‘TORTOISE mania’ may have taken over the Island this summer, but businesses have said that ‘Barbie mania’ has left a similarly sized – and high-heeled – footprint on the season too…
Released a month ago, the Barbie film – directed by Greta Gerwig and starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling – has already surpassed £1 billion at the box office worldwide.
It is also the UK’s highest grossing film of the year, with £84.7 million made so far.
And the ‘Barbie bounce’ has been felt in Jersey’s Cineworld too, according to a team leader at the cinema.
‘It’s been really busy, a lot busier than normal,’ she said.
‘It’s been hectic, to be honest. We’re seeing pre-Covid numbers come through the doors.
‘It’s died off a bit now, but it’s a big change for us to see this.’
‘It’s mostly because of Barbie,’ she admitted, ‘although there are a few here to see Oppenheimer’ – the film by Christopher Nolan about the birth of the atom bomb.
‘There are a lot of different age groups too, with more people aged around 30 or 40 than you’d think, not just teenagers.’
‘It’s whether those numbers translate to further on in the year, and whether this is the start of a big change for the cinema.’
Chris Spence, assistant manager at The Entertainer toy shop, also said that sales of Barbie products had ‘gone through the roof’.
‘Even before the film came out, it was already going up.
‘We’ve also had people come in here dressed in pink, kids singing Barbie songs as they’re walking around the shop. ‘Then, since the film came out, sales tripled again.’ He added that it was limited not only to Barbie dolls, but Ken dolls also, saying: ‘The whole range, all of the stock, has just gone.’
Mr Spence said that after selling out at first, the shop was now ordering three to four times more stock than normal to ‘catch up with the boom’.
‘I was expecting a little boost, but nothing like what we saw.
‘It has definitely helped our sales, not only for the summer, but for the whole year.’
