What is Barbies first car?
Barbie
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Also known as: Barbara Millicent Roberts
Written by
M.G. Lord
Author of Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll.
M.G. Lord
Fact-checked by
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica’s editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors.
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Last Updated: May 5, 2023 • Article History
Table of Contents
Billions of Dreams Barbie
Key People: Jill E. Barad . (Show more) Related Topics: doll . (Show more)
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Top Questions
Who is Barbie?
Barbie is an 11-inch- (29-cm-) tall plastic doll with the figure of an adult woman that was originally modeled on the German Bild Lilli doll (produced from 1955 to 1964), a risqué gag gift for men. The Barbie target demographic is young children. Barbie’s full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.
When did Barbie officially make her debut?
Barbie officially debuted on March 9, 1959, at the American International Toy Fair in New York City as a creation of Mattel, Inc.’s Ruth Handler. Handler got her inspiration from the German Bild Lilli doll in 1956, and development of the Barbie doll began soon after. Barbie was first sold in 1958.
What are the controversies surrounding Barbie?
Two of the most common criticisms of Barbie are of an excessive materialism communicated through the doll’s “lifestyle” and the doll’s unrealistic body proportions. Items sold as accessories to the Barbie doll included cars, planes, houses, animals, and more, all of which, according to critics, idealize wealth accumulation. With its impossible body figure, Barbie also presents an arguably unhealthy body image.
Are Barbies still popular?
Barbie is a very popular collectible. Aficionados are interested in both old Barbies and the special-edition Barbies that Mattel creates to cater to this market. Although Barbie’s sales since the year 2000 have not risen as steeply as they did in the 1990s, they still amounted to more than a billion dollars annually.
Barbie, in full Barbara Millicent Roberts, an 11-inch- (29-cm-) tall plastic doll with the figure of an adult woman that was introduced on March 9, 1959, by Mattel, Inc., a southern California toy company. Ruth Handler, who cofounded Mattel with her husband, Elliot, spearheaded the introduction of the doll. Barbie’s physical appearance was modeled on the German Bild Lilli doll, a risqué gag gift for men based upon a cartoon character featured in the West German newspaper Bild Zeitung.
Since the doll’s inception its body has incited controversy. Mothers in a 1958 Mattel-sponsored market study before the doll’s release criticized Barbie for having “too much of a figure.” Mattel circumvented this problem, however, by advertising Barbie directly to children via television. Mattel, in fact, upon sponsoring Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse Club program in 1955, became the first toy company to broadcast commercials to children.
In response to consumer demand, in 1961 Mattel brought out Barbie’s ultimate “accessory”—her boyfriend, Ken. (The Handlers’ children were named Barbara and Ken.) In 1963 Mattel added Barbie’s best friend, Midge, and in 1964 Barbie’s little sister, Skipper. By 1968 Barbie had been issued “friend” dolls of colour, but not until 1980 was the Barbie doll itself released in an African American incarnation.
Since the 1970s, Barbie has been criticized for materialism (amassing cars, houses, and clothes) and unrealistic body proportions. In fact, in 1994 researchers in Finland announced that if Barbie were a real woman, she would not have enough body fat to menstruate. Mattel responded by changing the body mold for Barbie on several occasions. At the turn of the 21st century the doll was given smaller breasts, a wider waist, and slimmer hips, and in 2016 the company released three additional sizes of Barbie: petite, tall, and curvy. Despite complaints, many women who played with the doll credit Barbie with providing an alternative to restrictive 1950s gender roles. Unlike baby dolls, Barbie did not teach nurturing. Outfitted with career paraphernalia, the doll was a model for financial self-sufficiency. (Barbie’s résumé includes, among other things, airline pilot, astronaut, doctor, Olympic athlete, and United States presidential candidate.) Nor was the doll defined by relationships of responsibility to men or family. Barbie has no parents or offspring. When in the early 1960s consumers clamoured for a Barbie-scale baby, Mattel did not make Barbie a mother but issued a “Barbie Baby-Sits” playset.
