The Summer of ‘Barbie’ Has Only Just Begun

At the mall, there are Barbie and Ken T-shirts from the Gap and pink gingham Barbie cardigans at Hot Topic. Neiman Marcus will sell pink Barbie handbags from Balmain, and at Bloomingdale’s there will be life-size Barbie DreamHouse installations. Ulta Beauty has hot-pink Barbie electric toothbrushes. Target and Amazon have Barbie pool floats. Microsoft made a Barbie Xbox. 

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Mattel wants to get “everyone playing with Barbie,” said president and COO Richard Dickson, “and that doesn’t necessarily mean playing with a doll.”

The movie and its accompanying avalanche of product is part of Mattel’s strategy to expand the Barbie world beyond toys. The company, which also owns Hot Wheels, American Girl Doll and Fisher-Price, banked $5.43 billion in revenue in 2022, but sees the growth opportunity in these franchise deals as “exponential.”

“The bigger opportunity for us is going to be outside of the toy aisle,” said Dickson. “That is the drive for where we see the monetization for the brand moving forward.”

The move is happening as competing fantasy empires like Marvel have seen record revenue in expanding their world. The toy industry grows at a slow rate, said Andrew Uerkwitz, a senior analyst at Jefferies, which is why competing toy company Hasbro recently put out a “Dungeons & Dragons” film.

Mattel’s growth ambitions also come at a time when America’s most iconic doll is facing fierce competition—from streaming giants pumping out products to complement their shows to YouTubers debuting toys of their own. Targeting millennials with pink crop tops and denim jackets might very well get nostalgic women to buy Barbie clothing. It might also move them to buy dolls for their children too. 

“Brands that have been around for a long time ebb and flow, and Barbie is always on the defensive,” said Uerkwitz. 

Dickson said Mattel sees the Barbie film as a first step to “elevate the Barbie narrative into a pop culture sensation.” It wanted to make a Barbie movie for years, he said, and began discussing the current film in 2018, when Robbie approached Mattel chief executive Ynon Kreiz about the opportunity, later bringing on the director Greta Gerwig. Mattel currently has 14 other feature films in development, the company said.

The movie is meant to drive brand awareness while moving Barbie, if not ironically, into the center of a conversation about feminism and beauty standards. Dickson declined to discuss the movie’s profit breakdown with Warner Bros., but Jeffries estimates Warner Bros paid Mattel $25 to $50 million for making the film (Warner Bros. declined to comment).

Mattel has been approaching partners over the last 18 months, eager to fill the market with Barbie products. In some agreements, a brand pays Mattel a flat licensing fee, while others give Mattel a 5% to 15% cut of sales. 

Dickson said Mattel’s merchandising strategy targets all ages, but said many collaborations tend to skew toward teens and adults since the movie is rated PG-13. 

“We go from our core customer, little girls, all the way through grandmas, or what we call ‘glam-mas,’” he said. 

The Barbie Xbox Series S—a gaming console nestled inside a three-story DreamHouse—opens the franchise up to another demographic: the gamer. Xbox sees the collab as a way to “motivate young girls in following their passions and highlight careers in STEM and gaming,” Kirsten Ward, Xbox’s vice president of integrated marketing at Xbox said in an email.

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Mattel has long been an aggressive marketer of products, said Einav Rabinovitch-Fox, a history lecturer at Case Western Reserve University. The company defied industry standards in the 1960s when its TV ads spoke directly to children, she said. 

Mattel has reinvented the doll several times to keep up with pop culture. In 2016, Barbie’s proportions were changed, in response to criticism that the doll’s shape wasn’t realistic. The company also issued dolls with more skin tones in response to diversity critiques. Rabinovitch-Fox said the company is now using the film to rebrand Barbie for adults.

“It’s a repackaging of Barbie to be cool,” she said. “Greta Gerwig’s Barbie has irony and undertones that grown-ups will find funny.”

Brands are hoping that if the bright colors and splashy patterns aren’t enough to lure adult customers, nostalgia will win them over.

“We see ‘Barbie’ as the most highly anticipated film of the summer so we’re really leaning into it,” said Kevin Harter, vice president of integrated marketing at Bloomingdale’s. 

“It is 50 shades of pink here,” said Forever 21 chief executive officer Winnie Park, who estimated pink products make up 15% of the company’s sales. “Pink appeals to men, women and them. It’s a major driver of our business.”

Some brands hope to stand out with merch that has a wow-factor. 

“You want to create products that are catchy and grab attention because you have to remember who Barbie is and what that style is about,” said Lorenzo Boglione, chief executive of Superga, an Italian footwear brand that debuted sky-high pink platform sneakers in early June. 

The products have caught the attention of Barbie fans like Matthew Bruneau-Richardson, a 32-year-old independent filmmaker and animator in Boston. He’s been collecting Barbie dolls for about seven years, which he displays in his office. He recently purchased paint from the Barbie collaboration with Backdrop to make his office the same color as the Barbie DreamHouse. Bruneau-Richardson also has Barbie T-shirts and plans to buy more merchandise before the film, including the movie’s official yellow rollerblades from Impala.

“Growing up, I would think, ‘as a boy I can’t like Barbies, and as a teenager I can’t like toys,’ but now that I’m in my 30s and have control over my life, I don’t need to be concerned about that,” he said. “I’m living out what 6-year-old me would have dreamed of.” 

Jacqueline Pont, a 21-year-old college student in Gainesville, Fla., hasn’t looked at a Barbie doll in years, but said she still finds the brand endearing. Her earliest memories are of going to garage sales with her mother and sister in search of old Barbie dolls. Pont has a continuing text message thread with her sister where they share all the different Barbie products coming out, and said the merchandise “fuels my soul.”

“The Barbie collabs are exactly what I want them to be,” said Pont, who owns a Barbie T-shirt from Old Navy. “We want the pink, the plastic, the girlie, like we’re adults wearing kids clothes.”

Raquel Morris, a 27-year-old nonprofit professional in Washington, D.C., who recently bought Gap’s Ken tee, said she plans to wear an all-pink outfit to see the Barbie film in theaters. 

Sydney Skeete, a 21-year-old college student in Ontario, said all the Barbie merchandise makes her feel nostalgic for childhood and “tugs at my heartstrings.” She has her eyes on a Cowgirl Barbie doll Mattel put out for the movie, though she wants to sleep on the purchase a bit longer.

“I went to a Taylor Swift concert recently, so I need to hold off a little until I know what I really want,” said Skeete.

Write to Chavie Lieber at [email protected]