The Barbie Shop Experience

After several delays, The Barbie Shop finally opened a couple months ago. Both my husband and I are not big fans of Barbie but my daughter, Audrey, has seen other kids around our neighbourhood whose had a few Barbies. So of course, she's been asking for one. After a few months of deliberation, I gave in and finally gave her one as she has accomplished a couple big goals I've laid down for her. So it was her reward.

Anyways, when we heard that a new Barbie Shop will open in Shanghai, my husband and I groaned at the thought of a whole building dedicated to Barbie. We just thought it would be rather tacky to say the least and all too girly.

So today, on our way home after spending hours walking around Shanghai, we decided to stop by the much-talked about Barbie Shop. And both my husband and I were rather impressed at what they've done in terms of decor and the atmosphere. There are a total of 6 floors! The top one is our favourite, The Barbie Cafe. Interestingly the decor was more chic than girly. They served gelato and lots of fresh shakes and cupcakes. We treated ourselves a bit to see if it was as good as it looked. Not disappointed at all. Coffee was nice.

There were a lot of interesting bits in the few floors below and a couple that we liked were the big stairwell mural housing rows and rows of Barbies wearing different costumes and all in the same shade of hot pink as on the brochure.

The other one was the wall that had a few of the bowl-shaped polished metal which had some amusing reflections. The kids just totally loved this. We couldn't pry them off these 'mirror bowls', as you can see from the photo.

All-in-all it was rather interesting and we might visit it again when it's not packed...