass for your dolls which led to fights between the barbies? 😅
@@lollylula6399 Yes 😂 we (my Sister and I) Played some kind of Cinderella. But the stepmother and her daighters had fake boobs (we made them out of playdoh). During the ball prince noticed fake boobs and decided to threw them to dungeons 😂
@@AnkaKaszanka9410 lol 😂 It sounds like some great storylines and great times with your sister! 💖
@@AnkaKaszanka9410 That's hilarious 😂
I also highly recommend Darling Dollz video essay “When barbie stopped being barbiecore” , it would give you lots of cultural info too!!
oh man I'm one minute into this video and it's already brought back memories... my sister and I had a few Barbies and twice as many Steffi dolls (they were much cheaper than Barbies and we're also Polish) and they all had the same face so we made them into a family who owned a drug cartel in virtually every scenario, we called them Strips Sisters (no idea why)
At my Grandmother’s, we had a bin of Barbie’s she had collected for us from rummage sales- these were mostly holiday Barbie’s of years past, so we had the Good Stuff (tm). All of the Barbie’s were constantly wearing beautiful ball gowns, and our singular poor Ken was wearing shorts but not a shirt because he didn’t have one. I miss them!!!
😂 he was kenough!❤
Im 60 and loved Barbies when i was little. They always reminded me of the very extravagant women in the movies. To me, the most important thing to have for playing with Barbies is imagination. Mattel gave you the doll and fancy clothes and houses and cars and her boyfriend but without imagination they were nothing.
Yep, I am 57. I was crushed when Mattel said Ken was not her boyfriend. I choose to ignore their opinion. We used to take empty drawers out of a dresser in our basement and arrange them on the floor to make the rooms of a house, since we didn't have a Barbie dream house. We had plenty of fun with those imaginative setups though.
@@KristinaHoneyHavenFarm My sister and I built a big house in the playroom using old ceiling tiles like a house of cards.
The quality has gone way down. The outfits I had as a kid had real stitches in it and if it was a pair of overalls over a top that was two separate pieces. Now it’s one (polyester? Nylon?) piece that has the fabric pattern etc printed onto it. 😕 My guess is that since they decided to make different model sizes for the dolls that made the production price go up and also all the outfits won’t fit on all the dolls which drives up the price and since they still want to make money the clothing is suffering. I dunno why not do both? Can’t we still have better clothes? How much does it really cost to have different clothing sizes and different molds? 🤷🏻♀️ Just my theories nothing concrete.
Nice thanks for making my brain think
They don’t do both because it’s a company. Mattel is profit-driven, pure and simple. That’s why.
A lot of the time they partially don't even have actual clothes anymore, and instead the clothes are made from moulded plastic stuck to their body! It makes me so mad honestly
The Barbie Xtra dolls thankfully still have quality outfits. (In several body types) I hate that they have so much junk plastic accessories though.
My Barbie playing was hardcore Sims😂 No regrets, the drama, the plot, the twists
This made me realize that I just traded out one for the other. It's pretty much the same multigenerational supernatural soap opera.
@@BonaparteBardithionAND the sims has cute clothes!!
It's always funny when I get reminded that while we boys went "big red robot good, big grey robot bad, they punch each other" often girls went on elaborate dark storylines with their dolls and My Little Pony figures.
Toy companies are just odd at times, from what I gather they do a lot of focus testing that often end up being misleading in a way or another.
But also apparently toys sell less across the board and the cost of some materials went up due to oil prices making plastics more expensive, and I guess everything else got cheapened out in a way to cut costs and maximize the profit margins.
Thanks! I think things progress from simple & good to worse. Except your videos.
Glad you like them!
I know, right? My mom's barbie dresses were *so* much cooler than even mine were. They had real buttons with real button holes, for goodness sake.
Edit: we didn't go from 90's barbie style to today's garbage. We degraded from 60's barbie style (working buttons and realistic closures and pockets and all) to 90's velcro closures, fake buttons and pockets, etc.
This!!! 100% this!
