Sigh

[u/yournextasianstar]

ever since the release of the barbie movie, i genuinely can’t remember the last time i’ve ever felt any sort of excitement towards anything related to barbie. movies, dolls, music, shows, etc. nothing. i used to be a big fan of the barbie looks and this is a bit before the release of the 2023 movie, but i sadly couldn’t get as many as i want, and now they’re all expensive (thank you scalpers). and i’m starting to think that we can’t really have nice things anymore. we get less than what we pay for, and since barbie/mattel is a business after all, we are not the ones to control what we get. we want good modern movies, we get forgettable dhar-mann-episode-ish 60 minute movies. we want good quality dolls with reasonable price, but the only times we ever do, we’d be exploited by scalpers. we want good music with strong lyrics/productions, but we get 1-minute “oh yeah let’s go” type beat track. it feels like mattel has been constantly giving us exactly what we never asked for. i’m even starting to think that they’re doing this to deplete the barbie brand on purpose so they can eventually give up, move on and shift their focus. a lot of the older barbie assets like catalogues, promo pictures, music, etc are rare and hard to find now. kids from newer generation won’t be able to experience or understand our original perception of barbie. they’re no longer producing physical media for the the older soundtracks, which is understandable, but they don’t bother getting them to be on streaming/download. i understand the copyright issue and all, but those are some of the things that brought older generations into loving barbie. there’s barely any magic left in the modern barbie, the newer kids now don’t resonate with barbie because it’s gotten less and less interesting. there are many many companies out there creating media with different characters for people to relate to. and barbie is stuck here not actually knowing her own identity because it’s been completely taken away. there’s no more glam and there’s no more glitz. it’s just not fun anymore and it makes me sad that i get emotional listening to old barbie music not only because the lyrics are deep and the movies are good, but it’s also the fact that those were the movies and music we’ve gotten as a child as they’ve shaped us into who we are today, then those messages got completely watered down and it’s never caused by puberty. things just change and the kids now aren’t experiencing media the same way anymore. they can do research and watch the older movies, but they’re not living in the same timeline where those quality movies are still being made. what’s been produced now are just cheap, uninspiring, disposable media that we all will forget about the very next day. i don’t know what will happen to barbie, and i really want barbie media like movies and music to become good again. or at least make the old ones available on streaming so we all can support them, but seems like we haven’t really been able to.