Weird Facts We Never Knew About Barbie That Made Us Nostalgic

Shortly after WWII, Ruth and Elliot Handler founded Mattel in 1945. Ruth, who encouraged her husband to start a company that specialized in plastics, believed in the company so much that she and her husband invested Mattel’s entire net worth in marketing their toy gun on The Mickey Mouse Club in 1955. The investment paid off, and the couple soon found they had the financial resources to produce other toys, including Barbie and Hot Wheels.

When Ruth introduced the world to the Barbie doll in 1959, sales skyrocketed. After locking in the young female market with the invention, the couple turned their eyes to inventing a toy for boys that would capture male audiences in the same way girls loved their dolls with womanly features. In 1968, their handheld, die-cast custom race cars, named Hot Wheels, hit toy store shelves – spurring a second overwhelmingly positive outcome for the Handlers’ company.

Many Barbie fans were shocked by a 2018 Barbie Twitter post that celebrated Siblings Day with a picture of Barbie and her siblings and a caption that read: “Happy #SiblingsDay, from the Roberts sisters!” Until then, most assumed that Barbie had reached celebrity status early in life and never needed a last name.

However, Barbie has had a last name since her introduction to the world in 1959. Inventor Ruth Handler called her doll “Barbara Millicent Roberts,” a name with deep and deliberate meaning. Ruth Handler’s daughter’s name is Barbara, and the name Millicent is of German origin – the country where Handler first found inspiration for her creation. Translating to “strong in work” or “industrious,” Millicent accurately describes Barbie’s drive to have many thriving careers, hobbies, and interests.

The doll also has an extensive family tree, including her parents, George and Margaret Rawlins Roberts, and her siblings, Kelly, Shelly, Chelsea, Kristine, Anastasia, Skipper, Tutti, and Todd. (Though twins Tutti and Todd were eventually discontinued.) Notably, Ken also has a last name: Carson.

Mattel was outraged by “Barbie Girl,” the 1997 pop hit by Aqua. Though the song was wildly popular, the toy company felt that the band’s lyrics, which included calling Barbie a “blonde bimbo,” harmed the doll’s image.

Mattel sued the band’s record label, MCA Records, over the supposed offenses, but Judge Alex Kozinski ruled the claims were unfounded because the song was meant to be a parody and thus protected by the First Amendment. Later, the judge explained his decision:

With Barbie, Mattel created not just a toy but a cultural icon… With fame often comes unwanted attention… Barbie has been labeled both the ideal woman and a bimbo… The parties are advised to chill.

Barbie collectors everywhere dream of someday turning their extensive boxed-doll collections into a seriously matured profit. Although some popular Barbies, like “Totally Hair Barbie,” have sold for as much as $160 on eBay, no commission has been greater than the one earned by Stefano Canturi’s design in 2010.

The doll’s couture black strapless dress highlighted the one-carat purplish-pink diamond surrounding three carats of white diamonds along the doll’s neck. After spending a full month designing every intricate detail of the doll’s look, Canturi placed his version of Barbie up for auction to raise money for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. The doll sold for $302,500.

When inventor Ruth Handler invented Barbie in 1959, she hoped to create a toy that would appeal to older girls who were growing tired of their baby dolls but still young enough to enjoy the play. Looking to her own daughter, Barbara, for inspiration, Handler named her grown-up doll “Barbie.” The Mattel founder wrote in her biography:

[I settled on the name Barbie] fairly early in the design process… in honor of our daughter, of course, whose innocent play with adult paper dolls had inspired the idea…

As Handler told the Los Angeles Times:

If it hadn’t been for Barbie… I would have never come up with the idea for the doll…

In her autobiography, Handler continues:

 [As soon as Barbie went on the market, we received] hundreds of letters from little girls begging us to make a boyfriend for Barbie.

Hoping to include both of her children for creative inspiration, Handler did invent a boyfriend for Barbie – and named it after her son, Ken. The choice changed her children’s lives, as they were hounded for autographs and constantly compared to the dolls  – which they say share no resemblance to their real lives.

Handler revealed:

There she [Barbara] was, just trying to be like everybody else, and suddenly she was the inspiration for the most popular toy in the world… [People] treated her like a movie star… She felt like it was really the doll they were making a fuss over, not the flesh-and-blood Barbara Handler… [She] went out of her way to hide her association with the doll… If people did find out, she’d tell them in no uncertain terms that she was not the Barbie doll… [Ken] enjoyed stints as an object of adoration… [but endured] a lot of teasing at school [because of the doll’s smooth crotch].

An interview with the real-life Barbie and Ken sibling duo echoed these statements. Ken Handler said:

Ken doll is Malibu… He goes to the beach and surfs. He is all these perfect American things… I was a nerd – a real nerd. All the girls thought I was a jerk… [Barbie is a] bimbo… [who] hangs out at the beach and doesn’t have a brain in her head… I really don’t like her.

Barbara Handler continued:

I’m tired of being Barbie doll.

Though Handler had gone on to name other characters in the Barbie world after her children’s spouses and children, Barbie and Ken told the Los Angeles Times they had never purchased the dolls for their families.

