ith the end of the war came an increase in the use of plastic, and Mattel Creations first product, a plastic ukulele called the Ukedoodle hit the toy store shelves. The production of this new toy really helped set Mattels business in motion. After the ukulele, came a jack-in-the-box, which also brought much revenue to the company. Mattel was so successful that by 1950, the company had compiled a net-worth of nearly a half million dollars (Lord 20).While Mattel Creations was busy celebrating the success of their famous ukulele and jack-in-the-box, a designer in Germany was diligently creating his own masterpiece; one that would greatly influence the design of the Barbie doll. A man named Reinhard Beuthien created a cartoon character named Lilli who appeared in the comic section of a German newspaper called Bild Zeitung. Soon after, this one-dimensional character called Lilli was transformed into a three-dimensional doll (Bad Girl 1). The doll that Mr. Beuthien produced was eleven and one-half-inches tall, flesh colored and beautifully painted (Lord 25). Her main personality traits included golddigger, exhibitionist, and floozy (Lord 25). However, Lilli was basically a sexy, adult male pornographic toy (Bad Girl 1)-- not a childs role model or toy (Bad Girl 2). Back in the United States, Ruth started having ideas, while watching her daughter Barbara play with paper dolls, of designing a doll with a womans body. Her daughter wasnt just playing with the dolls; she was intently interacting with them (Lord 29-30). Ruth could see her daughter playing make believe in the land of adult life and thought an actual doll would be quite a phenomena (Lord 30). Some time later, while shopping on vacation in Switzerland, Mrs. Handler first saw the Lilli doll. She decided to buy three of the dolls, one for herself and two for her daughter (Bad Girl 2). Ruth really wasnt familiar with Lilli or what she represented, but in her, she saw the f...
