Toy brand Mattel and your favourite Barbie: What is common between them?  

If you have grown up playing with Barbies, you have had a colourful childhood. Thanks to its immense popularity, the origin story of Barbie is not unknown. American inventor Ruth Handler launched it in March 1959. But do you know under which brand Barbie was sold? Well, that would be Mattel. Now known as Mattel Inc., it is one of world’s largest toy manufacturing brand and was founded in January 1945 by the Barbie maker herself. Here’s the origin story and evolution of this world-famous toy brand. 

The backstory  
Long before Barbie came saw the light of day, Ruth Handler was busy doing something else. She, along with her husband Elliot Handler and family friend Harold Mattson, were all struggling financially in the post World War times in the USA, and decided to launch a business. They established Mattel Creations in a garage in Los Angeles in 1945. Initially, they started out with metal scraps, but soon, Ruth Handler, a mother of three, conceived the idea of selling picture frames. She knew, in times of crisis, people needed to hold on to the memories of their loved ones, and photo frames would sell like hot cakes and they did. Later, when they had left behind raw materials from the frames, they also started making dollhouses. Guess what? The first one went to her daughter Barbara who was the real inspiration behind Barbie. After all, she liked to play with grown-up doll her mother made for her (the first prototype of Barbie) and wanted a home for her. Being a doting mother, Ruth Handler fulfilled her child’s wish and also came up with a brilliant business idea. Interestingly, the name Mattel was a portmanteau of the founders’ names: Matt from the surname of Mattson and El from the first name of Elliot Handler and was also the doing of Ruth. Later on, the woman had also mentioned that the very idea of dollhouses led her to create not only Barbie but also other toys. 

Mattel over the years 
In 1946, the year after Mattel’s inception, the co-founder of the Handler Harold Mattson sold his shares and stakes to them on account of poor health. While Elliot feared that this would mean their business may shut down if they could not increase their profits, Ruth was determined to make it a success. In fact, around the same time, she had started to try out different designs for Barbie but was not reaching perfection. But she knew that they would need a manufacturing plant once Barbie was rolled out. So, meanwhile, she tried out with other toys. The first success came with a toy ukelele called Uke-A-Doodle which was quite a hit. To expand their business further, in 1957, Mattel Creations started sponsoring a lead TV series called Mickey Mouse Club. Then finally, after a long wait, Barbie saw the light of the day and went on to become the brand’s bestseller.  

Fast forward to 1969, the name Mattel Creations was changed into Mattel Inc. – Toymakers. But it became popular as just Mattel and came to be known for its brand-new and iconic “red sun” logo with the titled wordmark of Mattel in all caps.  

Unfortunately, the Handlers were convicted of financial frauds and was banned from their own company in 1974 which was soon taken over by their the then Vice President Arthur Spear. His contributions include setting up the Mattel Children’s Foundation, an NGO and orphanage in 1978 and The Mattel Electronics (an all-electronic, handheld gaming company) in 1982 among others. Since then, Mattel has only grown in size and popularity, with new toys coming in almost annually, holding on to their legacy. 

Popular toys of Mattel 
Apart from Barbie, over the years, Mattel has developed and launched several other toys. Here are some interesting facts about the most popular ones among them.  

Hot Wheels: It is an American group of scale model cars that was launched by Mattel in 1968. It was the brainchild of Elliot Handler, who discovered his son Kenneth playing with model cars of a company called Matchbox. This encouraged him to come up with his own line of model cars to compete with Matchbox. He commissioned automobile engineer Jack Ryan to make Hot Wheels as close to real-life cars as possible.  

Monster High: One of Mattel’s latest creation, Monster High was launched in June 2010 as a fashion doll line featuring the characters of sci-fi movies, horror and fantasy fictions, and other pop culture. It was created by Mattel’s own toy designer Garrett Sander and was based in the fictional American town of New Salem where the kids of famous monsters attended the high school called Monster High. It went on to become so popular that it later inspired web series and TV shows of the same name.