Come On Barbie, Let's Go Party
February 18, 2009 It all started with those kitschy toilet-paper cover dolls:
I think every grandmother was required by law to make enough of these things for her family to cover a mountain of TP. (My personal favorite was our red-dressed flamenco dancer. You?) After this was done, those dear crafty souls had to come up with new ways to use their stockpile of doll torsos.
Enter: the doll cake!
It was understandable when at first children assumed they were being served yarn and TP. Here Jenn L. is saying, "How about you put that over there and go fetch me my real cake, before someone throws a hissy, Ok?"
Fast forward 30 years or so, and doll cakes have come a long way. Why, just look at all the diverse styles they come in now!
The "Hawaiian Shaving Brush":
The "Easy-Chair-Under-Her-Dress":
("My lap! My lap! My lap is on FI-YUR!")
The "Girls-Shouldn't-Have-ALL-the-Fun":
And the ever popular "Climb Every Mountain":
Cherie, Andrea M., Sanne, & Cattie P., all together now: "Life in plastic - it's fantastic!"
Reader Comments (251)
The "I'm-a-Little-Teapot" looks more like an "I'm-a-big-drag-queen" doll cake.
OMG, that third one is totally Courtney Love... That said, my grandma actually made the dolls for our beds and not toilet paper. Still only a torso in a dress, but it was meant to sit as a decoration on the pillows. I put mine through the washer. She died.
Hilarious!!! The one with her lap on FI-yur is SUPER funny. And I don't think I want to know the story about the Ken doll!!
I loved this post! It makes me not feel so bad about my own experience with A Doll Cake.
I posted my first experience here http://gladysspeaks.blogspot.com/2008/12/because-you-asked.html making my very own Barbie Cake for my Grandaughter. It was a Pink Peptobismal Explosion of Barbie goodness.
That teapot barbie cake is creepy, and I didn't know Ken was like that! LOL
~Amy B.
I made one of these for my daughter's 4th birthday! It was pretty atrocious, but I didnt pay $50 for it! I had to break Barbie's legs off to get the proportions right. You can see it http://theliebers.blogspot.com/2007/10/frances-4th-birthday-cake.html" REL="nofollow">
here in all its glory!
Who put an Earring Magic Ken in a cake? Those things are collector's items! Seriously, there a gay guys who would pay a lot of money for one of those.
Ah, yes. Eaaring Magic Ken. Yes, folks, you're seeing the upper half of the outfit he actually came in,(minus the purple leather-look vest) complete with, um...an ornamental pendant. My college dorm mates chipped in to buy one of these as a tree-topper for our dorm Christmas tree. We made paper wings and a pipe-cleaner halo for him. Wanna make a cake outta that?
wv: "tings." How do people come up with these tings?
Too funny. Someone should do an cake celebrating Barbies Birthday - A 50 year old Barbie!
those are AWESOME!!! Especially love the one with the candles in it. I kind-of think that these are definitely the "no-candles-necessary" kind-of cake!
So, I think on the hula cake, the barbie maybe wearing a very precarious frosting bra?
for the do-it-yourselfers out there, they sell half-doll-torsos-on-a-stick at joann fabrics in the bridal section. everytime i see them i have a flashback to a wedding i was in.... the maid of honor was sooooo excited about the "treats" she made for all of the bridesmaids. i'm sure you can guess they were doll cakes, but she gave them all haircuts and proportions so they were eerily similar to us in our dresses. i saved mine to "show my mom", took it home, and promptly disposed of it. i was pretty sure it was trying to steal my soul.
come on now...I think the hawaiian skirt doll came out quite nicely...everything else though.... not so much
"It's a kilt!" says Ken.
hilarious!!
Am I the only one that gets grossed out by the thought of doll hair in the frosting??? EEEWWWWW!!!!
But I LOVE the Ken doll cake! Cockring indeed!
wow - those are . . . incredible!
I spit out my coffee when I reached the Ken doll... HA HA HA HA! What a collection!
o.O
Thing that pick and white was a cake given the the mother of those octuplets?
awesome.
To The Courteous Chihuahua: I hadn't even noticed that until you brought it up. OMG!!! Too funny. I was totally opposed to doll cakes until I saw that Ken doll.
Ha ha ha! Jen, I think this is the funniest post yet-and I've read them all! You are truly talented.
Um, is Hawaiian Shaving Brush Barbie wearing a frosting bra? Uhhh... *looks around furtively* where can I get one of those?
Okay they're cheesy but it was the perfect cake for my friend who's a drag queen.
Awww man! I should send you the picture of my Goth Chick doll cake a good friend made for my birthday one year. Her top was made from electrical tape and she had black hair with purple streaks (like me at the time). Granted, it wasn't professional but it was darn good!
Wow, I'm surprised no one has commented on the Hawaiian doll's icing top. There's so much that could be said about that...
