Barbie: Fabulous at Fifty

This year Barbie turns fifty. Originally retailing at $3.00 and billed as the first American teenage doll, Barbie's name recognition fifty years later is universal with claims that three Barbie Dolls are sold every minute in a worldwide market.^2,4 Made for the consumptive age of the fifties, Barbie still has the power to "work it" delighting the collecting generation that first identified with her and pulling in new generations of young collectors and admirers year after year.

Born of French and German heritage, Barbie owes her success to a history that has footholds in the world of antique and modern doll design. Her early roots are found in the vintage masterpiece French Fashion Dolls produced by Jumeau, Bru, Rohmer, and Huret. Made with bisque heads and elaborately costumed and wigged, these fashionable lady dolls were the first adult dolls to be marketed to children in the 1870's. They were sold in trunks, which contained tea sets, clothing, footwear, vanity cases, parasols, fans, and other fashion accessories of the age.⁴ The Second World War caused a disruption in the manufacture of dolls, but in 1949 new chemistry and manufacturing processes created uses for the invention of plastic-a material that resisted the peeling, flaking and breakage that plagued earlier dolls.

The German sex doll, Bild Lilli, was Barbie's modern prototype. Lilli was a three dimensional, hard plastic, heavily made up and scantily dressed doll introduced in 1955 and sold mainly as a male gag gift. Lilli was exported to other countries and it was in Switzerland that Ruth Handler, co-founder of Mattel discovered her. She brought Lilli to the United States with the express purpose of making an American adult doll to engage the imagination and creativity of young girls. She worked with Mattel executive and designer, Jack Ryan, who bought the German rights to the Lilli doll and negotiated with a Japanese firm for the production of a new doll, named Barbie. Using a modern, soft-mold process, the transformation from Lilli doll prototype to American Barbie saw Lilli's hard plastic lines subdued and lengthened, and her facial features altered slightly to reveal more arched eyebrows over a widened eye that swept downward and to the right. Her Victorian rosebud mouth was stretched and smoothed out into the glamorous fashion model look of the fifties and her hair was rooted and darkened with a thick fringe of bangs added, giving her a softer look. ⁵ American Barbie had her breasts enlarged, in keeping with her newly lengthened frame and she was given well-defined feet, capable of wearing more than one pair of molded high-heeled shoes.

Barbie debuted on March 9, 1959 at the American International Toy Show in New York. Marketing efforts began with her "Beautiful Barbie" television commercial, which aired during an episode of the Mickey Mouse Club Show in 1959. ⁵ It had a dramatic influence that subverted conventional notions of appropriate "little girl" dreams and took advantage of an emerging young television target audience. Re-inventing Pierre Jumeau's French Fashion Doll marketing technique ⁴ of offering an affordable doll with swank clothing and accessories available for separate purchase, Mattel sold all of its 350,000 Barbies within that first year. ⁵ Irresistible in her black and white, zebra striped bathing suit with its careful hand stitching, Barbie was the "it" doll of 1959. Little girls dreamed of countlessly undressing, dressing and redressing Barbie in her modern outfits priced from one dollar to five.

Fifty years later, Barbie is seldom out of the spotlight. Currently Mattel is fighting hard to help Barbie maintain her place as number one. Sales of new Barbies began to drop in 2007 and continued a downward trend in 2008.⁸ New kids on the block, the Bratz Dolls, manufactured by MGM Entertainment, have steadily gained market share since their introduction in 2001.⁸ The Bratz line, created and named by designer Carter Bryant while under contract with Mattel Inc., was taken to MGM Entertainment when they lured him away from Mattel according to testimony reported . MGM built value into the Bratz brand undercutting Mattel market share in all things Barbie-doll related. In December of 2008 Barbie got a big break from a sympathetic jury who ruled that some of the designs were indeed owned by Mattel. In agreement with the jury ruling, U.S. District Judge Stephen Larson concurred that Mattel owns the original drawings and copyright to the Bratz line and may have the right to claim and recall any remaining unsold stock in stores. He called for the manufacture of Bratz to halt but deferred the order until January of 2009. He will issue a final version of the order sometime this year. ⁶

In February of this year Barbie dominated the catwalk as the muse of New York's Bryant Park semi-fashion week. The fifty most influential fashion designers in the world outfitted her in vintage, current and fast forward future designs. With pink as the backdrop, human Barbie look alikes turned the heads of record-breaking crowds eager to see and be seen at Mattel's first celebration in a yearlong commemoration of her fifty years at the top. ³

Barbie lovers can expect more spectacle and glimpses of Barbie this year as she struts her stuff wearing pink Christian Louboutin designer pumps in Paris, pushes her $500.00 Ultimate Collection, Luxury Assouline Edition Big Pink Book, opens her flagship store in Shanghai, and caps the first part of her fiftieth year with a four day Barbie Collectors Convention this July in Washington, DC. ¹ Always irresistible, independent, what she wants to be, and fully accessorized, Barbie remains fabulous at fifty and still the top doll.

Works Cited:

1. Bumpus, Jessica. "Louboutin's Birthday Surprise." Vogue.com. 2008 .
2. Doll Reference: Antique to Vintage Dolls 1800-1970's. 27 Feb. 2009 http://dollreference.com.

3. La Monica, Mark. "Barbie Rocks the Runway!(Talk of the Tents)." 14 Feb. 2009. Newsday.com. 25 Feb. 2009.

4. Lavitt, Wendy. Dolls. New York: Knopf, Distributed by Random House, 1983. (11,13,14,15,17)

5. Lord, M. G. Forever Barbie the unauthorized biography of a real doll. New York: Walker & Co., 2004.

6. "Mattel looking to settle Bratz case-attorney." Business News and Financial News at Forbes.com. Ed. Reuters. 12 Feb. 2009. 27 Feb. 2009 http://Forbes.com.

7. Mattel. 27 Feb. 2009 .

8. Somers, Geoffrey. "Fun for All." Hong Kong Toy Fair. 2008. 27 Feb. 2009.