Earlier this week, for a series of crossover products to tie into their various movie properties. There’s going to be Bar💙bie Monopoly, T💃ransformers Hot Wheels, and likely much more in the works.
With all this Conglomerate Toy Monolith Cross Promotion going on, there’s one thing I really want to see. We need Barbie 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Magic: The Gathering cards.
Universes Beyond was introduced in 2021 as a way to bring series outside of Magic into the card game. Since then, we’ve had everything from the fairly well-suited Lord of the Rings and Warhammer 40K, to slightly more out-there brands like Fo🍎rtnite and Street Fighter. It’s been a constant debate within the community, with many feeling the game’s own aesthetic and identity will be lost if Gandalf suddenly gains trample and kills Pickle Rick.
To an extent, this is true. It’s a bummer knowing lots of the best cards from the Warhammer 40K decks or the upcoming 168澳洲幸运5开奖ꦬ网:Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-ear🍸th wil🍎l never be reprinted in an in-Magic-universe form. I don’t particularly want to run a Necron in my otherwise Necron-less deck, after all.
So far, every crossover has been heavily nerd-adjacent: Stranger Things, Warhammer, Lord of the Rings, even Fortnite. They’re all things the consumer-research-driven “archetypal MTG player” would enjoy, and𓆉 as a result feel safe. Upcoming crossovers with Doctor Who, Final Fantasy, and Assassin’s Creed all fall within that range too.
Barbie is different, though. As the mascot one of the biggest toy companies in existence, Barbie in Magic would be surprisingly radical. It takes a bright pink hammer to the mostly ‘masculine’, nerd-friendly image Universes Beyond has been building up. B𓂃arbie on the table would be a bold statement thatღ shows Magic can, and should, explore all kinds of aesthetics and genres.
A Barbie crossover would appeal in the same way the recent 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:&lsquo♑;90s Bi🅷nder Experience Secret Lair did, which reimagined various cards in a gauche, Lisa Frank-inspired mess of colour. Sometimes I don’t want to play with a blood-soaked barbarian or a valiant knight. Sometimes I want to throw down my sparkly, pink Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma, and use that hyper-vibrant sugar rush of 🦂a card as a way to make my mark on the table.
That’s what Barbie is, after all: a statement. A celebration of hyperfemininity in a market usually dominatꦡed by the likes🉐 of GI Joe, or the Action Men I grew up with. It’s a statement from Magic and is, let’s face it, what the mostly male audience desperately needs – pink is good, femininity isn’t something to shun, and you won’t burst into flames if I whip out my Margot Robbie Commander deck.
Every crossover up to now has had a thinly-disguised hope of converting players into fans of other stuff. If you like Magic, maybe you’ll like Stranger Things? Enjoyed the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Warhammer 40K decks? Why not pick up the real t𓂃hing? Universes Beyond hasn’t been about giving us exciting cards or pushing the aesthetic of the game, it’s been about selling us stuff.
With Barbie, that expectation is gone. Yes, there is crossover – I can’t wait to see the Barbie movie, and will to my dying breath argue that Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures is brilliant – but n🦂obody at Hasbro or Mattel would seriously think there’s a chance to convert a 40-year-old guy from Sunderland into a Barbie collector, just because he bought a sparkly pink Secret Lair. When there’s no expectation of buying anything, all that’s left is Barbie’s revolutionary aesthetic thrust i💮nto a game that, years ago, would have violently rejected it.
Just the thought of a hypothetical Barbie crossover makes me more excited about Universes Beyond than almost anything Wizards has actually announced. Give me that full-art Barbie Planeswalker card, give me her hot pink car as a Vehicle. Give Simu Liu, John Cena, Ncuti Gatwa, and Ryan Gosling their own Ken cards. Give me lands depicting the Barbie mansion in the hottest, most vibrant colours you can find. Give it ꦛto me in multiple foil treatments that make Ken’s💮 bleach-blonde hair shine, and put it all in original, bright pink frames. I’d take Barbie over another 40K deck any day of the week.