And I totally have 'Barbie Girl' in my head. I'll be singing that for weeks :-(
If Ken's sexual orientation was still in doubt, it isn't anymore. Ken has been "outed", Cake Wrecks style!!
Are you sure the last one is "Climb Every Mountain" and not "Don't Cry For Me Argentina?"
Unrelated: Tag. You're it. I've tagged you on the Premios Dardo award
DANG! That Ken doll cake is just...WRONG! Dude, if you must put Ken in drag do it right and put some make-up on the poor guy for god's sake. And give him a good looking hat and purse to match his outfit.
ROTFLMAO!
We need smileys on here lol
OMGoodness, this is one of your funniest posts yet!! I literally burst out laughing at the fire barbie!! Hilarious!
Yep, my grandma made those, too!
My friends mother made one of these and she highly reccommends that you don't use candles. Apparently Barbie's hair is extremly flamable. Isn't that a beautiful image?
when I was about 8 my mother made one of these and it turned out freally well actually! she baked the cake in the mixing bowl from her Cuisenart and decorated it minimally with swoops of "fabric". I think the best part is she just took the top half of a dollar store "baribe" with a barbie top and put it on top. That way you didn't have to pull the whole barbie out. It makes me sad that other have had such "barbie ballgown" disasters. I suppose when you don't have much you can often do a lot.
I was saddened by the title of your post, because my favorite cakes as a kid were the Barbie cakes.
Then I saw your samples.
Oh, my.
Oh, my, my ,my. My memories are tarnished forever. And the Ken cake just may have made me snort coffee out my nose. Maybe.
Well done.
I LOVE these wrecks!!! I am guilty of making one of these for my daughters 4th birthday and wondered about where to put the candles... we opted for in the cupcakes made from the extra cake mix as opposed to trying to set her lap on fire.
Oh, and the pictures from the beginning. I was at a family wedding when I was a little girl where the wedding cake was a traditional tiered cake plus there were SEVEN of these doll cakes each in a different color for the bride and bridesmaids to match with the actual wedding party!!! I wish I had a picture of that one!
To borrow a phrase from a popular TV show, "Seriously?"
Wow, this really brought back some memories of Grandma....
Instead of toilet paper we had a large basket the size of a clothes hamper. Our doll was life sized!
I have been the recipiant of both TP-hider doll toroso and Barbie-Birthday cake.
I'm scared... so scared...
By the way you got that damned song stuck in my head the moment I read the title of this entry. I hate you so bad right now. LOL.
Reminds me of about 12 or so years ago when Mattel brought out a Birthday Barbie when she was popping out of a cake. I referred to it as 'stripper Barbie' I still wish I had picked one up because they disappeared pretty quickly off the shelves probably after some complaints.
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I have a Ken doll put away for making one of these for DH's birthday...complete with the quote "hope your birthdays not a drag" Just waiting for the big 4-0
Thank you now I am singing Climb Every Mountain, I appreciate it. The "Easy Chair" one looks more like she's terrified of catching on fire or like there was a big gust of air that was only from the waste up.
I went to a 4-yr old's b'day party this weekend with one of these. Sick sick sick. The torso is molded to an enormous spike.
Sherry
They are bizzare enough just to look at (the Ken cake?!), but the idea of hair - even fake hair - that close to my food is too much. ~SHUDDER~
Aw, man, my mom used to make one of those doll cakes for me every year (until I got old). Oddly enough, I think we had that same couch, too.
ROFL! Too bad about Dolly's arms, because otherwise that would be one rockin' cake. Well, not for a five-year-old's birthday, which is what I presume most doll cakes are for. But I like her.
The Ken cake is awesome too except that no self-respecting drag queen would wear a skirt that ugly.
But anyway, I've never SEEN a TP cozy version of a doll cake before! Did the TP cozies really come first? They are truly awful, of course, but then, so is that entire class of objects. Decorative TP covers are just weird no matter WHAT they're supposed to look like. (I will admit to a small fondness for certain Kleenex box covers though.)
OMG! The best! And Ken...what a naughty boy...who knew? Ok...we all knew!
Hilarious ! I wanted a Barbie Cake for my birthday when I was a little girl and never got one...I think this year I'll order one ! LOL
OMG! I saw a couple of these being made on an old episode of Martha Stewart recently (via her daughter's show on FLN called "Whatever, Martha! -- incredibly funny, I'd recommend it) and thought of this website immediately.
So I'm very excited/pleased/vindicated to see the doll cakes showcased here today.
AAAH! My mom made me a barbie cake for my birthday one year and I LOVED IT! My birthday's in Halloween so she was a witch - dark green icing, too, which made all us kids happy because we could run around with abnormally-colored tongues.
I got my first Barbie cake at age 39 *sniff*
Here's me and my blue Barbie cake and matching blue furry birthday hat my friends made me wear.
http://tinyurl.com/dmzgrc