Do a Pick! Game, Vintage Barbie, Vintage Francie, Vintage Skipper

Let’s play a game with dolls in 2023! #DollCollectors #DollClothesPatterns

If you’re a regular follower on my YouTube channel, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been playing around with YouTube #Shorts lately.

My cousin, who runs the ASMR channel, ASMR Tingle and Taps, gave me tips on how to grow my YouTube channel using YouTube Shorts. The Shorts videos I’ve uploaded so far have been doing extremely well, but I haven’t found my “niche” yet.

If I didn’t have a full-time job as a school librarian, I’d make a bunch of cool stop-motion videos with dolls, like the Romeo and Juliet #Shorts video at the top of today’s blog post, and I’d publish all my stop motion videos as YouTube Shorts.

The Chelly Wood doll (a Spin Master Liv doll that has been re-designed to look like the real doll clothing designer, Chelly Wood) is seated at her desk in her office. The wall of the office is a mottled purple color behind her open laptop. The doll's fingers touch the keyboard which is resting on an extended arm of the desk. Her computer screen shows the ChellyWood.com "Share Your Creations" page with three doll clothes displays under the introductory text. The ChellyWood.com logo appears in the lower left corner of the image.
Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

But the Romeo and Juliet YouTube shorts video that I published on my YouTube channel today actually took me several HOURS to make. Yeah…. You read that right. I said it took me several HOURS to make a 30 second video! That’s just not reasonable.

So I’ve come up with a different plan. Now, hear me out please.

My favorite playtime buddy, when I was a kid, was my cousin Virginia. We played Barbies at the beach, on camping trips, and even at school, where we were classmates. In fact, the two dolls in the stop motion portion of this video are supposed to represent the two of us, playing at the beach together:

Virginia and I used to say, “Let’s do a pick” before we started playing dolls. We’d lay all the dolls out (usually nude) on the floor, and we’d take turns picking a doll.

Then we’d lay all the outfits out on the floor and take turns picking what clothes our dolls would wear.

Image shows Mattel's Made-to-Move Barbie wearing a wedding dress (handmade with one-shoulder style), Mattel's Tall Barbie wearing a maid of honor gown, Mattel's made-to-move Barbie dolls wearing prom style dresses, and Mattel's Stacie doll wearing a flower girl's A-line dress. All of the dresses were designed and hand-sewn by Chelly Wood, and patterns are available at ChellyWood.com (free and printable sewing patterns for making all wedding, prom, and quinceanera dresses shown in the image). The dolls are seated and standing in an elegant 1:6 scale diorama, displaying their dresses in lovely pinks and whites. The furniture in the diorama is made of wicker. There is a gold-framed classical painting on the wall behind them. In the center of the room, the wicker table holds a porcelain tea set in 1:6 scale. The dolls look at the camera expectantly, and they are elegantly posed as if for wedding photography.
Please visit ChellyWood.com for FREE printable sewing patterns and tutorials.

It was a fun way to begin our doll play time!

When my two daughters starting playing with each other, I taught them how to “do a pick” to avoid controversy over the most popular toys, and it really worked for them as well.

So here’s my proposal, and I’d like to see what you think.

I’ve bought some vintage catalogs of Barbie dolls and outfits, like the one you see below.

Living Barbie and Living Skiipper Mattel Catalog cover from 1970, Copyright 1970, Mattel. Image shows Living Barbie with blond hair and bangs running in a field of tiny digital flowers, holding hand with Living Skipper, also blond with bangs and little curly pigtails.
Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable sewing patterns for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

What if I created YouTube Shorts that have scanned pages from inside my vintage catalogs? We could play “Let’s do a pick” and people can watch the Short, featuring three or four different dolls, or three or four different outfits, and then we all leave comments under the YouTube Short, stating which doll or outfit we would pick for playtime, and why.

