MyCelia™ EcoWarrior goes where no Barbie® has gone before: to the frontlines of changing the world!
With this revolutionary collection of inspirational climate activists, children of all ages bring to life cathartic fantasies of tampering with fossil fuel infrastructure, halting rainforest logging, soiling famous paintings, and other heroic acts of useful sabotage! Mattel knows that saving the planet is no child’s play. But why not?
The first five members of the MyCelia™ EcoWarrior Barbie® team are:
| Activist Actor! Daryl Hannah Guerrilla Gluer! Phoebe Plummer Rainforest Revolutionary! Nemonte Nenquimo | Climate Crusader! Greta Thunberg Redwood Rebel! Julia Butterfly Hill |
Each member of the MyCelia™ EcoWarrior Barbie® team includes a full set of stylish direct-action accessories that mix and match to inspire tactical problem solving and fun strategic disruption.
Kids 3 years and older will be sparked to find creative ways of strategically disrupting the system! The MyCelia™ EcoWarrior Barbie® Dolls are a great fit for any child with a big imagination whose dreams of furious justice are waiting to be unboxed!
Barbie MyCelia™ EcoWarrior Decomposable Dolls Go Plastic-Free
MyCelia™ is the first Barbie designed to die, just like us. Just add time and the elements, and watch Barbie decompose!
Ynon Kreiz, CEO of Mattel, is quoted in a press release dated 1st August 2023.
“We have made more than a billion plastic Barbies, and enough is enough”
“With our plastic-free commitment, we denounce the empty promises of plastic recycling and take a bold step towards real ecological sustainability. Only sustainably produced toys can provide sustainable joy.”
said Ynon Kreiz, CEO of Mattel
Each MyCelia™ Barbie doll is made from a proprietary combination of engineered mycelium, farmed seaweed, wood cellulose, and compressed bamboo commemorating Mattel’s historic commitment to a plastic-free future.
Mycelium is the fungus that mushrooms are made from and can be used to make lightweight, inexpensive and durable building materials ranging from building blocks, styrofoam, wall tiles, and particle boards. The materials are biodegradable, strong, fire-resistant, and offer insulation power. Mycelium is a natural, biodegradable alternative to plastic.
MyCelia™ Barbie® celebrates direct action that protects the environment!
Renowned actor Daryl Hannah’s passionate advocacy for environmental causes makes her the perfect ambassador for Mattel’s sustainability mission.
“I am honored to join forces with Mattel in their visionary efforts to create a better world through play”
“Barbie has changed in many ways since I was a girl, but under the surface, she’s still toxic.”
“Now, when she’s done being used, instead of persisting forever as a poison Barbie will be able to return to the earth, just like all living things. I am thrilled to be a part of this exciting journey.”
Daryl Hannah said.
Clockwise from top left: Guerrilla Gluer! Phoebe Plummer; Redwood Rebel! Julia Butterfly Hill; Rainforest Revolutionary! Nemonte Nenquimo; Climate Crusader! Greta Thunberg; and Activist Actor! Daryl Hannah.
The MyCelia™ EcoWarrior Barbie® line begins with these five living legends of climate activism, and will expand biweekly with the new EcoWarrior Casualty Collection™ effigies of those killed in the line of environmental defense, largely in the Global South.
But the EcoWarrior lineup does not end with these living role models. It will expand to honor more than 2,500 dead activists from around the world who have been tragically lost while protecting nature in the last decade.
said the press release.
MyCelia™ Activist Actor! Daryl Hannah Barbie®
MyCelia™ Activist Actor! Daryl Hannah Barbie® carries an oversized pink monkey wrench suitable for shutting down a 1:6 scale gas pipeline unit (sold separately). She stands up for what’s right, even if it means getting arrested.
Daryl Hannah is a well known actress (Hannah was Pris in the original Bladerunner!) who uses her high profile to publicise environmental and humanitarian causes. Hannah has been arrested:
° in 2006 (stopping bulldozers destroying the largest urban farm in the US);
° in 2009 (protesting a mountaintop coal mine in West Virginia);
° in 2011 (protesting in front of the White House against the proposed Keystone oil pipeline);
° in 2012 (charged with criminal trespass along with the land owner (trespassing on her own land!?), 78-year-old great grandmother Eleanor Fairchild for blocking heavy construction equipment on the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline);
° in 2013 (arrested for handcuffing herself to the gates at the White House along with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. protesting against the proposed Keystone Pipeline). There are no plans from Mattel® for a Robert F. Kennedy™ companion for Barbie® at this stage.
