Apart from the obvious doll-like Barbie heads, Mattel makes some really pretty head sculpts. I saw this Beach Barbie brunette (Mattel puts no names on the boxes) in a bin of discounted toys at a local department store, noticed her lovely smile and big green eyes and was instantly smitten.
Her head is more doll-like than the true CG heads, it is slightly bigger (but at 27mm width and 40mm height it still is credibly sized for a 1/6 scale head) and her eyes and mouth are considerably larger but I consider that part of the charm.
Apart from the long legs and tall neck, the Beach Barbie body has fairly realistic proportions but unfortunately it is rigid, as are the arms which only move at the shoulders, the legs however are soft skinned and come with posable knees. The feet are realistically sized and almost flat but also a bit floppy so she isn't really sure-footed.
I became convinced that her lovely head would look even better on a CG body as the slender Barbie body with its tall neck makes the head look bigger than it actually is.
A quick check of the skintones of the loose CG bodies I have revealed that the slightly orange tan of the cloned CG v2 type B bodies matches the Barbie tan fairly well. I double-checked by taking a picture as the camera often reveals skin tone mismatches that are hard to notice with the naked eye.
So I picked a CG v2B body, cleaned up the seams and slightly modified the neck.
Then I carefully removed the head from its Barbie body and fitted it to the CG body.
Just for fun I tried to put the Barbie bikini on the CG body, the velcro closures wouldn't meet but when viewed from the front it didn't even look too bad.
For now I put her in a tight white spandex jumpsuit.
To fit a Barbie head to a CG neck, the edge of the neck needs to be rounded off in side view and sanded to a round shape of about 11mm diameter (this won't impair the fit of CG heads). Once sanded the ABS plastic looks slightly more pale, this can be restored by applying a thin coat of mild solvent based modelling glue suitable for ABS (I used Tamiya Extra Thin Cement cat.nr. 87038).
After reshaping the neck, an adapter of some kind is needed to fit inside the head as the regular CG neck pin is smaller in diameter than the Barbie neck hole is.
On the MWD forum a great tip was posted describing an easy way to make an adapter:
Cut a 20mm circle out of a soft plastic (high density polyethene aka HDPE) container lid using a compass cutter. The plastic I used is about 0.6mm thick.
Then cut an X across the center (cuts of about 6mm long, 3mm on either side of the center) and cut a 2.5x2.5mm hole in the center to allow for the stem of the neck pin.
Finally I cut part of the sides away to make it easier to fold the disc when inserting it into the neck hole.
Making an adapter
original CG neck
reshaped CG neck
CG neck with adapter, ready for fitting a Barbie head
Her head is more doll-like than the true CG heads, it is slightly bigger (but at 27mm width and 40mm height it still is credibly sized for a 1/6 scale head) and her eyes and mouth are considerably larger but I consider that part of the charm.
