The Barbie doll made its debut
On this day · 9 March 1959
In 1959 Mattel unveiled an 11-inch adult-figured fashion doll at a New York toy fair, and a billion-doll industry was born.
On March 9, 1959, Mattel introduced the first Barbie doll at the American International Toy Fair in New York City. At eleven inches tall with adult proportions and a topknot ponytail, she was unlike the baby dolls that dominated American toy shelves.
Barbie was the idea of Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler, who noticed her daughter Barbara preferring grown-up paper dolls to infant ones. On a European trip Handler found a German doll called Bild Lilli and saw the form she wanted. Mattel’s all-male executives were skeptical that parents would buy a doll with a figure.
They were wrong: roughly 300,000 Barbies sold in the first year, at $3 each.
Named for Handler’s daughter, the doll became one of the best-selling toys ever made, with sales since 1959 counted in the billions — and a cultural lightning rod argued over for just as long.
Sources & references
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