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Skipper and her variety of face molds in the 90s

Have you ever realized that Skipper had in the 1990s more head molds than ever before in her existence? Have you noticed that we not only have one Skipper face but at least 3 different ones in the decade?

In the begin of the decade we only have the big eyes head mold from 1987 which is also known in Germany to as the “Kulleraugen Skipper“, means simply big eyed Skipper. Somehow these eyes remember a lot of collectors to the comic or manga like outward appearance of some Japanese comics.

I don’t want to do any speculations here but maybe this comes from the fact that after having cable TV in Germany and other European countries some broadcasters bought licenses from Japan to show some classic Animés like Georgie, Lady Oscar and a lot of other series from Japan. I think this hit a nerve back then without realizing it.

I did not question the TV program, just watched back then but I had no idea that the stuff came from Japan. It was mixed with American comic series. The offer to fill a whole afternoon with comics was broad enough. However after 20 – 25 minutes there were breaks for advertising and that’s where Skipper came into the game. We had no chance to escape the ads. We had no chance to recognize that we were trapped in the advertising and always got a little brain wash. They created the wish and we the need to buy it.

It was a thing to talk in school breaks about “Have you seen this and that” advertising? But to come now back to the face molds we only had the big eyed Skipper for a while in Europe. Maybe that’s why she was popular among us little girls? From looking into all my research books I know that the Pizza Party Skipper appeared in the US in 1993 but in Europe she was not sold ( as far as I could find out). I don’t remember having seen her anywhere. The first Skipper I remember is the Phone Fun Skipper. She had this new smile in her face and I admit I was attracted by her. So I asked my mother to buy one. I can’t really remember how I got her but she’s one of the few Skipper dolls I kept from my childhood.

In retrospect I did not realize at the age they were available that this doll could ever be a rarity because she was only used for a few head molds. So that’s sometimes something that you find out much later. Much more often you saw the big eyed Skipper. At the end I think it’s not bad because I think she hit a nerve at least among us Europeans because of the Japanese comics running in TV. In retrospect I also realized that the 90s had a bigger variety of Skipper face molds than any decade before and that’s why I decided to talk about this topic.

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How to make fashion for Supersize Barbie – the background story

Sometimes it’s just an idea and sometimes you put things into reality. I already had the idea to dress my new Supersize Barbie in December but the time was lacking. You know we were just preparing for the holidays, taking our annual X-mas vacation to see your parents. Bad time schedule but January came and so the time to put this plan into reality.

I don’t know how you do these things but I need time to work these things out properly. I hate it to be interrupted during my creative process so I do these projects mainly when I’m alone at home. It’s always my most creative time of day. I admit I’m a morning human. I prefer to do all the important things in the morning to make sure to get them done. I know there are different types of humans but my most productive time is the morning. So I used the last weekend of my holidays to begin with this project.

Sewing projects are always time consuming. It doesn’t matter what you do so you need a good schedule, prepare things in advance like marking and cutting the fabric, do the sewing the next day and continue so on. I prefer to have all steps to be planned in advance when I’m working so that I have a certain thing to do every day but on the same hand I can be sure to get things done.

I can give you the advice to plan more days than you will actually need because you don’t know how the result will turn out. From my experience I can tell that I had stress with finishing projects and videos more than once.

It’s a big advantage when you have several projects to work on simultaneously because you can always release at least one video a week. If you can produce in advance do it. I will have to improve my skills here because I’m always short on time. I hate it but it happens more often than planned. Don’t let anything interrupt you. The filming I did was at least two hours and I think I had to cut 10 hours to get it down to 20 minutes, correct the tone, the lighting and so on.

Nevertheless this was a project I wanted to do from heart because I don’t like my dolls to be naked. So I got to work and made the markings, the patterns and prepared the whole fabric for my sewing machine. At the end this project was very nice because my technique works so well that the Supersize Barbie has clothes now, is not naked anymore and the clothes only need a few adjustments for the perfect fit. I have to read a little bit before doing the final adjustments but for now I’m satisfied and it happens seldom enough to say this.

