{"id":1218,"date":"2008-07-01T18:51:13","date_gmt":"2008-07-02T01:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vernabob.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/01\/barbies-piano\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T15:44:23","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T22:44:23","slug":"barbies-piano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/vernabob.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/01\/barbies-piano\/","title":{"rendered":"Barbie’s Piano"},"content":{"rendered":"

barbie-piano.jpg<\/a>Why is this Barbie Piano<\/strong> special? Well, because, this one has provenance. <\/p>\n

You see, back in 1980, I worked for Mattel Toys in Hawthorne, CA as an engineer in the preliminary design department. I designed electronics for prototypes of all sorts of toys, including remote control cars, self-guided racers, sound effects for a hot wheels airborne transport toy, and the piano sounds for Barbie’s Piano.<\/p>\n

I collaborated with another prototype designer who did the mechanical development. My job was to develop an electronic piano sound. I actually got a patent for the ‘decay modulator’ circuit, which was the heart of the semi-realistic sound. When a key is struck, the tone fades out gradually just like a real piano.<\/p>\n

When it came time to demonstrate the toy to Mattel’s president, Ray Wagner, we brought the model in, sat Barbie down on the bench and I made my first and only professional musical debut as I plunked out “Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ using Barbie’s hands on the keys.<\/p>\n

keyboard.jpg<\/a>“I love it,” said Ray, as he clapped his hands with approval, “let’s get it into toy development and go with it!” After the piano went into production, even though I was not working at Mattel, they called me in and gave me this one when it was new.<\/p>\n

I saw an original Barbie Piano on eBay today with a selling price of 160USD. And that was without the bench and the instruction\/songbook. I imagine that this particular one might be worth a bit more with my signed statement about its development and my role in it.<\/p>\n

While this one has never been owned by a child, I used to indulge my granddaughters and let them play with it. As a consequence, it’s not completely pristine and the little wands used to play the tiny keys are missing. A mistake, to be sure, but you should have seen the pride in their eyes knowing granddad invented this toy.<\/p>\n

Please, click either image for a wallpaper-sized close-up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why is this Barbie Piano special? Well, because, this one has provenance. You see, back in 1980, I worked for Mattel Toys in Hawthorne, CA as...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-classics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/vernabob.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/vernabob.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/vernabob.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vernabob.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vernabob.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/vernabob.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8320,"href":"http:\/\/vernabob.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1218\/revisions\/8320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/vernabob.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vernabob.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vernabob.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}