The History of Barbie: The World's Most Popular Doll
Here's how Barbie came to be the best-selling children's toy in history.
Perhaps no other doll is more famous than Barbie. While many know the statuesque modern version, many don't know the origins of Barbie.
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The woman behind the invention of Barbie was Ruth Handler, the wife of Elliot Handler, the founder of the Mattel toy company. She noticed that their young daughter Barbara would always play with baby dolls because there were no adult dolls on the market. On a trip to Germany, she spotted the Bild Lilli doll, who was an adult doll based off a comic strip. She pitched the idea to her husband and designed an adult doll named Barbie after her daughter Barbara.
The first Barbie doll was introduced in New York in 1959, in a blonde and brunette version, wearing a zebra-print one-piece swimsuit and white sunglasses with a closet of fashion clothes. Barbie became an instant success and 350,000 dolls were sold the first year. The inventors of the Bild Lilli doll sued Mattel for copyright infringement, but Mattel ended up buying the rights for Bild Lilli in 1963 for $21,600 (equivalent to over $200,000 today).
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In 1961, the Ken doll was introduced, named after the Handler's son, as Barbie's boyfriend. For the next 60 years, Barbie has became a cultural phenomenon, with the launch of Barbies in a variety of costumes and professions (from astronaut Barbie to President Barbie), as celebrity versions (Twiggy was the first celebrity Barbie in 1967) and historical figures (Amelia Earhart and Frida Kahlo).
In 1986, Andy Warhol even did a silkscreen portrait of Barbie as a gift to his muse, fashion designer BillyBoy*, who was an avid collector of Barbie dolls, having over 11,000 of them. Warhol had originally wanted to make a portrait of BillyBoy*, to which he responded "If you want to do my portrait, do Barbie, because Barbie, c’est moi." The portrait, Barbie, Portrait of BillyBoy*, sold at Christie's in 2014 for $1.1 million.
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The most expensive vintage Barbie ever sold was a 1965 model in a Midnight Red gown and cape that achieved over $17,000 at Christie's in 2006. However, you can find vintage Barbies on Barnebys for as low as $100. Today, over a billion dolls have been sold as new models have been introduced and the company has branched into media with movies, TV and video games.
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This is an updated version of the article originally published on September 16, 2019.
