How Barbie Doll Works

In this episode, Josh and Chuck explore the history, cultural impact and feminist ire raised by the Barbie doll. The boys are joined by Gordon Javna, the founder of the Bathroom Readers' Institute and publisher of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff
Works dot com. Wait wait, wait, wait wait, um, we
have to talk about our TV show. That's right. We
have a television show that's coming out on our beloved

(00:21):
science channel UM. January nineteen at ten pm follows the
premiere of Idiot Abroad Season three UM, and after Idiot
Abroad at ten pm Eastern Standard Time will be the
world debut of Stuff you Should Know, the TV show.
Not one new episode, but two new episodes back to back,

(00:43):
ten o'clock and ten thirty. That's right, Saturday night, January nineteenth.
It's gonna be pretty neat. What are we doing? What
are the people gonna see? Are they gonna see a
game show, which we've been asked. Are they going to
see a a reality show which we've been asked, No, Josh,
They're seeing a scripted TV show that features the real
us playing ourselves along with actors on a set that

(01:05):
we recreated of our office. It's basically an office comedy
about our lives as podcasters, featuring the podcasting itself and
real knowledge and factual stuff. So we think it's a
good combination of fun and humor and facts and uh,
we think you'll like it. Yeah, we hope you'll like it.
Um that's January nineteenth, Saturday, ten pm. Uh the world premiere.

(01:30):
And uh, don't forget to check out Idiot Abroad season
three absolutely premier before. Very funny show. And for those
of you clamoring that you don't have TV or cable, you,
if you have a computer device, can watch this on iTunes.
Now you're going to be able to purchase these, I
believe the day after each episode is released and go

(01:50):
to iTunes, buy it for bucket and watch it on
your laptop. Nice and Science Channel is so cool they're
making the first episode available for free. Yeah, that's pretty
awesome on iTunes, just to get your hooked. So we
appreciate the support. And now on with the episode, sir, Yes, hey,

(02:12):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles
w Chuck Bryant and that stuff. You should know. Two
of us together, the anatomically Correct Doll Models version. I
guess I called myself a doll model once in a while,
a little perk, you know, very looking very kin like

(02:34):
these days. Sure, um, hey man, not magic your akin, No,
we'll get to that. Like shavedkin. UM. So, I know
you know this, but I'll tell you again. Back when
I was a little pup, I had this series of
books that were very, very significant in my life, the

(02:54):
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. I would get one for Christmas
every year and I would like go through it and
first hour I had it and my legs would be
numb in the bathroom. When you first got these, I
think I started I was about twelve. I love that
your parents knew that you were just a sponge for
information even at that age. Yeah, I don't remember how
I first came about it, but like I think somebody
got it for him and they were blown away at

(03:15):
how much I liked that. Um And it really helped
shape me in many many ways and the way I
understand things, the way I look at things like this
general knowledge. I've had some right, some wrong, but like
it's been a big deal what you do in the
bathroom reading. UM. So, this this episode is kind of

(03:35):
special to me because all this material we're doing, how
Barbie Doll works, almost all the materials from Uncle John's
Bathroom Reader. They got in touch with us and gave
us everything they have M Barbie, and we compiled it
into this podcast, and we actually have a special guest later,
the founder of the Bathroom Reader Institute, Gordon Jovna, is

(03:59):
going to be joining us on this to talk about
Barbie two. Very excited and they're also kind enough to
give us hats and I think shirts as well. Right, yeah,
because they listened to us, and we found out they listened.
I was like, you were kidding, Like the circle of
life is complete, Like we hear from Mad Magazine, Archie comics,
damn interesting, damn interesting? Have we heard from crack yet? No?

(04:22):
We love them. They're They're the one people, the one people,
the one group out there that I would like to
contact us. That's it, just the one, just them. And like,
very man, I've been whole enough for Obama. I know
he listens. Don't even pretend Obama, just send us an email.
Well yeah, you know, I remember when they released what
was the contents of his iPod one year and we
were both like, oh my god, we on it. We're
on it, like of course we're not on it now

(04:44):
still alright? Um oh and before we get storry, I
want to give a shout out to one of our
horror fiction contest entrants. Remember we said, if you publish something,
let us know and we'll tell everybody. Um, Jay McMurray
submitted his story The Mind Reader. It was very good. Yeah,
that was a good one. And he's got it up
on Amazon dot com and you can search um Jay McMurray,

(05:06):
m C m U R R Y and the Mind
Reader and it will bring it up for you. Um.
He's self published. So it's pretty awesome. Awesome, So way
to go, Jay, thanks for letting us know. Uh so, Barbie, Yes,
it all started with a lady named Ruth Marianna who
eventually became Ruth Handler. She grew up but I guess

(05:27):
kind of poor in Denver, Colorado. Uh yeah, Well her
mom was ill, and I have the feeling that it
was just her mom. Yeah, so she ended up having
to go live with her sister at a fairly young age. Yeah,
and um, at a young age as well, met her husband,
be Elliott, and they moved to California, as New Leo

(05:47):
EDGs did in the nineteen thirties with you know, prosperous
land out their opportunity and they had a very long
lasting marriage and business partnership years for de great it
is great. Um. Elliott turned out to have a knack
for creating giftwear, specifically to start picture frames, wouldn't picture frames?

(06:09):
And Ruth turned out to have a knack for marketing
and merchandizing them. That's right. And uh they together for Mattel,
which sounds familiar, I imagine. Yeah, well with Harold Mattson.
That's where the matt came from. Nice and the l
was Elliott, very nice. That's nice. And uh they also
had a couple of kids named Barbie and Kent. Yeah,

(06:32):
there you have it. We should just end it right
there the end. That's how Barbie works. That's pretty cool.
That was a nice little factoid. Well. I think one
of the things that I think is interesting about Barbie
is that the Barbie doll was directly inspired by Barbie
handler Ruth's daughter, Um Barbie used to play with Barbie,
the real girl used to play with dolls. She had
like her little baby dolls, and she had, um, you know,

(06:55):
little girl dolls or whatever, because that's all that was available.
But she also played with paper doll and these paper
dolls were kind of fashion dolls, so they were older,
mature women, and they had different outfits and apparently Barbie
was just crazy for him. So Ruth went to her
colleagues at Mattel and said, we need to come up
with a three dimensional doll that you can change outfit.
It's going to be a huge hit. And all of

(07:16):
the male suits poop poo did it's a boo boo,
Sit down, get me some coffee, lady exactly. And UM
she was like, all right, well fine, I'll see you
all in Hell. Yeah. Well, they did poopoo it for
a legitimate reason, though they said it was not possible
to manufacture it. UM. I don't think it was just
poopoo ing her idea, although there was probably some of
that mixed in. UM. Luckily, Europe called and the handlers

