Babs-olutely Fabulous

So we've made it solidly into the 90s! And this would be the first year that Miss Holiday Barbie was (mostly) on point. As we saw in 1990, as far as Barbie is concerned, green is a Christmas color only secondary to pink. But when she finally embraced green, girl did it right. We have a lovely forest green here which was clearly a color of the time considering I may or may not have owned both jeans and a leather bomber jacket (suede, what else?) in the same hue. And the velvet….the only way to make this more early 90s would be if it were crushed velvet, but I’ll give it a pass as that may have looked a little odd on the scale of Barbie clothes. The only tiny misstep here is Barbie’s liberal use of her bedazzler across everything she owns, including her dress, handbag, and huge Minnie Mouse bow. But we’ll even let that one fly. It’s retro, baby! A word of warning: Do not take this one out of the box! Normally I’m all for it with these holiday Barbies. They aren’t actually t...

As we roll into the 90s, and Mattel continues to recognize this fun little Christmas goldmine they’ve stumbled on, the third year of the Happy Holidays Barbie shows her coming to terms with two very important realizations: The biggest thing missing from the previous two years is clearly a shitload of pink. After all, what  three colors do you most associate with Christmas themed items? Red, white and….. scorch-your-retinas hot pink right? It is if you’re Barbie.       2. Oh hey, black people exist! This would be the first year we got both a standard blue-eyed blonde version and an African-American version. (Don’t worry, we’re still years away from Barbie admitting crazier things exist. Like brunettes.) It also would be the first and only Holiday Barbie I actually owned. By this time I’d found out how close I’d been to starting the collection from Year One and I believe my thinking was something like “Well, I can just have all of them from 1990 ...

I don't have too much to say about 1989, the second year of Holiday Barbies, and tentative confirmation that this is indeed about to become “a thing.” I’m not saying she wasn’t fancy and well-designed for the times, just that it was only the second year and Mattel really didn’t have to try too hard just yet. Put her in a big poufy ball gown, give her some pageant hair and makeup and slap her in big old box that makes a decent display case and there you have it: One more doll that slipped through my young collection-loving fingers. The only Holiday Barbie worth any real money today is the first one (and mind you, by real money I mean could maybe pay for some minor car repairs if you're savvy about selling, not could pay for the new car itself or anything), but 1989 still seems to be a little harder to find in mint condition than successive years. What I had forgotten about is that, while not any sort of holiday-themed Barbie, we also got the Unicef Barbie this year. Not...

What started as some random musings on Facebook is about to get the full blog treatment! The first plan is to go year by year through all the Holiday Barbie offerings since their start in 1988. This hit at an ideal time in my childhood to peak my interest and I've always held some mild curiosity of seeing where it all went from there. After that? Well, ideally I'll have thousands of fans begging "Oh my god, do this Barbie next!!" But honestly, if I make it to the end of the holiday girls it'll more likely be me saying "Well this one is crazy!" and picking new subjects from there. But it began as a Facebook post on Labor Day weekend... What good is an extra day off if you can't fall through a Pinterest rabbit-hole or two? Here's mine today: It started with me randomly thinking about how my Grandma told me later she really wanted to get me the Holiday Barbie when she first came out. It would have been appropriate. It was 1988 and I woul...