GROWING UP SKIPPER, No Skipper collection is complete witho…

No Skipper collection is complete without this gal IMO, as she symbolises a very interesting and unique period in Mattel history. The mid 1970’s were indeed a strange time, and those times were just as strange at Mattel, where all sorts of weird and wonderful gimmicks (usually to do with some sort of sport or action movement) were foisted upon Barbie and her friends. Indeed, one of the most controversial was a doll that went through puberty with the mere flick of an arm (if only it were that easy!) Growing Up Skipper was released in 1975, and her mechanism is quite fascinating, with a soft rubbery upper torso that allows her to grow ‘slimmer, taller (three-quarters of an inch) and CURVY’. The ‘curvy’ bit is what apparently outraged some women’s groups and parents in the United States, as she also grows a modest pair of breasts. Many newspapers at the time ran articles about that ‘controversy’. Truth be told, I don’t remember any such controversy at all around the doll here in Australia at the time she was sold, as many of my friends had one. She was just seen as a novelty, really, that was fun until you got bored with the whole ‘shape-shifting’ gimmick. Although there was one male friend who had one and whose dad didn’t approve of him playing with dolls, and he would regularly confiscate it, (though oddly enough, never threw it away! He just hid it in weird areas of the house, so it became a fun daily game of ‘Find Skipper’ for my friend and I! We would find her in the linen closet, the laundry basket, under his parents’ bed, under the cushions in the sofa, in the pantry… once even in the fridge behind the milk!!! LOL ) …. She was certainly NOT recalled from toy shelves as many blogs insist. She was sold all the way up through 1977, when the entire Barbie line got a ‘Superstar’ overhaul, (though the novel gimmicks still stayed on, such as moving arms, winking eyes and ‘kissing’ lips.) This is the 1975 first issue of the doll, with the shaggy, layered mane - very 70’s! She also had a range of ‘growing up’ outfits, similar in packaging to the ‘Get Ups ‘N Go’ range, consisting of several pieces to make an outfit for her ‘little girl’ self and for her ‘teenage’ self . I also got an NRFP outfit from the range, which is one of my favourites from it, (#9023. The socks are from her original outfit,) as I have a real thing for bandanna prints and remember them fondly from that time. (I had a very pretty primary school teacher who used to wear a dress just like Skipper’s.) Dying for her friend Ginger now, as these dolls are a great example of Mattel’s gimmick-mad days for Barbie back in the 70’s.

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