Kelly or Shelly?

 

I’ve been going through a big lot of vintage baby and toddler dolls recently and I came across one that stumped me. I could see it was Barbie’s little sister, Kelly, but she has an open mouth like for a bottle and a lever on her back that moves her arms up and down. As far as I ever knew Kelly is about 6 years old, way too old for a bottle! And this doll was dressed in what I later found out is a Heart Family footed sleeper.

As you probably know, I don’t consider myself a Barbie expert. I don’t repair a lot of Barbies, or I didn’t until pretty recently. So I once again went down the rabbit hole of the Barbie internet and eventually found the 1994-95 Bathtime Fun set with a splashing Shelly doll. You moved the doll’s arms with the lever on her back to make her splash in the water and the set came with a full-sized doll bathtub. Wait, Shelly? Does Kelly have a twin? How many kids do Barbie’s parents have anyway?

There’s Barbie of course, and Skipper, and Stacie, and Kelly, and apparently Shelly, and Chelsea, and Krissy. Poor Mrs. Roberts! Barbie was a teenager when the doll first arrived on the scene but she’d long grown up and must have been about 30 when her “baby sister” Krissy was born, making her mom around 50. A late-in-life baby. 

Barbie of course can’t ever be a mother because Mattel has decided she’s too pure or something. It’s left to her friend Midge to pop out babies or the Heart Family mom whose name is evidently just “Mom”. The only time Barbie has been portrayed as a mother is in the Coming Home series given to Chinese adoptees who stayed at The White Swan Hotel. So, she can be a mother as long as she doesn’t get pregnant, therefore implying she had sex I guess. Mrs. Roberts is left to struggle on through pregnancy in her latter years to supply Barbie’s family.

Anyway, further research revealed the exact same set but with the doll named Kelly. Turns out, her name was Kelly in America and Shelly in Europe and when she debuted she was much younger, probably around 2. Of course she still has hair down to her knees. You’ve got to love Mattel and their impossible beauty standards! The Heart Family twins are babies but the girl also has ridiculously abundant hair that looks like her mom has to style it with hot rollers even though she’s only like 18 months old. The Heart Family kids are called “toddlers” but they have baby doll bodies. They’re also HUGE. Mrs. Heart probably has to spend a lot of time at the chiropractor after carrying around her mammoth children. I don’t envy her delivery of twins the size of 5 year olds!

I found out Kelly and Shelly were toddlers at first. They came in sets with all kinds of adorable accessories. Then they aged to around 4 or 5 and were sculpted with closed mouths instead of the open mouths for bottles. In 2011 Mattel retired them and debuted Chelsea as a replacement. Chelsea has the same name no matter where in the world she’s being sold. She was 6 years old at first and then turned 7. All the Kelly, Shelly, Heart Family, and Chelsea dolls are 4.5 inches tall and wear the same size clothes.

I would probably know more about these little dolls if my daughter were a different age. When she would have liked to play with tiny baby Krissy (who really is amazingly well-made and sweet) or Kelly there was a gap in the series. At least in our area I never saw them for sale. She did have an Asian-looking doll around the same size but I can’t remember if it was a Mattel doll. It wasn’t Kelly and this was before Chelsea was released. I do remember seeing a set with Kelly and her friends once before my daughter was born, so maybe it was one of the friends. I believe strongly that it helps children to see themselves reflected in their dolls so I was always buying Asian child and baby dolls with white parents for her dollhouse and things. We have two Coming Home Barbie dolls but they’re too valuable to play with because they’re so rare.

At any rate, now you know as much as I do about Kelly and Shelly! There are several Kelly, Skipper, Shelly, Krissy, and Barbie dolls for sale in my shops as well as the Heart Family twins. Link from https://mandaline.myclickfunnels.com/shop

Watch the video of her arm movement by clicking here.