(07:41):
went on a European vacation and I think ninety six,
and while they were in Looser in Switzerland, they were
in some toy shop. I guess that happened to be
selling a German doll called the Lily Doll. And Lily
was based on a UM I guess you could call
it a body comic strip. And this doll that was

(08:01):
based on the strip was meant for men as maybe
the like as a host's gift for a stag party
or something like that. I get the impression you got
him in shops of ill repute at the time. Did
you look up Lily looks like Barbie, it looks like
Marlene Dietrich. That kind of ripped it off, although I

(08:22):
shouldn't say that because I might get sued. And we
should also say, as you'll find out why in the
Nazi distant future, that every time we say Barbie there
is an implied registered trademark symbol following it. All rights
to Mattel. We claim zero rights or copyrights on Barbie
or her products. Right. So Lily was a prototype and um,

(08:44):
you know, she was a grown up lady that you
could change the clothes on. And she was like, you
know what, this is what we've been wanting, this is
what I've been waiting for. It's possible to manufacture these,
and I want to make Barbies at Mattel because a
woman has choices. In the fact that you can change
your clothes proves it, right. It took a little convincing,
but she got Mattel. The other guys at Mattel on board. Yeah,

(09:07):
they resisted because the of the large breasts on the doll. Yeah,
they basically said, no, mom's gonna buy a doll with
breast for her daughter. Remember, there is nothing like this
out there at the time, at least in America and
even in Europe. The one doll that was like this
that Barbie was based on was based on a sexy
comic strip exactly, so it wasn't for little girls. So

(09:27):
this is a really revolutionary idea for a handler would
be like, no, no, Well they'll get past it, Like,
this is what we need to do. Got Mattel on
board and debuted this thing at the Toy Fair in
New York City in nineteen nine and a zebra stripe
striped bathing suit. Yes, very alluring, I guess, and her
eyes were cast to the side. She can never meet

(09:47):
your gaze, which as a sidebar, no, like it will
never meet your gaze. The only way for no, the
only way for eyes in a painting or on a
doll to meet you is for them to already be
painted looking ahead. If they're painted looking to the side,
they'll never meet you. Well, unless you turn the doll
to the sun. I'm telling you. You try you try it.

(10:09):
You've told the story about the painting. Let's still disagree.
So in the Shinto religion, um anything that has eyes,
including a doll, can capture your spirit. So in Japan
a lot of dolls are made with sideways looks so
you can't look them in the eye. And every year
and you keep your spirit at the right at the
Meiji Shrine in Japan, they have a doll burning celebration

(10:33):
where they burned unused, an unwanted dolls so that they
can't get anybody. That's an environmental nightmare. So Barbie debuts
in nine right, yes, they she goes to Sears because
they sold tons of Mattel products at the time. Sea
said this thing is too sexy. No one's gonna buy them.
It's too sexy. So uh, Mattel turned out to be

(10:56):
smarty Pants though, because five years later Barbie was a
million dollar dollar I guess because of all the internet
orders that they were getting, well the little kids. Finally
some stores said yes, okay, we'll take them, and little
Kids sold them. In that first year, Chuck, they sold
three hundred and fifty thousand of these things, and they
were selling them for three bucks apiece, which I looked
at three and two thousand eleven dollars. So there was

(11:19):
a substantial amount of sales for the first year, so
Rick Handler was proven right pretty much out of the gate. Yes,
that is true. Um, the cool end of Ruth story
actually not so cool because she died of cancer. But
she um eventually got breast cancer, and when she was
unable to find a breast prosthesis that she thought was

(11:41):
was good enough, she said, you know what, I'm gonna
make my own and I'm going to form a company
and I'm gonna call it Nearly Me. And they manufactured
breasts prosthesises for cancer survivors. Pretty cool. She sadly lost
her battle, but I think she was like in her
late eighties or mid eighties, and even after the Handlers

(12:01):
were basically forced out of Mattel after some questionable earnings
reports in the late seventies early eighties, she's still regarded
like this titan of the toy industry, legend of this
woman who like helped build Mattel from scratch and like
made it what it is today. And I think Elliott
just passed away last year. He lived into his nineties.

(12:23):
So we have a few stats here, Uh, New Barbie
All today sells approximately every three seconds. See just sold
one another just sold one. Uh. It is a one
point five billion dollar business for Mattel and the average
girl from three to six has twelve of these. That
is mind boggling. Number One Barbie from uh and called

(12:45):
you about twenty seven grand these days, and uh what else?
The best selling Barbie of all time was the totally
hair Barbie who had hair from head to toe. It
strikes me as strange. That's the best selling Barbie of
all time. I looked it up. It's it's for guys
like us. You look at this thing and say, wow,

(13:05):
what a redneck doll like? Has anyone been into the
Crystal Gale look since with the seventies? But I think
little girls uh enjoyed like styling the hair, all that
hair and all the hair that you could do all
these interesting things with. So Barbie herself, if you want
to know a little bit of a backstory, if anyone
ever asks you, Barbie's full name, Barbie the doll, Yes,

(13:26):
not the daughter. We're no longer talking about the doll. Now,
we're talking about Barbie the doll in this weird fake history,
and it's strange. It's a little weird. Yeah, that's why
we went in and then we're coming back out for
a second. But Barbie's real name is Barbara Millicent Roberts
apparently um, which is my aunt's name, not her middle name.
But her name is Barbie Roberts Um. And she hails

(13:48):
from not my aunt, but the Barbie doll hails from Willows, Wisconsin. Yeah.
And she has friends, specifically and most notably Ken Shawn Carson,
who was induced in nineteen sixty one. They're both pisces
I guess, like me, I think so. And they're both
early March. Well I'm mid March. Another cut office sometime

(14:10):
in March, though, so, but they were both born in March.
We'll call him pisces um. And uh, Barbie has some relatives.
Her best friend is Midge, by the way, who's been
introduced a couple of times pregnant and really caused controversy
both times. Yeah, one time with an actual baby in
the belly that you could take out in the womb. Yeah.

(14:31):
That it was. It's looked upon and Cracked Magazine as
one of the horrific toys in history. I think it
was necessary and educational, Alright. What was surprising to me
was that she was pregnant and it caused the second
time it caused waves as recently. It's like two thousand two,
two two or two thousand and six, it was fairly recent.
It seems the world still has hang ups about pregnancy

(14:54):
for some reason. Well, it's probably a single woman pregnancy,
probably not just the fact that she was pregnant. I
don't think any has he prompts pregnancy. Um, you've also
heard a skipper she uh was a sister she was
the little Sister's debuted in nineteen. Then there's Stacy, Todd
and Chelsea, who are named after the handler's grandchildren. Um,

(15:15):
and then about Ken, he's gone through some transitions over
the years. Is Malibu Kenna laid back dude, Magic Iran
Kin who will talk about a little more in death
shall we introduced in nineteen embraced by the gay community.
And um, have you seen pictures? Oh yeah, yeah, he's
got a do you not look up your earring? Magic Kin?

