Marie-Philip Poulin
The Marie-Philip Poulin celebrity doll depicts her at 29 as herself, a Canadian professional ice hockey player. The doll was release by Mattel in November, 2020 to celebrate Canadian hockey and was part of a promotion with the Canadian franchise/restaurant chain Tim Hortons (Hortons also sponsors Upper Dick Team Canada professional hockey trading cards). The doll retailed for C$29.99 and was only available in Canada. The Celebrity Doll Museum also has the Sarah Nurse Barbie doll in the collection.
Poulin scored the winning goal for gold in both the 2010 winter Olympics games in Vancouver and the 2014 winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. In 2015 she became captain of Team Canada, winning the silver medal in the 2018 winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korean. She also is captain of the 2022 Canadian Olympic women’s hockey team in Beijing, China.
From the box:
…Tim Hortons® Barbie® doll inspires girls to explore their limitless potential and encourages them that they can be anything including a hockey player. Get on the ice with Barbie® as she suits up in her Tim Hortons hockey jersey, grabs her helmet and hockey stick and hits the ice with her team. It’s game time, so she enters the rink and with a whoosh, skates across the ice and works with her teammates to get the puck towards their goal…
While Mattel doesn’t officially call the dolls the Poulin and Nurse dolls, it was certainly strongly insinuated and advertised that way. Perhaps it was a professional sports licensing reason they couldn’t.
The official Tim Hortons’ website said the following in their press release when the Barbies were released in 2020.
The partnership between Tim Hortons and Barbie also includes support from two Canadian women who have broken barriers in the sport of hockey: Marie-Philip Poulin and Sarah Nurse.
The Toronto Sun reported on November 19, 2020
…The dolls are a part of Barbie’s You Can Be Anything program to help young girls achieve their aspirations through positive role modelling. The partnership also includes support from two Canadian women who have broken barriers in the hockey world: Marie-Philip Poulin and Sarah Nurse. Poulin helped secure Olympic gold medals for Canada in 2010 and 2014, while Nurse won silver with Poulin and Team Canada in 2018, as well as being an ambassador of the Professional Women’s Hockey Player’s Association. The two Barbie dolls were created in the image of these titans of the ice….
The Hamilton Spectator, the hometown paper of both Poulin and Nurse, published an article on November 20, 2020 titled:
…The Nurse and Poulin dolls are limited edition Barbie models, selling for $29.99 at all Tim Hortons outlets for as long as supplies last, which will likely be until the end of the calendar year. All sales proceeds will be donated to support girls hockey through the Hockey Canada Foundation in an effort to attack females’ underrepresentation in youth hockey. …
The Tim Hortons Barbie comes wearing a red Tim Hortons hockey shirt with white stripes and white Canadian maple leaf on the front and the name Barbie and number 64 on the back. Two Velcro seams open at the shoulders to remove the shirt. Black knee length shorts, red socks on the legs (they are glued to the doll’s leg above the knee with double stick tape) and black removable plastic hockey skates with white blades and laces complete the uniform. The uniform is generic and both the Poulin and Sarah Nurse versions are identical. The clothes are complete removable if to remove the glue holding up the socks.
The doll has almost no articulation. Neck rotates and tilts in every direction; the shoulders do a full circle front to back and 90 degrees to the side; the hip joint allows the legs to go forward 95 degrees, backwards 45 degrees, and 10 degrees to the side. No knee, elbow, ankle, wrist movement. The right arm and both legs are fixed straight and the left arm is slightly bent in a fixed position. The feet are Barbie flat feet. The doll cannot be posed into hockey positions other than stiff legged skating.
To get the current prices of the Marie-Philip Poulin Barbie use these links. The museum gets a small commission for qualified purchase using the following links. The dolls are not always available in the secondary market.
Here is the official Hortons Hockey Barbie youtube video. They show them holding their Barbies at the very end.
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