Ruth Handler launched Barbie on March 9, 1959
Mattel's fashion doll, inspired by a German Bild Lilli toy and named for Handler's daughter Barbara, debuted in 1959. Analysts expected her grown-up look to flop, yet about 350,000 sold in year one. Barbie and Ken became the world's most popular doll pair, with accessories driving much of the revenue.
Barbie is a fashion doll created by the American businesswoman Ruth Handler, made by Mattel, and introduced on 9 March 1959. Handler, who co-founded Mattel with her husband Elliot, noticed that her daughter Barbara liked giving paper dolls adult roles at a time when most dolls were babies. On a 1956 trip to Switzerland she found the adult-figured German Bild Lilli doll, bought three, and back home reworked it with the inventor Jack Ryan, naming it after Barbara, who hated being known as the inspiration.
The first Barbie wore a black-and-white zebra-striped swimsuit and a topknot ponytail, came blonde or brunette, and was sold as a "Teen-age Fashion Model" for three dollars. Handler put the wardrobe at the centre: twenty-two outfits costing one to five dollars were meant to keep sales flowing after the doll itself. Some parents objected to her figure, but demand outran production for her first three years.
Louis Marx and Company, which had licensed Lilli, sued Mattel in 1961, arguing that Barbie copied the German doll and infringed its hip-joint patent. Ken arrived that same year. In 1971 Barbie's eyes were altered to look straight ahead instead of glancing demurely sideways, Ruth's last change before she and Elliot were pushed out of Mattel three years later. Barbie was also one of the first toys sold largely through television advertising, a strategy many rivals copied.
By 2006 more than a billion Barbies had been sold in over 150 countries, and Mattel claimed three were bought every second. Sales slumped between 2014 and 2016, but the 2023 film Barbie set off the "Barbiecore" fashion trend and the Barbenheimer phenomenon. Novels of the 1960s give her full name as Barbara Millicent Roberts of Willows, Wisconsin, and she has owned more than 40 pets and holds a pilot's licence. In 1974 part of Times Square was renamed Barbie Boulevard for a week.
Source: Barbie
