About

1970 "Special Barbie Month" Commercial is a viral vintage commercial for Barbie that regained popularity in 2023 after it was discovered by a TikTok user. The video has led to several works of fan art involving the commercial's two characters.

Origin

The commercial originally aired during the month of June in 1970, and was first posted to Vimeo (shown below) by Ira Gallen^[1] on March 16th, 2018, to embed on his vintage television website TVDays.^[2] In the commercial, a very excited girl talks to a mellow girl about a free membership to the Barbie fan club along with other free Barbie items. Afterward, the mellow girl runs off to claim the offer herself.

The commercial was reposted to TikTok by surroundedbystatic^[3] on September 7th, 2023, where it received over 296,000 views and over 77,000 likes in three days. The TikTok video was then reposted to Twitter on the same day by luvsygn^[4] where it received over 38,000 likes and over 5,700 retweets in over three days. The Twitter post also led to a wave of fanart of the characters.

Spread

The commercial quickly inspired fan art of the two characters on social media. An art thread of the commercial's characters was started on 4chan's /co/ board on September 7th, 2023,^[5] and was followed by another /co/ art thread on September 9th, 2023^[6] (examples shown below).

Popular examples on Twitter include a September 8th tweet by @jupiter9099^[7] that gained over 320 retweets and 1,800 likes in three days (shown below, left) and a September 9th post by @Scribby64^[8] that gained over 760 retweets and 5,600 likes in two days (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable

External References