From My Collection: Astronaut Barbie 1985

I make visual art of many forms for a living, and as someone who works commercially I have a fascination with vintage advertisement and product design. I love art made for toys and cartoons. Here are some scans from my collection: an Astronaut Barbie in very good condition, secured in her box with original packaging.

   
    I wanted to grab a scan of the front of the box and forgot to take her out of the packaging, which led to an interesting visual effect.

Pulled out of the box (but not removed from the packaging), she looks like this:

    She's got the white Barbie "Superstar" head mold, and her face deco has three bottom lashes. According to the Air and Space Museum's website, her outfit is made of lamé fabric. In this same line was a Black Barbie, who marked the first time a Black Barbie became an astronaut.

The bottom of the box, as you can see, has a little wear. 

    The scan of the side of the box is a little blurry. I'll update the image when I have time. I love those backdrops and little setups for Barbie.

    She came with all of her original inserts, including a little instructional pamphlet and a full color accordion flyer for the Barbie Fan Club. If she was ever unboxed by her previous owner, it was briefly; the accessories, (and stickers for them) were all still attached to their sprues, tucked inside the box within a little plastic bag. Everything is pristine.

    In a small greyscale instructional pamphlet, you can see a halftone dolly! What luck.

       Here's a scan of the little cardboard flag.

    And here are the stickers.

The Barbie Fan Club accordion flyer was a little hard for me to scan at home, so please forgive a few things being cut off.

I really like the blue mascara on Barbie's face deco. It's coming back into fashion a little at Mattel right now.

Here's as much as I could scan of the pamphlet at home. I'm an amateur hobbyist (sounds redundant but there really are people out there who are Pros at this TO ME!!!), so this is about all of the effort I could reasonably exert before getting frustrated... if you'd like any higher-res scans of any of these please email me.

Some of these dolls I hadn't heard of before, like the Dream Glow line. It looks radioactive. I'll now be on the hunt for one of those to light up my desk...

That's about all I have for now. I purchased this Barbie secondhand from a local collector who is no longer with us. This Barbie is very special to me and I find her very lovely. If I ever decide to truly RFB her, I'll create a counterpart to this post.

Until next time, bye.

First Post's the Worst Post

    Hello. I want to start making long-form blog posts as a hobby. Over the past decade I've largely become used to making very short-form posts online, and it's starting to disinterest me.

    I work in toy design and comic books, and I enjoy toy design and comic books. I made this blog so that I can write about the art of toys and comics that I have. I've got a bit of a dragon's hoard of toys and comics, and as my treasures I find them beautiful, silly, strange, and fascinating. I hope to share the things I like with you, and also create a better understanding of what I like, too.

    Other things to know about me... I am an adult woman!

That's about it, I think. I've never used Blogger before, so my blog might be quite primitive for a while.

Well, see you later.