If you don’t want to say why, of course, you wouldn’t have to, but I’d love it if anyone reading this gave an opinion. Is this a game that would be fun to play? Would you enjoy it? Would you participate?

Let’s give it a quick try, okay? Without having made it into a YouTube Shorts video yet, let’s look at the image below. Which doll would you pick and why? Please leave a comment.

A page from the Mattel 1970 Barbie catalog is open, and on the left side we see Living Barbie dressed in a half-gold-half-silver Swimsuit. She has blond hair and bangs. Beside her, kneeling down (to show her articulation), we see Living Skipper, who wears a swimsuit with a tutu skirt. It's a multi-colored swimsuit with green, blue, and pink single stripes of fabric. On the right-hand side page we see Hair Happenin' Francie. In the photo on the left of this page, Francie is seated near a mirror, and she has multiple hair accessories all around her. She wears a blue dress with lace sleeves and a lace belt. Francie has blond hair with bangs and a bob, but a little girl is adding a long hair extension to Francie. The photo of Francie on the right shows her in a pink dress with tulle overlay and a shiny bodice with a collar. Again, a little girl has added a long pony-tail-like hair extension to the doll, and it also shows her with a messy bun. the text reads "NEW! Francie hair happenin's #1122: Twist Francie with 4 fashionin' fun hair pieces. (in blond only). and then "New! Francie with Growin' pretty hair #1129 -- Just like magic! Watch Francie's hair grow longer... then in an instant it's short again."
Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable sewing patterns for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

Your options are:

These doll images come from the Mattel 1970 Living Barbie and Living Skipper catalog leaflet.

Disclaimer, Copyright, and Trademark Credit:

If you’d like to learn more about the Mattel family of Barbie dolls, please visit Mattel’s Barbie website. Disclaimer: ChellyWood.com is not affiliated with Mattel, but Chelly personally enjoys designing clothes to fit the dolls their company has created.

With that said, ChellyWood.com earns money by linking to Amazon, eBay, Michaels, Etsy, and other online affiliate programs. Links provided above may be affiliate links. For a full list of my affiliate programs, and to understand how cookies are used to help this website earn money, please see my “Privacy Policy” page.

Mattel, Inc. [1970]. Living Barbie™ and Living Skipper™ [Leaflet]. [Hawthorne, Calif]: Printed in USA. [Not paged].

[Back cover statement: “BARBIE,” “STACEY,” “P.J.,” “CHRISTIE,” “KEN,” “BRAD,” “SKIPPER,” “CASEY,” “FRANCIE,” and “TUTTI, BARBIE, & SKIPPER’S TINY SISTER,” are the trademarks of Mattel, Inc. for its DOLLS.]

My formal citation format comes from the Owl Purdue leaflet for collegiate citation guidelines.

8 thoughts on “Let’s play a game with dolls in 2023! #DollCollectors #DollClothesPatterns”

  1. I wish I played Let’s Do a Pick with my cousin who is the same age as me when we were kids, but she lived and still does live in Georgia. I’m 56 going on 57 years old now and I have been a doll collector off and on since 1994. I enjoy your doll clothes patterns and I would like to give them a try someday.

    Reply

  2. Francie Hair Happenings. The hair styling dolls all came out after I was no longer playing with my Barbies. I would love to have one now.

    Reply

  3. Lol too cute. My friend and I did something similar, though less organized. I’d have gone straight for the 3rd, Francies Hair Happening. She come with 4 hairpieces, one of which has definite Princess Leia vibes. 😉 Love the idea of stop motion shorts! I’m not a social media person really, but about to have to become one soon for promotions of my new lil venture. Ive been thinking I also need to figure out “shorts” content, though more “time lapse” to show a doll being created than stop motion. But hey, if you’re doing stop motion shorts, I’m thinking you can now call yourself ” Animator”, on top of librarian, blogger, teeny tiny tailor $ educator… you are a woman of many hats! Thank you!

    Reply

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