Doll-A-Day 2023 #102: Bubble Cut Barbie and a Tour of Barbie's New Dreamhouse

   Today Bubble Cut Barbie is going to show us around the New Dreamhouse. Take it away Bubble head...

  This is my New Dreamhouse. It was built in 1964. As opposed to the first Dreamhouse. It was built in 1962, but it was much smaller than this house.

    We'll enter through the patio door. Mainly because it's the only door on the house.

  I love the sliding patio door, even if it does get stuck sideways sometimes. The door is in sort of a weird place, because it comes straight into my bedroom.

I have a big double closet, because you know how I love clothes!

There's plenty of room in here for clothes and other things. I'm thinking of getting into wigs, so I'll have room for those. And when I move, I can put my furniture in here.

What?

There's a big drawer at the bottom. You may wonder why it has that extra nub on the front

That's to keep the closet doors closed.

And my door knobs look like oranges!

It doesn't work very well. 

It was Ken's idea.

  I have some lovely sculptured carpet...what the?! What happened to my floor?!

I must have mice...or wolverines.

  I love to sit at my vanity and look in the mirror. 

Sometimes I do it for hours.

Some people have asked me if I'm a vampire, because they can't see my reflection.

My bed is beautiful, isn't it?

 It's pink, (and so is my vanity chair), which isn't really my colour. I'm starting to like it though. I'm thinking of making the whole house pink! But that would look silly, wouldn't it?

  Now we move to the kitchen. 

And you can tell it's my kitchen, because my name is on it.

I have a very modern kitchen with all the latest appliances.

I also have a shuttered pass through to the living room behind my kitchen sink.

  Plenty of cupboards to store stuff.

And storage under the sink.

I have a spice rack on the wall, so it's handy when I cook.

I love to bake. Right now I'm baking a favourite around here: my potato chip pie.

Where did it go?!

  That's really weird! I can see it when the door is closed!

  I also have this little alcove between the kitchen and the patio door.

If I want to, I can put my table here and have a breakfast nook.

If that kitchen wall were pushed out a little more, I'd have even more room.

Or I can put it over by the oven. That'll be handy if I ever find that pie. I can put it straight onto the table.

Or I can put the table around the side here. 

That's handy if I want to serve buffet style at my dinner parties...you know, like all teenagers have.

  Peek-a-boo! Here's that pass through again. And see, that table is really handy there.

Or I can go whole hog and just put the table directly in the living room.

It's also a handy desk for doing my taxes, or Skipper doing her homework...or Skipper doing my taxes.

And while we're over here, check out my collection of books. They're only for looks obviously. My decorator put them in for what he called ambience.

I like them because they go with this lipstick.

I also have a plate collection, like many teenagers, I'm sure.

  Then of course, there's my entire beautiful living room.

I always think this arrangement is a bit too crowded. I like to shove that right wall out a bit and have more room. 

But doesn't everybody do that sometimes?

  Isn't this better? 

Of course, this means I had to pile a bunch of my furniture on my bed and use that to hold that wall back. It will keep closing in!

  I absolutely love my carpet, and these barrel chairs.

 

 

 This marble top coffee table is another of my favourite things in the living room.

  I have always been confused about why my decorator put a valance at the bottom of my picture window, instead of the top.

I have a great view out this window though. I could look out this window for hours...Hey kid! Get off my lawn!

I don't care it you are my sister...

   Looks like Skipper left the TV on again! 

Look at that. She should be watching more wholesome shows! And besides, these aren't Mattel products!

They're not even made in America.

That's better.

                                               

  Sometimes I just like to sit in front of the fire and have a romantic evening with Ken, completely unchaperoned, even though I'm a teenager, because I have no idea where my parents are. I haven't seen them in ages, but every now and then they send another sibling to live with me.

  The fireplace is so cozy on cold nights.

I always keep it well stocked with logs. Well, my housekeeper does.

I have a beautiful hanging ivy, because I have something of a green thumb. I think it's because I sleep with my hand under my ear.

My decorator hung these cute cat pictures too.

They look so modern and stylish, like my whole house really. And me of course!

  What the heck happened to my lamp?! Skipper!

  Now let's go back through that sliding patio door and see my wonderful patio.

