Barbies, Weebles, CHipS

I mentioned oh so wordlessly in my Wordless Wednesday post that some Barbies had made their way down from the attic.

Oh yes, they had. As if in a wonderful magical parade. So I couldn't very well leave off the rest of the story!

We spent the weekend at my mom's while hubby was out of town and she asked me to go through some boxes of mine that were taking up space left up in her attic and I did. The first box was pretty boring; some Tinker Toys and some Legos. Blah blah.

But then I hit the motherload. The Queen Mother of all my 80's memorabilia/slash/playthings. All. of my Barbies. And one Ken.(He was wildly outnumbered but I'm pretty sure he was ok with that. Even though it appears from his hair and his dirty clothes (not pictured) that he must've lost pretty big during the whole Internet start-up thing and it's likely they didn't give him the time of day after that. Poor Ken.)

Anyway, something happened to me. They were all such a matted mess and so were all of their beautiful clothes, so while the clothes were in a little lingerie bag in the washing machine getting the past 20 years of whatever cleaned off of them, I started brushing one of my Barbies' hair. Then brushing one of their hairs led to brushing more of their hairs, and well, I couldn't stop. I had to brush all of their hair! It wasn't fair to just do a few!

Could you just imagine the gossip that would've went on when I put them away?? Barbies can be a bit caddy sometimes.

Oh, it was so fun seeing all of them again. The one where I tried to cut her hair and completely butchered it. The one who had the long hair you could use a little twirly crimping thingy on. My "original" which I call original because she was my first one, Malibu Barbie. The redhead, the curly blonde haired one, Wedding Barbie, a couple of Skippers who belonged to my sister.

And you could tell which ones were "born" earlier because of the degree of nappy-ness their hair had. The Barbies with the nappiest hair were obviously born before the company figured out how to make fake hair that lasted longer and better and without getting all gummy and knotty.



So after I brushed all their hairs and/or put it in ponytails or buns, their clothes were all done and I started dressing them. I couldn't very well leave them all nekked! That's not nice! (Isn't she hot?? Look at all that bling! If she were a Barbie born today, she'd be named "Bling Barbie!)
Five hours later...


Yes. I spent 5 hours. 5! Playing with my Barbies. And I wasn't the only one. My mom totally got into it too. "No, I think that yellow dress would look much better -- No, that shirt doesn't go with those leggings.. -- Here! Here's some ribbon for their hair!" are some of the things you might have heard in the livingroom that day.


Oh yes, she was just as bad as me.



I see now where it all started. Even as a "grown-up", I still lust and obsess over clothes and shoes and purses and hairstyling and nails. I had forgotten how much time I spent playing with my Barbies. All 17 of them. Wow -- come to think of it, being a mom now, imagine how much time my mom had to herself while I played with my Barbies! She had a good thing going there for a while...


Of course I had to take pictures of all my work. And they seemed to have formed their own little cliques. Like the Sex and the City girls:

Or the Mom's group:

On Summer Vacation:

On summer vacation at night:

The young partiers:

But they're all friends in the end, right??

It was one magical afternoon. And as I was ruffling around I found a lot of other fun things in my box o' '80s. Like this:

Ponch's gun holster! Or it might have been John's. But I had a crush on Ponch so I am pretty sure this belonged to him. Nevermind that I saw him selling real estate on tv recently...
And the original Weeble Wobbles!! I used to have the treehouse too but I don't know where that went. I remember these being so big but I was playing around with them and they're tiny! Total choking hazard! But have you seen the new Weebles? They're huge! Can't we do something in between? I so loved these..

And then I found this and this really cracked me up. Besides things being tinier than they're supposed to be and way more hazardous back then, it was also ok to have this in your Barbie Dreamhouse:

Scuse the bad lighting but this is a liquor cabinet! A tiny plastic fake liquor cabinet! I can just see the mommy message boards lighting up nowadays if this had been on the market within this decade. And I never gave it a thought when I was a kid playing with this (neither did my mom!) .

Oh how times have changed. Makes me wanna say something like, "I remember when bread was a quarter!" or "I used to walk to school in the snow barefoot!"

Barbies, Weebles, CHipS

https://babytealeaves.blogspot.com/2008/09/barbies-weebles-chips.html