Supermeow!

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the reason I became interested in Japanese cartoons and comics was because I was first interested in Japanese Barbie.

In the early eighties, Barbie was not so well-received over in Japan. Nobody was keen on the toothy smile and big boobs of Superstar Barbie. Takara acquired the license to manufacture their own version of Barbie, and thus the phenomenon known as Takara Barbie was born.

My mom and I were at Waldenbooks in the Walpole Mall. It was summer time between the second and third grades, and I was 7. We were looking at books about Barbies, and we happened upon this book that had pictures of these cuckoo Barbies with round faces and huge eyes. I thought they were the cutest and also most gorgeous Barbies ever made, looking pretty alien to the Barbie I’d come to know. The book was purchased. I poured over this book regularly until it was in tatters with a broken binding (it was softcover). I was absolutely taken with the Takara Barbies and was sad to find out that my mom had actually seen some for sale in a store at Faneuil Hall called Goods, but she thought they were hideous and moved along. I really, really wanted one of these Barbies, but my mother was not keen on paying $50-$200 for a doll for her little daughter from the secondary collectors’ market. I can understand this as an adult.

The Barbie that I wanted most of all was a curly-haired Barbie in a pink polka-dot dress. She was part of the “Sweetpop” collection, and she was depicted with a doll in a red and black outfit. She didn’t have curly hair. I’ve always loved curly hair on dolls and on people (although it’s a pain in the ass to maintain on dolls – curly hair gets all disheveled pretty easily, snags on velcro, etc). If I ever had the chance, that’s the doll I’d want for myself.

About ten years later, I was able to finally get a Takara Barbie. She was from the Excelina line and she had a blonde bob and blue eyes (Excelina apparently meant your doll was so excellent that she got blue eyes instead of brown). Now, don’t get me wrong, I love my one and only Takara Barbie. It didn’t mean that I’d given up the dream of ole’ Sweetpop Barbie.

Here I am, a grown woman, and I will occasionally remember to scour eBay for this doll. Even Yahoo! Japan. Today, I found the other Sweetpop doll in the book I  had when I was little, right there on the Mandarake website!

I don’t know why I never researched it before, but there are actually a few different dolls in that series, not two like I’d always assumed. I’ve found a couple more of these guys on other Japanese websites (note to self: term to search for is タカラバービー　スイートポップ ).

The doll in the blue dress bears close resemblance to my dream doll, hair-wise. It’s not her, though. I’ve yet to find a picture online of my pink-dressed doll. This person posted about getting this doll (in Japanese).  From what I could gather from the crappy translation software, s/he was just as delighted to find this doll as I imagine I will be when I find my dear Sweetpop Barbie one day. I’ll never need another doll after that.

After having this shock, I had yet another! Here’s another person with yet another Sweetpop Barbie (in Japanese)! This page has some pictures of the stuff on the back of the box. More mysteries!

It’s my dear hope to find this doll one day.