Barbiemania: Manitoba doll devotee shares glimpse into sprawling Barbie collection

While Barbie is having a cultural renaissance thanks to her record-breaking weekend at the box office, one Manitoba woman’s passion for the iconic doll has never waned.

“I’ve been collecting for 34 years,” Lucy Cook, president of the Manitoba Doll Club, said in an interview on CTV Morning Live Winnipeg. “I love Barbie.”

Through the decades, Cook has amassed about 300 Barbies – a small portion of her massive doll collection, which tips the scales at over 800.

Her collection includes the first Barbie ever released in 1959, with the leggy, 11-inch plastic figure dressed in a black and white striped swimsuit, heels and sunglasses.

She also owns some of the iterations that Mattel may want you to forget, like Growing Up Skipper. This doll of Barbie’s younger sister was launched in the ‘70s. If you rotated her left arm, her torso grew an inch and she developed breasts.

The dolls were discontinued shortly thereafter.

The original Barbie was released in 1959 at the American International Toy Fair in New York.

“Even today, I’m sure there would be a lot of controversy about that doll,” Cook laughed.

As president of the Manitoba Doll Club, Cook oversees about 25 members. Ranks have waned since she first joined in the late ‘80s, when there were nearly a hundred doll devotees in the club.

Barbie’s popularity has also ebbed and flowed over the decades, with the doll long criticized for a lack of diversity and for promoting unrealistic beauty standards.

Mattel has since responded, giving its doll line a makeover with Barbies featuring different skin tones, eye colours, nose shapes and body types. After decades in sky-high stilettos, a Barbie was released with “articulated ankles” that could adjust to both high heels and flat-soled shoes.

In April, a Barbie meant to represent a person with Down syndrome hit store shelves.

And when the 'Barbie' movie debuted in theatres last week, with a $155 million USD opening weekend, Cook was among the pink-clad crowds.

“I think the movie is great, and I will be seeing it more than once.”

Cook chalks up her decades-long devotion to the doll to something quite simple.

“Barbie represents to me, if I would use one word – possibilities,” she said.

“She has evolved over these last 60 plus years from the very first one.”

- With files from CTV’s Rachel Lagacé and the Associated Press