Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is a new low. I want you to read this to yourself in Gordon Ramsay's loudest, angriest shout. I don’t even know where to begin. This “snowglobe packaging” is a cheap blister pack that could have contained any other doll. The bodice is glued on plastic and half-finished. She’s BALD on top. The dress color is WASHED OUT. The face paint is WASHED OUT. This isn’t a Barbie. This is the cheap knock-off you get at the dollar store for $5 two weeks after Christmas is over. They pay REAL designers REAL money and we get a holiday doll held together with hot glue! When I look at this doll in the box, on the shelf, there is NOTHING that makes it stand out from the rest of the dolls in the Barbie section. NOTHING. It looks like another playline doll, NOT a collectible. If you have every other Holiday Barbie ever made, THIS is the year you will want to break the chain. It looks NOTHING like any other Holiday Barbie ever made because none of the others have EVER looked this bad, and that includes the craft ribbon disaster of 1997. That’s what I have to say on the doll itself. The rest of this is how I think this doll happened, so if you hate history, skip it. This is NOT what I meant last year when I was talking about putting the magic back in the Holiday Barbies, or to trying to appeal to a broader age range. Barbie has always been a part of my life. She has had some ups and downs, but this is the worst. There's no going back. They've changed things forever. This is the end. Either the brand is just collapsing, or Mattel is pulling the plug. Either way, Barbie is toast. BADLY BURNT TOAST. This travesty of a doll happened because over time, Barbie has become a toy for younger and younger girls to the point that she is no longer for older girls as she was originally. Years ago, you had to be older and you had to prove to mom that you were mature enough to take care of a Barbie to get one. Barbie is not sophisticated now, and nobody wants to have anything to do with her. This happened because people would hear about a rare vintage Barbie Never Removed From Box (NRFB) had sold for some obscene amount of money, and people began speculating on the dolls. Once in a while, it would work out with some doll that had an unexpectedly high demand or unanticipated limited run. It got so bad that I would see girls getting playline dolls at the toy store, and they would be told that they couldn’t play with them, and they would get one of the bath tub dolls to play with instead, and this would happen all the time. I wasn’t the only one seeing this. And you know who plays with bath tub dolls? Three year olds. So these dolls just sat around. Where did the dolls sit? They sat on the highest shelves in the tallest towers of the littlest princesses in the land. The princesses wanted to take the dolls out and play with them, but the adults, who were really collecting for themselves and pretending to play the stock market, wouldn’t let them. So the little princesses grew up playing with Polly Pockets, Tamigochis, Furbies, and whatever else 90s kids played with. They had no reason to love those awful dolls on the highest shelves that they were never allowed to play with. Then those princesses had princesses of their own, and now Barbie has all the nostalgia of a Fisher-Price toy. They’re not buying their kids those awful dolls that can’t be played with. Sure, you remember playing with the cheap one in the bath tub, but it’s not something you keep on your shelf like a piece of art. You don’t admire it and you’d never pass it down from one generation to the next. It’s just trashy, and it has bad feelings attached. This is as it was in prophecy. There were many collectors who saw what was happening, and we warned the Powers That Were. We told them that if they wanted to keep the brand alive, they needed to do something about this maniacal NRFB mentality that had developed. We suggested ad campaigns and packaging that could be preserved so that dolls could be removed and replaced. We volunteered to go out as clubs to encourage play. Naturally, Mattel didn’t listen, and today, you have here this half finished piece of playline plastic that Mattel is trying to pass off as a glamorous and festive Holiday Barbie. They're chasing a market that has left them behind with shoddy product, and it's too late to fix it. There is no Prince who was Promised. Nobody is coming to rescue Barbie. This is it. Barbie may go on for a while, but this is the year The End began. I’m not convinced there wasn’t foul play. Of course, last year I asked for a Holiday Barbie in pale blue for variety. I never saw THIS coming. Be careful what you wish for. You may get it.