I stumbled across an interesting eBay listing over the weekend: a set of 45 rpm records from 1961, “sung” by Barbie and Ken (the back cover identifies the real singers as “lovely Charlotte Austin” and “handsome young Bill Cunningham”). The record jacket and lyrics pages are illustrated and make for a nice mini-update.

Jodi Benson, best known as the voice of Ariel, The Little Mermaid, has recalled in interviews that as she was preparing to voice Barbie for the Toy Story series, someone from Mattel told her that she would be the very first actress to give voice to this iconic character. Benson found that amusing because she’d heard exactly the same spiel when she voiced Barbie for a 1991 aerobics video (“Dance! Workout with Barbie“). I was aware of a few earlier examples of Barbie’s voice–the doll herself was speaking way back in 1968!–but this set of records may actually be the very first time that Barbie had a voice.

The six songs in the set were written especially for Barbie and Ken. Luckily for those of us without record players, today we can hear Barbie sing! on YouTube, and the songs are better than I expected. Austin’s singing style is more Doris Day than Annette Funicello. You can hear a sample, plus view some additional illustrations and very limited animations, in this lovely TV commercial:

See more images from this curiosity on the eBay listing.

Where to next? This post is an illustration “sidebar,” meaning short and sweet. Our most popular sidebar is on the Busy Gal Fashion Sketches, while the most recent covers Barbie and friends illustrations on mod house exteriors. The top post on the entire site concerns Mattel’s fashion booklets; or just head up to the Table of Contents to see more options.