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The Native Spirit collection Barbie dolls

From my early times as a collector I knew that hunting for dolls was always very exciting. You never knew what you would find in the single toy shop back in the times before internet. I guess some of you remember these times. Me too. Belonging to the last generation that went to department stores and shopping malls for purchases it’s possibly hard to believe that this was not even 25 years ago.

I don’t know how it is in other parts of the world but in Germany the department stores and shopping mall owners made one big mistake so that even all the companies where you could order via catalog disappeared within a short period of time. They missed the opportunity to sell online. They simply did not want to update to the latest technique. Their product range became overpriced and they did refuse to adapt to the market situation. That’s also true for toys and toy shops. Toys R us was in Europe also one of the toy shops with a very late online presence and you had no possibility to shop online. If I had had the opportunity to buy all of these dolls online while they came out.

Of course I did not have the opportunity and so I had to wait until somebody offered the Native Spirit Collection Barbie dolls to me. At first I had only one, the Spirit of the Water Barbie for a long time. An eternity later the other two, the Spirit of the Earth Barbie and the Spirit of the Sky Barbie were offered to me and I bought them.

At the end I think it would have been easier if I had the chance to buy them online. Nevertheless they are wonderful dolls and I thought this is a good opportunity to present them to you.

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The function of the Supersize Super Hair Barbie

Often when Supersize Barbie dolls are offered their hair is cut or they have other issues so that they are not perfect anymore. For one of the problems I made a video. It’s about the mechanism of the Supersize Super Hair Barbie.

She has a pull string mechanism similar to the one used for Talking Barbie. Some of you may think …. well that’s outdated. You are right up to a certain degree but the fact that the mechanism is working that simple brings us to the point that it can be repaired again once it’s broken.

I imagined something like a stick in her hair & her head and I thought that the string is attached to this stick in her head somehow. The understanding of the mechanism is correct up to a certain degree but it does not work with a stick but a simple plastic ring and to this ring is the string attached that comes out of her neck again. I admit I thought the hair would come out easier. It’s sometimes a little hard to pull but it works and it works for more than 40 years. How many toys with function do you know that work without problems until today?

That’s still a kind of quality work, isn’t it? Which device has worked for you the last 40 years without any failures? I don’t know much devices. Probably a fridge, a freezer or a mixer would still work but the energy efficiency is very bad.

Nevertheless I think it is possible to repair her. The missing or cut hair can be replaced with new hair and the mechanism can also be restored. The ring should not be very hard to replace. For the line I would use fishing line and the ferrules are also available online. All parts should no be hard to find. From this point of view a repair should be possible without any problems. Like always you need the skills to repair the doll. In my opinion the only hard thing to find is the pink ring in her back but it’s possible to use something else to replace the ring if you want. It’s up to you … like always.

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Talking Barbie vs. Kissing Barbie who is easier to repair

Sometimes it’s hard to explain but in the last week I had the idea to tell you a little bit about a comparison between Kissing Barbie and Talking Barbie. I have repaired both and now I’d like to tell you a little bit about my little comparison.

Talking Barbie

My background of repairing Talking Barbie goes back almost a decade. In the meantime they are hard to get in Europe. Sometimes you find one but in other times it’s very hard to find any repairable Talking Barbie. Talking Barbies have one very big problem. Their legs tend to fall off. It’s a material problem. The PVC of the body reacts with the rubber of the legs. That makes the front part of the leg knob very fragile. Don’t worry. It’s just the front part. It can be repaired. It’s just important that you don’t throw anything away from the leg knob.

The amount of time needed for the repair of a Talking Barbie is hard to estimate. I was asked more often to repair a Talking Barbie for other collectors but I never did so because it’s really hard to estimate how much time you need for a repair. You never need exactly 7 hours. This comes from the fact that every doll is different. The problem is that you never know what’s inside the doll. A doll is not just a doll. Every Talking Barbie is different. It depends on different factors like the storage of the doll, the conditions she had over the last decades. Was she always stored in the same climate? Was she stored in a cellar or attic?

