Barbie fans uncover secret reference to rival doll in Barbie film

Barbie fans are convinced the movie features a cameo by a controversial character in the doll’s history.

Barbie fans are convinced that one of the doll’s biggest rivals makes a cameo in the film. Picture: Warner Bros Pictures

Warning: Barbie spoilers ahead

It seems there is nothing Barbie fans love more about the hottest movie of the year – aside from the pink, the cast, the vibes, and the pink – than spotting its hidden references and subtle Easter eggs sprinkled throughout.

Fans have been poring over every pink detail of the highly-anticipated Greta Gerwig flick since the first trailer dropped, going into a hot pink frenzy with every “genius” tid bit uncovered.

But since the film’s record-breaking release weekend, once Barbies and Kens had a chance to take in Barbieland’s full pastel glory, theories are swirling about the more subtle pop culture nods.

One particular theory speculates that the filmfeatures a subtle cameo by Barbie’s biggest rival: the Bratz dolls.

Fans have taken to social media to unpack their theory, honing in on the scene where Barbie (Margot Robbie) travels to the real world and goes to a high school while searching for the girl she believes is responsible for her existential crisis.

At the school, she comes across a teenager named Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) and her three friends who give the cowgirl-dressed Barbie a brutal reality check about her problematic history in the real world.

“We haven’t played with Barbie since we were, like, five years old,” Sasha tells Barbie.

“You’ve been making women feel bad about themselves since you were invented.”

Margot Robbie (as Barbie) seeks out the young girl she thinks has caused her ‘perfect’ life to go awry. Picture: Warner Bros Pictures

Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt; second, left) and her three friends (played by McKenna Roberts, Sasha Milstein, and Brylee Hsu) give Barbie a harsh reality check. Picture: Warner Bros Pictures

One TikTok user, Ivan Mars, posted a video saying it took him three trips to the cinema to realise the group of teens bear an eerie resemblance to the original four Bratz dolls named Yasmin, Sasha, Cloe, and Jade.

And though the three friends – played by McKenna Roberts, Sasha Milstein, and Brylee Hsu – being unnamed “Junior High Friend” characters, their apparent ringleader Sasha shares not only a name, but a nickname with one of Barbie’s biggest rivals.

In the Barbie movie, Sasha’s mother Gloria (played by America Ferrera) calls the teen “Bunny Boo”, which according to TikTok users and the Bratz fandom page, is the same nickname as the Sasha Bratz doll.

The four original Bratz dolls Cloe, Jade, Sasha, and Yasmin were launched in 2001 and quickly overtook Barbie in popularity.

TikTok users were overwhelmingly convinced by the theory, with some saying they “knew it” all along, and others “can’t believe” others picked it up before them.

“Both Bratz and Barbie were everything to me as a kid. It’s so cool seeing this little reference,” one user wrote.

“Bro I would have never in a million years thought of that,” another user commented.

Someone else added to the theory, writing that the Sasha character’s clothing give away the Bratz reference.

“Sasha also didn’t get traditional Barbie clothes when they got to Barbieland it was more trendy like the Bratz dolls outfits,” they wrote.

Some suggested that the quartet were not a reference to the Bratz but another Mattel product: the My Scene girls Madison, Chelsea, Delancey, and Nolee – which were made to compete with Bratz.

More dolls featuring in a movie about the world’s biggest doll? It only makes sense. Picture: Warner Bros Pictures

But it hardly makes sense for a characterisation of one of Mattel’s own dolls – one that was made (but ultimately failed) to compete with the hugely popular Bratz dolls – to call the original Mattel doll a “fascist”.

It perhaps makes more sense that the dolls that overtook Barbie’s popularity just years after launching and contributed to a long-running legal feud between Mattel and MGA Enteratinment have a cameo as the too-cool teens that make Barbie cry.

Bratz were created by ex-Mattel employee Carter Bryant and launched in 2001 as a cartoonish – all puffy lips, bug eyes, spidery limbs, and chunky feet – alternative to the more than 40-years-old Barbie.

Bratz and Barbie dolls have been at war since the early noughties.

He sold the idea for the “Girls with a Passion for Fashion” to Mattel competitor MGA Entertainment two weeks before he quit the Barbie parent company. It took three years for Bratz to overtake Barbie in sales.

Then came tit-for-tat legal battles between the companies. MGA reportedly struck first, suing Mattel in 2005 claiming their My Scene dolls were copies of the Bratz image.

In 2006, Mattel filed their own suit against Bratz creator, Carter Bryant, alleging he was employed by Mattel when he developed the concept – which a federal jury ruled was true in 2008.

Then in 2010, the US Court of Appeals overturned Mattel’s copyright win – it claimed the Bratz was modelled after Barbie – saying dolls were “unprotectable ideas”.

Barbie filmmakers have not commented on whether there is a reference to Bratz dolls on the movie but, really, in a movie full of references to the life of Barbie it only makes sense for some cheeky reference to the dolls that gave Barbie a rude awakening and dethroned her.

And, I mean, Sasha and the girls being Bratz dolls does go some way to explaining the, dare we say, “bratty” teen attitude that she meets Barbie with.