Dr. Don Wood breaks down why the 2023 Barbie movie became a cultural phenomenon. Star power from Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling drove more interest than nostalgia, and online buzz mattered more than childhood memories. The film taps into Barbie's 65-year history as a global icon.
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So the Barbie movie is coming out. So you may be wondering what's all the mania about the Barbie movie? There seems to be a lot of talk about it now. Everybody's going to probably be wearing pink for a little while because it's going to create a big draw on pink. So what is the obsession with this Barbie movie? Well, Barbie's been a global icon since 1959. They've done a recent poll sort of looking at it and saying, what's the psychology behind this? What is creating all this buzz about it now? This is the first live action movie about Barbie. Mattel's never done a live action movie before. So what is the biggest draw? What would you think it would be? A lot of people, including me, would think it's really about nostalgia. But when we were children and you saw Barbie everywhere, so Barbie, especially for young girls, was a very popular thing. But is nostalgia really the reason why people want to go see this movie? Actually, it's not. Only about 24% of the people said it was nostalgia that was really drawn them to the movie. So what's the biggest draw? Well, I think because this is the first live action movie, it's really about star power. Margot Robbie. 30% of the people said they're going to see the movie because of Margot Robbie. 19% said they're going to see because of Ryan Gosling. So that's almost half the people surveyed said that they're going to see the movie because of the stars. So that's really not nostalgia being the biggest thing. Now 20% of the people said they're going to see it because of all the online buzz. They see all of this information out there all the time. So that's drawn them to create an interest in what is so exciting about this movie. They're going to go see it. So ever since we were kids, and especially even when I was a kid, Barbie was a cultural icon. Everybody knew the Barbie, everybody knew Barbie and Ken and all the stories behind it. So there was something back for a number of years ago called the Barbie effect. And the Barbie effect was really about how it was influencing young girls to have this perfect image of what a girl should be. Barbie created that. And so that created a lot of criticism about Barbie and the image that she was presenting. So Mattel really did sort of change a little bit and they adapted to that criticism. And so what they started to do is make Barbie a little bit more diverse, which was a good thing. And I think that's what you're really seeing now is a lot more diversity. So I think Barbie kept its image because they were able to diversify and go with the times. Now, what's the most popular Barbie doll of all time? Do you know what it is? It was in 1992, and the Barbie doll was the hair. Barbie was the most popular, selling 10 million. Obviously, that had no influence.
