Taswegian1957

Fashion Doll Friday: Ballerina Barbie 1976


As a change from modern Barbies’ today’s Friday Girl is my Ballerina Barbie. I bought her in my early collecting days and a friend sent me the dress and the original stand which is packed away at present. As you can see Barbie needs some work. I’ve never done anything about her frizzy hair and I really should. Her dress is worn and needs to be replaced so I have posed her to protect her modesty a bit.

She has the twist and turn waist and the same face as other dolls of this era. This Barbie has unusual arms, this was before the so-called “ballerina arms” of present day Barbie’s. The little gold crown is attached to Barbie’s head. As a child I would have found this annoying if I wanted to redress her. Who goes around wearing a crown all day? The purpose of it was to hold Barbie while she posed on her special stand which supported one leg while you twirled her. According to the ads Barbie could do the splits and kicks so of course I had to see if she still could. Not bad for a girl of her age!

Barbie does the Splits

Here are a couple of links to more information about her.

http://www.myvintagebarbies.com/ballerina-barbie.htm

https://www.dollreference.com/barbie4.html

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Published by Taswegian1957

I was born in England in 1957 and lived there until our family came to Australia in 1966. I grew up in Adelaide, South Australia, where I met and married my husband, David. We came together over a mutual love of trains. Both of us worked for the railways for many years, his job was with Australian National Railways, while I spent 12 years working for the STA, later TransAdelaide the Adelaide city transit system. After leaving that job I worked in hospitality until 2008. We moved to Tasmania in 2002 to live in the beautiful Huon Valley. In 2015 David became ill and passed away in October of that year. I currently co-write two blogs on WordPress.com with my sister Naomi. Our doll blog "Dolls, Dolls, Dolls", and "Our Other Blog" which is about everything else but with a focus on photographs and places in Tasmania. In November 2019 I began a new life in the house that Naomi and I intend to make our retirement home at Sisters Beach in Tasmania's northwest. Currently we have five pets between us. Naomi's two dogs Toby and Teddy and cats, Tigerwoods and Panther and my cat Polly. My dog Cindy passed away aged 16 in April 2022.

9 comments

  1. How pretty, very elegant, I didn’t know about her in the 70’s, I had one chunky Sindy doll, like a lot of girls I was ballerina mad, it never occured to me that my doll could be one. So I learned to do the splits and twirl around myself. Those were the days, now it’s a knee replacement next month lol. X

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  3. I love this mod face and delicate arms pairing, none of my dolls of this era have this elegance. I do have a 1991 with a Mackie face and molded pink ballet slippers but as the body is marked 1993 it may well be just an other Franken-barbie from the thrift store. I also suspect the bright pink tutu is not original but she still looks pretty flanked by nutcrackers for the holiday theme in my breakfast nook.

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  4. She is a beauty. This is the Barbie face I love the most, so delicate. I have always loved ballet and ballerinas, so she was a must have for me. She really needs a new costume though.

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