She’s the best friend when no one else is laughing with us, a sex symbol in the teenage bedroom that the bosom-bouncing Baywatch Pamela can hardly live up to. Because: Barbie is made of plastic. Not genuine, not authentic. A woman from the head of another. 60 years old and as beautiful as when she first smiled out of the box with her blonde ponytail and blue saucer eyes. Barbie was brunette and red-haired, sometimes darker-skinned, sometimes lighter, studied medicine one year and physics the next, learned to ski, bike and play baseball. Between body-shaming accusations and sexism, Barbie has held up really well – and at least her colleagues Furby and co. survived. This achievement is worth a few lines.
105,000,000 meters of fabric for Barbie
Mattel, the company behind Barbie, is not only the second largest toy manufacturer in the world (after LEGO). Thanks to Barbie, Mattel is also one of the largest clothing manufacturers in the world, albeit only in miniature. Around 105 million meters of fabric have already been used to make more than a billion items of clothing for Barbie and her friends.
Barbie loves luxury! Labels such as Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Versace and Christian Louboutin have already created collections for Barbie. Barbie’s first design collaboration was with Oscar de la Renta in the mid-1980s.
The world’s second-largest Barbie collection comes from Düsseldorf and has been collected with passion by Bettina Dorfmann since 1993.
3 Barbies per second
Three Barbie dolls are sold every second worldwide. That would be 10,800 dolls every hour and 259,000 Barbies every day. There are now over a billion copies sold in children’s rooms around the world. This means that every child owns an average of seven Barbie dolls.
Even in the world of dolls, love doesn’t last forever. On Valentine’s Day 2004, Ken and Barbie split up after more than 43 years of an on-off relationship. Surfer Blaine stood between the two. Ken tried everything to win back the love of his life, and on Valentine’s Day 2011, after seven years of separation, they actually made a comeback!
9.3.1959
Barbie was born on 9. Born March 1959 in New York (launch at toy fair). She is from Willows (fictional), Wisconsin and attended Willows High School. Her favorite subjects at school were chemistry, biology and German. She loves reading and experimenting. And she loves honey. With everything, including broccoli. She also sings while doing her homework and has three younger sisters: Skipper (1964), Stacie (1992) and Kelly (1995).
Barbie’s full name is Barbie Millicent Roberts. The inventor couple Ruth and Elliot Handler named Barbie and Ken after their children, who are called Barbara Millicent and Kenneth.
The best-selling Barbie doll of all time is the Totally Hair Barbie from 1992, whose hair reached from her head to her feet.
Zombie
If Barbie were a real woman, she would be 1.75 m tall and weigh less than 50 kg. She would have a waist circumference of 41 cm, a hip circumference of 74 cm and a chest circumference of 82 cm. She would be missing 17 percent of her body fat, which would eliminate her monthly menstruation. She would have to crawl on all fours as her ankles could not hold her body. Her head would be bigger than her waist, and that would be so disproportionate that she would have to live without vital organs. The liver would only have half the space, and there would only be a smaller intestine.
For a long time, Barbie’s unrealistic body shape was of no interest to manufacturer Mattel. It was only when the critical voices became louder and louder and the sales figures got worse and worse that the toy giant from California reacted and rethought its concept. Since March 2016, 33 new Barbie dolls have been launched on the market, including fatter and smaller ones.
Here you will find everything you need to know about the cult series Maya the Bee.