A doll that encourages anorexia, that consoles girls in their rejection of mathematics, that promotes a completely unrealistic model of the female body… The long history of the Barbie doll, which this year celebrates its 64th anniversary with the launch of The long-awaited film with Margot Robbie is far from a fairy tale.
From the accessory sold in 1965 in which you can read “Don’t Eat” (“Do not eat”) to the talking doll of 1992 that affirmed without complexes that “mathematics is difficult” through the models of Skipper (the Barbie’s sister) with an inflatable trunk in 1975… The doll has often been at the center of controversies related to female stereotypes.
And yet, despite the criticism, the scandals within Mattel, or the competition that has repeatedly tried to leave her the old fashioned way (Hasbro’s Jem in the 80s, MGA’s Bratz in the 2000s, etc.), Barbie seems indestructible. .
In 2022, the brand signed the second best year in its history with 1.5 billion dollars in sales worldwide. The best is 2021 with almost $1.7 billion. Available in multiple animated series, universes and accessories, the Barbie brand is now estimated at more than $700 million, its highest level ever recorded (up 20% in one year).
2 million Barbies in France
In France alone, 2 million Barbie dolls were bought in 2022. She alone accounted for 20% of the market share in the department.
It is that the doll has from birth to face contrary winds to impose itself. Even just to exist.
It was in the mid-1950s that Ruth Handler, wife of Elliot Handler, co-founder of Mattel with Harold Matson (the name Mattel is a combination of their names) had the idea to design a mannequin doll when she saw her daughter. Barbara playing with cardboard silhouettes.
At that time, the girls’ toy market consisted exclusively of baby dolls. Proposing the toy of an adult woman is then considered indecent. Furthermore, it was during a trip to Switzerland that Ruth found the doll of her dreams in a store.
Named Lilli, she corresponds in all respects to her idea of an adult mannequin doll. Of German origin, Lilli is not really a children’s toy. Originally, she was an adult comic book character published in the tabloid picture time which chronicles the adventures of a sexy young woman with a “bottom whore” to use Ruth Handler’s terms.
He returns to the United States, with a suitcase full of Lilli dolls, and entrusts a certain Jack Ryan with the task of making a copy. Designer and head of R&D within the toy manufacturer, this Yale-graduate engineer has a career at arms manufacturer Raytheon for which he is involved in missile design.
The scandal of a doll with breasts
Poached in 1955 by Mattel to work on toy airplanes, Jack Ryan negotiates a gold contract that will lead to his losing. Not being able to pay him the same salary as in the arms industry, the toy manufacturer offers him a 1.5% royalty on the sales of each of his creations. Not enough to jeopardize the company’s accounts, which at the time he was a little toy player.
Also, it’s not this Barbie she just created at her boss’s request that will change a lot. The men at Mattel don’t want to hear about this female-bodied doll.
Even disappointment a few months later when the director presented her creation at the New York Toy Fair in 1959. Retail buyers frowned at this female-bodied doll. Barbie’s fate then rests solely on the stubbornness of Ruth Handler, who stakes everything on one last market study.
She calls Austrian psychologist and marketing expert Ernest Dichter. Nicknamed the “manipulator,” he conducts interviews with consumer panels, primarily mothers who are also put off by the appearance of the toy placed in their hands. But it’s by listening to a girl boast about the doll’s neat appearance that the expert gets the hook from her.
Stroke of the Marketing Genius
“He understood that this was the key,” explains MG Lord, author of Eternal Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll in a Netflix documentary. If the mothers feared that their daughter would be seen as an easy girl, the idea of not finding a husband terrified them even more. If her daughter could follow Barbie’s lead in looking good, then mommy was ready to forget about her breasts.”
By guiding these interviews in this direction, the Austrian psychologist earned the enthusiasm of the mothers on the panel.
Finally convinced, Mattel leaders launched the first mass production in Japan, whose factories at the time were proficient in low-cost rotational molding of plastic and were preparing a full-scale marketing campaign. The first ad logically ends with a Barbie in a wedding dress.
The Barbie box is immediate. The first year, 350,000 dolls were sold in stores. Japanese factories are running at full speed and struggling to keep up with demand.
But Mattel’s second stroke of genius is a business strategy modeled on that of razor maker Gillette. Sold at a relatively affordable $3, Barbie is accompanied by an array of accessories and mini-clothes hand-sewn by Japanese home-based workers on which the brand earns hefty margins.
Enough to finance even more new models with the releases of Ken, her boyfriend in 1961 (inspired by Ruth and Elliot’s son Kenneth), Skipper, her little sister in 1964 plus the series of new Barbies (model, journalist, nurse and even a 1965 astronaut).
If Mattel rubs his hands, there is another who lives like a pasha in Hollywood: Jack Ryan. The engineer who takes 1.5% as soon as a Barbie product is sold to the world has struck it rich and lives in the heights of Los Angeles with the many women he marries year after year, including the Star actress Zsa Zsa Gabord in 1975.
A success that Mattel sees with bad eyes. In the 1970s, as Barbie sales plummeted, the company unilaterally decided to cut off the spigot of designer dollars. A five-year trial will follow that will end in an amicable settlement but will plunge Jack Ryan into depression, drugs and alcoholism. He ended his life in 1991 after a stroke.
They accuse Barbie’s ‘mother’
On the Mattel side, life for the Handlers is no longer rosy. Ruth was accused of fraud in 1978 after an investigation by the SEC, the police force of the United States Stock Exchange. As Mattel’s sales are in free fall, the leader is accused of falsifying purchase orders. Barbie’s “mother” is shunned by society and sentenced to community service.
The new management, essentially masculine, gropes its way, multiplies failures and suffers many controversies. The world has changed and female stereotypes no longer apply in the 80s.
Questioned later, Ruth Handler will defend herself that she never wanted to be in the front line.
But for Barbie, the lows are quickly followed by the highs. And after a few years in the background, the brand returned to the fore in the 90s. The “Ultra hair” model launched at the beginning of the decade remains to this day the best seller in Mattel’s history.
Bis is repeated at the end of the 2000s with the success of the Bratz and the arrival of a new generation of mothers more sensitive to the issues of inclusion and representation. Once again, Barbie is singled out for conveying non-standard physical stereotypes. Especially since girls, unlike previous decades, no longer play Barbie after 8-9 years.
Therefore, it is necessary for Mattel to convince parents at least as much as children. This will be the launch of television series that make fun of the world of Barbie, animated films imbued with irony and, above all, the decline of new dolls to stick more to diversity.
If Barbie continues to be an icon despite the years, the controversies and the scandals, it is because she has a costume that the others do not have: the chameleon.
Source: BFM TV