I inherited some 60's & 70's Sindy clothes (I'm from the UK so Sindy was our Barbie) & they all had poppers and buttons and were sewed properly! and had real lace and looked like mini real life clothes. it was really awesome.
2000s Barbie was a step up from 90s Barbie (I straddled the eras, and Generation Girl were leaps and bounds beyond what I’d had as a little girl), but 60s Barbie is the pinnacle of quality. Got to go through my mom’s collection recently and they are *immaculate*
The vintage 60s stuff is amazing. Prior to worrying about choking hazards, we got barbie curlers and dishes and all manner of realistic Sixth scale miniatures.
My parents are older, and my mom had Barbies in the 60s. My friends loved coming over to my house because I had such high-quality Barbie clothes inherited from my mom. Most of them were based on actual designer wear and were in decent shape even 40 years later. Even what was in stores in the 2000s was better than what's out there now but yeah we've downgraded from the originals.
We all want Karolina Barbie, make it happen Mattel
She would make a great fashion doll. She needs to put out her own line of fashion dolls.
New series idea??
The representation tall girls deserve
fr
With a tiny real hair net
Omg thank you for making this video!!! You hit the nail on the head with every point and I’m so glad that someone with a big platform has spoken about how Barbie went from stylish, chic & glamorous, to juvenile, cheaply made & pedestrian. I’m a fashion illustrator/designer and I’ve been speaking about this for a while now, & have even expressed this to Mattel directly, using my social media platform & design skills to showcase how far Barbie’s style card has declined in recent years. Many doll collectors and Barbie fans have felt this way for a decade now since they rebranded in 2016 to be more “diverse” & “inclusive”, which is great & all, but it feels more performative than anything else, bc the Barbie team has not had a leading black designer alongside their other non-black designers for many years, which is incredibly disappointing & they’ve made no efforts to seek out more diverse designers to bring into their team. What’s the point of designing a plethora of black Barbie dolls including celebrities & historical figures etc, yet you don’t have any black designers to take on those projects? It has to be given solely to a white or non-black designer, and there are certain things culturally, that just won’t be understood to execute things in the best way.
Aside from that, the heavy focus on making the brand diverse for good press coverage, has made Mattel forget everything else that made Barbie special. Everything else is now an afterthought. As you said…where is the glamour? The fantasy? The high quality dolls and fashions?? Diverse Barbie deserves to be high quality, look glamorous/stylish too! Kids nowadays unfortunately don’t get the amazing playline Barbie dolls from the 90s & early/mid 00s anymore & it’s a real shame. It definitely has a lot to do with Mattel being scared to ruffle feathers with ignorant adults that have had weird critiques against Barbie being glamorous & leaning into hyper femininity, when there’s nothing wrong with that. At one point in time, they were unapologetic about it, especially when they were competing with Bratz & created My Scene. They really took risks and were unafraid to take the fashion and makeup to the next level, actually reflecting what was hot on the runway and what teens & older girls were wearing, with different fabrics & textures, and amazing attention to detail. Nowadays, the dolls outfits are based on trends that are years late and are made from cheap fabrics like printed denim plastered with tacky food prints or cheesy slogans.
There is nothing wrong with a doll wearing makeup and a mini skirt, and weird adults that try to sexualise a doll & project their own insecurities onto a plastic toy, are NOT who Mattel should be catering or pandering to. Barbie is a fashion doll first and foremost, but the fashion element has been lost for a while. I really hope one day, they focus back on what made Barbie so iconic in the first place. Even the collector Barbie dolls are not as high quality or well designed as they used to be. It seems like in recent years, it’s been more about cutting costs and making things as cheaply as possible, instead of making incredibly well made and stylish dolls like they did 20 years ago. If you put a Fashion Fever Barbie next to a modern day Fashionista, that Fashion Fever doll will wipe the floor with the Fashionista in every sense! If anything, I feel for the Barbie designers, some who have been there for 30+ years and have seen their vision become more watered down in recent years, but they have no choice but to go along with the constraints and restrictions. You best believe they wish Barbie could go back to her roots too! Many of the designers feel the same as us.
I had no idea about the designer thing, that's ridiculous!
