Ruth Handler-Barbie's creator
Barbie was created by an American women named Ruth Handler. Ruth was born on November 14, 1916 in Denver, Colorado and was named Ruth Mosko. She had Polish immigrant parents . Ruth married Elliot Handler in 1938 and they had two children, Barbara (Barbie) and Ken. In 1945, the Mattel company was founded by Harold Matson, Elliot Handler and Ruth Handler to make picture frames. As the company grew to manufacture other items, such as doll-house furniture, Ruth began to pay attention to her daughter’s play habits. She observed Barbara role playing with her 2-dimentional paper dolls and acting out career scenes with them. On a trip to Switzerland, Ruth saw a adult doll and thought she could make a childish version of this doll. In 1959, Ruth invented a three-dimension doll, named Barbie after her own daughter. More dolls in the Barbie family followed with Skipper in 1964, Tutti and Todd in 1966 and Stacie in 1992. In 1967 Ruth Handler became the President of Mattel, Inc. She and her husband left Mattel in 1974, although Ruth continued to represent the Barbie doll throughout her life. On April 27, 2002, Ruth Handler died in Los Angeles, California after a long fight against cancer.