2013 Spring HAD Newsletter Licensed Spotlight

The Art of Collecting

One of my favorite things about Licensed Products is the original art that the various companies used, but nothing can hold a candle to the art that you create yourself! There were many ways to express your artistic side with Barbie and Ken and coloring books are at the top of that list. These were all large books with many different pages to color. As a kid, I spent many hours coloring in my favorite books, but sadly these early examples were all before my time.

The prices range from $5 or $10 for “played with” condition up to $30 or $40 for mint examples. Personally, I do like the ones with a little bit of history, a few pages colored in here and there certainly has its own charm.

There were certainly more things to color than just paper back in the sixties. The Barbie Ken and Midge WipeAway was a large plastic tablecloth that you could color, clean, and then color again. There were a couple of different versions, but Sport Time featured Barbie and Ken together and has many different line drawings scattered randomly throughout. How much fun would this be to have at your next Barbie party! These are valued between $75 and $125, but have sold for more in the past.

Another fun piece were the sturdier “paper dolls” of the Color ‘n Play sets. These featured cut out dolls on a heavy cardboard material with a plastic coated finish so that you could color, erase, and re-color again and again. The faces were photographs, but the clothes were blank line art. Some of the oddest pieces for sure, but hours of fun no doubt. Prices range from $15 to $25.

If coloring wasn’t your thing, you could also draw or write on Barbie and Ken’s Magic Slate (aka Paper Saver). These pieces offered a plastic covered drawing surface which you could use and then lift up the plastic cover to “erase” what you had done. There was actually only one which featured Barbie and Ken together (see inset) but the item pictured below is actually a little harder to find and does feature a cute graphic of Barbie and Ken together. It’s larger than the typical magic slates and has an easel back which allows it to command a slightly higher price of $45 to $60 as opposed to the $20 to $35 that the smaller versions bring.

Our last piece combines the best of both worlds. Barbie’s Magic Window came in a rather large chipboard box with loose coloring pages, tissue, and crayons inside. Although it doesn’t feature Ken on the cover, he is of course well represented on the various pages that are included. Kids were meant to place a blank coloring book page under the “magic window” (which was nothing more than a piece of acetate), color to their hearts content, and then clean off the plastic when they were done. It’s not really clear as to exactly how this would work as the box itself is a good inch-and-a-half thick, but my guess is that short-sighted children everywhere just shrugged and colored the actual pages instead. This is actually an extremely rare piece and only a handful of examples are known to exist. The one pictured below came from the manufacturers archives and is Christmas morning fresh! They’re valued somewhere between $200 and $300.

There are of course many other examples of art related products in Barbie and Ken’s world, and this is just the tip of the iceberg as they say. If you have a favorite piece or story you’d like to share, you can reach me at urrgghh@aol.com or, better yet, share with the He’s a Doll! Group. See you there!!