  Okay! Here we are on the patio, where I do a lot of entertaining.

  I like to put my name on the outside of the house too, so that nobody forgets that this is MY house. Not my parents' house, even though I'm a teenager. I don't know what people are talking about when they say young people can't afford a house! I made my fortune as a Teenage Fashion Model.

  Ken barbecues on that built in grill right over there.

We have all the utensils needed, and plenty of wood.

And there's another spot we use that table!

   Ken's not very good at barbecuing, but I let him think he is. I even bought him a barbecue apron and a chef's hat, because it's important to dress for the occasion.

  I have barbecue parties with all my friends, Midge, and Allan, or however he's spelling his name right now. Sometimes I even invite some of the kids from the less fortunate neighbourhoods; Polly, Wendy, Tammy, Bud, Ted, Tressy, a poor ugly girl named Mary, and sometimes the foreign exchange student from school, Sindy. I think she's related to Tammy somehow.  

  On sunny days I love to lay out on the patio on my lounge chair, and get a tan, since I don't have to worry about freckles like Midge does. She says some day they're going to find out that the sun is bad for you! She's so silly!

Ut oh! Looks like my patio wall has fallen down! That handyman had better get that fixed! I like to keep out the pesky kid next door. That Ricky is so aggravating!

  As you can see, I have a great brick patio.

I stood that wall up myself. I'm deducting that from that handyman's salary. 

I also have a really nice box hedge at the back of my patio...

...with a handle on it.

Let's see Ricky jump this thing. 

  And that concludes Barbie's tour of the New Dreamhouse. She's gone inside to lie down with a cold compress on her head, because all that exertion has given her a headache. Let's take a look at some of the outside of the house without her. 

This is the living room end of the house. It's covered in stone, as you can see.

And there's a nice yellow rose bush.

And that stone bit leads around the back to the outside of the living room window, and the patio door. That's the big picture window in the living room. As you can see, you can put the table between those two decorative bushes too.

Looks like there's been a tornado in the house...

The other end of the house is where the patio is.

And around the corner is the bedroom end of the house. 

That's Barbie's bedroom window. It looks three dimensional inside, but that's just clever shading on the picture.

The New Dreamhouse folds into a tidy rectangle for storage.

  

What is that cutout in the upper part for? It's in the patio floor, and is where the hedge folds over and slots into the floor so it can stand up..

The hard part isn't folding the house up. It's figuring out how to store the furniture inside and make it all fit, while managing to get the house closed. That was the joke about Barbie storing all her furniture in her closet when she moves. You literally have to pack that furniture like a game of Tetris. I should have photographed the packed up furniture---not just for you, but so I could remember how to pack it next time! It took me longer to repack the furniture than it did to do the photos for this post! The closet is where I put about half the furniture, with the other 'almost half' going in the patio doorway. The bed and one other thing, (Can't remember now.), are stored in the corner of the living room, where the fireplace is. When the house is folded closed that corner is a pocket of space. Some of the smaller things, like the vanity chair, can be stored in the vanity, and the TV stores in the fireplace with the logs. You can also store things on the sink/stove area. 

The lid is supposed to go down inside the end of the wall on one side. Two more rose bushes. I'm getting envious.

 
The bedroom floor folds up at the bottom edge and closes with two wingnuts.

But the damage on the left means there's nothing there to close with the wingnut.

See? The piece that's sticking out to the left of the tree is where the fireplace wall hooks into the house.

  

There is a top flap that closes with wing nuts too. That flap is made of the patio floor.

 

The top flap goes down into the edge of the outside wall on one side, but on the other side it fits under a little tab. (On the right.)

That's because of how the inside of the house is made. There isn't room on the one side for it to fit down inside.

And here's that patio floor with that cut out. The floor folds over to become the hedge, and hooks in so that it stands up.

