Did you prefer MLP over Barbie as a kid?

i didn't really like barbies much, i had a few but ponies were on top of my wishlist each birthday and christmas :) i would get some barbie horses but i traded my barbies for ponies :p
 
I was never for Barbie. I have only one, the Birthday Barbie, I got when I turned 6. I also had a house but I played with it because it was 3 feel tall and had an elevator, lol. Just couldn't get into Barbie. Pony hair was always more beautiful to me, and I love the colors. Barbies all looked the same and what could you do with them anyways? Cook? Fight with another barbie? Change her clothes? You could do that stuff in real life. My Firefly flew. They could also stand up where you put them and you could have a whole scene and create a narrative (like a pic flick, I guess). Barbie doesn't stand, you have to hold her pretty much the whole time you play with her or sit her on something. I did have baby dolls, ones you could cuddle and hug, like Huggins. Barbie never served a purpose for me, if you hugged her you could puncture a lung. The only thing I liked to do to her was bend her knee backwards. Opps, to much, sorry!
 
Totally ponies, even though my aunts gave me Barbies for Christmas every year, and my mom even tried sewing Barbie clothes at one point (that was the only time I heard her cuss!). But Barbies said on the box what they were (nurse, princess, model, whatever) and none of those things interested me. Ponies, however, lent to much more imagination because they 1. HAD to have been magic - I mean, they were pink and blue and had wings and things! Right?!? Of course! and 2. lived in a lush green cartoon world. Barbie, on the other hand, had a house (which she must have had to scrub and dust, right? and buy groceries for?), a car (that looked WAY too real life), a boyfriend (ew, boys are gross), and those ridiculously long legs - and don't even get me started about the ****. PLEASE. There was no imagining there! So to my 6 (7? how old am I again?) year old brain, ponies were WAY more interesting. (for the record, I also liked SSC and Smurfs - also small cartoony woodland creatures, many of whom were scented. Hmmm.)

AND, I could hold a pony between my feet and brush and braid her mane AND her tail without feeling guilty. When I held a Barbie and tried to brush her hair, her head would tilt WAAAAY back and I always felt like I must be choking her? And it creeped me out. Ponies were tougher, man. ;)

-elph
 
I never like Barbie I grew up with my brother who is 6 years older than me so I am a tomboy ^^ when I did get Barbies bought for me we would stuff her with black cats, put the little green army men around her and then blow her up. Now I had MLP's due to wanting a horse when I was a little girl and couldnt have one so I took the next best thing ^_^
 
I think I played with ponies and barbies pretty equally. I guess I have loved, and always will, My Little Ponies more, but Barbies are fairly special to me too.

My grandma got me those special collector's editions Holiday Barbies every Christmas. So, I got into collecting at an early age. Like, I looked forward to getting my Holiday Barbie every Christmas. And I don't recall ever wanting to open them up; they sat on my shelf, looking pretty. I still have all of them MIB...except the one my cat knocked over. She's in her box still, but the plastic was so brittle from old age it shattered like glass.

I probably have about the same amount of Barbies and MLP's. I would use the Barbies as my Megan & Molly. Although, I tended to like the brunette/red-heads better, so I used Chelsey & Katie instead of Barbie & Stacie. I played with my ponies more often, but my little sister was really into baby dolls, so I think I tried to get her to play barbies with me - I had a lot of barbies, but no baby dolls. I never got into baby dolls.

Anywho. I definitely liked my ponies more, but barbies were pretty special for me too. And as I got older, I played with them more. They would play the parts in my life that I wish I had gotten to do. I played with barbies until I was in like 7th or 8th grade...My best friend became one of the 'popular girls' and I kinda got pushed off to the side, so the barbies were the girls in school I wished I were friends with so my best friend wasn't embarrassed by me. One barbie I always used for myself, and then all the other ones would invite 'me' to the parties and all the stuff I didn't get to do because I wasn't 'cool' enough.
 
I remember playing with both of them a lot. I played with my beanie babies too. Actually, I think I *may* have played with my beanie babies the most, probably because I had more of them than ponies. But the ponies definitely got a lot more love than the barbies.
I'm not really sure why, I think it was just more fun to create stories with my ponies than barbies. The barbies already had roles and they didn't seem as fun to me. I think more imagination was required to play with the ponies, whereas the barbies were simple to tell a story with. But half the fun of being a kid and playing with your toys is imagination. Does that make sense?
Also, I love the TV shows... Not sure how much that contributed but there it is.
 
