"Barbara and I lingered outside that shop for the longest time," Handler wrote.īild Lilli had first appeared in comic strips in German tabloid paper Bild Zeitung. Walking past a toy shop in the Swiss Alps, both Handler and her daughter were "absolutely transfixed" by the sight of a doll they saw in the window – known as Bild Lilli. "So I stopped mentioning it."īut Handler's imagination was sparked on a family trip around Europe in summer 1956. "As the years went by, I brought up my idea a few more times, but everybody would kind of turn me off," Handler wrote. Mattel's team told her it wouldn't be possible to make such dolls at a low price in the US, she wrote. The one-dimensional paper fashion dolls Barbara played with in the 1950s limited her imagination, while the three-dimensional "fashion dolls" were built like children and would have looked "ludicrous" in a prom dress, Handler wrote in her autobiography "Dream Doll," published in 1994.īut Handler, who had co-created Mattel in 1945, struggled to convince people of the market for an adult fashion doll. With the dolls on the market at the time, Barbara "could only play out being a mom or caregiver," whereas Ruth's son's toys allowed him to imagine himself as a firefighter, astronaut, or doctor, according to Mattel's history of the brand.īarbie was made to plug a gap in the toy market: A doll for girls who were too old for the popular baby dolls of the time and who wanted someone inspiring to look up to. Handler's primary inspiration for Barbie was her daughter, Barbara. The current hype around the brand is in sharp contrast to the rejections Barbie inventor Ruth Handler faced when she first tried to create the doll in the 1950s. Millennials and Gen Zs are waiting impatiently to watch the upcoming movie starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, #barbiecore is trending on TikTok, and suddenly everyone's wearing pink again. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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