Creator Of Barbie Doll Dead At 85

Ruth Handler, who created Barbie, the world's most popular doll and an American icon that helped shape girls' dreams while infuriating feminists, has died. She was 85.

Handler, who also co-founded the Mattel toy company, died at Century City Hospital Saturday morning of complications from colon surgery she underwent three months ago, said Elliot Handler, her husband.

Since Handler's creation, named for her daughter Barbara, was introduced in 1959 it has become a touchstone of cultural politics.

The impossibly well-endowed doll has drawn the ire of feminists, inspired artists and intrigued academics around the world. Barbie even was placed in the official "America's Time Capsule" buried in 1976.

The original blue-eyed, blonde fashion model has morphed over the decades into a variety of ethnic looks and has had many careers, from astronaut to veterinarian.

More than 1 billion have been sold in 150 countries.

"My whole philosophy of Barbie was that through the doll, the little girl could be anything she wanted to be," Handler wrote in a 1994 autobiography. "Barbie always represented the fact that a woman has choices."

With the new doll, girls could play out their dreams of adolescence and beyond. Barbie, after all, could go to the prom, get married, or even travel to the moon.

"Over and over I've had it said to me by women," Handler told The Associated Press in 1994. "She was much more than a doll for them. She was part of them."

Handler kept a gold-plated Barbie in her Century City high-rise.

Barbie's birth came at a time when the usual doll was a baby. Handler decided to create a more mature plaything — with breasts, as she once put it — after noticing that her daughter liked to play with paper cutout dolls of teen-agers and career women.

Mattel's male ad executives were unimpressed with the idea, but several years later Handler got the doll into production.

Her concept was modeled on a sexy German precursor called Lilli, based on a comic strip.

Barbie was more innocent. The 11 1/2-inch (29 centimeters)-tall plastic toy was a fresh-faced Midwesterner with a ponytail and a black-and-white striped swimsuit. Barbie debuted at the American Toy Fair in New York City in 1959. She was an instant hit and in the first year 351,000 dolls were sold at $3 each.

Barbie went on to make a fortune for Mattel, which sold not only versions of the doll but an expanding number of outfits and accessories, not to mention Barbie's boyfriend Ken, named for Handler's son; her little sister, Skipper, and pals Midge and Christie.

Later dolls were named for Handler's grandchildren.

Handler was born Ruth Mosko, the youngest of 10 children of Polish immigrants who settled in Denver. She moved to Southern California at 19, later marrying her high school boyfriend and studying industrial design.

Eventually the Handlers began making and selling plastic bowls, mirrors and other house wares. The garage business boomed and was followed in the 1940s by a picture frame company. Mattel grew out of a sideline business making dollhouse furniture from the frame scraps. The company had early successes with a child-sized ukulele and the Burp gun cap pistol.

Things went downhill in the 1970s, however. Mattel began to diversify away from toys and the Handlers were forced out of the company. In 1978, Handler was indicted for mail fraud and false reporting to the Securities and Exchange Commission. She pleaded no contest, was fined $57,000 and sentenced to 2,500 hours of community service.

Handler, who struggled with breast cancer and had a mastectomy in 1970, later blamed her illness for distracting her from business concerns.

She began to campaign for cancer awareness. The disease also prompted her second career. Unable to find a decent prosthetic breast, Handler created her own, called Nearly Me, and formed a company to market it. She fitted Betty Ford for one after the former first lady had a mastectomy. The company earned more than $1 million in sales and was sold in 1991.