3 FROM SWITZERLAND WITH LOVE
In the early 1950s, Ruth Handler was watching her daughter, Barbara, play with paper dolls, and noticed that she gave them adult roles. This was unexpected, as at the time, most children’s toy dolls were representations of babies or young children. Taken with her observation, Ruth suggested the idea of an adult-bodied doll to her husband, Elliot, who just happened to be a senior executive at the Mattel toy company. He was unenthusiastic about the idea, as were Mattel’s directors.
And nothing happened until after the Handler’s summer vacation to Switzerland in 1956, where Ruth noticed a strange looking doll in the window of a cigarette shop. The doll was 11 and a half inches tall, had platinum-blond hair, long legs and perhaps surprisingly an ample bosom. Her name was Bild Lilli.1
Although Ruth didn’t know it at the time – she didn’t speak German – the doll was actually a sex symbol, sold mainly to middle-aged men. (That’s why the doll was only stocked in bars and tobacco stores.) Instead, she took one look at the blond Bild Lilli and saw a perfect toy for young girls. She bought three of them. She gave one to her daughter and took the others back to Mattel.
The design of the doll was slightly reworked (with help from engineer Jack Ryan) and the doll was given a new name, Barbie, after Handler’s daughter, Barbara. The doll made its debut at the American International Toy Fair in New York on 9 March 1959. (This date is now used as Barbie’s official birthday.)
While Barbie wasn’t exactly an overnight success – early market research showed that some parents were unhappy about the doll’s chest, and the famous US Sears store initially refused to carry a toy that had “feminine curves” – around 350,000 Barbie dolls were sold during the first year of production. Since then the toy has become a cultural icon and one of the most popular toys in the world.
And the moral is that old ideas can be reinterpreted for new markets. What ideas from other markets could you use to deliver innovation in your own market?
1 And just in case you’re interested, The Bild Lilli doll was based on a character that appeared in a comic strip drawn by Reinhard Beuthin for the newspaper Die Bild-Zeitung. Lilli was a blonde bombshell, a working girl who knew what she wanted and was not above using men to get it. The Lilli doll was first sold in Germany in 1955. Mattel acquired the rights to the Bild Lilli doll in 1964 and production of Lilli was stopped.