Éric Chatillon: A 25-Year Journey Collecting Barbie Dolls and the Special Bond with the Lyon Region

Éric Chatillon recounts the special bond that unites Barbie and the Lyon region from her early years.

“I have been collecting Barbie dolls for 25 years”. Éric Chatillon, from Lyon, shares some of his childhood memories of one of the most famous dolls on the planet.

Stories, going back to his childhood and which he entrusted to BFMTV. “When I was a child, I played with an Action Man and my aunt Nicole (…) lent me the Barbie of her childhood”, recalls Éric Chatillon, author of the book “Barbie in France”.

A few years later, around his thirties, the Lyonnais then visited an exhibition at the Paris Doll Museum devoted to “the first ten years of Barbie”. The latter then found “the doll of (his) childhood”, which he ended up buying at a flea market.

“I had put my finger in the gears, now I have a lot more”, confides the collector to the microphone of BFMTV.

Over 300 Barbie dolls

Today at the head of a collection of more than 300 dolls from the Mattel brand, Éric Chatillon recounts the special bond that unites, from his earliest years, Barbie and the Lyon region.

“In the 1980s, there was a law to save the French toy which was going very badly. Like what, to advertise on television, the toy had to be produced in Europe”, explains the Lyonnais on our antenna .

“So Mattel has relocated part of its production, for barbie in particular, to Oyonnax, near Lyon and we have Barbies that are marked on the back ‘Made in France'”, continues the latter.

The story of the doll will also very soon be adapted on the big screen, with Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.