Barbie MEGA Barbie Horse Stables Building Set with 304 pieces including accessories and 3 micro-dolls, toy gift set for ages 5 and up -

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The rituals of BarbieCon and Mattel’s movie merch outpour share a common motivation: buying Barbies. But the kind of accumulation on display at the convention is more complex than the average gotta-catch-em-all mentality. Here, Barbie is both the center and a starting point; between sales and swaps, attendees studied at various workshops on everything from the intricacies of collectors’ insurance to “Making Doll Size Tropical Drinks”. And while conventioneers revere Mattel, they are clear-eyed about corporate priorities. During one such seminar, the collector and historian Bradley Justice Yarbrough was leading a panel on preserving Barbie collections, when an older man asked why certain Barbies’ faces paled dramatically over time.

This year, it took place in Orlando from 4 to 8 July, overlapping with the film’s global cast tour to six different cities, and ending on the eve of its Hollywood premiere. Play as you build the garden, barn and stables that include roleplay accessories like a carrot, ribbons, brush and more The most competitive, and surprisingly moving, moment came on the penultimate night, when the awards are handed out. This portion of the event was hosted by the Barbie designer Carol Spencer. In a world of miniatures, Spencer, who oversaw the doll’s wardrobe from 1963 to 1998, is the closest the Barbie fandom gets to a giant. The 90-year-old, still agile and omnipresent at Barbie events, announced the event’s Oscar: the “Barbie’s Best Friend Award”. Everyone has their own reasons for being at BarbieCon: parents inheriting kids’ inventory, investors building retirement funds, nostalgics recapturing their childhood, being named Barbie or Ken and just rolling with it. But as the questions in the seminar made clear, the panelists were not the only experts. Here, everyone seemed an autodidact archivist at the small museums they stored in their homes.Our most gregarious companion was Arnaldo, a landscape architect and natural storyteller whose hobby of refurbishing damaged dolls has made him into one of the highest-regarded doll doctors (Arnaldo asked me not to use his last name as, like many conventioneers, he prefers to keep his Barbie and professional lives separate). When he started in the 90s, Arnaldo told the table, restoration was quasi-taboo. “People were scared,” he said, “because they could be passed off as fakes.” While trying to find the convention, I took the elevator with a pink-clad woman whose Barbie lanyard suggested she knew where to go. A Barbie tote bag dangled from her walker. The 30-year collector had played with dolls as a child, but gave them away in her teens. “A woman I knew told me she didn’t have money to get her kids anything for Christmas, so I gave them to her,” she explained, as the elevator dropped. “I felt good about that, but as soon as I handed them off, I started to cry.” This was the true attraction of BarbieCon: collectors are aware their obsession attracts sneers. The external disregard has made them secretive, but still more devoted to one another. Migrating between rooms at the convention amounts to a crash course in collector argot, with terms like ‘NRFB’ for ‘Never Removed From Box’. Photograph: Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images The seminar on proper storage practices and cleaning protocols was not, as it may sound, dry, but a study in the breadth of amateur Barbie scholarship conducted by conventioneers. For two hours, Yarbrough took questions on rubbing alcohol concentrations, basement humidity monitors, the acidity of cardboard display boxes, and the chemical composition of Barbie’s plastic body parts – all tailored to the particular year and model of any given doll.

These options range from chic hairstyles to trendy dresses. Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures offers a variety of thrilling challenges and adventures in addition to fashion and design. Players can go on adventures with Barbie and her friends, take enticing vacations, and take part in enjoyable activities like baking, dancing, and caring for cute animals. The game offers countless opportunities for entertainment and imagination thanks to the abundance of adventures available. Set off on camping adventures with the Barbie camper van, create your own fantasy world with Barbie Dreamtopia and discover what you could be with Barbie careers dolls. Kids can play out all kinds of open-ended dreams with Barbie and Ken, Stacie, Chelsea and Skipper. Mattel had been “in financial difficulty, so they were trying to pinch pennies”, Yarbrough concluded. The discoloration “is just low-quality vinyl that they were trying to maximize and kept re-melting”.

You’re right,” Yarbrough sighed. “I talked to a chemical engineer about that and you see it a lot in dolls from 1970 to 71. What happens is – this is going to get complicated, I’m sorry …” Players can interact with Barbie’s friends and other characters in the dreamhouse in this game which emphasizes the value of friendship. Players can deepen their friendships and gain access to exclusive rewards by conversing and completing tasks together. Players can also connect with actual friends and family members to visit each other’s dream homes, enhancing the gameplay experience overall by introducing a social component. There’s a whole range of Barbie Fashionistas and career dolls to explore too, encouraging real-world storytelling. Discover the widest range of Fashionista dolls to date, celebrating diversity with unique fashion dolls in a wide variety of skin tones, eye colours, hair colours and textures, body types and fashions. Or realise you could be anything with an exciting range of Barbie career dolls, from teachers, vets and doctors to Barbie pilot dolls and sports stars.