(15:37):
Not this personing? I did uh see through kind of
a sheer purple tank mesh mesh and uh there's a
matching purple jacket and a medallion. Doesn't he have like
a risk like corsage or something too? I didn't see
that part he looked like a gay raver. Yeah we
can say that. I mean, like dead on a gay raver.

(15:59):
I don't want to into any rabs out there. And
apparently the whole um this, the fact that the gay
community bought a large portion of these things, was a
big surprise to Mattel and they're like, wait, we didn't
mean that. So they took it off the shelves. Well,
they're pretty stupid, you know, registered trademark, registered trademark. They

(16:20):
were making big sales. Uh. There had long been joking
whispers about Kin's sexuality in pop culture, so when they
made this one, I think people thought, all right, they're
finally giving us like the real Kin. And then for
them to yanket back off the shelves, it's like come on, yeah,
Well that's the kind of a thread you'll see throughout
is that Mattel is very protective of Barbie's image and

(16:45):
by proxy Kin's image as well. Um, and apparently they
don't think Ken's gay. Um. Kenn and Barbie broke up once,
very famously in two thousand four. Yeah, and they got
well after blaming the Australian surfer showed up. They just
happened to break up then, but of course, like all
noted lovers in history, they got back together in Valentine's

(17:07):
on Valentine's State two thousand eleven. And apparently Barbie was
even on match dot com for a little while, and
Ken designed a cupcake for her at Magnolia Bakery and
posted billboards asking for Barbie's hand again and together. Of course,
she's never been married again. They got back together in
Valentine's State two thousand eleven. That's right. What about her jobs,

(17:29):
Barbie's a fact totem. She has done a lot of things.
Fashion model, astronaut, hundred and thirty careers totalners, been a cop,
a paleontologist. McDonald's franchise e was she franchise z? Because
I saw the one where she worked to the drive through?
It depends, Like if you really start thinking about Barbie,
she owned the place, Okay, but that's a big difference,

(17:52):
you know, of the image you're sending out, like is
she a business owner or she's slinging fries. Well, she's
also owned like tons of boutiques. Again, she owned that
hot dog sand like pretty much everything she works at
she's owned. I I that was the impression. I had
race car driver, aerobics instructor. She owned aerobics right while
she did it. She had a band, Barbie and the

(18:14):
Rockers that formed. That's right. I have not heard any songs,
but I should go look that up. And then animals,
she said, more than fifty pets, first of which was
a horse named Dancer. She said, twenty one dogs, twelve horses,
three ponies, six cats, a parrot, a champ papanda, a lion, cub,
a giraffe, and a zebra. And that is it for

(18:35):
the fake history of Barbie. Because, um, if there's one
thing about Barbie, it's that she collides with society, both
in academic circles and pop culture like you said, and
every aspect. Barbie has her her little plastic toes dipped
in some part of our society at large for tiny

(18:56):
little plastic does um. And probably the group that she's
run a foul of the most are feminists, right, Yeah,
and uh, this article makes a great point, like feminism
and Barberly Barbarie and Barbie co evolved right about the
same time in the nineteen early nineteen sixties, is when
these things were going on. Yeah, um, Barbie came out
in nineteen fifty nine. Betty Friedan published The Feminist Mystique

(19:19):
in nineteen sixty three. Right, so there they're just right there,
head to head, intertwined at each other's throats for pretty
much the whole time. Yeah, because, um, a feminist will
point out Barbie is, her figure is ridiculous, she's wealthy,
she's vapid, she's materialistic. Girls shouldn't even be playing with

(19:41):
this thing because it sends all the wrong messages, possibly
dangerous messages. Um. And there are times when Mattel's kind
of made the point for feminists or just any critic
of Barbie specifically ten Talk Barbie. Yeah, bad for them
sometimes with the stuff because they've made some terrible mistakes

(20:03):
a lot, I know, but you get I don't know.
You just picture like an out of touch board room
and they're trying to do the right thing and it
just blows up in their face over and over. So, uh,
Team Talk Barbie. Yeah, they recorded Uh this Barbie could
talk back to you thanks to a computer microchip, and
it would say four phrases, and they had two hundred
and seventy phrases total, and each doll got four at

(20:26):
random I love shopping, Let's have a pizza party, or
the one percent of dolls math class is tough, which
is a pretty high percentage for just one thing. So
like the worst thing that Team Talk Barbie could have
said ended up in the most dolls. Yeah. Uh and
of course, um that perpetuated the girls are bad at

(20:47):
math thing in the American Association of University Women said
we don't like perpetuating these stereotypes. Mattel said, fine, you
know what, We'll pull these and if you got one
of these, uh I don't like math doll, you can
send it in and get another one. But it was
kind of too late, and then the best thing in
history happened. Yeah, the Barbie Liberation Organization uh struck. They

(21:10):
bought hundreds of teen talk Barbies, and they also apparently
bought hundreds of talking Duke G I Joe action figures
and they switched the microchips out in them. So awesome,
and then they took them back. Uh. So, a lot
of little girls got barbies that said things like vengeance
is Mine and a lot of little boys got G I.
Joe's that said things like, let's plan our dream wedding.

(21:32):
That's pretty great. And there's actually a really excellent version
of this saga that's told in a Simpsons episode Lisa
versus Malibu. Stacey, Remember that got all this background based
on Ruth Handler and Mattel Barbie and and this m
Barbie Liberation organization. I'm glad you mentioned that that I've
forgotten all about that. That's such a good Episode's a

(21:52):
good one, Lisa, lion heart. So, uh, Mattel and Um
and Ruth have always shot back or countered, maybe more politely.
They're not shrinking violence when you know the feminists are
on them. No, they say, you know what, Barbie was
created by women. Barbie has always had you know, jobs

(22:17):
sometimes male traditional male jobs. Yeah, they say, she she
she breaks the plastic ceiling. Yeah, like she was day night,
day to night CEO Barbie, UM, Barbie for President, astronaut
Barbie UM. And they basically said, you know what, she's
never been married, she never had kids. Barbie is a feminist, right,

(22:39):
although I bet a lot of feminists would argue back,
and they have been for years. Well yeah, but some
feminists also actually grudgingly support Barbie as a champion of
women's right. So there's this one article I read by
by Deb Moore Hennicky. It's called rethinking Barbie. And she
points out that quote Kendall's come in several outfits, but
really he's just there. If Barbie happens to want to