@@HaydenWilliamsI absolutely enjoyed this documentary!
It sounds like they should have just kept a classic Barbie, all the same body shape, so they could focus on the fashion while running a separate inclusive line. I’m sure having to make clothes in all different sizes has contributed to the decline in interesting outfits for cost savings reasons.
I am currently designing doll clothes and I would love to do a collaboration with people like you!
You put everything that was on my mind so well. I was a huge Barbie fan growing up. Now when I want to buy them for my daughter, it’s not the same. If I want to buy a “nice” Barbie, it’s unaffordable!
Barbie is how I learned to sew! The lady who cared for me when I was a kid was a seamstress who made gowns for bridal parties and competitive ballroom dancing. She would give me scraps if the luxurious fabrics she was using and show me how to replicate the pattern she was making in the right size for the Barbie. Then I would handsew while she would sew on the machine. So while "playing" I learned pattern drafting, curved seams, fitted bodice, inset sleeves, assembly order, blind-stitched hems, how to use a scrap of tulle as stiffening under lace, and so much more. When I moved to the machine to "learn to sew", really I just needed to learn how to use the machine. I got new Barbie for my daughter and none of the clothes I'd sewn fit her. I had to draft all new patterns, and they just don't look the same. We go all over the eastern part of the country (USA) to vintage toy shows to get toys for our kids. The new toys seem to discourage imagination
‘Deyassification’ is such a great term. Meme Mother has popularised a term.
I used to go with "nah-ification", but I love the wonderfully unhinged length of "deyassification" so much, I might have to start using that.
Playing with Barbies shaped my fashion sense too: my Barbie had a pair of pointed toe high heel ankle boots in a light brown colour, and honestly I've been looking for a human-sized pair ever since 😩
I want the early 90s fairy barbie outfit. Holographic highlow skirt, massive bubbleblowing wings, glitter pantyhose, metallic blue bodyshaper.
REAL, doll designs are so iconic. Doll clothes designers are so good, as they just made the clothes everyone actually wanted to wear!
I think that like everything else, Barbies and their clothes are made as quickly and cheaply as possible. Like fast fashion, fast furniture, fast Barbie. There are probably way less people designing them and they have way less time to get them manufactured and shipped out.
And they probably bank on their good name to carry them. Parents and even grandparents remember Barbie from their childhood, so they buy Barbies for their kids and grandkids. Let's see how long that will last.
@griffindiary6692 Well, my granddaughter is too young for fashion dolls and maybe won't care to play with dolls. But, I've already bought four of the Rainbow High dolls. I really like how they look. The huge head clearly makes them a doll, and the body is more pear shaped as many females are.
I played with Barbies in the 1960s and 1970s. I LOVED the clothes, especially the astronaut spacesuit!
Barbie was originally described as a teenage fashion model. Now she's a Walmart shopper.
My sister and I made clothes for our barbies. And so much drama was on! Our barbies would rest while we were in school. And once we are home - it's soap opera time! We loved our dolls and Disney princesses and never ever thought we should look like them. I like barbies from old days as well. They let you dream.
I really think they could've prioritized BOTH Diversity AND Fashion, it upsets me most people think esp the Mattel Designers it seems, people in different Body types cannot be serving fashion divas
Reminds me of the whole fiasco with the new Victoria's Secret "fashion" show in 2023. This seems to be the common view of fashion industry execs, i.e., you can either have diversity or stylish clothes, but not both. 🙄
Cause you are creating a manufacturing nightmare in production logistics….. like it or not…. The thick dolls are never the big sellers, they are the ones that can be found on clearance and on sales…. Why is Mattel gonna throw money down the toilet for product that doesn’t sell just so some cartoon avatars can clap about “the diversity”….
As if thin woman weren't real, i hate the "real body type " thing , slim fit woman should continue to exist in their dolls model
@@SieMiezekatzeBarbies were not just "thin". Try googling how they would look like in flesh. It's terrifying.
@@polina-rs4lrthey are dolls.
