Thursday, October 17, 2013

life in the dreamhouse comments

There are now 43 episodes of Life in the Dreamhouse, which began last year on Mattel's Barbie website.  They vary in length between 3 minutes 20 seconds and 3 minutes 35 seconds.  I think they are far funnier than any sitcom currently on TV!  I laugh out loud quite a bit at them!  Why?
These mini-epics aren't just for little girls.  There are, of course, slapstick and sight gags, but there are also topics that their mothers and grandmothers will remember and/or understand, and the best parts are all the inside jokes aimed at adult collectors.
I'm not going to tell you which episode has which of these topics. You'll have to watch for yourself.  Like I said, some of these jokes aren't ones that a little girl would "get" yet, (no, it's not adult humor), and some only a collector would know.
For instance:
1.  Chelsea being called Kelly.
2.  References to The Godfather, Forrest Gump and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
3.  Continual jokes about hair (even Ken's), and the characters use oversized combs and brushes.
4.  Barbie's huge closet and all her careers.   Note the contemporary outfit packaging!
5.  How old is Barbie, anyway?
6.  Her car and airplane have to be assembled.
7.  All the backgrounds are decals.
8.  Plastic pox, and numerous references to everything being plastic.
9.  Barbie sells her entire wardrobe to a collector, who then decides she doesn't want it because the outfits have all been deboxed.
10.  My favorite character is Midge, who is the most beautiful of all of the characters and also the nerdiest!  When she is introduced, she is black-and-white and wears a flip hairdo and Friday Night Date.  It's her episodes that have the most collector jokes:  Willows, Wisconsin (the comment about the weather is the funniest one of all), George and Margaret, Roberts, Millicent and 1959.
The only problem with these episodes is that you do need updated software to watch them.  You'll also notice that the older episodes play through nicely, but the more recent ones stop in the middle of scenes to continue uploading.  Or maybe too many others are watching them at the same time, and it's causing a backlog.
http://dreamhouse.barbie.com/en-US/
My favorite episode has been #31 "Let's Make a Doll."

3 comments:

skippercollector said...

There are now some shorter videos available. One is of the new, longer theme song, which I really, really like!
http://dreamhouse.barbie.com/en-US/episodes/14a

skippercollector said...

I've discovered that if you watch the episodes on a different computer, the interruptions occur in different places. I suppose it depends on how much memory each computer has.

skippercollector said...

"A Smidge of Midge" is partially adapted from the movie "Pleasantville."