Research Paper On Ruth Handler

Inventor Ruth Handler fostered a major shift in the toy industry. In 1945, she had already founded the company, Mattel Creations (now Mattel Inc., one of the largest toy manufacturing competitors in the world). It wasn’t until 1959, however, that Handler introduced the world to a new kind of doll, inspired by her daughter, Barbara. According to the book, The Barbie Chronicles: A Living Doll Turns Forty, Handler’s game-changing idea sparked when she and her children encountered a similar three-dimensional German doll, Bild Lilli (FIG 5), that year during a trip to Europe.27 She purchased one for her daughter, knowing Barbara would take to it due to her new tendency to play with adult-looking fashion dolls made of paper instead of her once-beloved baby dolls. Handler also noticed her daughter,
FIG 5: An original Bild Lilli Doll presented at German auction house in 2013 (left) has physical feautures that almost mirror those of the original 1959 Barbie doll created by Ruth Handler (right).
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She arrived on the scenes during the same era that televisions were becoming more common in American homes, and Mattel capitalized on that by heavily advertising her through this medium. Young girls across the country owned an average of eight Barbie dolls, with at least two being sold somewhere every second, according to psychiatrist Ann Ruth Turkel in her 1998 report, All About Barbie: Distortions of a Transitional Object.28 Now, she can be frequently located at the top of almost every holiday gift list. The National Retail Federation, one of the world’s largest retail trade associations, released a 2014 survey for the most popular holiday toys. The results showed Barbie holding the “number two spot,” for the first time after eleven years at the top.29 She has made such an impact in the doll industry, that a 2014 TIME magazine article ranked her at #2 of “The Most Influential Toys of All