quinta-feira, 28 de janeiro de 2016

Review and Deboxing: Athena Barbie Doll - Collector's Edition





Life in plastic, it's fantastic!



I started collecting Barbies in the past two years. In Facebook, there are lots of collector groups where people show off their stuff, including OOAK (One of a Kind) dolls.
One of the things that I noticed was the lack of nice, high-res/decent res video reviews of the dolls. It's not like they're cheap, specially if they are old releases, and it's always nice to have as much detailed of a look into them as possible before getting them.

My first collector Barbie Doll was a Snowflake Ballerina from The Nutcracker, and I still want to get a new one, because 8-year-old-me wasn't very... Preserving when it came to the doll. Poor thing doesn't even have a left foor anymore, lol.

Last year, as a birthday gift, my family gifted me the one doll I coveted the most - Athena. And I guess you can see why I wanted her so bad. Girl's in full armor, shield and spear, as magnificent as it gets, badass, and one of the greatest goddesses in greek mythology.


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It doesn't get more plastic or more medieval than this.

Altough there's a lot of controversy amongst collectors about wether or not to take a doll out of her box (same argument is valid for just about any toy/memorabilia collectors), I just take all of mine out. I usually take pictures of how she's attached to the box before taking her out, and I never throw the boxes away. Of course they lose some value by doing this, but if you keep them safe from smoke and dust in a nice display, it doesn't become such a big deal.


Costed me about... 50 dollars to have a custom-made acrylic half box to keep my beauties safe from dust.


For Athena, I took the time to film the deboxing, but didn't really bring myself to actually edit and upload the thing until now.

This doll was released in 2009 and is part of a 3 Goddess series that include: Athena, Aphrodite and Medusa (though Medusa isn't really a goddess).

The back of the box brings a brief history of the goddess:



There is a great detail I love, But I couldn't really get into on the video or the whole thing would be too long.

Athena (AKA Pallas Athena) is the goddess of wisdom, warfare, strategy, strenght, craft and skill. She was born literally by jumping out of Zeus' forehead, born into the world like an idea from her father's head. Some versions say she was his favorite child. She was also known to never go into a fight without a fair reason.
She was the patron goddess of heroic endeavour, and aided Odysseus, Perseus and the Argonauts into their quests.
Her symbol is the Owl, which also stands as the symbol of wisdom.


Athena's and Medusa's story is entwined: The reason Medusa became what she became, is because Athena cursed her. To me, the story is pretty unfair upon Medusa, you'll see why:


Barbie as Medusa. Image from http://dollepic.blogspot.com.br/

Medusa used to be a beautiful, gorgeous woman, coveted by men. And one day, Poseidon dragged her into a temple dedicated to athena and raped her.
Perhaps because she couldn't avenge on Poseidon, Athena set her wrath onto Medusa, turnign her into the Gorgon, a horrible, ugly creature with serpents for hair, so she would never be coveted for her beauty again, and anyone who set eyes on her turned to stone.
So much for the goddess of wisdom eh? :P

Poor Medusa's tale doesn't end there...
Ages later, Perseus encounters Medusa and uses a mirrored shield to defeat her - pretty sure you know the story. To kill her, he cuts her head off, and delivers it to Athena, whilst the gods aided Perseus on his journey.
Athena then embeds Medusa's head in her own shield - the Aegis - and she shield becomes capable of turning people into stone. 
Some stories also claim Medusa had wings, and when she died, from her body came out Pegasus, the winged horse, and the Chrysaor, a golden sword-wielding giant.



Barbie as Aphrodite.

Hey, let's not forget the greeks were all about crazy ways of crap coming into life, such as Aphrodite being made out of... erhm... Zeus' "special sea foam". Yeah people, you got that right. Goddess of beauty was entirely created from man-cream.

Now what's interesting is the though Mattel and Linda Kyaw (the designer of the doll) put into detail for Athena. Her shield actually has Medusa's face on it. Not just regular medusa, but the doll version of her.



Anyway, this is the stuff that I didn't tell in the video, but really wanted to share the information.

For the video, I'm just sorry my voice was kind of messed up when I recoded. But here you go, please watch, all image details of the doll are there!

Hope you enjoy!






Now, If you're also a collector and would like to see a review (shorter than this one I promise), of any of my dolls, here's a picture of all of them toghether, and the list of their names. Just leave a comment and I'll be happy to do it as my next project!



From left to right: 
Athena
Empress of Aliens
Goddess of the Galaxy
Queen of Constellations
Haunted Beauty - Vampire
Maleficent (From Disney, not Mattel)
OOAK Dracula (Custom dress, original Dracula Head and Rosalie Body)
And my own handmade OOAK.



Farewell, and may the force be with you!



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