Barbie Dolls That Caused A Ton Of Controversy

Americans have a complex relationship with toys. There are toys we hate, like Furbies (shudder) and TeleTubbies (double shudder), and there are toys we love, like Lego and Crayola, and then there are toys that will destroy the universe and all who inhabit it. Like Barbie.

Yes, perhaps no other toy has been quite so controversial as the blonde bombshell with the impossibly tiny waist who has somehow managed to hold every conceivable job ever invented by humans — with the possible exception of "trash collector" because while Trash Collector Barbie would have been especially popular with the grown-ups there really aren't very many little girls who would know where the hell they were supposed to take that particular imaginary storyline.

Barbie is so controversial that some parents think little girls who play with them will become adults with poor career ambitions who are plagued by unrealistic ideas about what their bodies should look like. And that's not just parental hysteria, either, that's based on real, actual research. But that's not the worst of it — throughout Barbie's very long life, she's had to endure a ton of other controversies, starting with the day she was born.

The very first actual Barbie was introduced at the American International Toy Fair in 1959. And because Mattel was evidently not aware of just how innocent the adult population of America actually was in 1959, the Post-Bulletin says they gave her the tagline "A shapely teenage fashion model," which is still seriously discomfort-inducing in modern America and must have been shocking in the late '50s.

At first, it seemed like the only person who really liked Barbie was her creator, Ruth Handler. There were designers at Mattel who openly expressed doubts that parents would want to buy such a thing, and even Mattel's sales people were skeptical. As it turned out, they were right — wholesalers didn't like Barbie, either. Most importantly, though, mothers didn't like Barbie, and they were the ones in charge of the cash. Handler knew this was going to be a problem, so she hired a "Freudian-influenced" marketing guy to help her figure out how to sell the doll. He interviewed 191 girls who loved Barbie and 45 moms who hated her, and the conclusion he came to was ... wait for it ... Barbie should have bigger boobs. Oh and moms should be told that Barbie will help their daughters learn how to accessorize. Because let's face it, there's really no loftier goal than raising a child who knows how to match her heels to her scarf.

In 1964, Mattel decided to give Barbie a kid sister, who they named "Skipper" because everyone knows having a kid sister is exactly like having a puppy. Then in 1974 they decided that Skipper could not remain a child forever and must finally join Barbie (who was inexplicably still exactly the same age) as an unrealistically proportioned teenager. (Or adult? We're still not sure which one of those Barbie is supposed to be.)

But for some reason, Mattel didn't just release a teenage version of Skipper, because that would be bypassing the magical joy of puberty, which every child hopes to experience over and over again through their playthings. According to Messy Nessy, this particular version of Skipper looked like a child, but when you rotated her arm she grew taller and got boobs. Fortunately, Mattel did not give Growing Up Skipper acne and hormonal drama.

Parents mostly hated this doll, as you can imagine, and Mattel wisely decided to stop selling it in 1977. But wait, it's not like they filed that one away as "lesson learned" or anything. As recently as 2007, parents who really wanted their kids to experience the joys of plastic puberty could purchase the same basic doll (called "Growing Up Glam"), only this particular version featured a miniskirt, crop top, half-lidded eyes, and duck lips, which looked exactly as disturbing as it sounds.

By the 1990s, Mattel still for some reason had not figured out that parents didn't especially love to buy toys that idealize women as empty-headed, anorexic sex objects. Teen Talk Barbie — obviously designed by a bunch of old guys brainstorming the things they imagined teenage girls might talk about when no one was listening — came out in 1992 and immediately pissed off a bunch of people just like so many other Barbies before her. She was a verbal Barbie, and she mostly sat around talking about things like weddings, clothes ("Will we ever have enough clothes??"), and shopping, which everyone knows are the only things teenage girls are interested in.

Anyway, according to The New York Times, the one phrase that really got everyone's hackles up was this one: "Math class is tough!" Critics (rightfully) complained that the phrase perpetuated the stereotype that girls can't be good at math. But this story does have a happy ending because a group called the Barbie Liberation Organization bought a bunch of Teen Talk Barbies and switched out their voice boxes for GI Joe voice boxes so GI Joe would say "Will we ever have enough clothes??" And Barbie would say "Vengeance is mine!" and then the group put them back on the shelves just in time for Christmas. So that's hilarious except for the part where a bunch of little kids were crying on Christmas morning, but hey, it was all in the name of Barbie's liberation, right?

Mattel did acknowledge its mistake, omitting the offending phrase from the computer chip (but they did not recall the original Barbies). 

We like to think that this one was pure stupidity rather than overt racism, but here's the story. In 1997, Mattel and Nabisco got together for drinks or something because there's really no other way to explain this, and when they were drunk they said to each other, "You know what the world needs? A Barbie doll that dresses like an Oreo." So then they sobered up but evidently still thought it was a good idea, and Oreo Barbie was born.

According to My American Melting Pot, the first version did surprisingly well and the second version in 2001, not so much, because one of the dolls was African-American. And while pretty much everyone on Planet Earth understands why that was a terrible idea, Mattel and Nabisco were both totally clueless until the backlash began.

Just in case you are actually one of the few remaining humans who doesn't know why it's not okay to call a black girl an "Oreo," it's a derogatory term one might use to accuse a Black person of being white on the inside, not unlike the iconic cookie itself.