(23:00):
go on a date, she does not stand around waiting
for Ken to show up, or she needs someone to
go shopping with her to help her pick up friends
for that, And the next sentence she basically said, like
she goes shopping with her friends, she basically does whatever
she wants, you know. Um, so she's no, she's no
lackey for Ken. And they'll also point out that, you
know what, before we came along, it was just like

(23:21):
baby dolls, and all it said was here you can
only be a mother to a child or have a
little imaginary best friend, little girl doll. There were no
adult dolls that had adult jobs and thinking like adult jobs.
But know yeah, and even from the outset me um,
Ruth Handler created Barbie with the idea that little girls
could use this older doll to imagine themselves in their

(23:46):
life and maybe hopefully make a better path for themselves. Um,
and that's kind of been a point of Barbie all along.
And there's actually There's this one study out of Washington
and Lee in two thousand ten that supported that that
down that when the groups of little girls were showing
a Barbie doll getting into, um, the outfit of like

(24:07):
a male dominated occupation, like firefighter, they tended to report
that they could grow up to be a firefighter too. So,
I mean there is support for that very much. Um.
But still there's a lot of easy shots that one
can take a Mattel is, you know, basically making Barbie

(24:28):
a sexualized doll. Yeah, but I mean since the very
beginning until yesterday, this has been going on, and it's
just one of those lifelong battles. Mattel is never gonna
back down, and I'm sure the feminist probably won't either.
Studies aside, everyone has their opinion on Barbie. Yeah, And

(24:48):
I think that's a really good point about Barbie. I
feel like she is a giant mirror for society, everything
that's wrong with it, everything that's right with it it
depending on how you look at Barbie, and on a
much more micro cosmic level, depending on how an individual
little girl plays with Barbie, she can be a you know,

(25:08):
a tool for aspiration or something that teaches the girl
all the wrong things. That's good point. Yeah, all right,
So we should talk about Barbie and race because Mattel
has also like made some missteps over the years when
it comes to the cringe yeah, cringe worthy episode coming up. Uh.
In ninety seven, they conceived of a black friend for

(25:31):
Barbie and they called her colored Francie. I know, Um,
I'm not sure how well that went over. It's hard
to tell now because it sounds so ridiculous, but I
don't know how it was received at the time. I
couldn't find anything on that. Um, apparently not that great
because Colored francis not around any longer. Well, their follow

(25:52):
up wasn't that much better. In eight they came out
with Black Barbie. That's what they called it. Yep, Black Barbie.
Black Barbie. Ken came out two years later African American
Ken sun Stational Malibuchan in was was was black and
Um the problem was until two thousand nine, until three

(26:13):
years ago. One of the problems, one of the problems,
aside from the naming conventions, uh, is that they still
use the quote unquote white dolls and just made the
skin tone darker. Yeah, and they they didn't change any
other aspect of the doll until three years ago when
they finally, um made African American barbies Kara, Grace and Trichelle,

(26:36):
and they had designs apparently to replicate features of real
African American women. Finally, and have you seen these dolls
I have? Yeah, they're great. One of them looks sort
of like Beyonce. Um that one that two thousand and
ten Washington Least study that we mentioned. That author also
started to wonder like, how does what Barbie doesn't? How

(26:58):
does what Barbie isn't doing? A acting little girls as well? Yeah,
so the point she made was, Um, if a young
African American girl goes into a store and um, like,
there's not a black president Barbie, right, what does that
tell her? Sure, there's just the white president Barbie. That's

(27:18):
a good point. Um Again, prepare for cringing, because, like
you said, apparently Mattel's boardroom exists in a in a
cultural vacuum. So uh in they got a ring and
ding from Nabisco who said, hey, we need to move
some Oreos, so why don't you guys make an Oreo
theme Barbie? And they said, sure. Problem we should point

(27:39):
out they've done a lot of deals with companies over
the years. Yeah, so this wasn't anything bigger, Newer cook Barbie,
Pepsi Barbie, Nascar Barbie. It seems like anytime they have
a new you know, I mean I have a Barbie.
Do you really know Josh Barbie? Oh I thought you
meant you owned one. No, no, no, there's a yeah,
there's a podcaster Barbie. Yeah. Um. So they they contracted

(28:00):
with Nibisco and they came out with an Oreo theme
Barbie and all was fine. They got a few complaints
saying like this promotes junk food, but nothing big, no,
big East, the usual stuff. And then they released a
black version of Oreo Barbie. Yes, and that costs some
controversy because, like you said, apparently their boardroom is in
a vacuum and they did not realize that, Uh, that

(28:23):
is a racial epithet, uh level leveled by black people
against other black people who they feel like are being
too quote unquote white. So there dark on the outside,
white in the middle Oreos and Mattel wasn't aware of this.
And they released an African American Barbie that said Oreo
all over on the shirt and like in the purse,

(28:45):
and uh, they are now a collector's item, of course,
because they quickly were yanked from the shelves and his
cracked dot com put it. They quote picked the one
cookie in the universe that could ever be considered as offensive. Ever,
the one cookie she could have been the Nutter Butter
barbie problem. Yeah, you're right, or corrects right? Um so

(29:06):
Mattel Also as there's a lot of stuff that they do, right,
Like in that case, they didn't mean to offend anybody.
It was just a horrible mistake. Um. And you know,
they released an African American barbie and they released a
white barbie. Right. Um. They do the same with with
multi ethnic barbies from around the world. They've been releasing
them forever. And like it's great because you know, oh,

(29:28):
there's a place called Spain. A little girl says, like
that kind of thing. It's good for that. But at
the same time, it's like the clothes they dressed them
up in are beyond stereotypical. Like Native American barbie, the
Dutch barbie looks like the Swiss miss Girl. Um. As
a matter of fact, it probably is. Um. And then

(29:48):
Vitan Ken from Mexico in nine four. He's wearing a sombrero.
It's just agonizing. Sometimes they're trying to just miss the
mark once in a while. Yeah, I get the feeling
that the boardroom is not only in a vacuum, but
it's a lot of like old white people making these decisions.
Um okay. So I would say probably the most controversial

(30:12):
aspect of Barbie always from the outset, before she was
even created, because her body. Yeah, that's what kept her
from being created in the first place. As we mentioned,
the uh Mattel CEO said, you can't release at all
with big breast. I'm glad you finally got that out.
Just like didn't even know how to say that, but
that's what they said. And since then, Barbie's figure has

(30:35):
been notoriously called out is unsupportable, fake, um, not realistic,
and at worst, like really bad for these little girls
in their body image and what they think they're supposed
to look like, like a tool of body dysmorphic disorder. Basically,
it's like it's not even possible to look that way,

(30:55):
they say it depending okay. So what's very interesting, I think, Chuck,
is that this design of her body was actually a
design decision made by her designers, who were all women,
career women's successful career women um to allow her to
wear miniature versions of real like fashion clothes, so like

(31:16):
her crazy hips and small waist, they were designed like
that so that she could she could wear these clothes
that gathered at the waist and she had breasts, so
she could wear these biouses or whatever that we're like
based on real clothes and designed by real designers. So
it's actually a design decision, but it quickly took on
its life that like, yeah, Barbies, this evil tool that

(31:38):
spreads this um unhealthy body image to little girls. Yeah.
I think it was the nine fifties and it was
just like, you know, let's make a full figure and
you know, a tiny waist and girls will love it
or she looks like us? Yeah what what? This is
just my personal opinion here. That's all well and good.

