This wasn't just a price issue, it was a question of integrity. Mattel authorized dealers were upset, and secondary market dealers were pretty near hysterical. This doll had no room for secondary markup. Small dealers couldn't afford to stock even one for potential customers, and large dealers were forced to allocate a hefty chunk of their precious inventory capital to a doll that they probably were not going to be able to sell easily. What went wrong Ms. Barad sorely underestimated how much the collector market pushes the play doll market.
Children are snobs among themselves.
There isn't one of us who doesn't remember feeling jealousy when one of the other kids owned some really cool something we could never hope to attain. It is the secret desire of every little girl to go to school and do a bit of subtle bragging about her doll collection. She also seems to have misunderstood the tremendous value that Barbie secondary market retailers gave to her marketing pushes. In 1995, there were thousands of secondary market Barbie doll dealers. These were mostly people who supported their personal Barbie doll collecting habit by dashing around from one retail store to another, buying up as many dolls as their credit cards would allow, then reselling them for a profit to those that didn't have the availablity, time, or inclination to brave the stores.