Since the beginning of time, toys have often been an indicator of the way a society behaves, and how they interact with their children. For example, in ancient Greece, artifacts recovered there testify that children were simply not given toys to play with as in the modern world. The cruel ritual of leaving a sick child on a hillside for dead, seems to indicate a lack of attention to the young (Lord 16). The same is true of todays society. As you can see with the number of toy stores in our society, we find toys of great value to our lives and enjoy giving them to children as gifts. Ask just about any young girl what she wants for Christmas and youll undoubtedly get the same answer: A Barbie. But what exactly has caused this baby boomer Barbie craze, and how did the entire world get so caught up in it? The answer lies in Ruth Handlers vision for the first childrens adult doll. Mrs. Handlers eleven and one-half-inch chunk of plastic began causing problems even before its public debut in 1959, yet has managed to become one of Americas favorite dolls. Ruth Handler and her two young children, Barbara and Ken, were merely sightseeing in Lucerne, Switzerland, when Mrs. Handler first saw the doll she herself had been trying to create (Lord 29). In the window of a small gift shop was an eleven and one-half-inch tall plastic doll with a slender womans body and a long blond ponytail. Her name was Lilli (Bad Girl 1). She had been created from a cartoon character in a West German tabloid similar to the National Inquirer (Lord 8). Dressed provocatively, and with a seductive look in her eye, Lilli had become a popular pornographic gag gift for men (Bad Girl 1). Excited to see her long-time idea a reality, Mrs. Handler bought three of the dolls and hurried home to begin work on her own doll (Bad Girl 2). It was 1956, and within three years, Mattel Creations began marketing the teenage fashion model as a new kind of doll from real life ...