So after this all went down, Mattel and Nabisco were sufficiently shamed and they recalled the black Oreo Barbie dolls and never released a stupid, ignorant doll again, except of course they did because Mattel never learns from their mistakes. So we won't even mention Ritz Cracker Barbie, who was totally real and was white and is now officially just known as "Cracker Barbie."

To their credit, most of Mattel's Barbie doll releases stopped just short of being trashy. Mostly. And it's worth noting that other doll lines did veer off in a trashy sort of direction, so it's not like we can say that this next doll was an anomaly or anything. But yeah, Mattel did release a couple of really inappropriate Barbies, most notably the Black Canary Barbie, who was modeled after a DC superhero that pretty much no Barbie-buying child had ever actually heard of. Now in the DC comics, the character does wear some not-very-practical crime-fighting gear, like high-heeled boots and fishnet stockings, which really, dear, how do you expect those to not get snagged on the supervillain's steampunk doomsday device?

According to Newsarama, Mattel's Black Canary Barbie was totally faithful to the DC character, but that didn't excuse it in the eyes of critics (mostly just critical religious groups). At a price point of $40, though, it's doubtful Mattel was even trying to market the doll to children, but that didn't stop Black Canary Barbie from earning the moniker "S&M Barbie." So behold, Mattel had finally crossed a line. Based on everything we've heard so far it's a really big, really fat, shifty line, but they did finally manage to cross it.

With her hip jean capris and hot pink heeled boots, 2010's Video Girl Barbie seemed just like any other innocent millennial girl out for fun. But Mattel, appealing to young girls interested in filmmaking, had equipped her with a dangerous weapon. Embedded in her cute little necklace was a tiny lens that relayed video to a small but respectable LCD screen embedded in her back. To power her espionage set-up, sneaky cyborg Barbie hid a triple A battery in each leg. She could record up to 25 minutes of footage, which could then be downloaded to a computer for editing via a small cable connected above her derriere. Ah, the magic of technology.

While she might seem tame by modern standards, Video Girl Barbie launched at a time when things like influencers, smartphones, and YouTube were still in their infancy. A tiny spy cam was still pretty scary to a lot of people — and Mattel's creepy marketing statements, noted by Ars Technica, like "unsuspecting subjects won't know that Barbie is watching their every move" didn't help.

Ultimately, it was the FBI that stirred up controversy when they issued a "Cyber Crime Alert" warning law enforcement agencies that the dolls could be used for child pornography and should be considered evidence if found at crime scenes. Though allegedly nothing had happened to precipitate the horrifying warning, it inevitably leaked to the masses, and soon many were boycotting the doll just over the idea of it all. Way to kill a girl's fun.

Technically, the idea of a plus-sized Barbie was controversial before she even got made. A rendered image of a voluptuous triple-chinned version of Barbie that circulated on social media in 2013 became something of a scandal online, with many people claiming that such a doll would advocate for all-new unhealthy habits rather than promote the acceptance of bigger body types. The backlash was so great that no truly plus-sized Barbie ever saw the light of day — though Mattel was undoubtedly paying attention to the heated debates.

Instead, the company — humbled by years of plummeting sales and seeking ways to address parents' repeated demands for some semblance of anatomical realism and diversity in the Barbie canon — opted for its 2016 Fashionistas series, which celebrated at least a few other body types besides just "disturbingly thin." Barbie now came in three options: "petite," "tall," and "curvy." Curvy dolls — basically as plus-sized as Barbie ever gets — are still pretty thin by most peoples' standards, which caused its own controversy.

Still, they do feature slightly fuller hips, thighs, calves, stomachs, and arms, creating the impression of a somewhat more anatomically accurate adult woman's body. Unsettlingly, a 2019 study published in Body Image found that many young girls still refer to them as fat, which kind of proves that the whole unrealistic female body image problem goes a little deeper than just Barbie. Comically, the biggest complaint about curvy Barbies is that the clothes are no longer fully interchangeable between all dolls. Priorities.

Not every woman is fit to be Barbified, and many would argue that Frida Kahlo is one such woman. Mattel claimed that it got the rights to create a Barbie of the late Mexican artist from her niece, Isolda Pinedo Kahlo, a decade before the doll's launch in its 2018 Inspiring Women series. But some of Frida's more distant family members, including her great-niece Mara Romeo, claimed that the toy company did not have permission to use Frida's likeness and sued Mattel – not for money but to demand a redesign.

Romeo told AFP News (via the BBC) that she was displeased with how Frida was portrayed in doll form, citing her too-light eyes and complexion, lack of joined eyebrows, thin frame, and inaccurate style of dress. In general, many felt that making Frida into an American doll famous for her unrealistic body and penchant for consumerism was, well, not very on brand considering Frida was a lifelong communist who regularly bucked gender roles at a time when that wasn't exactly widely accepted.

Actress Salma Hayek – who portrayed the legendary artist in the 2002 film "Frida" — was also outspoken about Barbie Frida, expressing disappointment over how Mattel had erased the artist's most defining features while presenting the doll as an inspiration for young girls. "#FridaKahlo never tried to be or look like anyone else. She celebrated her uniqueness," Hayek wrote on Instagram (via Vogue). "How could they turn her into a Barbie." An injunction was granted, and Mattel stopped producing Frida dolls — at least in Mexico.