  The TV came with three two sided TV screens. One pictured Skipper on one side, and Allan on the other. Another screen featured two Mattel products unrelated to Barbie. They were two toys from the  Animal Yakkers line, Crackers the Parrot, and Larry the Lion. You may have seen my post about my Larry the Lion toys, and how I had wanted one all my life. I think that all started from seeing that TV screen in our Barbie New Dreamhouse when I was little. The screen you see in this post features Mattel's eye moving, mouth moving, talking doll, Shrinkin' Violette on one side, and the other side is  a picture of a screaming, very angry, (and who can blame him?), Native American fellow. I don't know how he's connected to Mattel. The reason you didn't see that screen is because when I got this house the one TV screen it had had a Beatles trading card taped to the Native American's side of the screen. I decided to leave it there, because, who wouldn't? When I found the other New Dreamhouse at Goodwill, (And got it for TEN CENTS! See that post HERE.), it had the Skipper screen and the Native American screen. I sold that house, but I kept the TV screens! But as I did the pictures for this post I noticed the other TV screens weren't in it. That bugs me. I may have put them in with my Skipper stuff, so I'll have to check. At the moment, all that stuff is still here at Emma's. 

  Finding that New Dreamhouse at Goodwill, and it being offered for free, and only paying ten cents is a great story. (Not as good as the story I heard from a lady at a doll show who found one sitting in the 'free' pile at a yard sale!) But this house was basically free too. In fact, I think technically, I got paid to buy it. I had wanted to replace our childhood Dreamhouse for years, and got lucky when I found this one. I spotted this house in an online auction, being sold 'for parts'. The auction photos showed the damaged bedroom floor, but from the other pictures I could also see that there were clothes in the closet. One of the things that was showing was Barbie's 'Junior Prom' dress, hanging in the closet. That dress alone is worth nearly $100. I thought if there was enough stuff in there that I could sell to make up what I might pay for the house, I could let myself keep it. That's a thing I like to do. That's what allows me to collect very cheaply sometimes. Well, not only was the dress in there, but the fur stole too. I sold only those two things, and more than paid for the house. (Nobody had bid against me, so with shipping I think I paid about $100 for the house, full of stuff.) So I got to keep all the other goodies I wanted too. You can see the post where I got this house in the mail and went through it HERE.

  The New Dreamhouse was in the Room of Water. You know. Below the Room of Fire. That room was doused pretty well. Boxes have come from that room, totally dilapidated from being soaked, full of moldy things that were totally ruined. The New Dreamhouse was on top of a shelving unit, near the ceiling. That would have been the worst place to be when water poured through the ceiling. I was so afraid there was nothing left of it, since it's only made of cardboard. Luckily I had the foresight to leave it in the plastic garbage bag it was sent in, to protect it from dust, and that bag also saved it from the water. It arrived here just the way it was the last time I saw it. As I said, that damage on Barbie's bedroom floor was there when I got it, and the reason I got it cheap. That is the only real damage to it.

  You can watch a commercial for Barbie's New Dreamhouse HERE. You can see some other posts where I featured the New Dreamhouse, HERE, HERE, and HERE.

And now, here are some pictures of Bubble Cut Barbie, with her indestructible hair do.

Barbie already had a pretty mature face, probably since she was styled after the Bild Lilli doll, who was VERY mature. (You can read my post giving that history, and see another of my Bubble Cuts, HERE.) But when she was given the 'updated' bubble cut hair style, I think she got even older looking. Maybe it's just because I grew up in the era where everybody's mom, (including mine), had an approximation of that hair style. (I've just realized that maybe I have never felt like 'a grown up' because I never had a bubble cut...)

I will say, that hair style was a good one for dolls. Like the Deluxe Reading doll I showed you the other day, Bubble Cut Barbie had a hairstyle that was practically impossible for a kid to mess up. It was a much better choice for a play doll than what came next: Swirl Barbie. That's the Barbie I had as a kid, and what a terrible hair style to maintain when you're 4 years old. You can see my Swirl Barbie, who now has to wear a wig, (and see the rare Barbie Regal bed, which we used in the New Dreamhouse instead of the cardboard bed), HERE.

Bubble Cut Barbie, (which is only called that now. Back then she was just Barbie.), was sold for years, even into 1967, when no teenager who was 'hip' would have had that hair style.

Indestructible!

There is such a thing as a 'side part bubble cut', but it's really hard to tell if you have one. Sometimes the hair vaguely looks side parted, but isn't. A real side part bubble will have the part rooted in.

 

  That's the doll for today. See you tomorrow for another one.