Charles's Pages about Doll Stuff - www.dollstuff.net

"Quintessential Barbie®" 2010

Last year, as part of the promotion for Barbie's 50th anniversary, Mattel released photos to the press showing a Barbie doll wearing a dress from the Top Model™ line. The captions for the photos only identified it as "Quintessential Barbie 2009".

Dolls Magazine incorrectly reported that the doll was going to be released, which caused some confusion among collectors.

In actuality, the doll wasn't meant to be produced - it was only being used for promotion, intended to be the "quintessential" representation of what Barbie was like in 2009. (You can read more about Quintessential Barbie 2009 here.)

A similar set of photos was released for this year's 51st anniversary, showing a Barbie doll wearing a pink sheath dress who's only identified in the captions as "Quintessential Barbie 2010". Not surprisingly, this is leading some people to believe the doll is actually going to be produced.

I think it's just the same situation as last year - the doll is only for promotion, and "Quintessential Barbie 2010" is the name of the photographs, not the doll.

She looks a lot like Quintessential Barbie 2009, using the 1998 "Generation Girl™" Barbie® head sculpt and the same face paint design (which has ended up becoming the standard face paint design in the playline since Barbie changed back to her old head).

"Quintessential Barbie® 2010" changes Model 05's "little black dress" into a "little pink dress"

As for her outfit - it seems to be the same the strapless sheath dress worn by Barbie Basics™ Collection 001 Model 05 (the one with the 2000 Lea® head sculpt), just made out of pink fabric instead of black.