(31:58):
Since then, may be, since they've taken all these steps
to introduce more correct versions, maybe they should release a
like realistic Barbie dump Be Barbie, a k. A normal
looking person Barbie. I don't think it will ever happen.
I don't think they have made changes to her figure,
so she's nothing like she was when she first came out.

(32:19):
She's not like she was. She she has changed some,
but for the most part there there's not gonna be
a dumpy Barbie, not if you call it that. See,
that's part of the problem is looking average you called dumpy.
Oh come on, man, I am definitely not part of
the problem. I don't. I wouldn't call it a normal
looking person dumpy Barbie. Then compared to Barbie, you would

(32:41):
call her dumpy Barbie. I think that's definitely that's the
whole zeitgeist behind this whole thing. Like if if Barbie
is perfect than anything else, that's different as dumpy. Alright,
well I disagree, Um well, National Organization of Women would
probably disagree to. They've frequently saw. Did Barbie is a

(33:01):
again this instrument of delivering an unhealthy body image to
little girls? Yeah? And like you said, they sometimes they
don't make it any easier on themselves because in the
nineteen sixty three Barbie sit upset, there was a pamphlet
called how to Lose Weight, and one of the tips
Barbie says, don't eat and that's it. So they Two

(33:26):
years later there was another booklet, Barbie Slumber Party, that
said there was a bathroom scale that was permanently set
at a hundred and ten pounds, and that sounds like
that's a little weird. The same booklet was included, Yeah,
oh yeah, it's weird. And even if it's not weird,
and again like if you take this, the conventional idea
of what's going with the thought is behind this um

(33:46):
you they said, okay, well what is Barbie? Wait? Barbie
is well, we can't make a real um scale that
moves back and forth, so we're gonna set it at
one ten without any thought that possibly this little girl
is gonna think that if she doesn't weigh a hundred
and ten, like, she's not as pretty as Barbie. Yes,
it never will be, and it will always hate herself

(34:06):
for not weighing a hundred and ten pounds. It's just
these decisions made without this wider thought has kind of
give him a Telli's reputation. That's right. They've done studies
on this. They did one in two thousand eleven in Holland,
and they said that girls who played with average sized
dollars for ten minutes eight significantly more during a taste

(34:26):
test following play than girls who played with the Barbie
dolls or a thin doll like Barbie. Yeah, to be fair,
And another study which I thought was pretty interesting. Well,
obviously they found that promotes materialism and sexualizes play. But um,
this other study found that there's more torture play and
anger play involved with Barbie, Like a little girl will

(34:47):
rip off Barbie's arms or head, and they found that
they ripped off more Barbie parts than other dolls because,
as one girl said, quote, she's the only one that
looks perfect. Right. So this is huge, huge, massive body
of work on the effect that Barbie's body has on
the little girls that play with there, and more often

(35:08):
than not, they find that it creates a poor self
image body image in little girls. But interestingly, it tends
to disappear in tweens. Yeah, like, um, say they're studying
girls three to ten, it'll really appear in like three, four, five, six,
But then like like it doesn't appear as much. It's

(35:30):
not as prevalent. Interesting, Yeah, it is, but you you wonder, like,
what's the lasting effect of those when it hits those three, four,
five and six year old you know, yeah, that's true
formative years. Um. There's also been a lot of studies
and reports of what Barbie would look like worsh a
real person, right, Yeah, they're always disturbing. So you said that, like,
it's impossible look like Barbie. Not entirely, but close. South

(35:54):
Australia University researchers calculated that a woman's chance of natural
really having Barbie's figure was one in a hundred thousand.
I'm surprised it's not more than that. I am too,
But for a man to have Ken's figure, you have
like a one in fifty chance. You and I are
are we don't have good chances. Uh. And in Finland

(36:17):
at their University Central Hospital, they say Barbie were life size,
she would lack the seventeen to two percent body fat
required for a woman to menstrate, so she's so thin
she medically can't even menstrate. And the BBC did this
comparison of Barbie and one of their employees named Libby,

(36:39):
and if Libby were to keep her twenty eight inch
waist but stay in step with Barbie's other proportions, she
would have to be seven ft six inches tall, which
again isn't impossible. The world's tallest woman is Yeow Defend,
who's seven ft eight inches tall. Yeah, but she didn't
look like Barbie. Uh, and then if she kept her height,
if Libby kept her hype but shrank Barbie's proportioned waist,

(37:02):
she would have a twenty inch waist, which is three
inches smaller in circumference than um Victoria Beckham's waist. Who's
like a bean pole beyond the beam posts. She's gotta
be like one of the She's like Vampira waistwise, she's thin. Um.
And did you see this Ukrainian woman? She says she

(37:24):
hasn't had plastic surgery. She's not being truthful. Valeria Valeria
Um Lucan Lucia Nova. Yeah, the quote unquote real life
Barbie doll. She's a model, artist and singer supposedly, and uh,
just look up a picture of her and prepare to
get creeped out. She's very animate. Have you seen her friend,
that's like the real life anime girl. Yeah, she photoshop

(37:46):
se she denies it, but I saw untouched before pictures
and she's clearly had plastic surgery and she doctors her photos.
But um, it's creepy. She looks like a doll. She
doesn't look real, she doesn't look alive. She's in the
young Annie Valley. But she's a real person. Yeah. Um,
there's a woman named Cindy Jackson who's a brit who

(38:07):
actually holds the record for um most plastic surgeries in
a lifetime fifty two as of April two eleven. And
she started undergoing those at age one after deciding that
she wanted to look like Barbie back when she was six.
So she moved to London and started going under the knife.
I didn't see a picture of her to you. Oh yeah,
well she looks like she looks Barbie. Yeah. So we

