My Size Barbie
The Barbie that was as tall as you were. Mattel's 1992 My Size Barbie stood about three feet high and came in a ballet outfit a little girl could take off the doll and wear herself, tiara included. It was the big-box Christmas present of the early 90s, and the doll that stared at you from the corner of the bedroom all night.
Mattel introduced My Size Barbie in 1992, a roughly three-foot-tall version of the doll with long blonde hair. The gimmick was in the name: her clothes were cut to fit the child too. The first edition shipped as a ballerina, with a stretch bodysuit, skirt and tutu, stretch ballet slippers, a tiara, earrings and lip gloss, so the outfit could come off the doll and go onto a girl in sizes four to ten, and the two of them could match.
The design came out of the Chicago toy-invention firm run by Jeffrey Breslow, Howard Morrison and Rouben Terzian, the successors to the famous Marvin Glass studio, whose credits also include Ants in the Pants, Guesstures, Brain Warp and Hot Wheels Criss Cross Crash; My Size Barbie is listed among their best sellers in the trio's Toy Industry Hall of Fame entry. Mattel kept the idea going through the decade with themed versions, including a My Size Bride and a My Size Angel, each with a wearable costume.
The doll's size was its whole memory. It came in a box nearly as tall as the kid opening it, it needed a corner of the room rather than a shelf, and it was either the best present of the year or the reason you slept with the light on, depending on who you ask. Original 1992 dolls in their boxes are now a collector item, usually described as "3 feet tall" and photographed next to a child for scale, exactly as Mattel intended.
Similar items
Barbie
Ruth Handler's fashion doll was already three decades old when the 90s arrived — then had one of its biggest decades anyway. 1992 alone delivered Totally Hair Barbie, the best-selling Barbie of all time, and the 'Math class is tough!' scandal. Every toybox had at least one; every sibling war featured a hostage.
Teen Talk Barbie
Press the button and Barbie chirped one of her four phrases: pizza party, dream wedding, meet me at the mall. About one doll in a hundred carried "Math class is tough," and in 1992 that single line got Mattel scolded by math teachers, condemned by the AAUW, and parodied on The Simpsons.
Dream Phone
The pink electronic board game where you called cute boys on a plastic phone to figure out which one had a crush on you. A deduction game wrapped in early-'90s sleepover fantasy, complete with a chunky toy telephone and recorded voices.
Easy-Bake Oven
A working toy oven that baked tiny cakes with the heat of a light bulb. You mixed a just-add-water pouch, slid the little pan in one side, waited an agonizing eternity, and pulled a real (if slightly rubbery) cake out the other — no grown-up oven required.