My guess is that it's a combination of Mattel trying to make one-size-fits-all-dolls clothes while having a diverse range of body types and cost cutting measures. I remember in the 00s that Barbie clothes started going down in quality. Shirts with a pattern only had the pattern in the front. Details like pockets and buttons were printed on. Form fitting corset tops were molded directly on the doll in plastic instead of being actual items of clothing.
This is such a great point!! The fantasy of childhood is almost nonexistent anymore and Barbie dolls is a great example of that. I wish for children to have their fantasy and not have reality thrust in their faces too soon.
I had a Barbie with a reversible dress that I absolutely loved! I think it was the Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus doll. She came with a tiara and earrings too! I loved playing with my barbies' fashions, mixing and matching tops and bottoms and accessories! And I could tell when something didn't look right.
I LOVED 80s-90s Barbie!!! Her clothes and accessories were amazing!! My doll stories were much like Karolina’s being very melodramatic/soap operas. “I can’t marry the Duke for my heart belongs to the prince” or “I must get ready for the Prom and look better than (insert villain/rivals name)” lol
4:10 Same. I don't think children will naturally compare their bodies to their doll's proportions. If they do, that comparison culture and body obsession came from somewhere else (friends, movies, pink magazines, etc). Either way, more natural dolls, in my opinion, is preferred, in terms of body proportions and makeup
Hey….. I wasn’t “traumatized”
Cause I wasn’t an athletic, muscular cat man as a child….. and year of going to Halloween at Disney have shown me children don’t pick “what represents” them……. I literally have seen Black Snow Whites and Blonde Falcons
When I was a kid, when my friends wanted representation, they bought American Girl dolls. When they wanted fantasy, they bought Barbies and Monster High. (I didn't play with dolls, but my friends did.)
Barbie needs to get back to their roots and start doing what made them a household name to begin with.
Exactly. I can tell you from experience it definitely wasn't Barbie because I can look at her and think of my childhood and the stories I created. But when I look at a model in a bikini, that's when the "I'm not as pretty as her, not as slim as her" thoughts pop up and I have to fight it for a couple of weeks to get over it. It was never Barbie.
i mean barbie is part of pop culture, especially the popularity it had back then. so it was more of a combination of everything in your environment. i can see kids hanging on to that. thats why bratz blew up so much bc the dolls had different skin tones and different facial features whereas 90% of barbies you saw on the shelf were skinny white blonde girl with blue eyes
I wonder if now, because of the ever present comparison through social media and life-like animation, kids actually do compare themselves to dolls and animated characters more? "When we were kids" is based on a pre-internet reality. 😅 We simply only saw who was in our social circle and maybe a movie or TV-show every now and then. But the thought of comparing myself to a doll or someone in the TV never even crossed my mind. They weren't real. Today though, because we are intensely interconnected and consume a lot more people-centred media, these strangers in the TV and inanimate objects do come to life in a way. Maybe we truly can't judge what doll do to a kid these days? I would love to read some studies about this!
Barbie being considered a bad influence reminds me of video games in the 2000s. People thought kids would be violent because games had violence. But when I played mortal kombat, I knew it wasn't real. I just wanted to perform martial arts combos with hot guys. Sure it was bloody.
Violent games do not cause violence, but it does add extra trouble with kids that already have trouble with boundaries and violence.
True, but would that kid just abuse an animal or bully kids instead? But maybe those would have more real world consequences.
Rock'n'Roll, Satanic Panic, and Video Games making serial k*ill*rs. They won the war in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. Unfortunately?
Looming at music, movies, games and art in general? They've lost the war. Everything just feels very hollow, lifeless, and bland.
@@ivyannanet Egging a child on that is already violent, does not help. They need clear instructions on how to respect other humans and people. If all they learn is videogames and they have the tendency to be violent, it will solidify their initial thoughts that treating eachother as such, is okay.
Once your basic 'foundation' of respecting humans and animals has been taught and you understand, let's say at 12 or 13, you could try and see what happens when you play a game that involves a different approach. And if it makes you hungry for real life action or hurting others, you know that you'd need to stop.
