Vagabond Barbie, a.k.a. Vagrant Barbie

Most little girls grow up playing with Barbies. I was certainly no different. And I had the good fortune of being the fourth of four girls..so I inherited quite a good collection. (I think the crowning glory of my collection would have to be Weightlifting Ken...his muscles actually FLEX!)

None of our Barbies were named "Barbie." We gave them other names like Andrea, Cara, Sunny, Jan, P.J., Wendy Poobah, Christy, Tracy, Megan, and Marie Osmond. (The Marie Osmond thing is not so quirky as you would think, we seriously had a patented Marie Osmond Barbie, endorsed by Marie Osmond herself.)

Another thing you should know before I can fully and effectively explain Vagabond Barbie is that in the 70s, they also had a series of pseudo-Barbies called "The Sunshine Kids." They were basically like adolescent Barbie-type figures, about 3/4 the size of a traditional Barbie doll.

About five years ago, Mom made us go through the Barbie stash and pick out only what we thought might become collectibles...and to get rid of the rest. Inevitably, we started playing with them. We put Marie Osmond�s head (whose hair was all matty) on one of the Sunshine Kids� bodies. Then we put a hideous lime green overcoat on her, and two of Ken�s mismatched cowboy boots. Then we put some weird Malibu Barbie lei around her neck and gave her some torn up luggage and giggled at this homeless baglady-type Marie Osmond..whom we immediately christened "Vagabond Barbie."

The plan was to leave her in the box dressed like that, then forget about her, then come back in five years and find her and have a good hearty laugh about the whole thing. The only problem was...none of us could forget Vagabond Barbie!!! Shoot, I think about her all the freaking time! Look:

Recently for whatever reason, the Barbie box was out. And there she was...Vagabond Barbie! With her fake snakeskin suitcase over one shoulder, and the blue tote bag on the other. Only there was something inside the blue tote bag, and I didn�t remember this.

Do you know what was inside the tote bag?

Ken�s head.

I didn�t remember this, so apparently our original plan of surprising ourselves later worked really, really good.

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