Of course I preferred MLPs over Barbies!! ^^;
I didn't like dolls much at all, I was always jealous of them, especially MLPs Megan - she got to live with the ponies, and well... I wanted that to be me! Barbie now, she had her own beautiful horses - of course I didn't have a horse, so there again I was jealous! I was and still am a equine feline kind of girl, so thats what I preferred to play with as a child, and collect as a adult; Breyer's & MLPs line my room with memories, and eye candy. ^^;

:catmoon:
 
I always preferred My Little Pony. It might've been because I came from a small farming community in Northern Alberta and the Barbie seemed a little out of place for a farm girl. However I even thought as a girl that the Barbie portions were wrong. The doll seemed too tall to ride the ponies and never stood up properly. I used to play with my brothers Turtles more than Barbies!

Of course when I was about twelve they stopped producing ponies and started selling the Cabbage Patch Ponies in the stores and I thought Mattel had bought out Hasbro and ended the Pony line because it was competing with their Barbie line too much. I'm not sure how I came up with that rumor or how I understood economics in Grade 6 but I was devastated when they stopped producing ponies and never bought a barbie if I could help it.

Now reflecting on the whole Barbie hating thing I think it was because there were so many well designed and imaginative toy lines emerging from the 80's and Barbie no where compared to Rainbow Brite, Carebears, My Little Pony, Keypers, Turtles or anything else. These toys also have influenced me in a big way because now I'm in my fourth year of illustration and design. Go Ponies!
 
I lived on a small farm as a child and liked toys that repeated the life I was familiar with: sweet, kind, and outdoors! Barbie, just doesn't fit that, but the MLP (and other toys like Rose Petal, Strawberry Shortcake, and Care Bears) sure did! Barbie was just "too cool" and jet set for me. I think MLP let me be more imaginative...talking ponies flying over rainbows? Yes, please! A woman shopping/hanging out in her house or spa? No thanks!
 
EnchantedDaisy said:
Barbie, just doesn't fit that, but the MLP (and other toys like Rose Petal, Strawberry Shortcake, and Care Bears) sure did! Barbie was just "too cool" and jet set for me. I think MLP let me be more imaginative...talking ponies flying over rainbows? Yes, please! A woman shopping/hanging out in her house or spa? No thanks!
Click to expand...

Yes! Too true! And I loved Rose Petal too, as well as RB, SS, and Herself the Elf! I had a couple Moondreamers and Cupcake dolls too. I miss the 80's!
 
What a fun project. Very interesting. I mostly ignored Barbie. She always seemed kinda generic. And way too perfect. Perfect blonde hair, blue eyes, perfect body, perfect job, perfect man. blech. And really once you have one Barbie you have them all. So why bother? I think I had one Barbie and one Midge doll when I was a kid. I liked Midge cuz she had red hair and freckles. Barbie was always the evil one in my stories. But really the ponies were my favorite. Cuz you could give them whatever personality you wanted, they're all different and you could have a whole community of ponies. Plus in the cartoons they were all a little flawed. With Barbie it's just her and a few friends in her click. Hmmm, kinda like the core 7 is now. And Pinkie Pie is miss perfect Barbie. And they got rid of Minty who was the only one left w/ any imperfections. ugh.
 
MLP were my favourite toys when I was a kid but Barbie came a very close second. I used to love dressing up Barbie and rearranging her furniture in her house and stuff liike that :p I had more fun playing with my ponies though and used to make up all sorts of things to do with them. I think I probably liked MLP that bit better because they were more fun and fantasy like? I guess whereas Barbie was more realistic . . .
 
I had a lot of Barbies, and I loved to dress them up and all, but I don't remember any memorable storylines or any memorable barbies really. As for MLP, I loved to watch the cartoon and to play with thema nd they did have storylines to go along.
 
Obviously I preferred ponies... but for one major reason:

The plastic used for MLP did not make me physically ill. Barbies had this nasty, overpowering, rubber smell to them. I can remember a Christmas morning where I got nothing but barbies, and to go sit in the bathroom with my head over the toilet. Not fun.

To this day, Barbie makes me gag. :\ Just not for the reason most people do. XD
 
MLP all the way! I had a ton of Barbies too - but MLP was always the #1 in my house.
 
Ponies were the favorite but Barbies were a close second. My sisters and I rarely played with barbies in a "real" setting; most of the time they were fairies, mermaids, queens, sorcereresses (sp?) etc.. I think the only reality based scenario was the one where Barbie owned a riding stable and had to save it from going bankrupt.

I think it helped that MLPs had their own show while Barbie only had a few specials (I don;t remember one anyway). Also ponies were waaaaay cheaper than Barbie; you could get two or three ponies or a special set for the price of one regular barbie. As we didn't have a lot of money back then and there were 3 of us (#4 wasn't born til end of the G1s, heh) guess what we ended up with more of;) We had several storylines with the ponies, some quite complicated, lol!
 
MLP!!!!!!!!!
I wasnt not into Barbie. I liked the Jem dolls. I still have my Roxy & Jetta. :)

Now that I'm adult I have bought a few Barbies. They are the super hero Batgirl, Ivy, Harley Quinn... & they are not on display.
 
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