Wednesday, May 22, 2013

My Favorite Toys


My very first Barbie Doll was Western Barbie. She was awesome. She had the quintessential long flowing blond hair, a white cowgirl hat, matching plastic cowgirl boots and a fancy shmancy, impossibly tight white one piece suit complete with fringes on the arms. In retrospect she should have come equipped with a bra since the white suit was so tight and see through and because what well-endowed cowgirl would ever think to ride a horse flopping around like that? Why Barbie of course!


(as you can see, a bra could have been utilized)


Another favorite feature about Western Barbie was her winking eye. She had a button on her back and if you pushed it, her eyelid would slide down in a flirtatious wink, revealing her ever blue eyeshadowed eyelid. 
My Barbie spent so much time winking that her eyelid stopped sliding back up into her head and eventually just ripped off. This was back in the day before they invented *Plastic Surgeon Ken so she had to go around looking like she had too much coffee. 

*I was not allowed to have a Ken doll until I was older. Apparently my dad did not want him and Barbie copulating and making more dolls for him to step on and yell about. So even if Plastic Surgeon Ken had existed, he wouldn't have been allowed in my house until well after the death of Western Barbie.

Here you can see the famous eyelid in action.


When Western Barbie came to live with me, she brought along her trusty steed, Dallas, a beautiful palomino who's hair was nicer than Barbie's.  I eventually spent more time  playing with Dallas than I did Barbie. 

Barbie taking Dallas out for his daily trot.


As time passed it became apparent that Dallas would need some equine company. Thus, Midnight, the black beauty of the Barbie world, made his way into our house. In my mind Dallas and Midnight were both male. It was a strictly platonic relationship most of the time. Except on days that Dallas needed a girlfriend. On those days, Midnight's curly hair made it easy to transition him to being female. He was not a cross dresser or anything like that. He just frequently switched genders to suit my moods. 

Dallas & Midnight 


Then came Honey.  Honey was like the Michael J. Fox of the bunch. He was short and compact and undeniably handsome. Honey was always a male and did not have to put up with gender switching. He was like the kid brother that hung around and got in shenanigans. He was shorter than the other two, I think he was made for Skipper.  But alas, I had no Skipper.



It was right around this time that Western Barbie died. It was not a violent death and it was not sudden. She just slowly lost her eyelid and hair until she sort of got shuffled to the bottom of the toy pile to decompose. My horses needed a care taker so.....I got Tropical Miko.


I mean, hey, who better to tend to my herd of horses than a girl wearing only a swimsuit with a flower in her hair, right? Her exotic beauty and long flowing tresses kept me busy combing and braiding. She spent a lot of time wearing a white terry cloth bathrobe without a belt. I would even pretend she was poverty stricken and that was all she had to wear, out shivering in the cold with nothing but a swimsuit, a bathrobe and three horses, foraging through the snow for something to eat. She was my beautiful homeless person. 

And then came Dixie.  

My little filly Dixie.

Since I had two males and a gender switching male/female, it only seemed fair that I should deem Dixie a girl.  So she was our cute little Shirley Temple. Full of spunk and adorableness with a tight blond afro of curls. 

The very last piece of my collection was Prancer. Prancer was the beautiful goddess of a horse that made all the others pale in comparison. Her arabian tail was always held high (for at least a year or two until it had been combed and braided so many times that it drooped but she was still very beautiful) and her light gray muzzle just screamed "MIKO COME PET ME!" She had a look that said Let us gallop away at a high rate of speed. 


Throughout my childhood these horses got a lot of play time with Dallas always being my reigning favorite. Maybe it was because he was my first. I dunno. I had every one of them right up until the time my sister moved back into my dad's house. I was married and out of the house at the time. I should have moved my beloved Barbie horses with me from the get-go but I very naively assumed they would continue to live happily at my childhood home until I wanted them. Nay.  I went back once looking for them and they were nowhere to be found. I asked my sister if she'd seen them but she lives in a constant haze and had no clue. And so it was that my most precious collections of all toys were lost forever. The key to my happy childhood, gone. What a bummer of a way to end a blog.