Lesson 12      Barbie doll    

     Before all different types of the Barbie dolls for sale ,there was just a single Barbie.Actually,her name was Barbara.

    Barbara Handler was the daughter of Elliot and Ruth Handler,co-founders of the Mattel Toy company .In the 1950s. Ruth noticed that the daughter Barbara preferred to play with dolls that looked like adults rather than babies .At that time,however most 3-D dolls were made to look like babies or small children. Realizing that there was a hole in the marketplace.Ruth suggested the idea of 3D adult- like doll to her husband. But the idea was laughed at.Martel ‘s told her that it would be impossible to create such a doll.

  After watching her daughter play so interestedly with adult-like paper dolls,however,Ruth stuck to her idea.During a trip to Germany with her daughter,Ruth discovered a German doll named lily in a shop window .the adult-like lily doll was exactly  what Ruth had in mind, so she bought three of them.She gave one to her daughter and took the other back to Mattel.

    The Lily doll was based on a popular character in newspaper comic strip.Mattel re-made the doll into decent all American version. Since her introduction in 1959,Barbie has become the queen of the dolls. Mattel says the average American girl owns ten Barbie dolls,and two are sold somewhere in the world every second.