Forever Barbie_ The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll - Lord [123]
By January 1980, Cronk's bulletin, The Noname Newsletter, had a fancy new title—The International Barbie Doll Collectors Gazette—and a stylish logo with drawings by artist/collector Candy Barr. Cronk, however, maintained an unprepossessing tone, often telling stories in an Erma Bombeck voice about her own Barbie-related mishaps. At one point, a network TV crew asked her to demonstrate her dolls, including the 1979 Kissing Barbie. "They had me holding her at a very difficult angle," Cronk wrote, "and in the process of struggling to hold her still and press the plate, I pulled her bodice down, leaving her topless on CBS's film." Then there was the time she tried to conserve money for Barbieana by making her children purchase the family's shampoo. "Before leaving for Girl Scout camp, I found myself shampooing with something called strawberry Earth Born Shampoo," she writes. "The following day I was pursued by about 1,000 bees, all trying to pollinate me! The next time Scott's turn rolls around to buy shampoo I just pray it doesn't turn out to be Banana or I will make sure I avoid the zoo!"
Cronk also offered her opinions on new products. "The thing that really rings my chimes," she wrote in February 1980, "is the new commode. . . . We can truthfully say Barbie has everything now as her pink commode has real 'flushing' action! It is pink and there is no mistaking who it belongs to as her name is on the tank! Part of the dream furniture grouping, it comes with a small chest with towels (what, no toilet paper?). Another new item is a round bathtub with continental shower. . . . Where does the water go? Hmm, come to think of it, where does the water go in the toilet?"
But for Cronk, the highlight of 1980 was meeting Charlotte Johnson at Barbie's twenty-first birthday party during Toy Fair on February 11. Johnson, who had just retired, regaled Gazette editors with war stories, including the trials of designing a Barbie-sized mink coat for Sears. The Gazette ran her photo in front of a revolving display of historical Barbies. It was among her last public appearances; felled by Alzheimer's disease, Johnson is currently in a nursing home.
Collecting has changed a lot in the fourteen years since that first convention, however. "There used to be a preponderance of older women whose children had Barbie and they wanted it," said doll dealer Joe Blitman. "Now it's different. There's a new guard of people in their late twenties to early forties—probably two to one, female to male. And it's a more urban group."
Whether they amass Barbies or bric-a-brac, Kens or incunabula, Francies or Faberg6 eggs, collectors frequently share certain personality traits— acquisitiveness, obsession, and an intense connection to objects, sometimes at the expense of people. In Collecting: An Unruly Passion, psychoanalyst Werner Muensterberger locates the beginning of the collecting impulse in early childhood—"in the objects that are always there when the child's need for comfort... is not immediately met; when the child does not have a mother's breast, or a loving pair of arms to allay frustration." For many grown-up collectors, to pile up treasures is to stave off childhood feelings of abandonment, to erect a tangible (yet frangible) hedge against ancient anxiety. The urge begins with a child's first "not-me" objects—Winnicott's transitional objects—a category into which, as we have seen earlier, Barbie sometimes falls. But even when objects are not intended as playthings they often function that way within their collector's psyche. "What else are collectibles but toys grown-ups take seriously?" Muensterberger asks.
Sometimes the lust to amass new and snazzier objects can dominate a collector's life,