Although Mattel has positioned Barbie as the ultimate American girl, the doll has never been manufactured in the United States, to avoid higher labour costs. Today the doll has come to symbolize consumer capitalism and is as much a global brand as Coca-Cola, with key markets in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. In 2009 Mattel opened a six-floor flagship Barbie store in Shanghai, featuring a spa, a design studio, and a café in addition to a wide offering of Barbie-related products. Barbie never won the approval of authorities in the Muslim world, however. In 1995 Saudi Arabia stopped its sale because it did not fulfill the Islamic dress code. Eventually, similar dolls, some wearing hijabs (a garment that covers the hair and neck), were marketed to Muslim girls.
Mattel registered Barbie as a work of art, but the doll has also inspired works of art, including a 1986 Andy Warhol portrait and photographs by William Wegman and David Levinthal. Novelists, including A.M. Homes and Barbara Kingsolver, have used the doll in fiction. When interpreting Barbie, artists tend to take one of two approaches: idealizing the doll or, more commonly, using the doll to critique ideas associated with it, from exaggerated femininity to profligate consumption.
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Barbie is a very popular collectible. Aficionados are interested in both old Barbies and the special edition Barbies that Mattel creates to cater to this market. Although Barbie’s sales since the year 2000 have not risen as steeply as they did in the 1990s, they still amount to more than a billion dollars annually. Every second, Mattel calculates, two Barbies are sold somewhere in the world.
Barbie Pink Convertible 2-Seater Vehicle Doll Accessory With Rolling Wheels
Barbie Pink Convertible 2-Seater Vehicle Doll Accessory With Rolling Wheels
$19.99 $
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With a pink convertible Barbie® vehicle, imaginations can hit the road and embark on endless adventures! This stylish, open-top car inspires all kinds of storytelling with a sleek design and modern finishes. The convertible features a sporty shape, realistic details and signature Barbie® style, like a personalized license plate and Barbie® silhouette hood ornament. With rolling wheels and room for two, kids can buckle their Barbie® dolls in (sold separately) and give it a push to get the story started! Dolls sold separately. Colors and decorations may vary.
- Take the story anywhere imagination leads in this sporty Barbie® convertible!
- Buckle 2 Barbie® dolls in and push to get the adventure underway with rolling wheels and realistic treaded tires.
- The car features a sporty shape with a pink exterior, black interior and realistic details, like seatbelts, a rearview mirror and a matte black grille.
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Includes 1 Barbie® car.
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Barbie Has the Best Toy Cars
Of course Barbie’s an enthusiast. She drives 911s and Corvettes everywhere. Let’s do a deep-dive into her vehicular history.
by Stef Schrader | UPDATED Aug 11, 2020 5:36 PM EDT
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Say what you want about Barbie’s favorite color, but the woman has good taste in cars.
From 1962 onward, Barbie’s had everything from Jeep Wranglers to Porsche 911s in her garage, all of which are a sheer delight—and these doll-sized vehicles were some of my favorites as a kid. In fact, I thought they were the best part of Barbie. I mostly posed the dolls and didn’t want to mess them up. But the cars? Those saw the most action.
Theriault’s
As with actual cars, they have a pretty fascinating history, too. In fact, the Barbie car was an inevitability. Barbie’s first «Dreamhouse» debuted in 1962 in her ever-widening quest to let kids reenact every aspect of daily life in small scale. While the Dreamhouse’s one-room studio layout wouldn’t be out of place in a New York City apartment building, the Barbie Subway would have been much harder to push all the way across the living room. Barbie needed a car to get around, and naturally, she got one of the coolest: an Austin-Healey 3000 Mk II.
Best of all, this was Barbie’s car. Later cars were marketed for Barbie and Ken, and then some for just Ken, but most of these were Barbie’s rides, first and foremost. Later, Barbie’s sisters and friends including Skipper and Shani got their own cars, too.
