Barbie: Why Did We Forget Skipper? The Mattel Barbie's Discontinuation Explained
Contains spoilers for "Barbie"
Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" movie is, perhaps predictably, stocked to the brim with various Barbies — and with the exception of poor pregnant Midge, they're all named Barbie with titles for each doll. Margot Robbie, the leading Barbie, is formally referred to as "Stereotypical Barbie." Hari Nef plays "Doctor Barbie," Issa Rae is the leader of Barbie Land as "President Barbie," Sharon Rooney is "Lawyer Barbie," Emma Mackey is "Physicist Barbie," and so on and so forth. After a major existential crisis, though, Robbie's Barbie has to head to the real world with her would-be paramour Ken (Ryan Gosling) and figure out the rift in the space-time continuum caused by a depressed person playing with her in the real world. In the process, Barbie realizes that the real world, to be blunt, isn't so great; unlike Barbie Land's matriarchy, women are pretty oppressed in the real world, and unfortunately for Barbie, Ken is a huge fan of the patriarchy and brings it back to Barbie Land when he returns.
Amidst all the Barbies, there's also an Allan (Michael Cera), Midge (played by Emerald Fennell), and a discontinued Skipper — specifically, the "Growing-Up Skipper," who's played by Hannah Khalique-Brown. So why isn't Skipper, canonically Barbie's younger sister, more prominent in the "Barbie" movie, and what do you need to know about that retired Barbie doll?
So what's the deal with Skipper?
After Barbie broke onto the scene in 1959, created by Ruth Handler, she was criticized for being too "sexualized" — and alongside her friend Midge, Skipper, Barbie's younger sister, was born. When Skipper first came into existence in 1964, she was a lot shorter than Barbie and definitely had a more childlike appearance... but eventually, Mattel kept aging Skipper up ever so slightly until they got to Growing Up Skipper in 1975.
The idea behind Growing Up Skipper was simple but also extremely weird. When kids playing with Skipper raised her arm, her chest would... inflate and she would also get taller, so the doll could basically go through puberty at a moment's notice. (This is the exact Barbie played by Khalique-Brown in "Barbie," where she hides out from the more beautiful denizens of Barbie Land.) It's probably not surprising that this doll was hit with backlash, and eventually, Mattel just made Skipper a slightly older teenager — with a more mature body — upon her re-release in 1979. As recently as 2020, in the animated series "Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures," Skipper's still hanging around and is really into technology and is fourteen-years-old.
Skipper gets a brief — and funny — mention in Barbie
So, aside from Growing Up Skipper and her bizarre inflating chest, how does Skipper factor into "Barbie?" She only really gets mentioned, but it's clear that there was a huge incident involving Skipper and a previous break in the space-time continuum between Barbie Land and the real world before. As Mattel's CEO, played by Will Ferrell, acknowledges — alongside underling Aaron Dinkins, played by "Sex Education" standout Conor Swindells — Skipper escaped from Barbie Land once, and it was chaos. Not only did she manage to get into a family's home in Key West, but she tried to teach the family's toddler how to surf in her capacity as "babysitter."
As Aaron points out, the situation Mattel is now dealing with is so much more severe; that was only Skipper. Now, Barbie and Ken are loose in the real world, and they keep getting arrested. Clearly, this is a huge issue for Mattel, who can't risk revealing to the public that their dolls exist in some fashion in a different place, and eventually, Barbie and Ken do find their way back to the real world. There's no word on what happened to that tricky Skipper, though.
"Barbie" is in theaters now.