Some people collect records. Others amass trading cards. Action figures. Shoes. Tchotchkes. Glassware. Art. Houseplants. Books. Vintage Pyrex.
For Kari Johnson, it's Barbie dolls.
Well before hype for the eponymous summer blockbuster began intensifying, Johnson started assembling her poseable plastic posse. In the three years since, her collection has ballooned to more than 300 dolls, from retro Barbies of the early 1960s to Mattel's much more inclusive characters of today. About half of Johnson's collection consists of Monster High dolls, another Mattel line, introduced in 2010 and inspired by sci-fi, horror, folklore and pop culture.
Each is carefully styled, accessorized and posed.
An early '60s blonde beauty with a sweeping updo and sky-blue eyeshadow is ready for a night out in her pale pink satin gown. She stands serenely next to a dark-skinned fashionista in a black-and-white strapless dress. The latter doll's scarlet-red, bobbed haircut contrasts her lush, rooted eyelashes (versus painted on), a feature of some vintage Barbies. On the shelf below, a Black Barbie doll smiles broadly as she reclines in a wheelchair. A doll nearby has alopecia, and another a prosthetic leg. Judging by their confident perma-smiles and enviably cute outfits, these differences don't hinder, but empower.
"I'm not that kind of collector where no one can touch them," Johnson says of her collection. "When I get the dolls, I don't keep them in the box. I take them out right away, because one of the joys of collecting for me is being able to touch them and play with them."
As such, her fashionable — and mostly female — force is proudly displayed in white, Ikea-style bookshelves along one wall of her home office. Some are arranged in scenes, perching on tiny upholstered sofas, wine glasses in hand. "Overflow" dolls that can't squeeze in with all these Barbies of honor are neatly tucked into file boxes on the bottom shelves with labels like "holiday," "childhood dolls" and "reproductions."
"It seems like I'm constantly reorganizing and changing their clothes, and I mean, to me, that's part of the hobby — decluttering, dusting and freshening everything up," Johnson says.
Since beginning her Barbie collecting journey, Johnson launched a YouTube channel (youtube.com/@kadawalden) aimed at fellow enthusiasts. There, she uploads Q&As, cleaning and restoration how-tos, and doll unboxing videos. Viewers love watching her reveal "mystery hauls," bulk lots with unknown contents, which she opens for the first time on camera.
Besides simply admiring her collection and the thrill of seeking out hard-to-find Barbies from across the doll's 64-year existence, Johnson and her husband, Dave, an artist and musician, also enjoy the hobby together as a creative outlet.
For the past three years, the couple has hosted their "Barbie Art Show," for which Dave produces miniature pop-art style paintings. Kari dresses the dolls to the nines for the big show opening, which is staged on bookshelf "rooms."
"It's like a Manhattan-style party, and he's got it all sectioned off, and I can't see it until he's ready, and I get the dolls all dressed and ready to attend," she says.
While it's a tradition they've so far enjoyed privately in their home, friends who've seen photos of the dressed-up dolls admiring Dave's art have urged them to make the event public. (Maybe someday they will, Kari says.)
"Photography is really big with people who collect dolls," she says. "I'm not on social media with the exception of YouTube, and I'm new to photography, too. I mean, since I started collecting the dolls, I started asking myself that very same question of, 'What am I going to do with these?'"
The couple also have fun re-creating some of their favorite retro movie scenes with the dolls, posting them on YouTube.
For most women born any time during or after the 1960s, Barbies were a childhood rite of passage. Whether you loved or hated Barbie, Ken and friends, you either had some, or knew friends or relatives who did.
Johnson's first doll as a girl was the 1976 ballerina Barbie. The same doll also reignited her love for the beloved toy more than four decades later.
"It was the COVID pandemic, and I think a lot of people went through a sort of nostalgia phase," she says. "I read somewhere that toy collecting and collecting in general just skyrocketed during the pandemic, so I wasn't the only one who went towards comfort, and for me, that was things of my youth and childhood. That was my excuse to buy my first Barbie" as a collector.
She found the white tutu-clad doll and all her original accessories on eBay.
"At first, it just started out as, oh, I'll just get my favorite childhood Barbies, so just these five," Johnson recalls. "And then that's when I realized the evolution of Barbie during that time, and I was like, 'Whoa, these are incredibly amazing and diverse and beautiful.'"
Johnson has the brand's first nonbinary doll, and several Black dolls with culturally accurate hairstyles. Curvy-bodied Barbies and several queer characters are also represented in the modern chapter of the doll's history, and in her collection.
"I mean, I was blonde and blue-eyed, so when I was a kid it was like, oh yeah, I love this," Johnson says. "But there were kids who never got to see themselves in Barbie, and now, just the thought that Mattel put into their dolls — you gotta give them credit for that. So that really appealed to me. And plus, I'm really into beauty, and come on — they're just so gorgeous!"
Johnson's collection truly covers every spectrum of Barbies' evolution, including homages to cultural figures, like drag queen Trixie Mattell (one of the few non-Mattel pieces she has), artist Keith Haring, David Bowie, Catwoman and others.
Once bit by the Barbie-collecting bug, Johnson's doll acquisition rate exponentially exploded. She finds dolls everywhere: big-box stores, online, garage sales and thrift stores. While it's gotten a little harder to find secondhand Barbies — prices for many sought-after dolls have also skyrocketed since Barbie's promotional push and release — Johnson says friends and family are often on the lookout for her. Many of her dolls were gifts from people looking to downsize their own childhood collections.
With about 150 Barbies and 150 Monster High dolls — an offshoot she loves for its characters inspired by Universal's Classic Monster movie-verse — Johnson has become more selective and willing to pass on less-favored dolls to make room for new must-haves. Several of her most treasured pieces, for example, are Mattel's Silkstone dolls, a high-end line made expressly for collectors.
"I was just buying whatever I thought was beautiful, and I had to slow down," she says. "Really, I can look at every single one of these dolls and tell you how I got it, and there's something special about every single one of them and how they came to be part of my collection.
"That's part of the fun — the story that goes behind it. You know, they're not just pieces of plastic." ♦
