Barbie-mania is within the air, due to the hotly anticipated summer blockbuster “Barbie” starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.
HGTV is onboard too, with its recent reality competition show “Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge,” which counts HGTV star Tiffany Brooks amongst its judges.
“My immediate response [to being asked on the show] was ‘In fact.’ I didn’t care what else I had planned. I needed to be there,” Brooks told The Post.
“Having been on a few of their competition shows before, I do know that every one of the network stars eat, breathe and live to be competitive,” she said. “I even have not yet met a non-competitive person on the network. So I knew they were able to win.”
Hosted by model Ashley Graham, “Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge” airs Sundays at 8 p.m. and follows eight teams of HGTV stars as they transform a Southern California house right into a real life “Barbie Dreamhouse.”
Each team is given an area, akin to the kitchen or lounge, and assigned a decade (the ’60s, the ’90s, etc.)
Then, they transform their designated space with life-size features that appear like they’re straight out of a Barbie Dreamhouse toy set — including a pink staircase, a purple pet elevator or a light-up dance floor. The panel of judges decides which team gets to advance to the subsequent round, and the winning team gets a donation made of their name to Save The Children.
Brooks, 44, a Chicago-based interior designer, is an HGTV staple. She won “HGTV Star” in 2013 and he or she was also the host/designer for “HGTV Smart Home” in 2020 (and a competitor on Season 2 of “Rock the Block.”)
She’s also a Barbie fan from way back.
“I even have a complete of nine Dreamhouses and Barbie structures. I principally have a Barbie town. A few them, I made myself, and a few them, I refurbished,” she said. “And a pair I purchased outright. So, I’m sort of a fanatic. It’s a fun hobby.
“I had my very own Barbie town once I was 10,” she said. “I ended fiddling with them once I hit the age of 12 or 13. I picked it back up as an adult once I lost my father, because that was one in all the things my dad would do — every week, he’d receives a commission and buy me a recent Barbie doll or play set along with his pay check.
“He’d come home and surprise me with it. I picked it back up after I lost him, and it grew until I had a Barbie village, with a food market, movie show, restaurant … I even have a nod to Barbie in my very own house –my library is hot pink. The bookshelves, the ceilings, the partitions, the whole lot.”
The competitors on the primary episode of “Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge” include couple Egypt Sherrod and Mike Jackson (“Married to Real Estate”) who compete against builder Jasmine Roth (“Help! I Wrecked My House”) and Food Network’s Antonia Lofaso (“Beachside Brawl”).
Kitty Black Perkins, who’s credited with designing the primary Black Barbie, makes an appearance and Maureen McCormick (“A Very Brady Renovation”) also appears as a celeb guest judge, joining Brooks.
“The teams should echo a decade of their home,” said Brooks.
“Additionally they needed to have a ‘toyetic’ feature, which is like within the Barbie dreamhouse, you press a button and something happens. In order that they were judged on that, and overall style, and the way well they carried out the entire look.
“One thing that I used to be in search of was an actual reference to the Barbie Dreamhouses, or a play set of the many years that they got,” she said. “Iconic features just like the trellis work, or among the patterns that Barbie used.
“One other thing I used to be in search of is to make certain a human of our size could use the toy features within the space itself.”