The one theme throughout the history of Barbie cars was that she always had her own car, and many of them weren’t the less powerful fare that gets unfairly stereotyped as «girl cars.» You could still find cars that get associated with women on a regular basis, including Porsche Boxsters (complete with motorized convertible roofs!), Volkswagen Golf cabriolets and various minivans if you wanted. (I’ll be honest, the New Beetle with its flower-power sticker kit would have definitely been on my wish list.) But Barbie wasn’t limited to these.
The Chevrolet Corvette was so ubiquitous throughout Barbie’s history that it’s usually the first car that comes to mind when you think of a doll-sized Barbie car. The Jeep Wrangler is another vehicle so associated with Barbie that Power Wheels-based «Barbie Jeep Racing» has become an entire genre of hold-my-beer downhill fun. Jeeps, too, make frequent appearances in doll sizes. Now it’s almost a given that you’ll see at least one flamboyantly pink- or purple-trimmed Jeep in real size at off-road parks everywhere, frequently adorned with «drives like a girl» or «not his car» stickers just to clarify things.
Barbie’s second car was a Mercedes 190SL, for Pete’s sake. After that came a T-bucket-style «Hot Rod.» The 1957 Chevrolet Bel-Air was added to Barbie’s garage before they became a car TV restomod cliché. Barbie cars had chrome wraps before they were cool. My favorite car, the Porsche 911, was also available for Barbie dolls and came complete with working lights.
Many of the licensed cars were surprisingly detailed. Barbie’s sweet targa-top Ferrari 328 GTS even came with the little Pininfarina badge on the side. The C4 Corvettes had the right dashboard down to the button layout. There’s an exhaustive list of Barbie’s rides on the Barbie List Holland collectors’ site, and it’s a truly enviable collection.
For a doll accessory that came right after the dumbed-down, designed-by-men «car for women» known as the Dodge La Femme, the Barbie car was pretty important. Maybe they took note that Dodge’s exercise in chauvinism was a commercial flop. Or perhaps they realized that sticking to stereotypes wouldn’t fit a doll who became an astronaut in 1965, two years after the Soviet Union launched its first woman into space but nearly two decades before NASA followed suit. Cars were a very male-dominated space, even more so then, but here she was, driving sports cars everywhere.
Since then, the Barbie-verse has had RVs, race cars, tractors, ATVs, helicopters, scooters, boats and dune buggies in addition to all manner of extremely cool cars. Barbie even got a new Volkswagen Microbus two decades before the real-life VW I.D. Buzz will go on sale. You won’t find the variety of cars that you would in Hot Wheels (a line of toys started by the husband of Barbie’s creator) or Matchbox cars, but thanks to Barbie cars’ open designs that were made for dolls, you could do something that’s fundamental to any human-sized car: carry stuff.
Some Barbie cars were even remote-control cars, except way cooler thanks to their doll-and-cargo capacity. Cars aren’t just made to roll, after all—they’re made to haul people and stuff. I was always more of a stuffed animal person, so my big Barbie limo frequently hauled Puffalumps around the house. My off-brand «fashion doll» Jeep Grand Cherokee was another favorite given its extra ground clearance that could hop over common household obstacles with ease, with doll, bunny or whatever in tow.
Between Barbie’s numerous rides and Clarissa Explains It All’s eponymous protagonist who constantly talked about her need for a driver’s license, there were no limits or expectations to which cars I should like. Admittedly, Barbie has been the root of many of controversies over the years, from the lack of racial diversity in her toy-orbit to an unrealistic body that—no joke—was based on a lewd German gag gift. The brand and its offerings have thankfully evolved quite a bit since then.
Yet Barbie’s cars continue to play an important role in expanding the automotive world to kids who might otherwise feel excluded from it, and for that, they deserve your respect.