All these factors have an impact of the repair. Even the fact if she was dressed or not can play a role. You don’t know where the o-ring has left a black trace of something very guey. Even when you manage to reassemble her properly you don’t know if she will start to talk immediately again or if it will take a few hours until she is willing to speak again. The mechanism is a fragile construction like I already mentioned in this video here

Kissing Barbie

The Kissing Barbie is an often overlooked doll. Some collectors don’t like her because of the discoloration of her breast/neck part. Others appreciate her but she has also a problem. She tends to break too. Her problem is in her body unlike the Talking Barbie legs. In my opinion the metal stick in her head is the weak point. That’s why you seldom find working Kissing Barbie dolls. Like mentioned in my Kissing Barbie video mentioned below I share some of my ideas what causes the problems.

And yes, I managed to repair her some weeks later but I would not recommend to repair another Kissing Barbie. I think it was a one time thing.

I can’t recommend to repair her. I think she was not planned to be ever repaired. The plastic is very thick and that makes it very hard to cut precisely into the body. She has 4 stabilizers in her body which are hard to cut through. Even the opening itself is very time consuming. I don’t know how long I needed for the opening but I think it was more than one hour. That’s a lot of time for a Barbie. If you have a better idea how to open her let me know in the comments.

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What did Santa Clause bring?

I was already asked by other collectors if I got new Barbie dolls or Barbie family dolls for Christmas and I can say yes. I got some new dolls but I did not find as much as in 2020. I think that’s not so much of a problem as long as you really searched for them and wanted them for a long time.

I never expected for example to find an affordable Supersize Barbie. Supersize Barbies are hard to find in the meantime and they are really expensive. Something is always missing. No matter if it’s the dress, jewelry or shoes. Sometimes when they have a function the function is not working anymore. It’s what stopped me from buying the doll you see in my latest video with the hair function. Often the hair piece/ hair part is simply gone. I think one could repair the hair when you have a doll showing you how the mechanism works. That’s why this doll screamed “buy me” when I saw her.

The function of the hair will be covered in one of my next videos. It’s very easy but was not covered in any video yet. Let’s change this in 2022. She will also get some clothing. You know it’s not the problem to taylor something once you understand how to take the correct measurements.

Francie came along my way in November. We made an online doll convention online and there she was offered. So I bought the two of them you can see in my video.

You know I’m not the biggest fan of Fashionista Barbie but the one in the wheel chair somehow fascinated me since she’s black and she was available in Germany. I observed her the whole year but the price was too high for the quality so I had to wait until I found her for a good price.

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The top repairs of 2021

Well, this year is over and it’s time to have a look back what happened in 2021. We had a lot of projects in 2021. Some of the projects were bigger and some of the projects were smaller. We had for example the problem with sticky legs. Sticky legs occur from time to time and especially when you store your dolls in different climatic conditions. Sometimes it’s just a matter of the production.

In February we covered the reroot of a Ponytail Swirl Barbie and repaired a Suburban Shopper with a big hole.

We also did some repaint work at a Spanish Barbie doll.

The last big project was the creation of a No Bangs Francie. Francie had no hair and we completely restored her hair including her legendary curl.

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25 years of collecting and not even realizing it

Last month I had my silver Barbie collecting anniversary and I didn’t even realize it. I think it happened due to a lot of work in the pre-December time. December is always the month with the biggest amount of work. I have holidays around Christmas and I have to pre-produce my videos for December/January in advance. So time is short and the time schedule really tight.

That’s how I completely forgot about my silver Barbie collecting anniversary. It all started by the end of November 1996 after having seen a Barbie Collectibles catalog with all these great Barbie dolls from the Great Eras collection, BobMackie, Escada, The Hollywood Movie series, Wedding Flowers collection with a lot of porcelain Barbie dolls that are unfortunately not produced anymore and other great Barbie dolls.

