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At a time when there were precious few women in business and even fewer entrepreneurs, Ruth Handler helped build the Mattel toy empire from scratch. Working with her husband (a furniture maker by trade) Handler took advantage of the baby boom to create a wide variety of toys for an ever growing market.
Mattel's early success came from the sales of plastic ukuleles, toy pianos and other instruments for children. An early Mattel music box sold over 20 million units.
Mattel grew enormously after Handler decided to invest heavily in advertising, becoming one of the first companies to truly exploit television as an advertising medium. Mattel was the sole sponsor of The Mickey Mouse Club and the association produced great synergies for Mattel and a huge increase in sales.
Mattel's real breakthrough would come in 1959, with the introduction of the Barbie Doll. More than 350,000 Barbies were sold in the first year and over one billion (including Barbie's sidekicks, Ken, Skipper, etc.) have been sold to date. To put things into perspective, an average of two Barbie Dolls are sold every second of every day.
Among the innovations created by Handler was the idea of selling clothes and accessories for her dolls, which was a multi-million dollar industry in itself. So many Barbie outfits are made that Mattel is actually the fourth largest maker of women's clothes.
The Barbie Doll is such an American icon that it was buried in the official "America's Time Capsule" in 1976.
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