She’s back in style – well, maybe she was never out of style. This will be an interesting post. Let’s start with the fact that Barbie and I were born in the same year! As a young girl, I loved Barbie and I had a few of the Barbie dolls.

My sister and I had several Barbies. I remember an original Barbie, Ken and Skipper dolls from the late 1960’s. I remember I had a few different Barbie dolls, and I’m sure they were not all authentic “Barbies”. I remember a dark hair Barbie doll, and just can’t seem to find one online, so she must have been a “knock off”. I also remember a pink carrying case for my Barbies.

My sister recalls that “all the Barbies were mine.” And I commented to her that Skipper (Barbie’s little sister) was hers. I’m sure of it. She is not so sure. We played with those Barbies for years.

Mattel is the toy company that created the Barbie and the entire collection of dolls. The Mattel company was (and still is, I believe) located not too far from the Los Angeles International Airport in the city of El Segundo. It’s actually very close to my parent’s house.

Mattel also created the Liddle Kiddle mini dolls. My sister loved those dolls. They were very cute. She had a nice collection of Liddle Kiddles.

A fun story is when my father’s brother, who didn’t live too far away from us, found a huge box of Barbie legs on the side of the freeway, close to the Mattel Company. It clearly had fallen off a truck on it’s way to the manufacturing plant. He made it to the Mattel Corporate Headquarters the next day, after calling them. They were so pleased that the box had been found.

My uncle promptly returned the box, but only after letting his son and daughter and us two girls and my brother take a good look. We were fascinated. But mostly with the curiosity of whether there would be a reward. Well, there was! My uncle was asked it he had kids and he told them he did and their ages. The cousins (my sister, brother and I) scored a board game. We cannot recall which one it was. My uncle’s two kids won the jackpot. They were given many different Mattel toys like Barbies, Matchbox cars and other wonderful toys. It felt like Christmas.

But back to my Barbie doll collection. My father had some odd ideas when it came to child upbringing. He would decide when toys needed to be donated because we had outgrown them. Well, the Barbie and Liddle Kiddle collections were no exception. My sister and I recall this time in our childhood with a lot of sadness and great disappointment.

The year, we think was 1970. I would have been 11 and my sister 9. And my father arbitrarily decided to take our entire doll collection and take them to Tijuana, Mexico where he was driving to take care of some business. He did not tell us he was doing this. He decided that the Barbies should be donated to a needy family. We still played with those dolls. We loved those dolls. And as many of you know, original dolls today are very very valuable.

But we had no say in the matter. We were so sad; I remember a lot of tears. My father would not hear of it. Honestly it was a defining moment in our childhood. I don’t think we ever forgave him… to this day. It is not discussed and in preparation for this Blog post, I did discuss it with my sister and mother. And their memories are similar to mine.