At the beginning of the year, would you have believed that a movie about a 63-year-old doll would be one of the highest grossing films of all time?
Probably not, but the success of the movie would not have been possible but for the astounding long-term success of the eponymous doll it is based upon: “Barbie.” Over a billion have been sold in the past 60 years. An original 1959 model can cost $25,000; in 2010 a custom designed Barbie with a diamond necklace commanded $302,000 at a charity auction.
Unfortunately, the story of how Barbie came to be, and its remarkable creator, Ruth Handler, has gotten lost in the hype surrounding the movie. She was not only the creator of Barbie, but with her husband she was the co-founder of a company that became synonymous with toys: Mattel.
In the late 1950s, Mrs. Handler noticed her daughter preferred paper dolls that were more representative of adults unlike the typical “baby” dolls that had characterized the doll business for centuries. She realized that a doll for a little girl that symbolized the young woman she wanted to be would have immense psychological appeal. Later, Mrs. Handler offered Barbies representing various professions, careers, races and even genders (the “Ken” doll) mirroring the emerging ethos of feminism and other social trends in the 1960s and 1970s.
Real entrepreneurship is not just starting a business that copies another business. At its best, entrepreneurship is a new offering that opens up a whole new market. As Ms. Handler later said, “We never copied anyone. We led.”
In later life, her own experience with breast cancer led her to create a line of breast prostheses for women who, like her, had experienced mastectomies. An eleven-minute interview taped before her death in 2002 provides an overview of the life of the creator of the one of the most popular, and influential, toys of all time. Another article, “A Cultural History of Barbie”, shares how Barbie impacted, and was impacted by, American culture. A deeper dive on Barbie herself can be found here.
