character toy

"Barbie was never intended to be anything but a reflection of what a little girl wanted her to be," Barbie creator Ruth Handler told ABCNews. "In my mind she was a prop through which the child could visualize being an adult" (Stearns & Vardell, 1998). Barbie was not just another plaything but a "personality" - a real life teenage fashion model. Her debut in 1959 marked the introduction of one of the first character toys into the toy market. Barbie was given a "back story" - a narrative that established her personality within an imaginary but familiar universe. Marketers realized they were not promoting the toy's use value as much as an imagined relationship with the toy. Cy Shneider, the former ad executive who worked on the original Barbie campaigns recognized her unique attraction as a doll who's character children could identify with: "'Somehow Barbie filled a very special need for little girls' imaginations. SHe was the fulfilment of every little girl's dream of glamour, fame, wealth, and stardom'"(Kline, 1993: 170).

While vacationing in Switzerland in 1955, Ruth Handler happened upon an 11.5 inch doll with a blond ponytail, pouty lips and a seductive glance. "Lilli" was a figure in a bawdy German cartoon, a symbol of illicit sex that was sculpted into doll form but never intended for children. She was a pornographic charicature, a gag gift for men. Handler was oblivious to the doll's naughty reputation, she saw in her a body shape that she'd been intrigued with for years (Stearns & Vardell, 1998). She got the idea watching her teenage daughter, Barbara play with more mature paper dolls that were not the playmate or baby type. Handler brought three dolls back to the U.S. and Mattel's designers went to work to create Barbie, a toned down version of Lilli, but still a sexed-up form that retained the German doll's womanly shape (Lord, 1994: 29-30). Handler saw the prospect of creating a fashion doll and knew that exaggerated proportions would allow her clothes designers to create and sell and endless line of stylish doll clothes and accessories.