Index:
Bild-Lilli, Barbie's predecessor
Barbie's Manufacturers Markings
Barbie's friends and relatives
Barbie through the ages, 1959 - 2009
Barbie luxury doll to massproduction
The five different collector types
current fashion styles during these times. First dolls were made from wood, then porcelain and later
from leather. It was not before the 19th century that dolls also became toys, and particularely the
vintage dolls from ancient times are popular collector items for centuries.
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Mattel, Inc. has been founded by the American businesswoman Ruth Handler (1916-2002),
her husband Elliott Handler and Harold Matson. The small enterprise is credited with the creation
of the doll using a German doll called Bild Lilli as her inspiration. Ruth Handler watched her daughter
Barbara at play with paper dolls, and noticed that she often enjoyed giving them adult roles.
At the time, most children's toy dolls were representations of infants. Realizing that there could be a
gap in the market, Handler suggested the idea of an adult-bodied doll to her husband Elliot,
a co-founder of the Mattel toy company. He was unenthusiastic about the idea, as were Mattel's directors.
During a trip to Europe in 1956 with her children Barbara and Kenneth, Ruth Handler came across
German toy doll called Bild Lilli. The adult-figured Lilli doll was exactly what Handler had in mind,
so she purchased three of them. She gave one to her daughter and took the others back 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. Lilli was a working girl who knew what she wanted and was not
above using men to get it. The Lilli doll was first sold in Germany in 1955.
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Upon her return to the U.S., Handler reworked the design of the doll (with help from engineer Jack Ryan)
and the doll was given a new name, Barbie, after Handler's daughter Barbara.