12 Barbie Controversies That Everyone Somehow Forgot About
Whether you love her or hate her, Barbie has always been a bit of a trailblazer. As Greta Gerwig put it in an interview with The Guardian, "Barbie went to the moon before women had the ability to get credit cards... She was always a kind of step ahead." But like any woman who does seemingly anything in public, Barbie has also had quite a few controversies and scandals over the years.
Even the upcoming Barbie movie has already been banned in Vietnam due to a map in the film allegedly depicting the "nine-dash line" on the South China Sea.
Because I personally cannot wait to settle in to a movie theater seat to watch Barbie do her thing, I'm rounding up some of the weirdest and most thought-provoking Barbie controversies that it seems like everyone just forgot about.
1.Mattel got sued for allegedly knocking off a German doll, Bild Lilli, who was portrayed as a high-end escort.
In 1956, Barbie inventor and Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler was traveling in Switzerland when a doll named Bild Lilli caught her eye. Lilli had a Barbie-esque figure, full makeup, and a saucy look on her face.
The Lilli doll was based on a comic that ran in German newspapers following the adventures of a young and uninhibited call girl, and Lilli dolls weren't originally manufactured for kids. They were sold in tobacco shops and adult toy stores and were often purchased as bachelor party gag gifts.
Ruth Handler brought several Bild Lilli dolls back to the States, and three years later in 1959, the first Barbie doll hit toy store shelves. But Greiner & Hausser, the German toy company that made the Lilli dolls, sued Mattel for copying their design. The case was settled out of court in 1963, and in 1964 Mattel bought Greiner & Hausser's copyright and patent rights for Bild Lilli.
2.Slumber Party Barbie offered kids "helpful" diet advice such as "don't eat."
It doesn't take an advanced degree to see that Barbie's body type isn't healthy or attainable for a human person. Like, who has a waist smaller than their head? Where are her organs???
Well, back in 1965, Slumber Party Barbie revealed the secret to maintaining her cartoonish figure. The doll came with some cute pajamas, rollers for her hair, and a little book of diet advice that only said, "Don't eat." Great tip if you're a plastic doll, but deeply dangerous if you happen to be a living organism.
The doll also came with a scale permanently set to the ridiculous weight of 110 pounds, because who doesn't bring their scale with them to a slumber party? In 1966, this doll was rebranded as Barbie Sleepytime Gal, and the scale was removed from the package. However, the eating disorder manual, I mean diet book remained.
3.The one where Skipper went through puberty.
4.This rollerblading Barbie was recalled for being a fire hazard.
Full disclosure: I had this Barbie, I loved her dearly, and I never successfully lit anything on fire with her — but I tried, oh how I tried. Rollerblade Barbie Flicker 'n Flash came with a cute skating outfit, knee pads, and some sick 'blades that sparked when you rolled them across a surface. However, this doll got recalled in 1991 because her skates posed a potential fire hazard.
Humorist Dave Barry took a particular interest in this dangerous doll and his columns on the topic are weirdly some of the only media I could find about it on the internet.
In one, he shared a letter from an alarmed parent who wrote, "Last year, my two daughters received presents of two Rollerblade Barbie dolls by Mattel. On March 8, my 8-year-old daughter was playing beauty shop with her 4-year-old brother. After spraying him with hair spray, the children began to play with the boot to Rollerblade Barbie. My little girl innocently ran the skate across her brother's bottom, which immediately ignited his clothes... There are no warnings concerning fire on these toys... I feel the need to warn potential buyers of their danger."
Barry asked his readers to send him one of these banned Barbies and successfully put its fire-starting potential to the test, once even appearing on The Late Show with David Letterman using the doll to set a pair of underwear doused in hairspray on fire.
5.An activist collective of artists hacked Barbie dolls in protest of gender roles.
The question of Barbie's influence on the minds and ambitions of young girls has been around pretty much as long as Barbie herself. Is she an inspiring "girl boss" who can be anything from a scientist to the President of the United States, or a patriarchal puppet designed to make girls obsess over their looks and hate their bodies?
In the early '90s, the Barbie Liberation Organization saw her as the latter. In response to a 1992 Teen Talk Barbie doll who uttered pre-recorded phrases such as "Math class is tough" and "Let's go shopping," the BLO took matters into their own hands. Led by then-art student, Igor Vamos, who is now a professor and member of the culture jamming group The Yes Men, the group hacked into talking Barbie dolls and swapped the recordings with those inside G.I. Joes to illustrate how these toys reinforced tired old gender norms of aggressive masculinity and passive femininity. The group then put these doctored dolls back on toy shop shelves, just in time for Christmas 1993.
Reports of the swapped voice boxes soon began appearing on the news when confused parents reported Barbies saying things like "Vengeance is mine" and "Eat lead, Cobra" in the battle-worn voice of a soldier. Mattel declined to comment on the situation, and Hasbro, the makers of G.I. Joe toys, called it "kind of ridiculous."
The story faded as the new year began, but you might remember seeing The Simpsons parody it. As for the kids who got these gender role-defying dolls, one little boy reportedly said he liked the gentler G.I. Joe and wanted to keep him, explaining, "He’s teaching me not to fight."
6.The Oreo Fun Barbie was supposed to be a cute Nabisco collab but was accidentally racist instead.
