for the contributions to the toy industry, especially their creation of Barbie and Ken.Įlliot, 72, is retired. Ruth and Elliot Handler will be honored next month by the Toy Manufacturers Assn. The Barbie doll, meanwhile, continues to propel Mattel’s toy business. Ruth Handler was indicted and later pleaded no contest in 1978 to a securities law violation, although she has maintained her innocence. They left Mattel in 1975 after an Securities and Exchange Commission investigation. as an importer of inexpensive toys from Japan. It was so important to them.”īarbie and Ken’s parents, Ruth and Elliot Handler, founded Mattel Inc.
Little girls lined up outside the house, eager to meet the “real” Ken. He recalls getting his first taste celebrity in 1963, when he was visiting his mother-in-law in Cheyenne, Wyo. Handler says that today that he is mostly amused by attention that the dolls bring him and his sister. Though the doll has helped make him a “millionaire several times over,” Handler says, “it bothers me. “Like she hangs out at the beach and doesn’t have a brain in her head.” Handler also has strong opinions about the Barbie doll. “If they had asked for them, I would have bought the dolls for them,” says Handler. His two daughters never played with Barbie or Ken. He lives in trendy Greenwich Village and is finishing up a book on his family with a working title, “The Ken Doll Talks.” He says he sold his first project to media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Ken, now 44, balding and married with three children, restores turn-of-the-century homes in Manhattan. “But I am really not very well acquainted with Barbie doll at all.” And Segal said she was too old to play with Barbie doll by the time her mother created the toy. Barbie’s daughter, Cheryl, liked outdoors games and never played much with dolls. Now she says she just swallows hard and smiles.īarbie doll never took up residence at Segal’s Brentwood home. Whether she’s at the club or at a tony Brentwood dinner party, someone inevitably hails her as the first Barbie doll. But she is tired of being typecast as the “real” Barbie doll. Segal is grateful to her namesake for bankrolling her leisurely life style. She says she plays a lot of golf at the posh Riviera Country Club, and is a tennis buff, too.
BARBIE DOLL IN REAL LIFE FREE
Since she sold her West Los Angeles bed and bath shop two years ago, Segal has enjoyed her free time. But Barbie allows, “I’ve changed as I’ve gotten older.” As a teen-ager, Barbie says she didn’t want “the best clothes or drive the best cars” that are showered on the Barbie doll.
“I’m tired of being Barbie doll,” says Segal, who was a 16-year-old sophomore at Hamilton High School when her mother created Barbie. Last week, however, the two agreed to speak briefly by telephone about growing up as, well, Barbie and Ken. The Handler children long avoided the spotlight that seemed to follow them ever since they were teen-agers and never granted interviews. He is all these perfect American things.” But when Ken was at Hamilton High School in Beverlywood, he “played the piano and went to movies with subtitles.” Looking back, he says, “I was a nerd-a real nerd.