Though the Barbie movie is sparking a lot of conversation for its critique of the patriarchy, a few of the doll’s greatest foes who have no connection to the hegemonic group went completely unnoticed by some viewers.
The film features a sneaky little nod to Mattel’s rival toy company, MGA Entertainment, and their most famous line of dolls representing girls with a passion for fashion.
In the film, Margot Robbie’s Barbie encounters four teenage girls in the real world that do not like her. While this may seem like a scene that is merely there to showcase how the blonde bombshell’s unrealistic beauty expectations are perceived negatively by some people nowadays, and indeed it does serve such a purpose, there’s actually more going on here than what’s on the surface.
Luckily, a TikTok user uncovered the truth about this unexpected Easter egg: the four teenagers represent the original four dolls with the Bratz lineup of fashion toys. In fact, the characters even have the same names as the Bratz dolls: Sasha, Jade, Yasmin, and Chloe.
The Sasha character, played by Ariana Greenblatt, is kind of a central figure in the movie since it is her Barbie doll that has come to life from Barbieland. The three other girls are each listed on IMDb as Sasha’s junior high friends: McKenna Roberts, Brylee Hsu, and Sasha Milstein.
In real life, Bratz dolls represented real competition for Barbie in the toy market in the early 2000s. The rivalry even generated a lawsuit related to Bratz creator Carter Bryant allegedly forming the idea for the dolls while working for Mattel, only to sell it to MGA Entertainment, as The New Yorker explained.