In 1997, Mattel released Oreo Fun Barbie, a sweet fashion doll based on the popular cookie. The white version of the doll sold well, so later in the year, a Black Oreo Fun Barbie hit the shelves. But there was a problem. "Oreo" is also a derogatory slang term for a Black person who is perceived as rejecting Black culture and adopting white cultural norms instead.
The Black version of the doll was quickly removed from stores, and the whole debacle is actually a great example of why it's so important for organizations to hire and promote diverse employees. If there had been more Black people in the room when the Black Oreo Fun Barbie was being developed, it's possible that Mattel could have avoided this controversy.
7.Barbie's Dreamhouse is not ADA-Compliant.
Becky was Barbie's wheelchair-using friend who was first introduced in 1997. She was an instant hit, selling 6,000 dolls in just her first two weeks, but when kids got her out of the box, they started running into problems.
Becky's wheelchair couldn't fit through the doors of Barbie's Dreamhouse, and it also didn't fit into the Dreamhouse's elevator. How could Becky fully join in Barbie's world if she couldn't even get in the door? And then, instead of modifying Barbie's house or creating an accessible home for Becky, Mattel discontinued the doll.
Karin Hitselberger, who uses a wheelchair and has blogged about her own experience playing with Becky as a child, told Public Radio International that the Becky debacle reflects larger problems that people with disabilities experience in our society. "A lot of the ways we think about disabilities, we talk about ‘fixing disability,’ instead of focusing on ‘fixing society'," she said.
In 2019, Mattel tried again, this time releasing a Barbie who used a wheelchair and a Barbie with a prosthetic leg.
8.Mattel sued Aqua over their hit song "Barbie Girl" — and lost.
9.When Barbie's friend Midge got pregnant, parents once again felt Mattel had gone too far.
In 2002, Mattel released a pregnant version of Barbie's redheaded friend Midge as part of a Happy Family set that included her husband (and Ken's buddy) Allan, and their three-year-old son Ryan. The pregnant Midge doll wore a wedding ring and a magnetic baby bump that made childbirth easier than changing a Barbie's dress.
Wal-Mart pulled the doll, and spokesperson Cynthia Illick explained, "It was just that customers had a concern about having a pregnant doll." And one shopper told CBS News, "It's a bad idea. It promotes teenage pregnancy." However, Mattel's website at the time described the doll as, "a wonderful prop for parents to use with their children to role-play family situations — especially in families anticipating the arrival of a new sibling."
When Midge reappeared in 2013, she was no longer portrayed as a mother and went back to her 1960s roots as Barbie's ginger friend. Pregnant Midge, however, has been spotted again recently in promos for Greta Gerwig's Barbie movie, so stay tuned — there may be more to her story.
10.The FBI actually sent out an alert about Video Girl Barbie.
I did not expect Barbie to have a history with the FBI, but here we are. In 2010, Video Girl Barbie made her debut. The doll had a lens in her necklace that could record 30 seconds of video and a screen on her back where budding filmmakers could watch the playback.
But the FBI saw a potential problem with the doll. They sent an alert to law enforcement agencies warning them of its potential use in the production of child sex abuse images. However, the alert accidentally got picked up by the media, leading to headlines about the "perverted" new doll.
Mattel released a clarifying statement reading, "The FBI is not reporting that anything has happened. Steve Dupre from the FBI Sacramento field office has confirmed there have been no incidents of this doll being used as anything other than as intended. Mattel products are designed with children and their best interests in mind. Many of Mattel's employees are parents themselves and we understand the importance of child safety -- it is our number one priority."
11.The book Barbie: I Can Be A Computer Engineer appeared progressive, but it contained some pretty icky assumptions about the role of women in tech.
File this under: Don't judge a book by its cover. Released in 2010, Barbie: I Can Be A Computer Engineer looked like an attempt to educate girls about careers in tech where women tend to be underrepresented. But inside its pages, readers found Barbie passing the actual programming work along to male coworkers, having a pillow fight, and crashing her computer. It's pretty cringe.
The book didn't get much attention, however, until 2014 when comedian Pamela Ribbon blogged about it in an entry titled, "Barbie Fucks It Up Again." Ribbon goes through the book page by page, concluding that it represents, "a perfect example of the way women and girls are perceived to 'understand' the tech world, and how frustrating it can be when nobody believes this is how we’re treated."
Lori Pantel, VP of Barbie’s Global Brand Marketing, told TIME, "We believe girls should be empowered to understand that anything is possible and believe they live in a world without limits. We apologize that this book didn’t reflect that belief. All Barbie titles moving forward will be written to inspire girls imaginations and portray an empowered Barbie character."
12.And finally, the Barbie that could listen and respond to questions was met with instant backlash.
Introduced in 2015, Hello Barbie was a talking doll that used a microphone and Wi-Fi to listen to what kids said to her and respond accordingly. Think if Siri and Barbie had a baby. But like any tech with listening capabilities, Hello Barbie could have broader implications than mere child's play.
Consumer tech expert Kim Komando warned that the servers hosting recordings of children talking to Barbie might not be as secure as parents would like, and also raised concerns that hackers could potentially use the doll to listen in on kids or make Barbie say inappropriate things.
Parents also took to social media to critique the doll using the hashtag #HellNoBarbie. But in 2016, a smart Barbie Dreamhouse came out. The Hello Barbie Dreamhouse was supposed to be a voice-activated modern update on Barbie's classic home, but unfortunately for buyers, there were numerous complaints about glitches. The Hello Barbie and the Hello Barbie Dreamhouse have both been discontinued.