Doll Hospital

As you you know, I’ve entertained the thought of opening up a doll hospital since I was a kid. In general I find fixing things restorative and life has been plenty stressful lately. I also find shopping therapeutic. So I’ve been buying up celebrity dolls and vintage doll clothes. The original plan was to style the dolls to make TikTok videos inspired by Todd Haines’s movie Superstar which was a reenactment of the life of Karen Carpenter but with all the roles played by Barbies.

Now and then I come across some non-celebrity fashion doll oddities. And I can’t resist bringing them home. One example is Barbie and the Rockers from 1986. The line was introduced to compete against the wildly successful Jem and the Holograms (that’s Jem in the middle of the above photo). The story behind these girl groups is interesting but I won’t get into it here (not in this post, anyway) but I find Rockers all the time. And mostly their heads are wobbly or straight up falling off. The same phenomenon occurred with the Heart Family doll I got from my friend Sarah.

I have two Rockers — Diva and Dana. In the case of Diva (the red head), the grommet that attached the plastic neck to the rubber head became detached and was rattling around in the head. I retrieved the grommet and reset it into the neck. Easy peasy.

Dana was a trickier option. I tried just popping the head onto a donor Barbie with the same body type. It didn’t work because the opening in the vinyl head had stretched out. The Internet recommended tying a bit of string around the grommet to add extra width to account for the enlarged opening. That didn’t work. Wrapping a rubber band around the joiner was also suggested but others warned against as rubber bands tend to disintegrate.

Instead I wrapped some stretchy gauze (see photo above) around the top of the grommet to create the extra diameter. So far it’s working like a charm.

Next up on Doll Hospital: I will attempt to untangle these doll’s hair. And their outfits could use repair. Stay tuned!