Barbie
Barbie (B.) is the most popular doll on the planet, which history began in 1959. The doll’s creator is Mrs. Ruth Handler (1938-2002), who was a president of Mattel Inc. Company (est. 1945), which manufactures the dolls and everything around them: films, simple games, TV, cartoons. She and her business colleagues managed to create a large company with revenue of over 4 billion dollars yearly (and an income of hundreds of millions of dollars). The company’s modern business today is not just dolls but also things for children, vehicles, action figures, building sets, and games. The company’s market capitalization is 7.4 billion dollars as of 2021.History
The first appearance of the B. doll was on March 9, 1959. Since then, she has been an important participant and headliner of the doll world’s fashion and the fashion of people, creating many trends of the modern world, as we know it today. Since the very first years of B. creation, the doll was very popular among girls and millions of them wanted to be like her: tall, blond/brunette, slim, and wealthy. The doll’s fictional lifestyle was perceived by many Americans, Canadians, and other people in the world as a goal to pursue in life, being not the latest factor of increasing the lifestyle levels in millions of families.
During the life of B., it has created numerous controversies and lawsuits, as well as parodies and hatred, which, however, did not stop the company manufacturer to keep developing B. in all its manifestations. Today, over a billion B. dolls are sold all over the world for all time (excluding accessories and the rest in her universe), which makes it the most successful doll ever appearing on the market. In 2021, not only doll itself is a headliner but mostly the things that surround her – apparel, vehicles, houses, accessories, friends, and collectibles.
B. was named after the inventor’s daughter Barbara, who loved to play with paper dolls, assigning adult roles to them. The idea came to Ruth in the early 1950s but she could not market it properly for almost a decade, as nobody believed in her idea of an adult doll (the market of those times was filled with only infant dolls). In one of her trips to Germany, Ruth encountered a Bild Lilli doll, which was manufactured in small numbers for the local market, and immediately understood that this was a thing, which she exactly had in mind. She bought these dolls and brought them home to create B. based on them. Bild Lilli doll’s copyright was later purchased by Mattel. In creating the doll’s look and style, Ruth was helped by a fashion designer and an engineer, both working in the Mattel Company. The doll was represented at an annual Toy Fair in New York and was perceived well by customers, as the company sold over 350,000 dolls for the first year. All dolls’ clothes were originally hand-sewn in Asian factories.
Since the year of origination of B., she has been redesigned a large number of times, which all added to her look, spawning more and more things into her universe. Also, the Mattel company has been shifting all these years more towards producing the doll and accessories, expanding its primary business (it originally sold picture frames, pop musical instruments, and some other dolls, including the ones that spoke if to pull a string – this idea has revolutionized the doll segment in the entire world). The Mattel company was growing on the B. sales through the years and by acquiring other companies (to have their patent rights, copyrights, and manufacturing powers). Today it has grown into a large conglomerate employing over 32,000 workers, also spawning several entertainment companies, the most notable of which are Mattel Films and Mattel Television, which were one of the creators of Monster High.
Although B. was created by a white woman and was many years catering to the white, straight, and healthy society, the human thinking development largely affected the company’s approach to making dolls and everything around her. So today, one can find B. of various genders, skin and hair colors, physical shapes and conditions, healthy and ill, made from usual and recycled plastic, with or without pets, of various ages, and having various professions. This diversity allows catering to potentially all people on the planet.
B. in media
B. has become a cultural and business icon, creating much of the pop area and show business, as we know them today. It was the first doll, which heavily relied on TV commercials to sell the dolls, which was later copied by other makers. Several TV specials and animated films were created, which were sold on various carriers and shown on TV and on the Internet.
B. is a main or supporting character in many films, TV shows, and cartoons, including such huge hits as Toy Story. Full-fledged Barbie films today include 38, being distributed by such well-known companies as Artisan Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Universal, Lionsgate, and Warner Brothers. The films and creations all generated large sales revenues, which today account for over a billion dollars of only directly calculated sales (as it is hard to estimate the indirect influence on sales).
You also must have heard the ‘Barbie Girl’ song by Aqua, which made this music band widely popular.
Simple games with B. participation
To popularize a doll among gamers, many online simple games have been made by various companies through the years. We’re looking at their types below.
• Visiting a doctor for various reasons: to explore her pregnancy, to make surgical interventions, to see how her general health is doing
• Treating skin, facial, or nail problems
• Seeing her doing some mundane things with her family and/or children – like going to a park, on a picnic, to the beach, doing things at home…
• Dealing with animals and pets: visiting farms, making the pup rescue, petting sheep
• Fashion and everything connected to it is the biggest part of B.’s life. Beauty and fashion embraces such games’ topics as running a fashion boutique/beauty salon, changing her appearance to try on different apparel, hairstyles, design of nails on fingers and toes, doing facial makeup and makeover, and investigating the changes in her style
• B. also can be a fashion designer, blogger, or reporter
• Going to some parties, including themed, for which some of the mentioned above beauty changes have to be made. The parties usually include well-known occasions like a prom, a ball, a Halloween night, a Christmas celebration, an Easter picnic, Valentine’s Day, etc.
