Is Polly Pocket Getting Ready to Dominate 2025?

Photo: Kelsey McClellan

Every September, I scan every inch of my apartment to see what empty corner needs to be animated. It’s a part of my pre-autumn and winter ritual to ensure there are bits of brightness surrounding me before the temperature becomes too frigid to venture out and the sky is blanked in fluffy yet dismal shades of gray for months on end. I want to be sure I have delightful decorations to meet my eyesight everywhere I look. So, naturally, I hit the World Wide Web to see what’s still available during the annual SSENSE Sale. After paging through items as varied as this Maison Balzac vase, Helle Mardahl bowl, and Edie Parker jelly cake table lighter, I was suddenly reminded that my attraction to witty decor stems from a childhood of imagining what adulthood would look like via Polly Pocket compacts.

Each handheld interior was meticulously decorated from top to bottom with specific color palettes matching the themes, ranging from a fashion fun boutique to an absolute dream house. No corner was left unfurnished, yet they were not cluttered with minutiae that we are impaired to look at today as city dwellers with limited space. During the pandemic, the tiny dollhouses reemerged as pint-size places for a nostalgic escape in quarantine. My eyes sharpened to spot more of these items out in the wild after watching this TikTok, where creator Coco Mocoe predicts the summer of 2025 as a rainbow of pastel hues inspired by the tiny but mighty figurine.

Polly Pocket’s long-awaited reign has already begun: To celebrate her 35th birthday this summer, Airbnb teamed up with Mattel on a life-size version of her 1994 Slumber Party Fun compact where millennials could fulfill their dreams of living inside one of her miniature mise-en-scènes. Located in Littleton, Massachusetts, guests could book a one-night stay in the 42-foot-tall compact for $89 per person, which alludes to the entrance on the toy shelves in 1989. Ali Killam, communications lead at Airbnb, reveals that the team used this particular compact as their “North Star from an overall design perspective throughout the build.”

“The team quite literally carried around this compact with them for months,” she explains in an email. “This helped us ensure every detail from all the specific colors used throughout the compact, decor elements, wallpaper, the screen on the TV, couch, books, kitchen utensils, and more were reflected in the life-size version of Polly’s iconic pad.” Visitors can further emerge themselves in Polly’s world by dressing up in recognizable pieces from her wardrobe that are “custom made in the signature gummy texture” that her fans know and love.

Although Polly Pocket may be top of mind as we fantasize about the highly anticipated film, interior designers have recently been incorporating her aesthetics into their own projects too. AD PRO Directory designer Sasha Bikoff referenced the ’90s color scheme of her own childhood when she was designing the bedroom for the 2023 Kips Bay Decorator Show House. The vibrant oranges, shades of purple, and turquoise also nod to her nostalgic admiration for Polly Pocket.

“I grew up in a New York City apartment, I always wanted the Barbie Dreamhouse or the Malibu House, but rooms are smaller here,” she says. “Polly Pocket was perfect for a city kid like me because you could bring it everywhere.” The influence of the slick, candy-colored hard plastic cases of the beloved compacts can be seen throughout the space, especially in the iridescent, shell-shaped headboard and bedframe. Miniatures may be physically small, but their impact is enormous. AG Minis were another popular entry point for many young millennials into a world of interior imagination that was tangible and helped us visualize the possibilities of how we can craft our future homes. The mini market continues to boom as young people look to Instagram and TikTok for small-scale versions of dream living spaces.

Polly’s shiny plastic world was also on Studio Ringo’s mood board while they planned the design for Funny Face Bakery in 2022. Decked out in a monochromatic shade of purple called “grape ice,” as Madelynn Ringo describes it, the storefront was designed to reflect the playfulness of the illustrated cookies in the window by carving out a “micro-environment that is also nostalgic to a certain generation of people.” As the creative director and interior designer further explains, “I think the way that we translated our references was through this illustrative effect of the way that Funny Face creates their cookies with icing in bold outlined shapes; we wanted to use those lines in the ornamental details of the store. You’ll see details like hearts and the triple outline of the arch mirror in the store that reflect our conceptual narrative as we worked alongside them to generate this feeling or this character that becomes a physical representation of that brand ethos, and the way that we’re doing that is by pulling cultural references.”

If I could sum up the world of Polly Pocket into one word it would be sweet. In my search for interior eye candy, I was delighted to dig further into the array of offerings by the Copenhagen-based artist Helle Mardahl. “Objects like the Stand or Bonbonniere are inspired by the joy and indulgence of childhood memories, much like being in a candy store,” she says. Not only are her artfully functional objects a treat for the eye, but their blown sugar resemblances are named after cherished flavors from adolescence: “The color and flavor combinations in my designs recall childhood memories.”

“Choosing colors feels like the same playful, sensory experience—like selecting the perfect combination of ice cream flavors,” Mardahl continues. “It’s not just about picking your favorite, but about finding the right balance, like pairing vanilla with caramel or blueberry with banana. Just as everyone has their own unique taste, I love that people can mix and match colors in our physical store to create their own personal combination, much like in a candy store.”

In addition to home decor items that looked picked from one of her portable spaces, there has been a trend towards little, edible items becoming supersized objects to live with, like Third Drawer Down’s sensational corn stool and Coming Soon’s new Pill bottle cooler. Jell-O just dropped some inflatable furniture, debuting a collection of chairs that are shaped like their iconic Jell-O molds, complete with a holder to perfectly fit your jiggly treat. Not only are they reminiscent of the chair features in Polly Pocket’s Slumber Party Fun compact, but their inherent squishiness would also be approved by her. (After all, gummy materials are her preferred textile as evidenced by her closet.)

If 2023 was the year of Barbiecore and 2024 was awash with Brat green, a kaleidoscope of soft bright colors to sprinkle in our homes looks promising for 2025.

Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest