Barbie's Eichler 'Dreamhouse'

Tickle us pink!

With all the hubbub over the blockbuster 'Barbie' film, it was just a matter of time before 'Barbie pink' would be spotted on an Eichler exterior.

That home, a 1953 Eichler in the Roseglen neighborhood of San Jose, "looks like Barbie's Eichler dreamhouse," according to owners Kevin and Jessica Milden, whose streetscape exterior radiates blazing pink, loud and proud.

The Mildens say it all began when they saw the 'Barbie' movie, which debuted in theatres last July. "We absolutely loved it," says Jessica. "I thought a Barbie Halloween party would be awesome, so we started thinking of ways to make our house into a dreamhouse."

After coming across pink plastic tablecloths with a stone pattern on them, added Jessica, "My husband said, what if we painted [the outside of] the house? 'We' is usually a code for 'me,' so I painted it myself, along with my neighbor, Jim."

But where did all of this hoopla really start? Oh, about six decades ago.

Barbie the spectacularly popular toy doll debuted in 1959 at the American Toy Fair in New York City, taking the world by storm. The world's first fashion doll, Barbie was created by inventor Ruth Handler, who co-founded the Mattel company with her husband near the end of World War II.

Sparking imaginations, the grown-up doll offered our nation's young girls a chance to imagine their own futures as career professionals, attorneys, and flight attendants. Barbie dressed the part, of course, and had her own home, a mid-century modern design introduced in 1962, dubbed 'Barbie's Dreamhouse.'

Sixty-one years later, writer/director Greta Gerwig's blockbuster movie 'Barbie' is introducing Barbie to a 21st century world. The fantasy-comedy is now the highest-grossing movie directed solely by a woman, grossing in excess of $1.36 billion global box office dollars to date.

Though the Halloween holiday has passed for the Mildens, they remain enraptured with their own dreamhouse. "It's like a costume for our house," Kevin says when asked about the redesign, adding, "We're both all in. We collaborated on this one together."

Inside, the couple covered some of their wood paneling with the patterned pink tablecloths. Jessica says, "We painted the entire house, but I wasn't going to touch my wood paneling."

Kevin, who is a designer, had a lot to do with the redesign, and worked with Artificial Intelligence to create custom portraits of Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie as plastic Barbie dolls. "Kevin made family photos of them shopping, exercising—he even made really large ones to cover our paintings in the house."