Mattel Police Officer Barbie [Toy]

Product Information

The famous Barbie logo is a hand-drawn cursive that doesn’t seem to have an exact free version available. The font used for the old Barbie logo (used from 1991 to 1999), however, is very similar to Barbie Medium. If Barbie and Ken were to kiss, one assumes they would do so by mashing their faces together at a diagonal. Gerwig gets out in front of her decision to take a check from Mattel by centering her new corporate overlords in the film.

She’s living proof that no dividing line separates fashion from high art, one of the guiding principles for the film’s sartorial euphoria.Likewise, Gosling’s Ken rolls with an entourage of backup Kens, though in keeping with the film’s ladies-first doctrine, the second-stringer likes of Kingsley Ben-Adir and Ncuti Gatwa get slightly less to do than the ensemble Barbies. An upbeat song by Lizzo delivers exposition like a commercial jingle, narrating each of Barbie’s actions as she performs them. Every aspect of the first act’s setting has been informed by the rituals and aesthetics of toys and their attendant media, harkening back to the brand-savvy of The Lego Movie. The chipper, blunt dialogue sounds like the internal monologue of an eight-year-old’s imagination, declaring every day forever and ever to be the best day ever.

Featured soundtrack artist Dua Lipa even pops by as a trio of mermaid sisters to wobble her way through a few lines of dialogue, most of which are “Hi, Barbie! Gerwig’s having a laugh at her own expense, conceding that all her subversions will be happily permitted so long as they agree with the profit margins. Barbie creator and Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler appears with a deified glow about her in the form of Rhea Perlman, the actor’s presence a possible nod to her past gig on Cheers as sharp-tongued barmaid Carla Tortelli, the kind of flinty, funny, unapologetic woman that speaks to Gerwig. Unlike superheroes or princesses or so much other exhumed IP, the glamorous doll doesn’t come prepackaged with narrative, leaving open the question of what she would do in a big-screen vehicle primarily greenlit off her brand recognition. The reactionary weirdoes decrying Barbie as peddling the “woke” agenda haven’t pulled much of a gotcha, accurately summarizing the textual substance of a film about one woman’s sudden burst of institutional consciousness.As in their feminist Eden, Barbie and Ken came expecting a female president, female garbage-haulers, female Nobel laureates and a coterie of adoring, pliable men just grateful to share their presence. And yet for all the valid critique lodged by Gerwig – that this company marketing itself to little girls has entirely male management, that they profited for many years off of unattainable body standards, that they have hastily discontinued dolls like the pregnant Midge and the ambiguous Earring Magic Ken and anything else complicating their clean, hegemonic worldview – the film can’t help its promotional origins in brand synergy. During an argument, Ken hurls Barbie’s wardrobe out through the missing fourth wall of her home, and each outfit momentarily flattens into a display-fold with logo and caption while suspended in the air. In one of the film’s most unexpectedly poignant moments, Barbie shares a brief chat with an anonymous woman on a sidewalk bench, informing her that she’s beautiful only for her to respond: “I know.