“One of the most shocking headlines when I first came back was CNN-literally the headline was ‘Is Barbie Dead?,’” Dickson recalls. Barbie had reached its lowest volume of sales in 25 years, with only $900 million. , her first website, was also launched.ĭickson left Mattel in 2010 and rejoined in 2014 when it was facing one of its worst periods yet. Barbie’s first film, the animated feature Barbie In The Nutcracker, was released in 2001. Dickson oversaw the creation of Barbie Entertainment. In the 2000s, Barbie entered the digital era. Hello Dolly: The first Barbie commercial in 1959. The brand represented half of Mattel’s sales at the time. “It took 28 years to get Barbie to $430 million in sales and just three years to get her to $700 million,” John Amerman, Mattel’s chairman, told Forbes in 1991. She eventually pleaded no contest.Īfter some lean years in the 1980s-during which Barbie found work as an aerobics instructor, cashier, travel agent and a veterinarian-another renaissance occurred. Ruth, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer, resigned in 1975-three years before she and several other former Mattel executives indicted by the Securities and Exchange Commission for making false financial statements. But the next decade brought trouble for the Handlers. “If you owned Mattel stock in the Sixties, you were getting double-digit returns every year,” Gerber says. In 1961, Ken-named after the Handlers’ son, Kenneth-debuted. Soon after Barbie’s arrival, the company was inundated with letters asking if she could have a boyfriend. The most valuable are Dress Box Ken, released between 19. But adult dolls made for children to play with didn’t exist. “It hit her that little girls just wanted to be big girls,” Gerber says. Of particular fascination for Handler was that the girls weren’t pretending to be children or mothers with their creations, rather they pretended to be librarians and teachers. Handler got the idea for Barbie when watching her daughter, Barbara, and her friends play with paper dolls, whose outfits and tabs were constantly tearing. “This woman was an entrepreneur, corporate leader, in an industry where there were no women at that level, at a time when women weren’t supposed to do that.” “She was the reason they went from working out of their garage to being able to rent space.”Īs president of the company, Ruth was “the embodiment of her doll,” that “women can be anything,” adds Robin Gerber, author of Barbie and Ruth: The Story of the World's Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her. “She was the chutzpah, she was the driving force behind the company,” Tanya Lee Stone, author of The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie tells Forbes. (The brand’s moniker was a portmanteau of the men’s first names.) While Elliot handled the design, Ruth was all business. Mattel was started in 1945 by Ruth Handler, her husband, Elliot, and Matt Matson. 1 toy in the world.Īnd that was before this summer’s Barbiemania.įamily Affair: Ruth Handler named famous creations after her daughter, Barbara, and son, Kenneth. And AMC theaters announced that some 20,000 moviegoers have already purchased tickets for a cosmically curious opening day double feature of Barbie and Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s drama about the invention of the atomic bomb.įor a doll approaching retirement age-Barbie will turn 65 next year-she’s showing no signs of slowing down, despite a lengthy career as a fashion model, nurse, ballerina, Army medic, astronaut, paleontologist, dentist, florist, yoga teacher and President of the United States The dynamic dilettante did $1.7 billion in annual sales in 2021, a record high. The movie, which also stars Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, and Hari Nef as Barbies, Simu Liu, John Cena, and Kingsley Ben-Adair as additional Kens, and Will Ferrell, as a meta Mattel CEO, is expected to make between $80 million and $100 million in its opening weekend. PHOTOS, FROM LEFT: JOYCE LEE(2) HOGWASH STUDIOS A Doll's House: In June, Airbnb listed a "Ken-themed" Barbie Dream House in-where else?-Malibu.
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