@@Widdekuu91 If only the rest of us didn't need to suffer all the time because of some people simply refusing to parent their child. The solution isn't making gaming or Barbie dolls unenjoyable for the rest of us, it's making people actually parent their kids. Or at least it should be the solution.
'Who doesn't want a doll that looks like them?'
Am I the only one who did not want to have barbies that were similar to me? The Barbie I played with was not supposed to be me. Just as Karolina said, I was a little girl, but my barbies represented imaginary grown women who had affairs, and had their own lives.
Exactly!
Myscene had such cool clothes! Seriously, I only got 1 of those dolls, Barbie from the bling bling collection or whatever the name was (I remember I wanted Nolee but whoever gifted the doll to me didn't find that one). I had so many barbies with beautiful clothes, but myscene were on another level! Little me was amazed with all the sparkles and pretty dresses, and even their makeup :3
My niece has rainbow high dolls and they look pretty good! The only bad thing is that barbie clothes and rainbow high clothes don't really fit on each other's dolls, because of the different body proportions... My niece took some of my barbies and their clothes home, but she can't really interchange the clothes with her dolls :(
It's basically impossible these days to find nice-looking Barbie clothes. And heaven help you if you want a ballgown or anything princess-like.
I used to sew and crochet Barbie clothes, but most people didn't want to pay even a minimum wage price for them, even back in the 90s. Once they changed the body shape (which seriously did not bother me as a kid...I knew it wasn't realistic), even the new sewing patterns were blah fashion. I wasn't even going to play around with adapting the crochet patterns, so I just stopped doing it for pay.
The closest thing I can find to a "princess" Barbie, has molded plastic tops and disintegrating clothtable "skirts" with the most horrendous patterns printed on with cheap colors. And the skirt isn't even big and poofy
it def feels like Mattel went "Oh you want more diverse Barbies? Here you go. Oh you wanted **pretty** diverse Barbies?" as if both wasn't very much a real and very in-demand option. The whole "pick just one" attitude is NOT a good look. It's giving "only the idealized body deserves to look good, everyone else can get by with cheap crap, and they should be grateful we even bothered to include them."
The idealized body doesn’t even get to look good anymore, all the Barbies wear the same shapeless polyester.
@@CanonessEllinorand that’s the problem with “equity”… it doesn’t lift people up, it just brings everyone else down.
It's all about the cost.
That's why we are getting what we are getting.
They are making most clothes to fit ALL the dolls rather than tailored, unique clothes.
All of this!!! As an older Barbie collector that’s pretty much seen 4 decades of the brand, this past decade is by far the worse in terms of fashion, makeup, packaging, and overall aesthetic for the play line, the dolls marketed to children. I remember back in the day feeling excitement walking down the Barbie aisle. That is no longer the case and that is sad.
I always made my barbies prosthetic legs and wheelchairs out of plastic cars whenever my little sister broke one. They were my favorite.
I think it's down to them changing the body types of the dolls. Its easier to make boxy crap fit all the different body types they made ratger than have unique outfits that fit & flatter each doll. I personally liked how the barbies used to be shaped when I got them because it matched with my own body type. Felt awful having people rip into them as being "incredibly unrealistic" when all she was was an hourglass figure with long legs relative to torso. With the shift to diversify & make the dolls more "representative" they actually stopped producing dolls with the hourglass proportions. Apparently I'm not a realistic enough body type. I must not exist.
I remember having one without a head and chewed legs that walked around the doll house naked as a tormented spirit. It haunted the house of my other Barbies.
Now that is my kind of girl.
That's hilarious!
i was born in the very early 2000s in a diverse country, and i went to an all girls school. trust me when i say nobody cared about the diversity or bodies that much. i think it was grown adults making a fuss that really pushed barbie down. these people were not buying them, some didnt even have kids. why not ask what the kids want to see? back then we all wanted to be the single black character bc they stood out to us. bratz having a girl for each major race didnt worry us at all.
Great video!! Just one thing I thought I would also point out: that holiday Barbie pictured at 7:27 was designed with the help of AI and the packaging art itself is all AI. Can't even design their own dolls let alone give them high quality fashion!
