Forever Barbie_ The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll - Lord [48]
Barbie's SuperStar status also had an impact on the company she kept. She didn't drop Ken or Skipper, but she did start hanging out with Mattel versions of real-life celebrities. They included Debby Boone, Charlie's Angels Cheryl Ladd and Kate Jackson, and, in clothes befitting a male hoodlum, Kristy McNichol. Missing Angel Farrah Fawcett evidently declined to be cast in plastic, but that didn't stop Barbie from stealing her hairdo in 1981.
Barbie was also seen with Donnie, Jimmy, and Marie Osmond. Not exactly the Laura Mars type, Marie was a Mormon, and her mother demanded that Mattel engineer the doll's outfits so that Mormon "garments"—sacred, baggy, one-piece underwear—could be worn beneath them. Traditionally emblazoned with religious symbols over each breast and a slit in the crotch, the "garments," however, were not issued with the doll. Marie's mother also forced Mattel to bring out a thirty-inch Marie doll with dress patterns. A rabid advocate of home sewing, she hoped such a doll would inspire girls to use a needle and thread.
Although Barbie helped reverse Mattel's losses in the late seventies, she was never the darling of its top management. Arthur Spear, who became chairman of the board in 1978, was committed to reducing the company's involvement with toys. In 1979, it acquired Western Publishing, the producer of Golden Books, for $120 million. With its Ringling Bros, subsidiary, it expanded Circus World, a theme park near Orlando, Florida. It entered the electronics business with Intellivision, a $300 home video game system, and dumped its unprofitable acquisitions, such as Metaframe.
The press, for the most part, applauded Spear. "Under Mr. Spear, Mattel has pulled out of its earnings slump [and] reduced its long term debt from $118 million to about $20 million at the end of the 1979 fiscal year," The New York Times wrote. "His austere, no-nonsense style of management has brought a measure of order to a company that was run haphazardly for years," Fortune said, noting that Spear was a teetotaling nonsmoker who worked out daily on an exercise bicycle.
But Business Week remained skeptical. After "years of murky legal and financial battles," Mattel's hottest new toy, the magazine insinuated, had a certain appropriateness. The toy was "Slime"—green, runny glop that came with its own plastic garbage can.
CHAPTER SIX
SOME LIKE IT BARBIE
In 1980, Americans banished Jimmy Carter from the White House. They had had enough of greasy peanuts and off-the-rack suits. They craved chintz and glitter, Galanos and glen plaid. It was time to chuck the Birkenstocks and sell the six-year-old Toyota. There was Armani to be worn and a new BMW to be driven. Owing a trillion dollars hadn't slowed the country. Debt was good; greed was good; Barbie was good.
When the Reagans moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, they brought their Veblenesque appetites with them. Like Barbie, they were Californians, and their tastes bore the stamp of sun and surf and celluloid. Never had Barbie been more West Coast—her "Sun Lovin' " Malibu incarnation actually had tan lines—or more in tune with the times. "She's got the billion dollar look," said Mattel's 1981 catalogue about its "Golden Dream" Barbie. She was even prepared for escalating tension between haves and have-nots; in 1979, Mattel issued a Barbie "Fur & Jewels Safe" complete with security alarm.
In her 1979 "Kissing" version, Barbie—head tilted,