Word: doll
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...billion copies of its hit toy by cultivating its wholesome image, making it as popular with American kids as it is safe for parents. But the toy industry has been changing. Girls are trading in traditional favorites for video games at younger ages while tweens flock to hipper dolls like Bratz, which launched in 2001 and quickly chewed into Barbie's market share. Mattel last year won a copyright-infringement case against Bratz owner MGA Entertainment, but that didn't change the fact that, over the past five years, Mattel's domestic sales of Barbie-related products have fallen...
...change Mattel is not making is in the doll itself. The company has produced ethnic dolls in the past, including a few it might like to forget, like the 1981 Oriental Barbie or the 1967 Colored Francie. But other than the fact that there is a brunette version, very little about the new Shanghai Barbie doll is different. Same long legs, same wasp waist. Barbie may be entering her golden years, but Mattel is betting there's life...
Barbie and Ruth: The Story of the World's Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her By Robin Gerber Collins Business; 278 pages...
...image issue right from the beginning. "No mother is going to buy her daughter a doll with breasts," Ruth Handler's husband and business partner Elliot insisted. Her other male colleagues at Mattel, the company she founded, concurred. But Handler, a 5-ft. 2-in. (1.6 m) dynamo, was convinced there was a market for a mass-produced adult doll. Little girls aspired to be bigger girls, she reasoned. For years she pressed on, finally introducing the doll at the 1959 Toy Fair in New York City...
...mention the lead character of a compelling business saga. It's one of unrelenting ambition that ends sadly but not unsuccessfully. Sales of Barbie, plus her carefully tailored outfits and paraphernalia, garnered more than $1 billion last year, helping keep Mattel the world's No. 1 toymaker. The curvaceous doll, who would measure 39-21-33 if she were an adult woman, is both an icon and a kitsch object that has provoked feminist ire. In recent years, Barbie's sales have vacillated because of competing dolls and other childhood diversions like video games. (The maker of a popular rival...