EDICOLA NEWS: THE REVIEWS nr. 318
album: Barbie, together we shine (Panini)
stickers: 176 (1-176)
starter pack: album + 2 packets 2,90€
box: 36 packets (5 stickers per packet) 1,00€ each
blister: 5 packets 5,00€
What world would it be without Barbie? Fresh from the incredible success of the film, Panini takes advantage of the opportunity to propose a new album dedicated to the Mattel doll. Considering that a few months have passed since the last album there is no other explanation. It’s a shame, we imagine for rights reasons, that there is no trace of the film on the album. Even just a dedicated part would certainly have created a lot of interest.
Over the years, creating a Barbie album has required increasingly diversified research to arrive at a product that can be captivating. Many years have passed since the first Panini albums released in the 80s. The Modena publisher’s graphic designers certainly had fun with this mix of stickers, glamour, interaction and even memorabilia.
The cover is among the best created by Panini in recent years, not so much for the choice of the image, which is quite standard, but for the shimmering effect and pleasant to the touch. The quality of the album paper is finally worthy of the name while remaining shiny and not opaque.
Of course, after so many years and after so many albums, it’s difficult to invent something new and original, difficult but not impossible. In our opinion, Panini succeeds. Leafing through the pages we find ourselves catapulted between Brooklyn and Malibu, alternating the adventure with chapters on the world of Barbie and the characters that populate it. Space for images in stickers but also a set of captions that make the completed collection almost like an illustrated book.
If anything, the album lacks a certain repetitiveness in the format of the stickers, always horizontal rectangular (which feels very 80s) but perhaps the choice is intentional, as if leafing through the pages were a film or, if desired, a photo novel, or rather a “figuromanzo“. Second part of the more diversified album with self-contained pages, this time the stickers become vertical rectangular and the always cute and fun shaped stickers are added.
This standard format is also repeated in the central poster, which is also important for keeping the album compact, certainly the most successful part of the album, where little girls can dream (why do they stop as adults?) of the job they would like to do when they grow up.
The other interesting aspect is the mix of stickers, if the same in format, different in content. “Real” Barbies, comic and cartoon Barbies, small and large fans of the most loved doll in the world. The page that introduces us to some of the many models created over the years by Mattel makes us think that that could really be a winning idea or at least something that breaks the mold.
Bring the sticker album with all the dolls produced over the years to newsstands and, why not, toy shops, or rather adding the rare and never distributed ones, as the recent film at the cinema also suggested.
Standing ovation for the choice, for once (and in the case of an album like this the risk was very high), not to load the collection with useless cards. Although the cost of the sachets remains the now consolidated 1 euro, at least the collection of 176 stickers, with a bit of luck, could allow, with the purchase of a box of 36 sachets, to partially complete the collection, with only the addition the purchase of the few missing stickers directly from the publisher.
Unless of course you don’t pass through Bologna and you can take part in our sticker exchange days and even more so in the great FIGUCON event scheduled for Sunday 14 January 2023 at the Estragon Club.
Anything to add? Barbie forever!
(EN)