Notes

1. For 3 consecutive years, sales of Barbie dolls have declined. It is down by 16% last year, 3% in 2012 and 6% in 2013. (source1)
2. Sales of toys in the US grew by 4%. (source2)
3. Barbie's core demographic narrowed down to kids 3 to 6 years old (from 3 to 9 years old). (source1)
4. Young girls have been favoring electronic toys and toys based on movies. (source2)
5. Habro's revenue increased by 5% last year. (source3)
6. Overseas sales is about half of Hasbro's revenue last year. (source3)
7. Hasbro's overseas sales increased by 8% last year, while only 1% rise in US and Canada. (source3)

How telling is that?

Eyes pop less

Others like big anime eyes on their dolls but to me they look like eyes that grew a face. Not that I don't like funny looking things (I do keep a couple of Takara Licca and Jenny), I just don't like to have most of my dolls to look too funny. I think there is more humor in the irony of looking serious but nobody is taking you seriously.


When I got a Hairtastic Barbie doll, I was itching to do something with her eye-popping look. I wanted to shrink her head but I don't want to risk what acetone will do to her purple hair or to her vinyl face. I heard about dolls that got discolored after shrinking. Shrinking was out of the option.

I figured I can repaint her eyes. Her head doesn't seem too huge when compared to other dolls. I retained the lashes and resized the eyes. Her molded lower eyelids now looks like eyes bags. Honestly, I can take the eye bags than have her eyes bigger than her mouth.

I wanted to have dolls with different hair color. She used to look funnier when grouped with my other dolls. But she's okay now.

Do you know that I resisted buying this Hairtastic Barbie for over a year? I was waiting for it to go on sale last December but I didn't see it at the warehouse sale. I visit this certain store every now and then just to check if it is still available, but every time I resist buying it. A few days ago, I decided to get it to complete my rainbow hair collection. I got it despite its exorbitant price even after being a peg warmer for about a year. No matter how reasonable in a business perspective the price is, I sometimes get the feeling that I got cheated. The problem with getting the feeling of being cheated is that there is a chance that one won't buy again. I wonder how many more times do I need to feel cheated before I my eyes pop open and completely stop buying Mattel products.

Hair Ado

For the Mattel face sculpts that I like, I want to have them in varied skin tones, hair color and hair styles, although I want the facial screening to be more or less the same. There isn't a lot of dolls that have updo's and most of them are over-priced. That is why I had to learn how to give some of my dolls an updo. The Midge doll (Golden Qi-pao Barbie) had her hairstyle restored since the bun has become undone. She got a some repaint to make her look less inert.

I found out that the dolls with thinly rooted hair works best for an updo, otherwise the hair would be difficult to twist and turn. And since it's quite difficult to restore when undone, I decided to sew them in place.

The girls are naked for now because I felt that they need gowns to go with those hair. I'm not very motivated when it comes to making gowns. Maybe I should review some red carpet moments to get some inspiration.