The “doll doctor,” Manfred Reichel, gathered 1,800 Barbies in Vienna.

A man in Vienna has been accumulating the legendary dolls for four decades and has more than 1,800 of them. He is one of the millions of admirers eagerly anticipating the world premiere of the movie “Barbie” this Thursday.

The “doll doctor,” 58-year-old Manfred Reichel, has a storefront in the heart of the Austrian city where he sells the figurines with 1,500 Barbie and Ken outfits.

“Barbie was a very popular girl’s toy when I was a kid, at the end of the 1960s. In statements to EFE in his shop, “Clnica de muecas,” where he fixes them, Reichel recalls his pals having two or three of them and how much fun the three of us had playing together.

he claims that when she got older, she realised the quality of the Barbies she had as a child and started to gather replicas from the 1960s through the 1990s, which she acquired at flea markets and antique stores.

The collector still possesses a soul that is quite youthful. The most unique Barbie doll in existence—the 1959 original prototype—was given to her as a present for her 50th birthday.

“It was a gift from me to me, for which I paid about 5,000 euros,” remembers the doll enthusiast, who will watch the movie with his pals from the Vienna Barbie “fan club” next week.

As her attention is primarily on dolls from the 1960s and 1970s, Reichel claims that while she doesn’t have every Barbie ever made, she does have “almost all the ones she’s interested in.”

The collector emphasises the sterling example Ruth Handler, who created the barbies, set for American kids in the 1960s right from the start.

Despite the fact that he himself initially did not comprehend it, Reichel claims that in 1960, Barbie appeared at her graduation dressed in the traditional outfit that people in the United States wear for those occasions.

“I used to question why they selected that “outfit” (or “clothes”) for themselves. I didn’t get it,” he acknowledges.

Later, she understood that this was done to show the boys—and, more so now, the girls—the value of education in building their own life.

“That promised them the world would be their oyster after they earned their degrees. The most significant feature of this doll is that it has a backstory, according to him.

“To me, Barbie is a smart, independent woman, not a ‘dumb blonde girl,'” she says in her conclusion.

Since nearly 30 years, Reichel has been repairing dolls. She describes herself as a lover of her job and enjoys “listening to the stories of the doll owners and teddy bears” that customers bring to the shop.

Amidst hundreds of dolls, he states that he would like to keep working till his hands “allow it” four decades after getting his first Barbie and just before turning 60.