‘Come on Barbie, let’s go party’: 28 Memes for all the Barbie girls who wish to live in plastic

Giuliana Tiscioni • Writer

Jul 15, 2026 6:00 AM EDT

Remember all the good times we shared with Barbie as young girls?

The iconic plastic doll Barbie has been around since 1959, so there are high chances that you grew up playing with them... Some girls only had a few dolls, while others had tons of Barbies and maybe even a few Ken dolls. The luckiest kids had the Barbie dream house too. Of course, all of that depends on the year you were born and how many toys Mattel had launched at that moment. We all lived in a different Barbie era.

The point is that Barbie was a fundamental part of our childhood. And, for millennials, the peak moment was 2001, when all of a sudden, BOOM! The first Barbie movie came out: The Nutcracker. To this day, the film is still one of my favorites, along with Swan Lake (2003) and 12 Dancing Princesses (2006). That last one was the start of my everlasting love for Barbie and ballet itself. It was fantastic that they chose to go with classical music and ballet for the first few movies. It opened the door for a whole new wonderful world of art for kids, that is usually considered old and boring.

Later on, the marketing team did a great job with the "You Can Be Anything" motto, and we got thousands of different career-specific Barbies. Was it an excuse to sell more toys? Absolutely. Did it also inspire a lot of young girls to dream big? Definitely, so it's safe to say it was not one of those evil campaigns.

The dolls and the movies were my favorite part of my childhood, and what I miss the most. My friends and I spent countless hours playing and making up the craziest stories in our heads. A few years later, I totally cracked up with the Life in the Dreamhouse TV show. It was a genius move to have a living Barbie aware that she was a doll. So, this is for all the moments Barbie spent with us as a doll, in the movies, and in the live-action as well. It sure brought back some good memories just like these Barbie memes will too.