Brilliant points made! Thank you for stating these facts!!!
I was not a girly girl but I loved my 80's and 90's Barbie's fashions. They would go on adventures but keep their clothes nice. haha. They were so fluro, bright, bold and over the top, layered to the max. I still have them and just gave them a clean before sticking them back into storage. I have crystal Barbie! And Totally Hair, Benetton, Beach Blast and Super Star.
Now they have different bodies I assume its easier just to trot out bland costumes that can be size adjusted.
I'm pleased to learn that chewing on Barbie shoes is an intergenerational and international thing. (I was doing it in the late 70s/early 80s.) And I still look back fondly on my Peaches n Cream Barbie.
I had a Cali Girl barbie, she had a vanilla scent, the most prettiest face and gorgeous skin color. She was my favorite, shaped my life I swear... Yeah, her feet didn't fit Barbie shoes, but I could put on different clothing on her, sew my own or just pinch it with hair clips... Me and my cousins gathered to create new clothes for them, later on started creating our own fashion magazine at home. I was the illustrator. Now I'm working as a graphic designer... The complete lack of care for kids' toys or products angers me everyday.
I think you just unlocked a core memory. I too had a Barbie that was vanilla scented. She was Cali themed -- think surf, sand, sun. A beautiful olive tan skin tone. She was my favorite.
This change was most likely in the works since around early 2010s. Barbie was losing sales each year, the pop feminist blaming disney princesses and dolls was stronger than ever, and mattel had to do something, especially after the 2014 swimsuit magazine controversy. They opted for making barbie diverse, but also removing all the fantasy aspect of barbie. Barbie brand also has a huge recognition and devoted collectors, so they can release the most mediocre doll ever and it'll still sell.
“But won’t Barbie find out they were having an affair?”
“We can’t just leave the bodies to rot!” 😭🤣
Glad I’m not the only one who had dramatic soap operas with her Barbies. I had a headless Barbie that served as my murder victim in all my mystery stories.
My niece got a eighties/nineties Barbie from me (second hand but still looking great) and I was happy she said that that Barbie is her favorite because "she has the prettiest face" We're getting clothes from flea markets for her because plain real life clothes just don't inspire kids + I am spending hours sewing gowns and poofy dresses for that Barbie now.
The horrible plastic-ey low quality clothes nowadays can rot in the shelves of the stores imo. :D
But I must say I really like today's "Made to Move" labeled Barbies with all the pose-ability they come with - and of course the diversity of the dolls.
It made me want better clothes for this generations' kids - because we had them back in the day, and I loved them!
Awesome that you picked this topic!
Well done. I couldn't agree more. I still have some of the first outfits from the original Barbie and the quality in construction is so different from modern Barbie clothes. The original outfits had linings and little buttons...if you could blow them up to adult size you could wear them yourself and alot of the accessories were fabric, not cheap plastic. As a kid I used to make outfits for my Barbies and I would always strive for that kind of quality.
honestly the biggest factor is probably just the price, collectors have been complaining for a long time about printed fabrics, lack of accessories and sculped unremovable tops which all are just cheaper to produce. also the fashion in pricier dolls is just outdated by the time they're even advertised. im not sure if i remember correctly but i think mattel rly started strugling when one of the most influencial designers retired
also u mentioned dolls like rainbow high or lol omg but they are a fair bit more expensive and as far as i know rainbow high recently started making clothes of lower quality than they used to when the dolls launched so they were probably too pricey to make despite that
YAS GIRL this is exactly the HARD HITTING fashion journalism I needed from you Karolina!
I think the barbie fashion crisis has also a lot to do with increasing the profit margin. The clothes from the 2000s are way more detailed, not only trough accessories but also through bows diffrent fabriks, small pockets...
I was a kid in the late 50's-early 60's. The Barbie fashion was elegant, well put together outfits, Barbie couture. There was a booklet that listed the outfits, we yearned for these clothes. They had names! "Solo in the spotlight" more like collectors Barbies today.
I've seen those booklets and love them! They're sold on eBay now for over $20. So soothing to read the outfit names and descriptions...
