Haven’t had enough of the colour pink? You can visit a ‘Barbie’ museum in Ottawa | 24CA News
You is perhaps seeing much more pink than ordinary because of the Barbie film launch, however one Ottawa-based collector has been operating a business out of the toy franchise for many years.
Elizabeth Kondruss has over 3,000 Barbie collectibles for viewing. Dolls, vehicles, homes — some over six a long time outdated — are all on show in her Ottawa-based Barbie museum.
Kondruss obtained her first Barbie doll from her mother and father at 9 years outdated, in 1965. It was Barbie’s now discontinued little sister, Tutti, who will be discovered within the museum. Kondruss started gathering toys from the franchise since then, and formally opened the museum at Stittsville’s Carp Road Flea Market in 1996.
“It’s been huge since 2021,” she instructed Global News in an interview.
For Kondruss, Barbie is greater than a toy or film. The doll represents part of historical past.
“If you look through the ages of Barbie, it’s what we wore, it’s the sign of the times,” Kondruss stated.
Kondruss says she typically has guests come into her museum not as a result of they’re followers of Barbie, however due to the historic worth of the gathering.
Elizabeth Kondruss began her Barbie assortment when she was gifted her first doll on the age of 9. She opened Ottawa’s Barbie museum in 1996, the place she has roughly 3000 gadgets on show.
Global News/ Touria Izri
Kondruss went to see Greta Gerwig’s Barbie film on Thursday — opening night time. She says the movie was “fantastic.”
“It’s not a Mattel Barbie commercial,” Kondruss stated, referring to the toy franchise’s guardian firm.
“It’s a movie, it has a really interesting story… And there are some funny parts for us collectors.”
The trailers for the movie sparked countless memes, Mattel partnered with greater than 100 manufacturers to market the film, and embracing of the movie’s aesthetic has prompted #Barbiecore to development for months on social media.
The movie cashed in roughly $377 million globally on opening night time, making it the second finest begin for a film by a feminine director after Captain Marvel at $456.7 million.
The Barbie model hasn’t at all times been met with such a optimistic embrace from customers. Problems started as early as its conception in 1959 with a doll impressed by the Bild Lilli doll — a racy, buxom doll marketed to German males and offered in grownup shops.
Over the years, the model has confronted scrutiny over the doll’s unrealistic proportions and been accused of perpetuating dangerous magnificence requirements and gender stereotypes.
In 2000, medical doctors got here out and stated {that a} lady of Barbie’s weight, mixed along with her hip-waist-bust measurements, wouldn’t have the ability to arise with out tipping over, nor would she have the ability to menstruate.
“She’s a toy. It’s what you make of her,” Kondruss stated in response as to if she’s stunned a Barbie film hadn’t come out sooner. “You can create, you can imagine, you can have fun.”
Elizabeth Kondruss is the founding father of Ottawa’s ‘Barbie’ museum that has roughly 3000 collectables on show.
Global News/ Touria Izri
Ottawa collector Elizabeth Kondruss noticed Greta Gerwig’s new Barbie film Thursday. The movie generated roughly $377 million globally on opening night time.
Global News/ Touria Izri
The stars and director of the movie, too, have painted the film as a tongue-in-cheek have a look at Barbie’s historical past, the model’s misfires, in addition to the rhetoric surrounding the doll since her conception.
In 1997, Mattel launched Share-a-Smile Becky, who was the primary good friend of Barbie to make use of a wheelchair. It turned out that Becky’s chair couldn’t match by means of the door or into the elevator of the Barbie Dream House, leaving her destined to sleep on the porch.
That similar yr, a collaboration venture between Mattel and Nabisco resulted in a huge recall when it was delivered to consideration that “Oreo Fun Barbie” — a Black doll with an Oreo-branded outfit and cookie purse — was derogative to the Black neighborhood, as “Oreo” has been used as a racial slur.
Through a sophisticated mixture of missteps, adults projecting varied stereotypes and mores onto Barbie and a surge in options within the doll market, Mattel was left with plummeting gross sales and curiosity within the Barbie model by the mid-2010s.
Mattel instructed CNN its hope is that the Barbie film will give its model a lift. While gross sales for the doll have been up in the course of the pandemic, they slumped once more within the first quarter of 2023.
Kondruss says she embraces Mattel’s makes an attempt of designing dolls extra consultant of actual individuals, regardless of their hiccups.
“It doesn’t matter what body shape you are… what hairstyle you have, if you’re a cancer survivor, if you have a prosthetic limb… there’s a Barbie for all of it,” Kondruss says.
Even after retirement, Kondruss says the franchise will proceed to be a giant a part of her life. She plans on opening one mega Barbie hub that would come with a retailer, workshops and a show of her collectibles “like a huge city.”
“I can wake up in the morning and go play, design, decorate. That’s what I want to do.”
Kondruss says that Barbie acts as a reminder for adults to put aside time to decompress and even play.
“You have to relax, you have to play. It’s really hard sometimes to go ‘yes I’m allowed to sit down and put my feet up.’”
With information from Global News’ Touria Izri and Michelle Butterfield.
© 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
