The History of Barbie

Barbie is a fashion doll manufactured by the American based toy-company Mattel, Inc. and was introduced in March 1959. American businesswoman Ruth Handler was the creator of the Barbie doll and for her inspiration to create Barbie, Ruth used a German doll called Bild Lilli.

Barbie's name is Barbara Millicent Roberts and her official birthday is on March 9, 1959. Random House published several novels back in the 1960s and gave Barbie's parents' names as George and Margaret Roberts and they lived in the fictional town of Willows, Wisconsin. In the Random House novels written about Barbie, she attended Willows High School. Barbie's on-off boyfriend Ken (Ken Carson) first appeared in 1961. Mattell let out a news release about Barbie and Ken's split in February 2004, then in February 2006, Barbie and Ken got back together.

Barbie's forty pets she has had through the years have included: cats, dogs, horses, panda, lion cub, and a zebra. She has also owned several vehicles which have included a pink Corvetteconvertibles, travel trailers and jeeps. Barbie has a pilot's license, operates commercial airliners and is also a flight attendant. Barbie's many careers she holds are designed to show young girls and even adult women that any women can be what she wants to be and nothing can hold her back from acheving any goals. Barbie has several titles including the 1965 Miss Astronaut Barbie,1988 Doctor Barbie, 1998 Nascar Barbie.

One day when Ruth Handler was watching her daughter Barbara play with paper dolls, she kept seeing that her daughter would give each doll an adult role to be so since most children's dolls back then were infant like, Ruth had the idea of creating a doll with an adult body and suggested this to her husband, Elliot to get this thoughts since hher husband was a co-founder of the Mattel toy company. Her husband was very excited of the idea and so were the directors at Mattel.

In 1956 when Ruth and her two children, Barbara and Kenneth were on a trip in Europe, Ruth saw a doll named Bild Lilli which was made in Germany and this doll had the adult body to which Ruth was searching for so after she purchased three of them, she gave one to her daughter and the other two she took to Mattel. The Lilli doll was based on a popular character appearing in a comic strip drawn by Reinhard Beuthin for the newspaper Die Bild-Zeitung. In 1955 when theBild Lilli doll began being sold in Germany, it was usually only sold to adults, but soon younger children were playing with the Bild Lilli doll spending lots of hours enjoying dressing her up all of the different separate outfits that were available to buy.

Upon her return to the United States, With the help of Jack Ryan, Ruth Handler redesigned the doll and gave her a brand new name, Barbie. The Barbie doll is named after Ruth Handler's daughter, Barbara. Barbie made her official debut at the American International Toy Fair in New York on March 9, 1959 and this date is known as Barbie's official birthday.

Sources:

Wikipedia.com