I got curious, so without looking up the reddit thread because I hate reddit, I went to the list of Barbie's careers. Because of course people have dated lists of those.
Her first 28 years are fairly tame, until we reach 1987's Canadian Mountie Barbie. Reasonable odds for a cop, even if they're not a USAmerican cop.
in 1991, we get US Air Force Pilot Barbie, US Marine Corps Sergeant Barbie, US Navy Petty Officer Barbie. There's also 1992's US Army Barbie, if those guys were feeling left out. I'm also ignoring the 1989 US Army Barbie because that one is 100% a stolen valour runway look, not a uniform.
Going to run my autism over those four.
US Navy Petty Officer Barbie is wearing quartermaster's rating insignia, so no combat for her.
US Army Barbie is wearing an airborne maroon beret with no rank insignia that I could see, but she's loaded down with medical supplies, so I'm gonna say combat medic, but only as many kills as her other medical endeavours.
US Air Force Pilot Barbie is wearing a jacket that looks like a Top Gun tie-in. The unit patch is just the USAF coat of arms, and the name patch says she's a Captain. VERY confusingly, the plane on the box art is an F-5, which had just recently been retired. But its USAF usage was almost all in the OPFOR Aggressor squadrons, which is... "come play enemy planes for our training exercises".
US Marine Corps Sergeant Barbie is wearing E-5 Sergeant's insignia, and three medals (she's in dress uniform). To my eye, and allowing for badly printed colours, looks like Navy and Marine Achievement Medal, Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal, and the South West Asia Service Medal. The first two are fairly obvious "Barbie Is Well Behaved" stuff, but uh. That last one though?
USMC Barbie was in Desert Storm.
And if she was in a support role there, well, 1993 gave us USAmerican Cop Barbie. Case closed.
