The company's name is derived from Harold "Matt" Matson and Elliot Handler, who founded the company in 1945. Handler's wife, Ruth Handler, later became president, in 1959, she created the most famous doll Barbie of the whole world at that time, and that was inspired by the paper doll cut by her daughter.
In 1963, barbie began to towards the international market, and nowadays, Mattel barbies have entered more than 150 countries & hundreds of millions of families, the annual sales is more than 1 billion pieces, three barbie dolls are brought average per seconds. The Businessweek evaluated the barbie in the "2001 best global brands" list is: "she is not only a toy doll, also is the symbol of American society."
The Mattel barbies have been defined as the female image spokesman who aspire to perfection and fashion. Therefore, Mattel launches nearly hundred sets of barbie dolls series every year, they can be astronauts, starts, teachers, doctors and businessmen, and even the princess, presidential candidate. For combining with the social and television & cinema news, the barbies has been improved more than 500 times, no matter in appearance, race, skin, hair style, language and even cloth model design.
In order to solve the different culture problem of different area properly, they launched the Latin barbie , barbie with cheongsam, Muslim barbie with robe & kerchief and black skin, etc.
It is said, every American girl has 8 barbies, Italian is 7, French is 5, and the biggest collector is a German girl, has more than 6000 barbies.
It seems to Mattel that barbies absolutely are not only a few different color skin beauty girls, because if the barbies go to school, thety need book, and they also need father, mother, sister, boyfriend, pet, etc., And they have the demands of clothes, cosmetics, electric shavers and so on. So, start from barbie, It derived a incomparably huge barbie market.
