There is a new reality when it comes to careers. Instead of working for decades in a single job and being thanked with a ‘farewell’ cake and a watch, a young person today can expect to change jobs a dozen times before age forty. But no matter how many jobs or careers, no one will get even close to Barbie. Yes. Barbie.
It is estimated that Barbie— now appearing on a movie screen near you—has had an estimated 250 different jobs in the nearly 65 years she’s been around. Everything from astronaut to zoologist.
Barbie has been a nurse, Olympic skier, game show host, UNICEF Ambassador. She’s been in the Army and the Air Force. She’s been a soda jerk and a surgeon; she’s been a florist and firefighter. Barbie’s been around the block. And that includes Denver. Kind of.
Ruth Mosko Handler, the visionary who dreamed up Barbie, was born in Denver in 1916, the youngest of 10 children. Her parents were Polish immigrants. She attended Denver East where she met her future husband, Izzy Handler. After high school, she enrolled at the University of Denver but there is no record of her graduating.
She and Handler moved to Los Angeles where they lived in near poverty; she was a stenographer, he attended art school. It was also in Los Angeles where they met Harold ‘Matt’ Mattson, the man who would become the ‘Matt’ of Mattel. The remainder of the brand would come from the first two letters of Izzy’s middle name, Elliot. The change from Izzy to Elliot was a business decision. At a time of virulent antisemitism names sounding ‘too Jewish’ could work against you.
Elliot designed the toys; Ruth ran the business and ran it like no one had ever run or even imagined a toy company should or could be run. Her marketing genius made Mattel and toy ubiquitous and universal. She practically rewrote the manual on marketing toys. In Robin Gerber’s book, “Ruth and Barbie,” Handler explained the relationship. “If he can make it, I can sell it.”
The newly minted company enjoyed early success. Its a classic, “Mr. Potato Head,” lead its line. Mattel was also the first toy ever advertised on television, a medium that never considered toys for sponsorships on kids TV. Toys, it thought, were seasonal. Handler saw things differently.
Disney made Handler an offer: commit to a year’s advertising on the then nascent Mickey Mouse Club TV show for a then unheard of $500,000 or nothing. The sum—astronomical for its time—was the entire value of Mattel. Handler thought about it and took the gamble, figuring she could sell her toys year-round on a show that would only grow more and more popular. She bet it all.
She immediately ordered three commercials, including one for something called a ‘Burp Gun.’ At first, things looked bleak. Sales numbers back then lagged, and Handler’s deci- sion looked like a bad bet. But it was just the opposite. After six weeks of ‘Mickey,’ Handler learned that her ‘Burp Gun,’ was actually a hit with a million ‘Burp Guns’ selling that first holiday season.
Her baptism by television also inspired a whole new approach to getting more timely sales numbers. Handler began by hiring an army of agents to physically visit stores across the country to get real-time sales figures and get them back to her as quickly as possible. It was brilliant. She was getting data back in days, information that was taking her competition weeks. She was also marketing to children—her real customers—and not their parents. As proof, in 1954 Mattel totaled $4 million in sales. The next year, it sold $4 million in ‘Burp Guns’ alone.
With the company the wave of success, the Handlers took a European vacation. It would be a trip of a lifetime and change the industry forever.
In Germany, Handler spotted a doll that had been around for years. ‘Bild Lilli,’ was a very adult doll that originated in comic strips and had gravitated to not a children’s market but a very adult one.
In her first incarnation, ‘Lilli’ was a voluptuous, very made-up, gold-digging vixen. Not exactly the kind of kids’ toy that would change the world. But Handler saw something else in ‘Lilli.’
Handler, like everyone at the time, was used to girls playing with doll babies or paper dolls, whose cut out paper fashions worked theoretically but rarely practically.
Handler pitched the idea to her husband and staff. The idea of a children’s doll with an adult body—a woman’s body—was rejected. ‘Just asking for trouble,’ was the consensus. But it was Handler’s vote that counted, and it won out.
She thought, why should a girl be playing only with dolls that looked like babies and playing only the role of mothers. She liked the idea of young girls with aspirational ideas and their dolls in roles they imagined for themselves.
The first Barbie—named for her own daughter—debuted in 1959 as an all-American fashion model. Barbie made cash registers sing. Mattel had transformed the temptress and gold digger Lilli into an ‘honest’ and professional icon and erased her dubious past. In fact, erased nearly any trace of Lilli.
Mattel and Lilli’s creator, Rolf Hauser, subsequently met in court two times in the years after Barbie’s debut. Hauser was livid that Handler had stolen his idea and rebranded it as ‘Barbie.’ He subsequently ended up selling the copyright and patent to Mattel for a meager sum. His company soon after was out of business. Another lawsuit was filed by Hauser in 2001. The case went nowhere.
Handler’s time in the courtroom was not restricted to ownership rights to Barbie. She and her husband were charged in 1978 by the Securities and Exchange Commission for various white-collar financial crimes, including fraud and false reporting. She pleaded no contest, was fined and ordered to do community service.
Today, Barbie, in one of 250 incarnations, is the most popular doll ever made, selling an amazing 164 units every sixty seconds. Since Barbie’s first birthday, March 9, 1959, nearly 90 million Barbies have been sold worldwide. Iran, citing religious values, is one nation where Barbie is prohibited from entering.
What is next for Barbie? Who knows? She’s done more in a short 65 years than any human possibly could. Her doppelganger, Lilli? Like any recluse from another age, is seen only rarely and then only in places like German tobacco shops or adult-themed stores, her long ago haunts.
Ruth Handler, the daughter of Polish immigrants, died in 2002. Her company, Mattel, is today valued at $7 billion.
