Plastic fantastic: You can now enter the life-sized world of Barbie
With 14 million friends on Facebook and more than two million followers on Instagram, Barbara Millicent Roberts is a significant online influencer. But it’s her influence elsewhere that is really hard to beat.
In the pink at the Barbie Exhibition.
In her 64 years on the planet, the ageless Barbara, or Barbie to her friends, has held down more than 200 jobs, including as astronaut, pilot, firefighter, surgeon, and video game engineer, just to name a handful on her CV. She’s run for President of the United States every year since 2016. She’s been muse to many artists including Andy Warhol and Peter Max. More than 100 diverse plastic likenesses of her are sold every minute, adding up to a total of 58 million sold annually.
She is, of course, Mattel’s iconic Barbie, which continues to be the world’s most popular “fashion doll”.
Greta Gerwig’s feature film Barbie, the first live action Barbie movie (there have been many animated versions) isn’t set for cinematic release till mid-year but anticipation reached fever pitch months ago as teasers appeared showing the kitschy styling of its stars, Australian Margot Robbie as Barbie and Canadian Ryan Gosling as Ken.
The Barbie camper.
Now, fans can get a Barbie fix ahead of the release via an exhibition, The World of Barbie, which has debuted in Los Angeles, inviting visitors to immerse in the plastic-fantastic world of the record-breaking toy.
On at Santa Monica Place in Santa Monica (just down the road from Venice, where Robbie and Gosling as Barbie and Ken nearly broke the internet when photos of them on the beach decked out in neon and roller blades went viral), the exhibition brings to life some of the most iconic aspects of the Barbie universe.
The exhibition’s centrepiece is a human sized Malibu Dreamhouse including a life-size version of Barbie’s closet and a ball pit pool in the backyard. Expect it to be busy – a toy Barbie Dreamhouse sells every two minutes somewhere around the world.
Step aboard Barbie Interstellar Airways.
In homage to her galactic adventures – she went to space for the first time in 1965, two years before a human stepped on the moon – there’s a Barbie Interstellar Airways shuttle. To honour her stints as a rock star, there’s a Barbie music studio.
Malibu Barbie fans won’t be disappointed: they can hang out at a mock-up Malibu Beach (Barbie version) or in a full-size Barbie Campervan, designed and built by West Coast Customs.
What to wear...?
The exhibition includes a theatre showing the animated Barbie movies and displays of Barbie dolls and accessories from across the toy’s six decades, including the original doll from when Barbie debuted on March 9, 1959, during New York Toy Fair.
And when all that’s done, fans can pose for a selfie in a human-sized Barbie box – a touch, at least, of Barbie pink in your outfit is recommended.
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