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Barbie® and the Three Musketeers Barbie® as Corinne™ is shown here with Barbie's old 1998 open-mouth head sculpt; Teresa® as Viveca™ has Barbie's current head

So, it looks like Barbie®'s having a full-fledged identity crisis. We just cleared up the mystery of the new closed-mouth head that's missing-in-action, and now we're confronted with a new question: What open-mouth head will Barbie be using from now on?

These catalog pictures of some upcoming dolls take the confusingness introduced by the pictures from Toy Fair and add an extra dash of spicy confusingness to the mix.

As you can see in the picture to the left, this Barbie as Corinne™ doll from Barbie and the Three Musketeers has the 1998 "Generation Girl™" head - just like the doll in ASM's pictures from Toy Fair. And the Teresa® as Viveca™ doll has Barbie's current head, also just like the one in ASM's pictures.

(These are different dolls, though - the ones in ASM's pictures are the "deluxe" versions that have a costume-change feature and will be available at places like Target and Toy 'R' Us; the ones in this picture are the less-expensive versions that will be sold at places like grocery and discount stores.)

Halloween Treat™ Barbie® is shown here either with the current Barbie® head or with a new one that looks a lot like it

Meanwhile, the grocery and drug store Halloween doll (which is called Halloween Treat™ like I mentioned here) has a head that looks like it could be the current one, but the mouth somehow looks "less-happy" to me. It sort of looks like the open-mouth head in the Fab Girl picture shown here - but, as with that picture, it could just be the lighting or something making it look that way. In any event, this is a different head from the one on the Three Musketeers dolls.

Holiday Scene™ Barbie® appears to have a new head with a "pointy" chin

Now, here's where it gets interesting: The 2009 grocery and drug store "holiday" doll, Holiday Scene™, is shown with yet another head, and this one is definitely new. It has an open-mouth smile and what looks like a very pointy chin.

Maybe this is some kind of yule-tide "nutcracker" feature (like, you're supposed to use her pointy chin to crack open walnuts). In any event, this bumps the total up to three (possibly four) different open-mouth head sculpts shown on upcoming dolls.

Just to summarize, my guess would be that Barbie is definitely getting a new head, but for whatever reason the the existing 1998 "Generation Girl" sculpt is (or was) being used on prototype dolls that will be produced with the new face. (Maybe the new one wasn't ready when the prototype dolls were constructed?)

Who needs Agatha Christie novels or Murder She Wrote DVDs when you have real-life intrigue like this?

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