• Chasing for likes in social media – the newest trend of modern online free games, where all sorts of regular girls, princesses, and B. make photos and post them online to catch likes. In some of such games, the likes serve as an internal currency, allowing buying things and unlocking locked, while in others, they are simply given per se
• B. acts in a company of other characters, including Disney princesses, or just some regular girlfriends, who help her doing the already named things or explore something new. For instance, she can try on a rock-style outfit or be in a spy squad, going to a graduation day, or riding a horse
• When B. first appeared and then evolved, during long years, she was representing a person of about adolescent or young adult age. However, with the exponential growth of her popularity, more people wanted to see her as a child. That’s why a separate cast of games with B. as a child appeared (together with a toy line). She can be given in these games in various ranges of age: from the smallest baby to someone who’s nearly adolescent. In these, we mostly see her changing clothes to various events, going to some themed parties, or being a cheerleader
• Bringing her from sad to elevated, including the usage of better apparel and makeover
• Taking part in sports events, which are mostly connected to secular and easy things, for instance, skating, ice dancing, or rollerblading. She never participates in something traumatic-dangerous like bike riding or serious events like football. She is a girl, in the most girlish notion of it. Although, she can be a beauty at such sports events but only as a model with a nice look
• B. has a partner, Ken, who in different games appears as simply a boyfriend or as a husband. Sometimes, B. and Ken have children, whom they raise and do the connected chores. In some simple online games, they kiss and hug
• Dances – anything from ballet to polka
• Although B. is not a princess, some people consider her to be (and the company-maker also started pushing B.’s image towards being a princess). That’s why some games on the Internet include her in a princess style and doing things in this image
• She can turn into a singer or actress, a host of a show, etc.
• Surely, in the world of gadgets, B. could not stand aside. So some online games reveal her relations with them – like owning a new smartphone, including its unpacking
• Shopping
• Create your own doll from the proposed pieces (they will all be based on B. universe, so don’t expect something dramatically different)
• Going to spa, beach, tanning salon.
Sometimes, she crosses with other characters from the gaming, Hollywood, or pop universes – like Minions, Ladybug, Cinderella, Little Mermaid, and others. Mostly, she is trying their styles and apparel.
We’ve never seen B. doing some cooking in simple games (at least, anything harder than collecting/serving a burger from components in a fridge), house cleaning, or another ‘dirty’ work. It seems like B. was conceived as a very affluent person with far above-than-average income (and it should be passive since we’ve never seen her actually working, only entertaining). So she must have at least a housemaid, a cook, and some general helper. Or, if she is married to Ken, he must not only be very handsome but also very rich to allow B. not to do things regular people do. Nevertheless, there are many mundane-life things in B.’s world when considering the merchandise, official or not, which covers any part of human life, obviously catering to people of all social strata, genders, and ages.
B. merchandise
No wonder that in the universe of dolls, merch of B. has become the most powerful thing to create the ambiance of this character – even more than anything else. You already know that B. has appeared in the world first as a physical doll for children to play, not as a character of a game, movie, or cartoon (but they all followed). And below, we’re looking at the types of B. merch that’s available for everyone today. As always in the characters’ description, we are considering official and unofficial merch. The official one is made by the company-owner of B. rights and intellectual property, Mattel. Its website is mattel.com.
• Dolls of B., Ken, in various styles, outfits, and having different shapes and body modes (did you know that B. was highly evolving through the years? Today, not only a thin B. exists but also ‘fat’, ‘regular’, and ‘child’ versions)
• The sets of dolls, mostly connected to anniversaries, other events, or connected to other universes, like Star Wars (there are even B. dolls of Darth Vader and Stormtrooper!)
• Houses, apparel, and even huge playsets, which are able to recreate nearly any way of living, filled with things (this is what our current civilizations teaches us to – consumerism – so B. follows and even headlines it). The playsets include large houses packed with things – from apparel and furniture to cars. Even pools with elevators are present!
• Trucks, tractors, passenger cars, boats, and other vehicles
• Accessories for practically any life event, from a beach day and kayaking to being a farmer and a dog trainer
• B.-inspired dolls (like offspring or simply the broadening of B.’s universe), like Chelsea, another trademark.
It is hard to calculate the number of pieces of dolls and the associated merch but it is easily believed that over 100,000 pieces of various things are being sold considering the dolls, houses, vehicles, apparel, accessories, pets, and everything around them.
In addition to the website directly, it is possible to purchase merch of the B. universe in nets of Walmart, Target, and Amazon, which sell about half of everything connected to B.