Summit Barbie

The Summit Barbie has a story of conquered dreams of a little girl who dreamt with a Barbie doll and when the Wall fell the first thing she did was go to buy a Superstar. She was photographed and her image went worldwide in no time with the following text:

"East Germans Anika Polzin, 6, of the nearby border village of Schwanefeld, East Germany, proudly displays her new #Barbiedoll after a day of western-style shopping in Helmstedt (town with a major border crossing between the FRG and the GDR)." Photo: International Magazine Services photo archive.

She was from East German so she lived in the soviet part, usually a part where lived the working class and peasants and where salaries weren't as high as in the other side of the Wall. Of course they had not Barbie dolls there and probably she ran to the toy store with her family as soon as the Wall finally fell.

The image arrived to Mattel and next year they invited Anika and children from 30 countries to New York for a cultural exchange to celebrate the Barbie Summit Program. They discussed topics like war and peace, drugs and poverty and Mattel contributed to the cause with $500.000. A Summit Barbie doll line was created with 4 diverse dolls representing diferent etnias.

Part of the money was destined to promote the education of the children. Anika must feel like in a dream with her Barbie Summit in NYC where she attended the party that Mattel organized at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel with personalities such as Bob Mackie who was already leaving his mark on the company with his Collector line dolls.

That year, 1990, the Mattel's vagon of the Macy's Thanksgiving parade was presented with the theme of Barbie Summit and in there four singers representing the four dolls of the line (Latin, Asian, African American and Caucasian) sang Together We Can Do It, the song from the commercial dressed like the Summit Barbie dolls and surrounded by children of different ethnicities.

For the record of that moment we have the Barbie Summit dolls but a feeling that, unfortunately, much progress has not been made in the matters that were discussed at the summit.