Regardless, Barbie's loveable boyfriend is to be celebrated today and it reminded me of our Barbie and Ken collection growing up. Or should I say our Barbie and Ken/Beast/Zack Morris collection.
Yes, 4 girls in the house, probably 30 different iterations of Barbie and her friends/sisters (Skipper, Kelly, Midge, Teresa, Niko) and we had at most 4 men. We had one true Ken doll (mine) , one Zack Morris doll (Sara's- from Saved by the Bell), The Beast (Sara's- from Beauty and the Beast- he even had a removable Beast head cover) and at one point Mr. Darling (Anna's- basically a friend of Ken). I have no idea if Paula had any men, she might have burned out on Barbies early.
Needless to say, there were a lot of "families" living in our Barbie houses with a bunch of women and no man and some seriously soap opera style schemes to get the men to fall in love with the women. The main activity for our Barbies was to have a party so that you could dress them up [I mean, changing the outfits was the best part of playing Barbies] and hopefully score a new man.
I laugh about it now and it makes sense that little girls don't want boy dolls whose clothes are hard to change and have no hair to brush and play with but it also got me thinking: Were my parents inadvertently preparing us (or at least me) for 20-something life? Where there are only a few good men who you want to date and you're pining away at them along with all the other smart, nice looking, successful women of NYC? In which case, the fact that Barbie could have any career she wanted, have some kids, hang out with her Barbie-sisters and never need a man is a pretty good lesson. But then I think about when my Ken put on his white one-piece suit and Barbie her coordinating evening gown- with detachable ankle length skirt to give her two dress options- they were so much better together.
This is actually what I got for my 7th birthday and I can't lie, I'm tempted to buy from ebay...I have the best memories with these two!
And because I had too much fun looking at old Barbies on ebay, I found proof of the Prince/Beast:
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