Dream Doll: The Ruth Handler Story

Ruth Handler and Jacqueline Shannon

"In 1936, Ruthie Mosko, a petite inquisitive and determined nineteen-year-old college sophomore from Denver, Colorado, went on a vacation to Los Angeles, California. On an impulse, she scooped up a coveted job at Paramount Studios. With scarcely a glance back, the budding business dynamo seized initiative after initiative until she and her hometown sweetheart, Isadore Elliot Handler, had founded one of the signature corporations of modern American culture, Mattel Inc. Ruth and Elliot Handler, soon to be known as "the whiz kids of the toy industry," parlayed his creative designs and her marketing genius into a toy revolution that gathered steam during the war years and exploded, along with the infant television industry, into nearly every home in the 1950's and 1960's. "Hot Wheels," "Chatty Cathy" and "You can tell it's Mattel; It's swell!" became household words. "

"...in Mattel's early years, I was such an oddity that no one felt threatended by what I was doing; no one feared I was out to change the comfortable status quo; no one worried that this one working mother might inspire a million other young mothers to throw off their aprons and march toward corporate life. And in later years - the 1960's and 1970's, when women's liberation was a hot potato - Mattel had become such a powerhouse and I was so high up in the chain of command that I suppose no one dared throw such criticism at me. There is one comment that I did hear a lot, and that was along the lines of 'growing up in Ruth and Elliot Handler's home must be like growing up in a candy store.' Yes, we did bring toys home for the kids to test. But by the time we got into the doll business, Barabara - who adored dolls - was too old to play with them."