ALTOONA, Iowa — Amanda Kieler of Altoona is truly a Barbie girl.
She grew playing with Barbie dolls, but didn't start collecting them until she turned 12 years old. Kieler says her mother gifted her her first Barbie because she received straight "A's" on her report card in middle school.
After receiving her first doll, her collection just snowballed -- into a collection of 320.
"Most 28-year-old women wouldn't like getting a cheesy Barbie doll for their birthday, or for their wedding gift, but I did, I loved it," Kieler said with a smile.
She loved her newly wedded husband and her Barbie dolls.
Both Kieler and her husband are avid vintage collectors. Kieler of course collects her Barbie dolls, but her husband collects Transformers, so she says they have had to gain respect for one another's collections without judgment.
“I kind of have reasons for loving all the different ones, and they kind of, and a lot of them have different stories, or memories associated with them, or some of them I think are really pretty," she said.
And each of Kieler’s Barbies remind her of a cherished memory from the past, like her wedding, for example.
“I’d go places with my girlfriends, we’d always go to Hard Rock Cafes, so when I look at my Hard Rock Café Barbies, it kind of reminds me of the times that I got to spend with the people that I care about," she said.
Kieler's still making memories with the people she cares about every day, including Thursday night, when she went to go see the "Barbie" movie with six of her friends.
She says they all dressed up in their Barbie "outfits", and had dinner at a restaurant. Kieler also said the restaurant expected women "dressed up as Barbies" Thursday, so they wrote "Barbie" on their table.
Another hint that Kieler loves anything Barbie.