When I was in my late teens I had a friend who nicknamed me Sindy because of my neatly coordinated look - matching shoes and handbags and the like. I’m not sure that being named after a doll was really all that flattering but there it was. He was making friendly fun of me and was the only person ever to call me Sindy. I am still known for being well-coordinated, by the way, even though my shoes and bags no longer match.
Sindy, the doll, doesn’t seem to have survived into modern popularity the way Barbie has. She, Barbie, is still around. My smallest granddaughter has a few but she also has other similar “fashion” dolls such as Bratz.
Personally I never liked Barbie dolls. Maybe it’s because I was too old for dolls when Barbie came onto the scene, too old to play with dolls and collecting such toys for their future re-sale value was not yet something people did. Nowadays it seems that vintage Barbie dolls sell for ridiculous amounts of money, especially of unopened in their original packaging. Quite why a child would keep a toy in its original packaging, unopened, defeats all logic. Presumably these unopened dolls were bought with the intention of storing them that way. Indeed, this article includes sections about people who collect dolls that way.
It’s always seemed to me an odd way for an adult to want to decorate their home but then, each to their own! Granddaughter Number One has a number of computer game figures all in their packaging, collectible items which she has on display. Somehow that’s acceptable when you are in your early twenties but I find it odd that mature women, such as those in the above mentioned article, go out of their way to buy, or re-buy, the dolls of their childhood. But then, is it any odder than my aunt who had masses of model swans - ceramic, glass, any other sort of material - decorating her house! And we seem to have acquired / inherited / had dumped on us a collection of Dinky toy cars, die-cast models, in their original packaging. They used to belong to my late brother, bought when he was an adult. I suppose we could let the car-obsessed smallest grandson play with them but according to some things I’ve seen they might be quite valuable; maybe we should sell them and put the money in his bank account instead.
Anyway, getting back to Barbie, we never bought Barbie dolls for our daughter. Somehow she never seemed like a good role model and didn’t lend herself to the kind of imaginative play our daughter enjoyed. We were going through our not quite hippy, mostly vegetarian, no television but lots of books and music phase at the time and so we were not subject to lots of advertising making her want Barbie dolls.
We had a similar aversion to toy guns and were quite annoyed when my brother-in-law bought both our children cap-guns.
I think my older sister eventually bought our daughter a Barbie one Christmas or birthday, as much to annoy me as to make up for what she saw as a lack in our child’s life.
At one point we went to a family party, possibly my older niece’s 21st birthday. Her younger sister, aged about 13, brought her best friend of the time to the party. The friend had a mass, a huge mass, of blond hair. She wore a net skirt, rather like a long tutu, and a close-fitting, stylish top. To finish off her “look” she wore elbow length net gloves. I suspect that the also wore rather more make-up than any 13 year old should be allowed to experiment with. As the two teens made their entrance, our daughter, a six year old tomboy who refused to wear dresses and skirts, was open-mouthed in amazement. “She looks just like Barbie!” she said to me.
And indeed she did. I think she won Barbie lookalike competitions and did go on to a career in modelling, without, to the best of my knowledge, ever hitting the big time. I wonder how she feels now about Barbie having a good year. She must be pushing 50 now. How time flies! And there is going to be a new Barbie movie this year.
Meanwhile, as quite a lot of people are getting excited about “Wednesday”, the Netflix series based on the character of Wednesday Addams of ancient Addams Family fame, the news is out today that the original Wednesday Addams has just died, at the age of 64 - “Only 64!?”, exclaimed Granddaughter Number Two, a “Wednesday” fan, on hearing the news.
Just imagine, the actress Lisa Loring was only 5 years old when she began to play Wednesday Addams.
That’s enough nostalgia stuff.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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