Somehow, without even realising it, everything around us is suddenly pink. Buses that zoom by? Pink. Cosmetic packaging? Pink. PlayStation controllers? You guessed it, pink. It's got to the point now where even nature randomly presenting something pink to us, like rare bugs and weather patterns, will elicit the same, half-joking response: “Barbie marketing has gone too far”.
Though anticipation has been building since the first set photos went viral on Twitter last summer, Barbie szn feels like it has arrived like a speeding pink Corvette. It started with a humble and brilliant digital marketing campaign, with individual posters released for every character in Greta Gerwig's take on Mattel's classic doll, with a generator designed to make your own. Cue everyone with access to a social media account posting their own Barbie-fied profile picture. Then came genius merch tie-ins, like a collaboration with the skate brand Impala to release custom neon yellow roller-blades as seen by Margot Robbie's Barbie and Ryan Gosling's Ken in viral memes from the film's shooting, and the chance to stay in an actual custom-built fuchsia Barbie Dreamhouse, courtesy of Airbnb.
And then there's the rest, what we think can fairly be called the C-tier of Barbie tie-ins. Brands and products that don't have a specific reason to be tied to Barbie, but look cute with a logo slapped on them nonetheless – think Hot Wheels cars, UNO cards, PlayStation controllers and dog clothes. The list is exhaustive, with currently more than 100 brand-tie-in hammering us with hot pink and pastels, and with every new merch drop that's been splayed across our Instagram home screens, shop windows and email inboxes, the time has sadly come to finally say: Barbie marketing actually has gone too far now.
Barbie entered our lives like an explosion of unadulterated fun. The return of the big-budget comedy! Greta Gerwig! Ryan Gosling just being Ken! Taking aim at something so meticulously crafted to tickle all the right receptors in our brain landed plenty a Twitter hot-taker in the dreaded ‘main character of the week’ chair with the masses decrying their need to ruin the party when life was already so dreary. And on the whole, we agree – spoiling fun while it's at its peak is groan-worthy behaviour, and everyone who does it doesn't deserve an invite to Barbie's Dreamhouse anyway! But the thing is, at this point, Barbie, and the overlord at its reigns, toy conglomerate Mattel, are spoiling their own fun.
The best marketing fools people into thinking they're not being marketed to. No one likes to admit they're susceptible to being pulled by the strings of capitalism, we like to think we're making our own, individual choices based on things that appeal to us by chance. Barbie's early, almost scrappy-seeming marketing strategy made everyone root for it, this feeling of a film being so clued into the very specific fanbase that was already excited. Cheap character posters and an Architectural Digest Open Door tour felt like, despite the behemoth of Mattel behind it, everyone involved was approaching Barbie with a bit of a wink and nudge. This wasn't a classic Barbie tale, we were frequently told, and the promo around it was in line with that. A bit left of centre, it felt curated – now it just feels interminable.
Of course, there could be a large meta quality at play with this deluge of Barbie paraphernalia. We already know the film touches on larger themes of existential dread and the artifice of life as we know it. It could just be an overarching stunt centred around the commodification of this character at the hands of suited puppeteers. It could be, but that feels like an overly generous read considering the news of Mattel's larger plans to introduce the Mattel Cinematic Universe with 45 films planned for its toy catalogue. No, it seems like, ultimately, life in plastic was the goal. Right now, the jury's still out on how fantastic that feels anymore.
