Barbie’s best friend

To Mary Meins, Barbies are more than dolls.

“They’re works of art,” she said.

And the toys’ outfits serve as historical references of the past six decades.

“That’s what the trends were. That’s what people were wearing,” she said.

Meins’ fascination with Barbie is one reason she has 1,700 dolls packing her basement.

“They’re not all Barbies,” she is quick to point out. But most of them are. The former Port Washington resident now living in Sheboygan once topped out at around 2,500 dolls. She sold 400 last year.“eBay has been a godsend,” she said.

Meins is as interested in the history of Barbie — she can tell story after story about its reluctant development by Mattel due to the lack of female engineers off the top of her head — as she is the dolls themselves.

Meins started when she bought two dolls with her birthday money when she was 8. She still has them, a 1961 model with a bubble cut and a red and white one with a ponytail.

“I took care of my toys. The rule in our house was if you wreck it, you don’t get another one,” she said.

The dolls are now worth hundreds or thousands of dollars each, but Meins remembers when that wasn’t the case.

“I have a Ben Franklin sticker on mine that says $2.89,” she said.

Meins has always loved dolls. “There wasn’t a time I didn’t,” she said.

She got into collecting dolls when, on her walks to and from her job at Port Washington State Bank, she passed a doll in the Ben Franklin store window. She finally broke down and bought it.

It was only the beginning.

“I didn’t know when I started this how out of control it was going to get,” she said. “It’s an addiction. It truly is an addiction.”

Meins remembers a different world decades ago. When girls played with dolls back then, she said, they weren’t concerned about her body image, unlike today.

“It was a toy. She looked good in the clothes,” she said.

Meins’ dolls come from various sources, from a Gibson estate sale to a magazine called Barbie Bazaar. She would send requests to vendors in the publication and receive catalogs.

It wasn’t until 1988 when Mattel finally got wind that a number of Barbie collectors existed, Meins said. A holiday edition Barbie that was marketed more toward adults flew off the shelves.

One day while searching for the best Barbie at Walmart in Sheboygan, Meins encountered a woman doing the same thing. The two became longtime friends.

At a Gibson estate sale, Meins met a woman who wanted to start a doll club. The Central Wisconsin Fashion Doll Club — avoiding the Barbie name for trademark purposes — was born. Eight to 12 members meet quarterly with different themes.

“It’s like kindergarten. We do show and tell. If you found something spectacular, you show that,” Meins said.

Meins at one point was listed on Mattel’s website as a member of its Barbie Collector Club, which is how she came to purchase her most expensive doll. A woman in Grafton had a 1959 doll — the first year Barbie was made — and was looking to sell it. She contacted Meins out of the blue a few years ago.

Meins did research on the doll’s value and ended up buying it.

The price tag? $4,000.

Meins’ husband Tim approved of the sale, reminding his wife that she had wanted that doll since she was a child.

“He’s a sweetheart,” she said. “I felt guilty spending that much money for weeks, but I got over it.”

The doll today would go for about $5,000, she said.

The most expensive doll Meins ever sold was $300 online. She is keeping her more valuable vintage dolls.

“I’m very attached to most of them,” she said of her dolls.

Meins has some accessories, including a cardboard Barbie house, but collecting houses takes up too much space. She has several cars and Ken dolls. Manufacturing of Ken stopped for a short time in the mid-1960s due to low sales. Most girls, she said, had their G.I. Joe dolls dating Barbie instead.

Barbie never married Ken, but her doll friends Midge and Alan were married in 1991. The Barbie family also includes her younger sister Skipper and British cousin Francie.

Meins has versions of another less successful doll, Darci, which was made by Kenner from 1978-1980.

But it’s the Barbie story that enthralls Meins the most. She has more than 90 reference books on Mattel with stories of early inspiration for the doll from Germany and manufacturing it overseas.

Barbie, Meins said, has been Mattel’s best seller and the world’s best-selling doll.  Bratz, American Girl and Cabbage Patch dolls all had their runs but never had the staying power.

Meins will share some of her and Mattel’s story at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 19, at the Cedar Grove Public Library.