Happy Holidays!!
Each time we get closer and closed to Christmas and we want to take out our Barbie Happy Holidays! Their pompous dresses, their "big hair" and those sparkles make them the spotlight of any celebration.
The line was born when in the late 1980s John Ammerman, president of Mattel, had the idea of making a Barbie doll that he could sell to the public for about $ 20 before the stunned gaze of the rest of the Mattel management group. He had always believed that there was a market beyond $ 10 so the guidelines given to the designers were clear, make the most elegant doll with the most sumptuous dress and the most spectacular packaging ever made and. .. it was a success!
Barbie Happy Holidays was launched for Christmas '88 in a limited edition that barely made it to store shelves as they were kept by those who previously had access to them. The "hype" was served and so was the resale that made Mattel see the vein of the adult collector's world and, almost unintentionally, it became the first Barbie collection line and the precedent of the Collector one. Every year from 1988 to 1998 a special Happy Holidays edition was launched in a large and sumptuous packaging and from 1998 to the present day they were given other names "Millenium Princess", "Holiday Celebration" ... but always with the same premise, a special doll to celebrate Christmas and, although in the first two years it was only available in blonde version, since 1990 she could also be found year after year in an African-American version, even in white skin with dark hair in some editions.
If you still would like to hang them from the Christmas tree, know that since 1993 Hallmark launched, under license from Mattel, much smaller and more manageable editions in "keepsake" format for that purpose.
And it is that beyond the sumptuousness of these dolls they are a reflection of a time, in many aspects, just as sumptuous as them which we, who were children then, like to remember. If they create an impression on an adult ... Can you imagine what they made on us children?
by The Barbiest