Holiday Barbie 1990 - Barbie Learns a Lesson (Or Two)

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:
  1. 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.
1990 Blonde Holiday Barbie in original box


      2. Oh hey, black people exist!

Advertisement for 1991 African American Holiday Barbie

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 on and that would still be a pretty cool collection right?” My mom and I went to buy her after Christmas that year and I remember I briefly considered buying the African American version. The collector in me was already thinking of it as “I bet she’ll end up being rarer than the white version!” But the 10-year-old side of me won out with “but I want my Barbie to look the most like ME!”

It's also the first year we see other stores and companies jumping on the game with the 1990 FAO Schwartz Winter Fantasy exclusive.

1990 FAO Schwartz holiday exclusive Barbie in a pink box with tag

She has a simpler design than the extravagance of the official Holiday Barbies, but she’s still winter/Christmas themed and wearing a big crazy dress. I’m sure that was good enough for most little girls on Christmas morning. Plus she’s an FAO Schwartz exclusive and we’re only a couple years out from Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia bouncing around on that big old piano in their store. They knew what they were doing.

FAO Schwartz piano scene from the movie 'Big'

(*Check out the grumpy little girl in pink on the right. She's clearly saying "Why are we watching these old dudes dance when there's Barbies to buy?")

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