Barbie and the Rockers: Out of This World (1987)

Directed by

Bernard Deyriès

Genre

children's film

Country

United States

Runtime

50 min

Rated

G

Rating

7.0 of 10 from 50 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Barbie leads a rock band. She and her friends go on a musical adventure that takes them away from Earth.

lightheartedenergeticplayfulupbeatwhimsicalcolorfuloptimistic

What happens

Barbie and the Rockers: Out of This World is a 1987 American animated television special created by DIC Animation City with Saban Productions featuring popular Mattel character Barbie. The story was based on the Barbie and the Rockers line of dolls, which featured Barbie as the leader of a rock band. The special originally aired in syndication. It was later released as a single tape (on VHS, or an exceedingly rare Betamax tape) by Hi-Tops Video. Foreign rights were assumed by Channel 5 Video, a joint-venture of Heron Communications (owners of Hi-Tops) and PolyGram. A sequel was broadcast in 1988 under the title Barbie and the Sensations: Rockin' Back to Earth. Mattel had largely avoided media centered around the Barbie character prior to this special's release, in large part because of their reluctance to provide personality to a doll long seen as a "blank slate" for girls to use their imaginations with. However, competition from Hasbro's Jem line—which had a daily cartoon in syndication at the time—prompted Mattel to begin multimedia expansion. The miniseries was allegedly supposed to have been the pilot for a daily Barbie cartoon series. However, negotiations between DIC and Mattel fell through, and the project eventually emerged with a whole new set of characters—and the sponsorship of Mattel rival Hasbro—as Maxie's World in 1988. (These plans, if they existed, were likely unrelated to a planned live-action/animated hybrid newsmagazine under the Barbie name that Mattel had planned for 1987; this show never made it to air.) (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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