Golda & Barbie : Israeli ice cream teams up with famous doll

The wait is over. Barbie the movie finally opens on July 21 and the only person unhappy about that is director Christopher Nolan as the release date clashes with that of his of his own new film, Oppenheimer.

Unfazed by Nolan’s gripes, actress Margot Robbie meanwhile has been promoting the kishkes out of her role as the doll in Greta Gerwig’s film, which is the first cinema outing for Mattel, the toy company founded by Jewish Barbie creator Ruth Handler.

Mattel grew into an empire, but the doll with the enviable curves was never up for grabs as a brand. Not until Israeli-American Ynon Kreiz came on board as CEO in 2018, and he is now setting up brand partnerships that will generate millions including one with the Israeli ice cream chain Golda which will see their pistachio and white chocolate cone become as famous as Ken. That’s the doll, not the Ivrit word for a firm ‘yes’.

This Barbie collaboration has seen Golda’s pastel honed Instagram page turn into a festival of pink with the Barbie flavour of sweet raisin and meringue pieces taking centre stage. With competitions to win tickets for the film launched every day and Barbie fans lining up  at Golda’s 130 stores in Israel, other brands will be looking to get involved in the other Mattel toy-spinoff movies, Kreiz has in the works.

For now however it’s all about Barbie, with director Gerwig hoping the film will also evoke a deep Jewish experience. The feeling she wants to achieve, she told The New York Times, is the same one she felt as a child when she was a guest at the Shabbat dinners of close family friends.

Though Greta Gerwig is not Jewish, her co-writer and partner Noah Baumbach is, and will appreciate her recollections of the dinners which she says gave her “a sense of, ‘Whatever your wins and losses were for the week, whatever you did or you didn’t do, when you come to this table, your value has nothing to do with that.’”

“I remember feeling so safe in that and feeling so, like, enough,” she added. “I want people to feel like I did at Shabbat dinner. … I want them to get blessed.”Golda’s ice cream certainly has been.