(38:29):
mentioned the litigious nature of Mattel guarding zealous league guarding
Barbie's image over the years. Uh, and you have dug
up via the Bathroom Reader and notable examples. Um number one.
Paul Hanson in the n H San Francisco artists began
selling Barbie art basically drag Queen Barbie, Tanya Harding Barbie,

(38:52):
Exorcist Barbie having a lot of fun with it, Tanya
Hardening Barbie. I guess it comes with a little minicro
bar there's dumpy Barbie right there. Oh boy. Um. He
sold about a hundred and fifty dollars, earned about two grand,
and Mattel sued him for one point two billion dollars.
This is what these corporations can do. They'll just be like,

(39:13):
I didn't gonna sue you for nine dollars. So Hansen
is like, alright, alright, alright, everybody just calmed down. How
about this. I will sell my dolls only in art galleries,
no more stores, just the galleries themselves, and I will
donate all of the profits charity. Mattel said, no, We're
going to court. Pal. So they went to court, and

(39:35):
eventually a judge, uh just lost patients, it said, and
granted a partial judgment and said against Mattel for not
having a sense of humor. So a little smack on
the face, but I'm sure the attorneys smugly left with
their headheld high. Um. And that's kind of similar to
another artist's case, Mark Napier, who's uh from New York.

(39:58):
He's got us a website. UM that was originally called
the Distorted Barbie website. UM, and it was pictures of
Kate Moss, Barbie Fat and ugly Barbie Dolly parton Barbie. UM,
and Mattel sent a ceason desist later apparently they were
a fan of this guy or something. UM. Imagine that
people trolling the world for this kind of stuff, you know.
I mean they sent a ceason assist rather than suing

(40:19):
him for a billion dollars in days, instead of just
suing him. But Napier said, you know what, I'm not
going to really do this, h percent. I'm gonna blur
the images a little bit and then change the B
and Barbie to a dollar sign. I wonder if it's
still up. I haven't looked. I haven't looked either. And
then there's Barbie. Barbie Bell a k. Barbara Bell. Yeah,
this one is a little she's at wacky. She claimed

(40:41):
that Barbie was speaking to her. Is that right? And
and started selling uh chances to channel Barbie spirit and
answer personal questions via Barbie for three bucks three bucks
a pop. Barbie will directly through me tell you whatever
you want to know. Well, and um, Barbie sent her
first message to Barbara Bell. The message was I need respect.

(41:05):
So Bell also, this is probably what pushed her over
the edge as far as Mattel is concerned. She started
publishing the Barbie Channeling newsletter. So I'm Antell threatened a
multimillion dollar lawsuit. Bell is like, okay, fine, that's fine.
I'll shut down, but first I'm gonna make a statement. Look,
she says, for three dollars, nobody's getting hurt. I don't
claim to be the only voice of Barbie. And I'm

(41:27):
sure not taking any other channeler's business. I've carved out
my own niche in the market. There's seven million Barbie
dolls in the world with no voice my favorite partist.
I'm sure not taking any other channeler's business. Nobody else
would be this crazy, is what she's saying. Um, this
one turned out a little odd if you ask me. Um.

(41:49):
There's a band called Aqua from Denmark. They recorded a
song called Barbie Girl. You know this song? Right? Oh?
Here it is now do you recognize it? Yes, you do.

(42:12):
I'm a Barbie girl in a Barbie world. Is plastic.
It's fantastic. Yeah. I don't know you. I don't believe you.
I don't think you realize that I don't listen to radio.
I don't believe that you've not heard this song. I haven't,
all right, So Mattel filed suit, of course against m
c A. So this is actually slugging it out with
a big corporation for a change. Uh, And it ended

(42:32):
up as a bigger battle because of that, I'm sure,
because they can all afford big, high powered attorneys. So
they suited Mattel. I'm sorry, m c A, m c
A countered um and you know what, we're suing you,
and we can even bring in expert witnesses that basically
we'll testify that you based this on a little German
sex doll, sex doll, but you know, sexy doll back

(42:55):
in the day, in the nineteen fifties, And Mattel was
probably like, oh, yeah, we did kind of do that.
They had a really good point. They said, what Aqua
was doing in the song Barbie Girl is not to
make Barbie into a sex object, as Mattel alleged, but
to point out that she's been one all along. Yeah,
and then Mattella exactly and so um. In a in

(43:17):
an ironic twist of fate, um, they ruled this song
was protected as parody and tossed out the defamation suit
back at Mattel. And then in two thousand nine, Barbie
actually recorded a cover version of the song and Mattel
released on YouTube to promote a line of Barbie fashionistas
that crazy. So they sued them for the song and
then they used the song I'm Sure for free because

(43:39):
it was a cover version sung by whoever does the
Barbie songs. This one's my favorite, Paul David. I just
felt bad for this guy. He Um. He was a
Barbie collector, a big time Barbie collector. He was on
their team. Yeah, so much so that he published the
Barbie catalog um and he in the mid ninety nineties.
Um wrote in one of his catalogs that if there
were an ugly con test, Elizabeth and Queen Barbie would

(44:01):
definitely win. Did you see that one? Yeah, it's Elizabeth
the First. You know, it was notoriously dumpy. Yeah, it
was just, uh, it looked like Queen Elizabeth the First.
But this guy, who they had trusted to help protect
Barbie's image had written something snyde, so they brought down

(44:23):
the hammer of God on him. Also, they point out
that there were some he didn't put the registered trademark
symbol next to some of the photos, which is like,
if you want to give motel after you uh just
put forget to put the registered trademark next to a
photo of Barbie. Yeah, we should put that on our
podcast title. We don't want the Barbie hammer, we don't

(44:44):
um so Barbie sus mattel Um accuses him of copyright
infringement and um. Eventually Paul David signed a settlement agreement,
and as The Wall Street Journal reported, it stipulated that
Barbie may only be portrayed in his catalog as wholesome, friendly,
accessible and kind, caring and protective, cheerful, fun loving, talented

(45:06):
and independent. And what did he do? He was disgusted
and sold all his Barbies and I guess quit writing
his catalog and that was the end of that one,
Which is that's why that was so sad to me,
because he was such a huge supporter of the company,
like to be such a fan to go out of
your way to publish a catalog and then they essentially
just like squash the guy. Yeah. I remember reading this

(45:27):
and like many years ago and thinking like, yeah, that
was pretty awful. Yeah, but who knows, Maybe it's the
turning point for the guy. Maybe he's like, I'm free.
He walked outside and like talked to real humans. Uh
what about Barbie being banned, Chuck? Yeah, like this year actually,

