Its success laid the foundation for Mattel to become, for a long while, the largest toy maker in the world. The company went public in 1960, and by 1965, its $100 million in sales qualified it for the Fortune 500 list. In any case, Barbie revolutionized the American toy industry. There’s little question that Ryan deserved credit for engineering the product - he held several patents for his technical work - but history also seems mostly to credit Handler for coming up with the basic idea. Ruth Handler poses with a Barbie doll along with a framed picture of her daughter, Barbara, the doll’s namesake in 1995. After almost a decade of bitter legal battling, Ryan won a $10 million legal settlement over the issue in 1980. Years later, Barbie became the subject of contention when Mattel engineer Jack Ryan claimed that he was the creator of the doll, and accused Handler of trying to take all the credit for his innovations. Barbie’s friend Midge arrived in 1963, and her younger sister, Skipper, in 1965. Barbie’s boyfriend, Ken, named for the Handlers’ son, was added in 1961. Sales were slow at first, but television advertising helped build Barbie into a best-seller. It was introduced at the annual New York toy fair in March 1959. Inspired by the racy German-made Bild Lilli doll she saw on while on vacation in Switzerland in 1956, she pushed the idea for a cleaned-up version that would become the Barbie doll. Ruth Handler got the idea to make a more realistic doll, with real clothes and different outfits, that could assume a variety of roles. Ruth Handler observed that Barbara preferred to play with paper dolls rather than real ones, because she enjoyed being able to change the dolls’ outfits. The doll’s name came from her daughter, Barbara. The Handlers bought out Matson’s share in the private company, and became its sole owners.ĭuring the 1950s, Mattel profited from a pioneering entertainment tie-in with Walt Disney’s popular “Mickey Mouse Club” television show, marketing its toys during the daily broadcasts that began in 1955.Ĭredit for the creation of the Barbie doll later that decade goes to Ruth Handler, according to conventional corporate history. in Los Angeles, in the industrial area just east of Los Angeles International Airport. Other toy products followed, including a line of musical toys beginning with the Uke-a-Doodle in 1947, and the company moved again to larger quarters at 5432 W.

They sold briskly, and toys became Mattel’s focus. Soon, the new company branched out into dollhouse furniture made from lucite and the scraps left over from picture-frame production at their plant, 6058 Western Ave., in South Los Angeles. The Handlers and Matson became disenchanted with Zemby when he brought in new business partners they didn’t approve of, and they began thinking about forming their own firm in 1944. The company’s distinctive lucite designs were popular, and it became a million-dollar enterprise in the early 1940s. Elliot created the jewelry, and his friend Howard “Matt” Matson was put in charge of manufacturing. In 1941, the same year their daughter, Barbara, was born, the pair formed Elzac Jewelry, with businessman Zachary Zemby. Ruth became convinced she could sell her husband’s designs, and her success at doing so led to the formation in 1939 of Elliot Handler Plastics, 3030 W. He crafted light fixtures, mirrors, candelabras and picture frames from it in the garage of the couple’s Hollywood apartment. They’d met in 1932 as teens at a dance, in their mutual home town of Denver, and later moved to California, where they married in June 1938.Įlliot, then a student at Art Center School of Design in Los Angeles (now ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena) and a born tinkerer, began working with a new plastic substance, lucite.

The Mattel toy company officially formed in 1945.īut Elliot and Ruth Handler, its husband-and-wife founders, actually entered the manufacturing business years earlier.

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