Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Flickr!

So, this is going to sound really lame, but I just discovered flickr. I mean, I always knew it existed, in the back of my mind, but I'd never really looked around or searched on there before.

They have a ton of great Barbie photos on here! Now obviously, a vast majority of these photos are copyrighted and will not be appearing on this blog but in the future I'm going to include links to some of the great photographers on the site, especially when their pictures are relevant to some of the items.

I'm planning on including the Barbie Fold n' Fun House as one of the items for my Barbie Furniture and Structures page (it will be the inaugural item of that page! Exciting!). I was looking for photos which appear to be far and few between and came upon this Flickr blog:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lauralovelylocks/

The Flickr name of the author is Laura Lovely Locks and she has some great photos of some 80's Barbies. But what she also has is a "family photos" type deal where she has placed Barbies in the structures and made it look quite realistic. I think that's just awesome. Pictures of packaged items are great and all -- it really can help you identify a set and what it is exactly -- but pictures of Barbies where they are used in models really remind people of what it is to play with Barbies. And playing with Barbies is what always held the magic for me.

So I just thought I'd share!

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Barbie's Lil' Friends of Kelly

Kelly can get a little confusing for some people, possibly because she has about a trillion little friends. Those playdates must be a massive headache for all of the mommy Barbies out there.

The first Kelly came out in 1995. Barbie has had different sisters over the years but none as young as Kelly until the 90's. It is interesting to note that briefly Barbie had a sister named Kelly who was the size of Stacie and she came packaged with Todd in a wedding set. But I'll talk about that set in another post I believe.

The Kelly's page will be organized by year (which I hope to do with all of the pages as I go along.) I am starting off with Kelly's Lil' Friends only because I find them so interesting. I had several as a kid so it pulls particularly at the heartstrings for me I suppose.

Kelly's Lil' Friends differ slightly from the Kelly Dolls of the World and other Kelly's in general. In fact there is not a "Kelly" that comes is the same type of packaging as Kelly's Lil' Friends. You would simply use a Kelly from another set, or at least that was what Mattel was probably supposing would occur.

There were also different names for many of Kelly's Lil Friends depending on what type of the world they were from. I've noted this in the additional information where it was necessary. I'm having some trouble finding pictures of what the foreign dolls looked like and I'm unsure whether they are the same doll, outfit, etc with a different name or whether they are a completely different doll with a different name that is simply wearing the same outfit. I will try and make this clear later and I plan to upload pictures once I have found them.