Made to Move

#madetomovebarbie #madetomove #barbie

#22joints #redhair #ariel

#littlemermaid

A month or so ago after a horrible night of studying, sometime that morning before I went to bed I ended up playing around on ebay looking for vintage tin toy kitchens.  From there I went on to search for 1:12 scale miniatures and somehow ended up looking at Barbie dolls.  I had an extensive Barbie collection growing up, but it's been maybe 25+ years since I have actually bought one.  The dolls I used to play with were fun and very beautiful, but also very static when it came to movement.

The dolls I stumbled on that morning were part of a group called "Made to Move."  Each doll has 22 points of articulation so the poseability options are pretty much endless. 

I haven't been able to find much information about them, but according to barbie.mattel.com, it looks like they were introduced around 2015.  There were 6 individual dolls that each came dressed in a t-shirt and yoga pants.  All 6 say "no longer available" or "find at retail" when you go through Mattel's site.  Other than ebay I was able to find a couple of the dolls on amazon, but most listings I found said unavailable.

So needless to say, before I went to bed that morning I had spent over $120 on Barbie dolls.  I don't know why, but even as old as I am that sentence still makes me smile :)

On ebay I was able to find the blonde Made to Move Barbie, the red head, and the brunette - and all three are beautiful.  Something that I find interesting is that all 3 are just labeled as Barbie.  Back when I was little most of my dolls actually came with names (and then some got new names once I brought them home).  Of course Barbie was the original, but the dolls that didn't look like her had names of their own.  There was Skipper, Stacie, and Kelly who were all blondes.  Midge was Barbie's red-headed friend.  And of course, there was Ken.  I know there were others, but I can't remember their names right now.

By the way, one of the best Barbie sites that I have found that breaks down dolls and accessories by year is - http://www.barbiedb.com/

 (It's amazing how nostalgic this stuff makes me!)

The other 3 Made to Move Barbies I haven't been able to find yet.  There is a beautiful African American doll, an amazing Asian doll with jet black hair, and a second blonde doll with curly hair.  It also looks like there are more recent Made to Move Barbies, including a martial artist, a soccer player, and a skateboarder.  Another interesting thing is that I have found is that there are dozens of other articulated style Barbies online that appear to be available in countries other than the US.  Which is odd to me, because if articulated Barbies had been available when I was younger they would have been the only ones that I wanted to play with!