(45:48):
in two thousand twelve, she was banned in Iran for
destructive cultural and social consequences, and they came up with
their own little doll, and girls called it ugly and fat.
I couldn't find a picture of this one. I couldn't
find anywhere. It doesn't like anything like Barbie. It's just
a doll. Yeah, oh then maybe I did see it. Um. Yeah,

(46:09):
the one toy seller called Barbie worse than an American missile.
But I also hear that all over Tehran, like you
can still get Barbie's no problem under the counter, but
for like, this is what I what I hear got
you this Audi Arabia band Barbie in two thousand three,
saying she was offensive to Islam and even in the

(46:29):
States she can't get no respect. West Virginia outlaw Barbie
in two thousand nine, or try to with a bill
deciding emotional intellectual impact she has on girls. But I
doubt it that one anywhere did. It's time now. Yeah,
we're about to talk to Gordon Jovna, the founder of
the Bathroom Reader's Institute, the guy who introduced me to

(46:51):
all this stuff, and we're gonna talk to him. What
about the missteps of Barbie some even more missteps. Yeah,
it tells got a great and wonderful history of it.
So let's let's bring them up. So, Chuck, we're sitting
here talking to the guy Gordon Jobna, the founder of

(47:11):
the Bathroom Readers Institute and publisher of the Uncle John's
Bathroom Reader series. His name's on Uncle John. No, it's Gordon.
He We tried to call him Mr job Nat and
he went crazy. We're great, we're fantastic, Thank you very
much for joining us. We're um talking about Barbie. UM.

(47:32):
And of course you know, we've let everybody know all
the material from the episode today. This is a special
one because normally we do this from how stuff works articles,
but we're doing this, um from just stuff that's come
out of the Bathroom Readers. UM. So so we're talking
Barbie here. I feel like, UM, we've kind of done
a pretty good job setting all this up. We've we've

(47:53):
gone um into Barbie and Mattel's UM, I guess, troubled
history a lot. We've kind of made it clear that
Mattel is pretty good at making missteps, and um, you've
you've brought along some some other examples of ways Mattel
has just missed the mark a little bit. I guess
you could say, with some of their their Barbie's Barbie releases. Right, yeah,

(48:16):
we we have some examples of Barbies that created controversy.
I don't know that you'd call them all missteps. At
least one of them. It's not a misstep, but certainly
certainly a controversial. Uh So the first one I would
mention is share a smile, Becky, which he'll introduced in

(48:42):
Yeah we laughed, then then feel bad for laughing. No,
it's kind of funny. They were actually originally going to
call it wheelchair Barbie. Excuse me, wheelchair Becky, but they
were they had an eye toward diversity. And this was
a friend of Barbies who was um confined to a
wheelchair for an unspecified disability. And incidentally, the wheelchair the

(49:05):
doll came with a wheelchair, little pink wheelchair, And that
was fine until um Mattel got a complaint from a
seventeen year old girl from Washington named Kirsty Johnson. She
complained that Barbie's dream House was not wheelchair accessible, but

(49:26):
she had a personal interest because she was she had
superbral palsy and was confined to a wheelchair herself. So then,
uh She also mentioned that the dream house. Although the
dream House had an elevator, was too to accommodate the wheelchair.
So this thing falls into another example we pointed out
earlier in the podcast. I believe that um Mattel probably

(49:50):
trying to do the right thing here, but in the
end sort of takes a ham pisted approach and doesn't
cover all the angles. Yeah, and and there was my
was to promise a redesign of the dream House, but
instead they just dropped Becky from the Barbie line. Very
set sat into that story. That is all met tell

(50:11):
right there? What what else do you have for um?
I know, totally styling Barbie kind of raised some some eyebrows.
I believe it did. Uh. And this is the one
that I don't know if you'd call it a misstep,
but it certainly caused a scandal. They released this one
in two thousand and nine. I had a set of
stickers that came with it that looked were like temporary tattoos.

(50:32):
They had two sets, actually, one for the doll and
that an example of that would be the heart with
Ken that they've been in Ken and and they also
came with a set of temporary tattoos for the girls
who played with the dolls to put on themselves. Uh.
And they were also impact on the package. They encouraged

(50:52):
girls to to put them their lower back, which is
what those of us, well well most people know as
a tramp stand. Uh. So parents were up in arms
because it did two things. It encouraged girls, uh to
give each other homemade tattoos, they said, And they also

(51:13):
said they took it was a message that it was
okay for girls to do to do trampy things. And
this is one of those things. I wouldn't I don't
know that I would call us a misstep because they
Mattel didn't agree and they left it in the in
the line and it's still available. Yeah, yeah, I guess
that would be kind of the definition of a misstep.
If Mattel doesn't back down, then it's not a misstep. Well,

(51:34):
which basically means does the doll cell exactly. It's a
misstep if it doesn't sell breath. And can't you see
little girls sitting around like, oh, we're out of our
barbie temporary tattoos. Go get a sewing needle in some India, inc.
Let's get let's get down to brass techs here um
and we talked Gordon about Skipper already. Um. We talked
a little bit about Barbies Family Circle, um, and we

(51:58):
we mentioned Skipper, but we didn't mention the controversy that
came with her, like right out of the gate, right
when she was released kind of early on in the
Barbie saga in ninety right. Yeah, Yeah, Skipper was Barbie's
little sister, and she was introduced actually in the sixties,
but the original plan was for them to uh make

(52:19):
her a little older with each subsequent release. In the
nineteen seventy five they introduced growing up Skipper, which was
controversial almost from the very beginning because what it was
was when when girls cranked her arm, she grew a
quarter of an inch taller, and she sprouted breasts, and

(52:42):
she got an hour glass figure and a tramp stand.
You have to put that one on yourself. Yeah, I
would be curious to see just the mechanism behind this.
I'd like to, I guess something. I'd like to play
with one, but I would like to see how that worked.
I wanted to see the doll grow. I'm interested that
the safe complicated. If you want to play with it,
you'd have to buy one, like on eBay and it

(53:03):
would cost you around a hundred bucks. That's not worth
it that there are YouTube videos of of the doll
in action. Perfect you go, chuck, what the link to
one of those? After this thing publishes? Um? Yeah, but
again this isn't a misstep because as I understand it,
Mattel was like, well, we'll see you all in hell

(53:24):
because we're not taking this one off the shelves because
again it's selling very well. That's that's correct. But they
did phase it out. Uh. In seventy nine, they introduced
super teen Skipper, which was a the breast didn't grow,
but they were a little larger than the previous Skipper.
And then a couple of years after that, they they

(53:45):
made her a little bit, uh, took away a little
baby fat, and and they she became hot Stuff Skipper. No,
was that really what they called her? Yeah? Hot stuff Skipper. Wow. Um, So, Gordon,
you and your rather started out before the Bathroom Reader. Um,
you guys wrote a book about the sixties and the eighties,
and you guys mentioned Barbie in that book, right, So

(54:09):
what did you guys say? We said it was a
pop culture book, very early pop culture book about the sixties.
And and um we said in the introduction that Barbie
was as important a cultural icon as any anything that
happened in the nineteen sixties. And we were lamb based
in the or Lamb bastard whatever in the in the press,

(54:31):
in reviews for you know, like somehow putting Barbie over
the war in Vietnam or civil rights right there, And
we weren't. But we just felt that that this was
going to be a lasting, uh cultural image and we
were a little ahead on that. Laughing now exactly. Well,
let's talk about your books. Um, you guys are releasing
the twenty five anniversary of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. Cong congratulations.

