Barbie Roberts Has An Official Hometown - The Fictional Willows, In Wisconsin.

The bag and beret are from my childhood and I treasure them.

It's funny how Monster High and Rainbow High are suffering from opposite problems: MH makes too many dolls of their characters and RH doesn't make enough dolls of their characters

G3 has only been around for nearly a year and we have had 12 Draculauras in succession with minimal face screening variety meanwhile RH has about 81 characters and a small majority of them have gotten a few more dolls outside of their signature release.

They keep creating more new characters faster than the show can make us give us a rat's ass about the previous wave and it's starting to fatigue them (see series 3 of Shadow High) while MH keeps sticking to same 5 characters and is starting to bore everyone.

I got one of the mini verse lifestyle :D i got a cactus plant and its all so cute im dying!!!

Imma give most of the stuff to my Sylvanian Families since the scale is almost perfect for them.

I love how most of the packaging is reuseble too. The faux newspaper, the paper bag that can be used as a poster and even parts of the checklist can be used as posters or artworks for a pet shop, florist or candle shop :D

In addition to the Barbie playline Halloween toys, there have been a number of Kelly dolls and friends of Kelly themed around Halloween. And of course, this makes a lot of sense - many of the best traditions of Halloween are for children.

Happy Halloween Barbie & Kelly from 1997 shows Barbie taking Kelly trick or treating while Kelly is dressed as a pumpkin. I did in fact see a pumpkin costume for small humans today while out shopping so I can confirm this is a longstanding tradition.

Halloween Fun Barbie & Kelly in 1999 had Barbie and Kelly in matching leopard costumes, as well as apparently shadow puppets for the kids to play with.

This 1999 collection also contained a Li'l Friends of Kelly collection. My favourite of these costumes is Tommy in the bottom corner as a skeleton.

Kelly Merry Monsters was a Target exclusive series from 2009; Kelly herself was a pink-themed vampire.

Her friends Kayla and Miranda were Frankenstein's Monster and the Bride of Frankenstein which I think is an odd choice. These weren't particularly topical in 2009 to my knowledge, and I think it's an unusual choice for Mattel to put two children of the same gender in a matching couples costume.

Even after Kelly changed her name to Chelsea, there have been additional Halloween themed dolls in her doll line.

We see a great many similarities in costumes again - for example, in these two sets pictured above, there are two different variants on a ghost costume. I would be tempted to say it's a reused costume, but the ghost has a different expression on the otherwise very similar costume.

My favourite is the middle one here where she is a cute little bee!

Cute animal pics 🌿🌺🐮🐰🐦

Hottest day

What kind of paint would you recommend to use on Calicos? I found my collection at my Nana and Papa’s and their paint has been WRECKED by my younger cousins who lived here

I've never painted mine!

But I believe I've seen most people use watered down acrylic? I've seen fabric markers, paint markers too just be super light with it to make sure it's not bleeding.

If you check my custom critters tag people on there might have better info! 💕

It's hard to narrow down my favourite Barbies of all time, as there are just so many. However, of the new lines, my favourite series is Barbie Extras.

I have posted about these before, because I think they have some of the most interesting designs of modern Barbies.

In 2023, Mattel have expanded the line with five "Extra Fly" vacation-themed dolls, and I think they're extremely cool.

The series features four Barbies and a Ken, themed around four holiday destinations: Desert, Safari, Snow and of course... Beach.

In a nod to sun safety, Barbie Extra Fly Beach and Ken Extra Fly Beach have SPF50 sunscreen to keep themselves safe. They also have vacation drinks they can sip on while reclining next to the water. (It doesn't say that it's alcoholic, but I think we can read between the lines.)

I think my personal favourite of this line is Barbie Extra Fly Desert.

I am not sure this is a practical outfit to wear in the desert, but it certainly is fashion.

Barbie is not the only character in the Barbie line to have received collectors edition dolls themed after other media. (I mean, Ken too, but this post isn't about Ken.)

Kelly and Tommy (before Kelly became Chelsea) featured in a variety of tie-ins, including in collections that also featured Barbie and Ken such as the Grease line-up, as well as in collections of their own.

Storybook Favorites, for example, was a line-up featuring Kelly and Tommy as classic children's book and fairy tale characters. I never grew up on Raggedy Ann and Andy and always thought they were just names for a line of dolls themselves, so it was only upon looking it up that I discovered the books came first.

I find the Hansel & Gretel way cuter, personally, but that's just my bias showing.

But besides the four in the Storybook Favorites Collection, there have been others. Some of these actually turn up on the secondary market bundled with Storybook Favorites, and I can see why, because they do look broadly similar in style and theme. For example, Kelly and Tommy as Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

I don't know how I feel about this one, whether it's cute or creepy or somewhere in between.

Or as the cast of Wizard of Oz. This one i am completely unreserved about in my praise. I think these are adorable. 10/10 design aesthetic. I mean, just look at Tommy as the Scarecrow above compared to Ken as the Scarecrow in the Barbie and Ken Wizard of Oz lineups.

Tommy does it better!