Talking Barbies and G.I. Joes were some of the most buzzworthy toys of the 1993 holiday season, but for entirely different reasons than the manufacturers may have hoped. As children across the nation opened their gender-stereotyped versions of the dolls, some realized their G.I. Joes had very high-pitched voices or that their Barbies were more interested in terrorizing their enemies than going shopping.

Spurred by Mattel’s release of a Barbie who complained that “math class is tough” in 1992, the Barbie Liberation Organization performed what its members called corrective surgery, switching the voice boxes of Barbies and G.I.Joes in numerous states before replacing them back in their boxes on store shelves to be sold.

The group, which had left notes for doll purchasers to report the events to their local news stations, also created and dispersed a video explaining the motive behind its actions. As a Barbie doll with a super-imposed moving mouth becomes visible on screen, the toy announces:

We’re an international group of children’s toys that are revolting against the companies that made us… we’ve turned against our creators because they use us to brainwash kids. They build us in a way that perpetuates gender-based stereotypes. Those stereotypes have a negative effect on children’s development.

I donated my voice to a G.I. Joe, ’cause they wanna be free, too… They don’t want to say all that violent war stuff. Now he says what I used to say.

The scene cuts to G.I. Joe dolls whose voice boxes have been replaced with those of Barbie dolls, declaring:

Want to go shopping?… Ken is such a dream!… Will we ever have enough clothes?

In 2015, Mattel announced that children would no longer have to pretend Barbie was a trusted friend, because the company had developed “Hello Barbie,” who was capable of intelligent conversations with her owner.

Children could press a button on the doll’s belt buckle to record information about themselves through her built-in Wi-Fi. Barbie then sent the information to the cloud, where she could retain it to give advice and hold increasingly personally tailored conversations as children continued to feed her information.

Although Mattel argued that the company was finally giving Barbie lovers exactly what they’d always wanted, some parents found the new doll “creepy.” Susan Linn, the director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, said:

Kids using “Hello Barbie” aren’t only talking to a doll, they are talking directly to a toy conglomerate whose only interest in them is financial… It’s creepy – and creates a host of dangers for children and families.

Barbie and Ken have always had a rocky relationship – the doll creators established he was Barbie’s on-again, off-again boyfriend when Ken first hit toy shelves in 1961. Still, the couple remained each other’s only love interests for decades, even moving in to the Barbie Dreamhouse together in 1974. Many assumed Barbie and Ken would remain together forever.

Sadly, the couple officially split on Valentine’s Day in 2004 after 43 years together. Quick to find an edgier replacement boyfriend, Barbie began dating Blaine, the Australian boogie boarder. Thankfully for Ken, the whirlwind romance didn’t last. Though it took years to win Barbie’s heart again, the doll couple reunited on Valentine’s Day in 2011.

After Mattel posted billboards in major cities announcing the couple was reunited, the company released a statement from Ken regarding the newly reestablished relationship:

Talk about a total doll! Barbie and I met in 1961 on the set of our first television commercial together. It was love at first sight. I was thrust into the limelight, becoming America’s most fashionable “first man” alongside my leading lady. We lasted a long time – more than four decades. Although I tried unsuccessfully to win Barbie back on numerous occasions, it wasn’t until February 14, 2011, my dream finally came true. After a series of grand gestures that included everything from personalized cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery to billboards professing my love, Barbie finally said, “Yes!” We are once again a happy couple.

Midge was first introduced as a friend of Barbie’s in 1963. However, the doll, which was specifically designed to have less remarkable features than her more popular friend, was discontinued and replaced by PJ, a doll who more closely resembled Barbie, in 1967.

Midge made a couple of short-lived reappearances in 1987 with the California Dream Barbie set, and again in 1990 as the bride of her long-term boyfriend, Allan (Allan had been introduced as Midge’s love interest and Ken’s best friend in 1964, but suffered a fate similar to his female counterpart).

Though Barbie has had a few fantasy wedding gowns, she’s never been allowed to marry or have children because Mattel believes it would take away from her ambitious storyline. However, the doll creators didn’t see a problem with allowing her best friend, Midge, to follow the route of having a family. In 2002, the toy company released “Happy Family,” a toy that featured a pregnant Midge with a magnetic belly that held a removable toy infant inside. Some parents were outraged, insisting that the doll promoted teenage pregnancy. Eventually, the doll was pulled from shelves.

In 1992, Mattel released Teen Talk Barbie, a doll priced around $25 that would choose four random “girlie” phrases from her 270 phrase-loaded chip. The doll sparked outrage with the American Association of University Women when purchasers realized that one of Barbie’s chosen phrases was “Math class is tough.” Though the company did not recall the dolls, it did reprogram dolls produced after the incident to choose from 269 phrases – with the comment regarding scholastics omitted.

Still, the controversy was enough to spark an entire The Simpson’s episode dedicated to the events in 1996. Lisa exercised her rights as a feminist to denounce a newly released “Talking Malibu Stacy Doll,” with many aspects of the plot mirroring Mattel’s sales tactics from the ’80s and the public backlash Teen Talk Barbie’s release garnered.