This morning when I checked the blog for comments there was one from reader Faith about a Mattel/ Arco beagle dog she has. The comment was posted on one of my old posts about Arco toys so although I replied to it there I thought I would write this post as well.
I have a Mattel/ARCO tagged Barbie stuffed Beagle (3″ nose to tail), covered in a type of felt-like material. I cannot find any like it and I was wondering if it is rare or valuable. The information on the one tag is genuine Barbie. The other tag says, “Mattel, Inc, Arcotoys, Inc., Westbury, NY 11590, USA. Made in China. Can anyone help?
Faith
I had a quick look online myself to see if I could find anything. I came across this post by fellow blogger Barbielist Holland. It is a very well researched post with loads of photos of Barbie and family dolls, pets, toys and playsets. It is long but well worth a read if you haven’t seen it.
If you look over the 60 plus years you can see that many pets have been used multiple times. There were beagles in playsets in 1988, 1998 and in the early 2000s. I can’t tell from the photos if any are made of the material Faith describes. I’m thinking she means the dog is flocked. I did see one dog that looked as if it was but it was plain brown. Anyway I am hoping that the article will be helpful to Faith and others.
Another interesting thing I noticed is that the pets from the past ten years are so are now predominantly tiny, Polly Pocket type pets. More stylised than realistic. I prefer the vintage pets myself but as I’ve mentioned before Barbie playline is now marketed to younger children so that’s probably the reason.
I have not seen all the 2022 playline dolls in the shops here and was quite interested in the “It Takes Two” and I think it was “Life in the City” playsets. They look quite well done.
Dolls, Dolls, Dolls 