Barbara, the daughter of Elliot and Ruth Handler, had no interest in conventional baby dolls with which girls pretended to be mommies. So Ruth, inspired by an adult toy in the shape of a woman sold in Germany as a version of a comic strip in the tabloid newspaper Bild, envisioned a highly feminine and stylized doll with which girls could fantasize about their future as adults.
In this way, Barbie was born, the doll with blonde hair and impossible dimensions that revolutionized the entire industry and is the best-selling doll in history, with more than 1,000 million units sold since its launch in 1959.
The Handler couple had launched a furniture company years before that ended up focusing on the manufacture of toys and that was called Mattel. From being a medium-sized company, barely known for a toy ukulele that was selling with some success, Thanks to Barbie, Mattel became a giant in the sector, with annual sales of more than US$5,000 million and a stock market value of more than US$6,400 million. The slender figure doll, of which its creators assure that three units per second continue to be sold, still represents about 30% of the multinational’s income.
Ruth Handler first introduced Barbie at the 1959 International Toy Fair in New York. The launch of that plastic doll with heels and a black and white swimsuit went almost unnoticed. But Ruth was also a pioneer in the marketing universe and she decided to introduce the doll in commercials featuring Mickey Mouse. This decision not only transformed the advertising model of the toy industry, but also turned Barbie into a revolution that crossed borders.
The woman-shaped doll was quickly a best-selling toy, but with it also came controversy, which has never ceased to accompany it. The toy’s curvaceous figure was attacked, criticized for fostering superficial ideals of beauty and thinness, and seen as contributing to the stereotype of the female object.
For Ruth Handler, however, the Barbie philosophy represented just the opposite. “I wanted, through the doll, the girl to know that she could be whatever she wanted to be. Barbie always represented the fact that a woman has options,” defended Ruth, who assured that if the girl fantasized about her adult life , “It was kind of stupid to play with a doll that had a flat chest. So I gave her beautiful breasts.”
The doll was a resounding success nonetheless, but Ruth Handler was forced to abruptly leave Mattel in 1974 after being accused of fraud by the SEC, the US regulator of the markets.
Years after becoming a legendary businesswoman, Ruth Handler created a new company, Ruthton Corp, dedicated to producing breast prostheses, as a result of breast cancer that she herself suffered from and from which she died in 2002 at the age of 85.
2023-07-30 11:05:31
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