Daryl Hannah married Canadian rocker Neil Young in 2018, bonding over their shared love of environmental and social activism. Daryl Hannah is on Instagram as dhlovelife
MyCelia™ Guerrilla Gluer! Phoebe Plummer Barbie®
MyCelia™ Guerrilla Gluer! Phoebe Plummer Barbie® wears a “Just Stop Oil” T-shirt and day-glo vest with a U-lock (universal neck-sized to work with any Barbie®), soup can, Van Gogh painting, and real super glue. They get the world’s attention on climate issues by throwing soup on the glass covering a priceless painting!
Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland, both 21-year-old students, were charged with criminal damage when they drenched the glass-covered priceless “Sunflowers” by Vincent Van Gogh with Heinz cream of tomato soup. They then glued themselves to the wall of the National Gallery, London, with Plummer asking:
“What’s worth more: art or life? Is it worth more than food? More than justice? Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?”
Phoebe Plummer
Just Stop Oil say they have only one demand – no new oil and gas licenses in the UK. Phoebe Plummer is on Twitter
MyCelia™ Rainforest Revolutionary! Nemonte Nenquimo Barbie®
MyCelia™ Rainforest Revolutionary! Nemonte Nenquimo Barbie®: Models an oily rubber glove, Waorani string necklaces, and a miniature Goldman Environmental Prize, Map of Ancestral Lands and Land Agreement.
Nemonte Nenquimo took the Ecuadorian government to court to protect the Amazon from oil drilling—and she won in a 2019 ruling that protects half a million acres of Waorani ancestral land in the Amazon rainforest
In 2020, the United Nations Environment Programme awarded her the “Champions of the Earth” for Inspiration and Action, and the same year, Nemonte Nenquimo was named in the Time 100 list of the 100 most influential people in the world, the only Indigenous woman on the list.
MyCelia™ Climate Crusader! Greta Thunberg Barbie®
MyCelia™ Climate Crusader! Greta Thunberg Barbie® sports Greta’s signature yellow raincoat and comes with an erasable protest sign and backpack holding a functional set of bolt cutters. She skips school to stand up for what’s right!
Greta Thunberg is a Swedish environmental activist who challenges world leaders to take immediate action for climate change mitigation. In 2018, at age 15, she started protesting on Fridays outside the Swedish Parliament holding up a sign reading Skolstrejk för klimatet (School Strike for Climate).
Student strikes have been happening every week around the world after Thunberg addressed the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference, telling world leaders and the UN that they weren’t doing enough to protect present and future generations from the effects of climate change.
Greta Thunberg is on Twitter and Instagram
MyCelia™ Redwood Rebel! Julia Butterfly Hill Barbie®
MyCelia™ Redwood Rebel! Julia Butterfly Hill Barbie® comes with a hemp “Activism is Patriotism” T-shirt, ropes, and a 5-gallon bucket filled with poop emojis. She tree-sits to protect them from loggers!
Julia Lorraine Hill (known as Julia Butterfly Hill, born February 18, 1974) is an American environmental activist best known for her tree sit in a 1000-year-old, 200-foot (61 m)-tall California redwood tree for 738 days between December 10, 1997, and December 18, 1999 to prevent Pacific Lumber Company loggers from cutting it down.
Julia Butterfly Hill continues a tradition of nonviolent forest protest that began with the Chipko movement in India in 1973. Chipko set the precedent for non-violent direct action (NVDA) protests used by many environmental movements all over the world. Chipko literally means ‘tree hugger’ so it is not the insult that some people use it as.
Julia Butterfly Hill has her own website.
Barbie MyCelia™ EcoWarrior Pussy Riot & Direct-Action Accessories
The Pussy Riot accessory kit (sold separately) features colorful balaclavas and guitars to instantly transform the My Celia™ Barbie collection into dissident punk band Pussy Riot.
Play out revenge and revolution fantasies against despots real and imagined!
The MyCelia™ Manual includes instructions for civil disobedience and non-violent direct action, a coordinate map of the oil and gas pipeline network and its vulnerable junctures, and a pastel pink “Know Your Rights” handbook for activists by the American Civil Liberties Union.
EcoWarrior Barbie in the news …
Coverage of the plans by Mattel to go plastic-free and release their new EcoWarrior Barbie collection appeared in People, Dow Jones Newswires, Market Watch, the Washington Post and other mainstream media. But …
It was all a hoax and the infamous Barbie Liberation Organisation quickly claimed responsibility releasing another press release that also looks like it came from Mattel …
“EcoWarrior” Barbie Is Tasteless Hoax
EL SEGUNDO, Calif., Aug 1, 2023 – Reports that Mattel, Inc. (NASDAQ: MAT) is releasing a “MyCelia” Barbie made from decomposable materials are entirely false. Mattel will not be lobbying the federal government for a ban on plastic or otherwise changing its business or production practices.