I think it's very rooted in gender essentialism, trying to turn Barbie into an "average girl" to avoid being misogynistic/sexist but it backfired because girls who like pink and fashion exist and that's okay. Also because Barbie has so many expectations to uphold and it sucks that Barbie can't be a girl that likes fashion.
My first Barbie was one of the early ones in the black and white striped swimsuit, with red hair. That was in the early 60s. Grandma gave her to me. Then later on in 1969-1970 I had one named Stacey I think. That had some cool clothes of the time. Short dresses. One in a metallic silver, and colors fabric. Just some cute clothes that were in fashion then. The only Barbie I have now is a Catwoman one. And some cheap one I bought for figure drawing. I admire mom's and grandma's that would sew special dresses for their daughter's Barbies. I remember seeing Barbie doll dress patterns in the back of the pattern counter books when I started to sew myself.
American Girls Dolls went down in quality after Mattel bought them. They are too concerned with making a buck than they are about quality. Barbie has been owned by Mattel since 1964. So, the era you enjoyed was still Mattel, but maybe over all Mattel’s focus changed in general around the time they bought AG.
You need to do a video ranking historical fashion Barbie!!!! Please, Please, Pleaseeee
I can’t stand Barbie clothes these days! It’s like vomit.
Etsy is the way to go.
@@ygarza7319 and that's if they even *have* clothes and not the molded plastic bs.
I was born in the 70's and some of my oldest Barbie/Sindy/Fashion doll clothes needed you to take the head off of your doll to dress her., like some close fitted knit sweaters with high necklines but also a few halterneck dresses without clumsy buttons. You just took the head off to dress your doll and put it back again. And never have I ever thought that would apply to my own body or wardrobe! :D
The problem is Carlyle Nuera, the current Barbie designer. He is absolutely terrible and his designs are hideous... Also the quality standards now are way lower than in the '80s/'90s and '00s because of budget constraints and that now Barbies are targeted at small toddlers instead of young children and teenagers, because they only play with computers and smartphones sadly...
"We are in a barbie fashion crisis and something needs to be done about it!". LOVE this, plus I learned a new word, never heard of deyassification before. Entertaining and educational rant.
As someone who loved playing with Barbies in 90s, and who still loves checking out Barbie shelves in toy shops, I would say, the fashion issue comes from the quality issue and saving money on production issue. They're cutting corners on all the details possible. I have Barbie jeans from the late 90s made from actual lightweight denim, with teeny tiny buttons, contrasting seams on the sides and pockets were actually slit, so Barbie could put her hands in them. Now unless you buy expensive collectors editions, regular Barbie jeans are just cheapest polyester with buttons, seams and denim textures printed on them.
All the details that can be printed are printed or omitted. There's as little decoration as possible, and the outfits are made from as little pieces as possible, so there's not too many seams and the construction is as easy as possible.
Maybe they're trying to reflect the real life fast fashion, or maybe they're just trying to save money. But unless you go for more expensive lines, collectors editions or other Mattel dolls, you're not getting the same quality and creativity anymore T_T
As a Barbie collector I can’t describe how grateful I am that you use your platform to talk about this topic. Most people don’t even know that Barbie isn’t even glamorous anymore 😅
Yes, kids deserve more creativity in their toys these days!
This is why I buy my Barbie clothes on Etsy.
I can't sew worth a shit, or I'd make some of said clothes myself.
I think you are correct about one thing. Barbie should be about *Fantasy*, if not *Aspirational.* The dolls should inspire imagination, not be a constant reminder of how reality is "unfair". I wonder if modern Barbie is a result of the MyTwinn doll of the 1980s to 1990s? Parents could custom order a doll to look like their child. Selection of skin tones, eye color, hair color, and even freckles can be painted on. Parents could even buy an outfit for their child that looked identical to the one they select for the doll. Having a doll that looks like you surely can't be good for long term mental state. How can one be aspirational or imaginative with a doll that looks exactly like you?
Now I want to see Karolina design Barbie clothes. Maybe even some historical garments.
Everything was perfect, until one day, fast fashion came to Barbieland 😅😭