The many faces of Mattel

My house growing up was definitely a Barbie house! My older sister had tons of Barbie, and when old enough, I joined the ranks. We'd spend an entire day playing Barbies, making a "town" on my parents bed. My mom would be the local dressmaker and create a couple quick fashions for us while we played. Needless to say, we had LOTS of Barbie clothes!

Something I never really thought of when I played with the dolls what how nice it was that Mattel didn't use the same face mold for all the dolls or even for all the Barbie character, herself.  As a teen my sister's Barbie things went in boxes in her closet, and me, well we already know -- I became a collector! That's when I started collecting porcelain dolls (cute ones, not creepy ones!) and Barbies that I kept in the box. These were my first real doll collections, as it were. It's also when I started appreciating the that same face was not recycled on everything. What personality Barbie had was due largely to that.

When I think of my Strawberry Shortcake collection, the one era I stopped collecting completely was the Playmates era. While I think the dolls are so completely beautiful, they never really felt all that Strawberry to me. And they used the same face for all of the characters, only changing the color on the eye paint.  So while they were pretty, and had fabulous hair, they ended up being kind of boring to me.

But back to those Mattel faces! I hadn't been living in a Barbie world for many years. But when Monster High came about I got into it. How fun to have these zany characters in their fabulously fun outfits. It felt, and looked, fresh.  And once again, the big thing for me was that their faces are different!

Thankfully, I had gotten over my completionist ways before I started collecting any Monster High dolls. So, I have a smattering of them. Just the ones I can find in store that strike my fancy the very most.  And I have to admit, that after not so long my attention was called away by another Mattel line, Ever After High.

Ever After High really caught my attention through the cartoon. I just loved the premise of the whole thing and they way they were telling the stories.  The dolls were fabulous, but then after a few lines, wait, what? They are Mattel, but their faces are pretty much all the same!?!?!  I was disheartened by that. But I was also vocal about it on social media, as were many others. And now it seems like they are really stepping up to the plate and giving us more facial variety.

I wonder why on earth they didn't from the beginning? Were they putting more of their dollars into the terrific clothing and accessories? I mean on average I'd guess an EAH doll has twice the body coverage as a MH dolls does. That's more fabric cost for them. And I think their packaging had to cost more than MH, as well. Hmm, Now that I think about it, the new lesser EAH packaging is happening right about the same time and we are getting more face variety.  I guess it always does come down to cost. 

But no matter what, I applaud Mattel for putting a good amount of their dollars into facial variety. I can get a better outfit for a doll without too much effort, but face-ups can be a real pain!