Barbie has an entire family that isn’t in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie

From the notorious Earring Magic Ken and Ken’s Finest Buddy Allan to Video Lady Barbie and the ever-pregnant Midge, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie film is chock-full of cameos from probably the most distant corners of the Barbie canon. There’s even an look from the infamous Rising Up Skipper — Barbie’s little sister, whose boobs grew when you turned her arm.

However whereas a model of Skipper made her live-action theatrical debut in Barbie (and the Mattel company fits point out one other Skipper, who they are saying escaped into the true world after which practically drowned a baby in a browsing accident), the remainder of Barbie’s household is nowhere to be seen.

That’s proper: Barbie has a household, and it’s fairly massive. And in Barbie’s present incarnation within the motion pictures and TV exhibits (which extends to a variety of toy counterparts), her household performs an enormous function in her life.

Ever since 2018, Barbie’s animated adventures have been slightly extra grounded in actuality than the solely fairy-tale-based tales of the early 2000s. (Although she does nonetheless get to befriend mermaids and swap locations with princesses.) In her latest tales, she’s only a common woman from Malibu, albeit with massive desires and an astonishing quantity of free time to place these desires into motion, when she isn’t getting pulled into wacky adventures. The 2018 Netflix present Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures kicked off this period. Extra importantly, it dives into the lives of Barbie’s household, who had beforehand simply been facet characters in Barbie’s story.

Since her early days, Barbie has all the time had members of the family, together with a number of discontinued youthful siblings and cousins who’ve been eradicated from canon. However now greater than ever, they’ve been closely emphasised, to the purpose the place a couple of of them have had motion pictures and TV exhibits of their very own. Right here’s a who’s who of the Barbie household mythos — and what Skipper’s so far that her toys aren’t emphasizing her boob progress.

Picture: Mattel Tv, Mainframe Studios/Netflix

Skipper Roberts is Barbie’s OG sister, first launched in 1964, and the Barbie sister talked about in Gerwig’s Barbie. She’s the second-oldest sister within the Roberts household, at 14 years previous, although she was initially launched as an 8-year-old. Rising Up Skipper got here out in 1975, again when Skipper was a blonde, and he or she’s come a great distance since these days. The doll was briefly discontinued in 2003, however revamped in 2009. The present incarnation of Skipper is a brunette with streaks in her hair, and he or she’s good, tech-savvy, and an aspiring innovator and DJ. She stars in the latest animated Barbie film, Barbie: Skipper and the Massive Babysitting Journey.

Picture: Mattel Tv, Mainframe Studios/Netflix

Stacie Roberts was first launched in 1990, as a flower woman within the Wedding ceremony Get together Midge set. She was initially named Kelly, however that identify was then repurposed for the youngest Roberts sister. Stacie was reintroduced in 1992. Within the present canon, she’s a aggressive, athletic 11-year-old who’s all the time prepared to leap into motion. She’s the one sister who hasn’t had a stand-alone film but, however Barbie: Stacie to the Rescue is scheduled for a 2024 launch on Netflix. As the center youngsters, Stacie and Skipper are the closest.

Chelsea Roberts is Barbie’s youngest sister, although you would possibly know her as Kelly, or in Europe, Shelly. She was first launched in 1995, then rebranded as Chelsea in 2011. She has a giant creativeness and loves animals, and canonically turns 7 in her solo film Barbie & Chelsea: The Misplaced Birthday. She was the star of the Barbie YouTube sequence Barbie: Dreamtopia.

And opposite to standard perception, Barbie and her sisters truly do have mother and father. They’re closely featured in Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures, and generally seem within the Netflix motion pictures. Margaret Rawlins Roberts is the matriarch of the household, a pc engineer who designed Barbie’s high-tech DreamHouse. (Her unique iteration again in 1960 was a homemaker.) George Roberts is Barbie’s dad, a documentary filmmaker. (His unique iteration was an engineer.) Neither of Barbie’s mother and father have doll variations, although, which explains why they aren’t residents of Barbieland within the Gerwig film.

Picture: Mattel Tv, Mainframe Studios/Netflix

Barbie has much more prolonged kinfolk who seem within the motion pictures and TV exhibits, although few of them even have doll counterparts. (Additionally, monitoring what’s canon within the Barbie movie-verse will get slightly funky previous to 2018.) In fact, including in Barbie’s sisters and kinfolk would’ve bloated Gerwig’s Barbie, and surfaced a variety of logistical questions. (Would each Barbie in Barbieland have three sisters? Would the Skippers simply be everybody’s communal little sisters?)

However Barbie has been many issues, and “massive sister” is likely one of the extra grounded and approachable roles she presents for little ladies enjoying with Barbies. The films that dig into Barbie’s relationships together with her sisters provide a brand new facet to the often flawless trend doll. Because it seems, being a giant sister is tough work! And although Barbie does her greatest to be there for her little sisters, she doesn’t all the time make the fitting selections. It provides her a extra human edge, identical to Margot Robbie’s Barbie within the live-action film.