(54:54):
That's enormous. Um, so what what what tell us a
little bit about this? Well, um, you know, we never
thought we would be doing this for twenty five years.
And I should say that the actual inspiration for doing
the Bathroom Meador was my brother's idea to give credit
where credit is due. But um, you know that first

(55:14):
book was two pages long, and we are our latest one,
Uncle John's Fully Loaded Bathroom Reader. We uh we made
it six hundred and eight pages, so it's a it's
quite a giant book that covers a zillion topics and
just like any other bathroomador, only a little more so. So, um,
where can everybody find the anniversary Well, all of your

(55:37):
books where where? Where's the best place to find them? Well,
hopefully your local bookstore will have Uncle John's fully loaded
Bathroom Reader. Certainly the chain bookstores like Barnes and Noble
will have it. Um, you can get it at Costco,
Sam's Club, get it online from Amazon, or you can
get it online from US at bathroom reader dot com. Cool.

(55:58):
We'd love to have people visit us. Uh and sometimes
they make suggestions of what we should be including, and
that's fantastic. Hey, thank you very much for joining us. Um,
you guys are doing the anniversary edition of Uncle John's
Bathroom Reader. It's available pretty much anywhere you can find
a book, right. Absolutely. I will be looking forward to
reading it this Christmas. So thank you very much, Gordon

(56:19):
job Now we appreciate you. Thank you, Josh, and thank
you Chuck. Thanks god bye, Well Josh. That was awesome.
Thanks for hooking that up man. Sorry I was a
fanboy kinda No, it was great. Uh, Like whenever you
can get the real people on the line, and sometimes
it happens, you just gotta do it. I'm just glad,

(56:41):
he answered. I mean like we were really running a
gamble by calling him in the middle of recording. That's true. Alright,
So shall we finish up with a few of them,
the more odd Barbie dollas throughout the street. These aren't missteps,
are just unusual. Yeah, and I'm sure there was not
a marketing campaign behind any of them. There's side to
Another Country or come there is Alfred Hitchcock's the Bird's

(57:02):
Barbie and this Barbie looked like Tippy Headron from the movie,
and it has three blackbirds attached to her, so they're
like perpetually attacking her. Yeah, she's being attacked by blackbird Barbie. Uh.
My favorite is Pooper Scooper Barbie. And I guess this
is to teach girls, or I guess boys they play
with dolls. We've been seeing girls the whole time. Um.

(57:25):
It comes a little Golden Retriever named Tanner who eats
and poops and really poops. And Barbie has a little
shovel and pale to be a responsible dog owner and
curb her dog. That's what you can inspire to do.
That's right, Um, there's the McDonald's one, which we talked about.
She's wearing a headset which I think threw you off.
But can a franchise the work at his or her

(57:46):
own store? Yes, taken to me. The most bizarre one
of all time is I Love Lucy sa Barbie. Oh yeah,
I thought again, say George Washington Barbie. It's pretty bizarre, alright.
So what's I Love Lucy One? That I Love Lucy
Santa Barbie is based on a specific episode of I

(58:08):
Love Lucy from nineteen fifty six, and Barbie is dressed
as Ethel Mertz, who is dressed as Santa Claus. That's
the weirdest Barbie ever. She's not dressed as Santa. She's
dressed as Ethel from I Love Lucy dressed to Santa.
My like, my mind is mush. Yeah. I think some
Mattel like employee higher up was like hammered on eggnog

(58:29):
Christmas Eve watching this George Washington's episode and said, uh,
I got a great idea, and I guess George Washington
Barbie followed, actually preceded in and that's pretty much straight up.
She is dressed like George Washington in his Revolutionary War uniform.
That's right, except that's pink in it. There's an NBA Barbie,

(58:50):
which doesn't seem all that weird. You can get all
the different teams, right, there's never been a w NBA Barbie.
That's the weird part. X Files Barbie. That's a little strange. Yeah.
There was a can dressed as uh Ducovny's Fox Molder
and of course Barbie dressed in a pant suit as
uh Scully Goldie Horn Barbie. I loved that Goldie hawn

(59:14):
and laughing. Yeah, that's who it's based on. Yeah, with
a bikini and the tattoos. It's just sort of an
iconic television figure. Yeah, I mean, what are you gonna do?
Wildcats Goldie on that was terrible, yeah, or Ruth Buzzy Barbie,
you know, um wowdcats Goldie on overboard Goldie hawnks. There
was Harley Davidson. Barbie is a bike or chick from

(59:37):
head with head to toe leather. That's right, it's weird. Um.
And then there's a bunch of other just slightly noteworthy ones.
French Made Barbie, Lady of the Unicorns, Barbie, civil Ward,
Nurse Barbie, John Dear Barbie urbane. Yeah. I looked up
urban Hipster Barbie, and I thought it was gonna be
like some Brooklyn chick with Hornero glasses, and it was this.

(01:00:00):
It looked more like uh, foxy brown, like black exploitation Barbie.
They called it. That's what they called urban hipster, like
big Afro, sort of like African American goddess. Wow. Yeah,
if it was urban hipster today, it would be she
would have a mustache and glasses, live in Williamsburg. There's

(01:00:22):
Star Trek Barbie and Ken Barbie's dresses, Lieutenant hura Um
Nascar and John Deere Barbie's bowling Champ Barbie. This one,
this is one of my favorites. Barbie and Ken is
the monsters. They have so much fun, those two. And
then of course the Pepsi. Barbie also had the Coca
Cola Barbie to do battle and the Cola Wars. Because

(01:00:46):
if there's one thing Mattell doesn't want to do is
to offend any segment of the American population. That's it. Man,
You got anything else? No, I think In Loui of
Listener Mail, we had the interview and we just want
to say thanks to get into Uncle John's bathroom. Here. Yes,
thank you very much for everything all these years. Appreciate
you guys, and we appreciate you guys too for listening.

(01:01:08):
Agreed Um. If you want to get in touch with us,
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(01:01:31):
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