These dolls made me start to collect although they were very expensive at first and were marketed exclusively through only very special toy shops. You were not able to find them in every toy shop. So at first I had to drive with my parents to Hamburg, Germany or Bremen, Germany to have a chance to see any of them. I was living back then in a province near the North Sea. We had toy shops in town but they had no Collectibles. The Dolls of the World ( like the one below) were the only Barbie dolls to be found. With 50DM (25 euros) of costs for one doll they were pretty expensive while normal playline Barbie dolls were only up to 35 DM (17 euros).

In times when the internet just started it was impossible to buy online especially when you were under age. I was only eleven when I made the decision to become a collector. This was a very intentional decision. Through all my collector life I was able to learn a lot of things. I learned more than other fellows in the same age. For example one of the first Barbie dolls that inspired me was the Victorian Lady Barbie ( one of my very early gifts from my parents) and made me interested in this time period concerning fashion and other things. It’s not just this one doll that inspired me to look beyond my own nose. I not even improved my English for understanding the texts on the boxes better but also inspired me to learn more than just one foreign language. I focused my learning habits around what interested me and it made me pretty successful in school.

By the way I think I often made my parents mad because my interests were not the interests of a normal teenager. My ideas were always different and I made my parents often to drive to special toy stores in the pre-Christmas time in the hope to find one of these very special dolls. Sometimes we were lucky and sometimes not.

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Francie and her Let’s Dance dress

I know I should have written more about this project in the last months but time was short. That’s at least why I’m writing now. I started in the begin of 2020 with this project and did not finish it until now. But be assured now the project is finished. I finally found a solution for the design of this dress and it fits Francie perfectly. I only have to adjust some little pieces to make the cut perfect.

Nevertheless that’s what I plan to do in 2022. We still all need goals for 2022, don’t we?

Here’s a link to the video of the final version that I did recently.

Why lasted this project so long

Well, I admit I had problems to find the perfect top measurements for Francie for a long time. I did several drafts for Francie but I missunderstood what I was doing there. I’m really sorry for the delay but I found a solution in the last months. There’s a little channel on youtube showing you the basics for designing clothes for Barbie dolls and I used the knowledge and transferred the knowledge for Francie. That’s how I found my mistakes and re-drafted my designs. Furthermore was I lucky enough to find more pictures of the original dress to study the design. I thought I had understand the design and then saw another mistake. I oversaw that the design had a cummerbund which is not really visible in the original dress. It’s hidden under a ribbon. That’s one of the thing causing problems. Another one was adjusting the design. I had a perfect top by the end of the summer but I misunderstood the cummerbund. That made me re-draft the whole top. I needed several nights to find the correct idea. Then attaching the cummerbund caused unseen problems but I finally also found a solution for this problem. The easiest part of the whole project was the skirt with my ruffler.

Things I have learned from this project

No matter how long this project lasted I learned several things from my mistakes. The biggest learning effect had my design itself on me. I learned a complete new method how to make the body measurements for a doll. It’s really easy and really simple to use. I can only recommend this method. It made me understand what I was doing. After understanding this method I made really progress with my designs. I made several designs for tops, skirts, a jacket which are still in prototype stadium but the next year will bring us new projects and we can finish what we started in 2020 and in 2021.

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The tiny bobby pin curlers and how they work

I was recently asked how these tiny bobby pin curlers work. Some of my viewers had problems to understand the mechanism I showed in one of my last videos. So I thought it would be a good idea to make another video about this topic to make the function.

So the function is not really hard, we simulate human hair curlers here but in a smaller dimension. Instead of one big rubber we use two small orthodontics elastics ( rubber bands without any heat problems) and one bobby pin. It doesn’t matter what bobby pin you use, probably the easiest is when you use what you have at home. We need one elastic to keep the curl in place and the other one serves as a closure for the bobby pin.

To demonstrate it better I have made another short video about this topic.