Saturday, April 29, 2017

SPP also had fashion booklets

Cute Tips for Shopping Trips is the name of the 1965 SPP booklet.

Barbie- and Skipper-themed luggage by SPP
There were two of these Barbie and Skipper trunks.
The other one shows them in horseback riding outfits.

No, I don't know why you'd want
a vinyl Frankenstein picture hanging in your room.

The back of the SPP booklet.



My boss, Anita, told me some shocking news yesterday, and NO, it wasn't job-related.  She has taken an interest in old Barbies since I've told her a lot about them, and she was at an antique store last week where the dealer had a Skipper case for sale.  Neither she nor I were interested in the Skipper case, but he told her about a booklet that he had with information about the SPP cases.
Standard Plastic Products made the Mattel Barbie cases in the early and mid-1960s.  I did not know that SPP also had a booklet that advertised all its sale items, very much like a Barbie clothing booklet.  Anita bought the booklet and showed it to me yesterday.  I nearly fell over; I had no idea such an item existed.
Although the booklet was undated, I believe it was from 1965.  It showed all the Barbie, Ken, Skipper and Midge cases and school supplies available that year.  It also had its own children's luggage lines, Beatles vinyl school supplies, plus a bizarre series of Universal Monster binders, wallets and pictures.  Lastly, it showed some small houses for its own line of toy animals, and the houses looked like what Mattel later used for its Kiddles dolls.  Did Mattel eventually buy out SPP and just use its designs itself?
I took some photos of the booklet, although not all the pages, because the booklet is actually quite thick.

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