The story is juicier than that. In 1992, Mattel came out with a talking Barbie doll. She said almost 300 phrases such “I love shopping!” and Let’s have a pizza party” and “Math class is tough!” On that one, women libbers went completely nuts, or should we say, more nuts than normal.
Mattel caved and offered buyers a replacement Barbie who thought math was fun. Smart shoppers, almost no one turned in their old Barbie for the sterilized version. Those Barbies are now big collector’s items and sell for over $1,000. Mattel made 100,000 of them before they were pulled.
I never knew a plastic kewpie doll could be so valuable. Some do collect them the way others collect stamps. I don’t know if there are many stamp collectors anymore.