“Mattel is the victim of a hoax perpetrated by trolls toying with the emotions of Barbie fans everywhere,” said Michael Pellegrino, Senior Director & Assistant General Counsel, Mattel. “We will expose them and bring the full force of the law against these bullies. Mattel is all about fun, and this is not fun.”
Additionally, Daryl Hannah is not a Mattel partner, nor is Mattel connected with Russian dissident band Pussy Riot. Although Mattel deplores acts of violence against environmental defenders, the company will not be making dolls based on murdered South American ecoactivists, or transitioning to biodegradable materials, as published on the illegal fake website.
“The memories of these people have been cruelly dishonored by these pranksters,” said McKnight. “Furthermore, those who died do not represent a market demographic that Mattel serves, so the very idea that Barbie would glorify them is patently absurd.”
“Barbie is enjoying a cultural moment that she has earned thanks to her iconic status and devoted following,” continued Pellegrino. “It’s a shame that a few sour opportunists want to steal her spotlight for their own agenda. There is a time and a place for appropriate conversations regarding toy manufacturing and the environmental crisis, but this is not it. Fortunately Barbie’s spirit is strong, fun, and resilient, and she will overcome this.”
Who are the Barbie Liberation Organisation?
The latest Barbie hoax was the work of the Yes Men, culture jamming activist duo Igor Vamos and Jacques Servin (aka by their alter egos Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum), and Daryl Hannah.
The Yes Men, and the Yes Lab raise awareness about problematic social and political issues. Over the years, they’ve targeted Dow Chemical and McDonald’s and Adidas and Starbucks.
Igor Vamos is Associate Professor of Art and Technology at Renssellaer Polytechnic Institute and Jacques Servin is a Visiting Professor at New York University’s Department of Performance Studies. Together, the duo have produced three films: The Yes Men (2003), The Yes Men Fix the World (2009), and The Yes Men Are Revolting (2014).
With Barbie-mania in full swing around the release of the Barbie movie, Vamos and Servin were making a documentary about the original 1993 BLO prank with Hannah when she suggested they target Barbie again.
In 1993, Mattel came up with the idea for a talking Barbie to compete with their arch-rival Hasbro’s talking macho GI Joe. All well and good until Barbie blurted out “Math is hard” and outraged feminists began plotting revenge.
As it turned out, the voice boxes of G.I Joe and Barbie could be transplanted and swapped, so a fiendish plot was hatched and the Barbie Liberation Organisation was born.
BLO members bought hundreds of the toys in different cities and sent them in for voice box transplant surgery. Each toy was carefully removed from its packaging, their voice boxes swapped over, and returned to the shop shelves they came from. That’s not stealing, right?
On Christmas day in 1993, kids were dismayed to discover their new GI Joe’s purred “I love to shop with you” while other kids heard their new talking Barbie dolls growl “Dead men tell no lies.”
To maximise media coverage and ensure discussion about gender stereotypes, the BLO included a fake instruction sheet with the phone numbers of major media organisations, and a voicemail number for the BLO. The idea was that kids would open their Christmas toys, parents would call the numbers, and the media would cover the story.
The day before Christmas, the BLO sent out a press release claiming responsibility for the switch, hoping the media would twig to what had happened when they started getting calls from parents.
The BLO kept extra dolls on hand ready to head to the nearest toy stores to any media outlets who phoned the voicemail number and make a switch with the real dolls. BLO members were still in one toy store and they watched as a journalist arrived, found the doctored talking toy, tested it, and then buy the talking doll for their story!
Australian EcoWarrior Barbie® activists
EXCLUSIVE: Mattel Australia will soon release an Aussie line to complement their Julia Bishop™ Barbie®.
Bulga Glider Barbie® and Newry Gnome Barbie® featuring forestry protesters standing up for the native timber forests and endangered animals who live within. See the Save Bulga Forest group, and the Bellingen Activist Network.
CO2 Coal Barbie® and Fracking Emissions Barbie® are ready to lock on to machinery to stop the carbon and methane extraction industries.
Far Ken Greenie®, the famous EcoWarrior known associate of Barbie® will make an appearance just in time for Christmas shopping. Foresters, frackers and followers of a certain political party are known to chant his name whenever he appears.
