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The internet is astounded at a rare toy a woman’s mother kept for decades, which she’s now been reunited with.
Leah McGee, 35 and from Iowa, who posts to Threads under the username leahmcgeah, had a whole host of Barbie toys when she was growing up, telling Newsweek “they were a favorite for me and my two sisters.”
This isn’t unusual, as Barbie has been among the most popular children’s toys since its release in 1959, going on to spark multimedia franchises including video games and a major live-action adaptation.
In 2023, 64 years after the first iteration of the doll was launched, Mattel had global gross sales of around $6.1 billion—with £1.5 billion coming from Barbie alone, according to Statista.
‘Stoked to find them’
However, while many people’s childhood toys may have found new homes, or been tossed away as their owners outgrew them, in McGee’s case, her mother made sure not to lose a single thing.
“My mom was the queen of keeping all our toys, so we have several totes full of Barbies and Barbie accessories,” McGee told Newsweek.
“I was playing with my daughter and niece with the Barbies, and my mom had kept all the shoes in a bag. I wondered if the sparking rollerblades from the recesses of my mind were in there, and I was stoked to find them.”
In a Threads post on July 20, McGee wrote: “My mom kept allll our Barbie stuff. Look what I found.”
Sparks Fly
The poster shared a photograph of what at first appeared to be ordinary accessories for a Barbie: tiny pink plastic rollerblades, with a green see-through sheath covering the wheels.
But a video showed the true treat behind the discovery: as McGee rolled the blades along the table, sparks shot and crackled out from the side.
The Rollerblade Barbie, first released in 1991, was advertised with the catchphrase: “Skates flicker ‘n flash!”
Mattel no longer makes this particular doll, and the sparks caused some controversy when it was first released.
A 1994 article in the Colorado Gazette Telegraph saw a journalist spray clothing with hairspray, before rolling the Barbie’s rollerblade over it—causing it to burst into flame.
“The sparks are kinda wild, [to be honest]. I forgot HOW sparky they were,” McGee wrote in a comment under her post.
In a follow-up post to her original Thread—which received more than 22,000 likes and hundreds of comments—McGee declared that her mother, “kept EVERYTHING.”
Along with further photos of her old childhood toys, she joked: “I also had fun dressing Snow White up in various outfits to go clubbing later.”
Her post had a big reaction, with one commenter sharing their own pair of Barbie rollerblades and asking: “Hi, did we just become best friends?”
Elsewhere, “Barbie went hard in the 90’s, y’all,” another said, as one admitted: “I TRIED starting fires with those things and was never successful.”
‘Big reaction’
McGee, now a mother herself, told Newsweek that her kids, “got a huge kick out of them,” and while she thought the internet would be interested in seeing the blades, “I didn’t expect such a big reaction.”
“I think I underestimated the deep love for nostalgia Gen X and Millennials have! It’s always so fun to see something you remember from your childhood. Takes you right back to simpler times.
“Especially when the simpler times included the threat of a small Barbie-induced fire,” she joked.
Newsweek has reached out to Mattel for comment.
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