Paper doll:Barbie Paper Doll

Introduced by Mattel, Inc., in 1959, Barbie has dominated the doll world ever since. By 2000 annual sales for Barbie reach into the billions of dollars, and this one product accounted for about 34 percent of Mattel's gross sales. In her 50+ years, Barbie has appeared in many varieties. She has tried scores of careers from dentist to astronaut, from fashion designer to fire fighter, and from jet pilot to paleontologist. Her hours of leisure have been filled with all manner of activities--skating, surfing, swimming, skiing, horseback riding, singing, dancing, cooking, babysitting, shopping, motorcycling, exercising, and more. She has embraced major events, trends, and activities of popular culture including TV shows, musical groups, Olympic games, Disney World and Mickey Mouse, designer fashions, Broadway musicals and popular movies, consumer product lines like Coca Cola and Harley-Davidson, and many others. She has traveled the world many times over. Barbie and her friends represent cultural diversity itself. In short, there is little in the American Experience of the past 50 years or so that Barbie hasn't tried. Barbie's popularity since her introduction, however, has not been constant. In the 1970s, many mothers and feminists condemned Barbie for encouraging little girls to aspire to little more than becoming clothes hounds and females of frivolity. By the early 1980s, Mattel had refocused Barbie from the ultimate consumer and party girl to a more career-oriented and culturally inclusive figure. Mattel issued more Barbies as teachers, race car drivers, soldiers, and doctors, with the slogan, "We girls can do anything."