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Okay. Hear that? That's what it sounds like when you plant more trees than you harvest. Work done by thousands of working forest professionals like Adam, a district forest manager who works to protect our forests from fires. Keeping the forest fire resistant is synonymous with keeping a forest healthy, and we do that through planting more than we harvest and mitigate those risks through active management.
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Visit shop.colgate.com/slash total. Mm-hmm. This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. In the world of toys, there's hardly anything more recognizable than Barbie. Glamorous, stylish, and endlessly versatile, she's been everything from a fashion model to an astronaut.
Here's the story of the woman who dreamed up, Barbie. A woman with all kinds of dreams and all kinds of ambitions. Here's Robin Gerber. tell the story. of Ruth Handler.
Take it away, Robin. Colorado.
Well, Ruth Handler. was the 10th and last child of Polish Jewish immigrants to our country. Came here and family moved to Denver for more opportunity for her father to work. He was a very hard worker and he had shooed horses in the old country, in Poland.
So when he came here, he worked on the railroad. But her mother was quite sick when she had her, and so she gave Ruth to her oldest sister. And the oldest sister ended up not being able to have children, so she raised Ruth. She saw her mother, but her mother mostly spoke Yiddish from the old country.
so her real connection was with her sister. Who ran a market in the Denver market? She ran a cafeteria in a little market space.
So from an early age, Ruth learned about business. She loved business. She was in a hurry to grow up. She brought that great energy that immigrants and their families bring to this country. of wanting to make it and take advantage of the openness and opportunity that America offered.
She fell in love at sixteen. with a boy from her neighborhood, another child of immigrants. Elliot. And actually his name was they called him Izzy Handler. Izzy was his nickname, Itzak.
They met at a Jewish dance. where it costs a nickel a dance. And he only had one nickel. And she said he had to go borrow some from his friends. But she said, the minute.
He touched me. I knew. She couldn't describe. their feeling. Elliot and her had the kind of marriage that we think marriage is for.
Like, these were two people who somehow were so right for each other. When they got married and they drove to Los Angeles, there was so much anti-Semitism, this was in the 1940s. and she was worried about them being attacked for being Jewish. and so she asked him to change his name to Elliot.
so it wouldn't be so obvious. Yeah.
So they came to Los Angeles, and Elliot went to art school and started to learn how to design and make things. And all Ruth could think about was building a business that's really what you want to do.
So Elliot would make little ashtrays and bookends and that kind of thing, and Ruth would pack them in a suitcase and go sell them. And she was a fantastic saleswoman. She describes selling the very first thing that Elliot made. She put them in an old suitcase she went to the fanciest store on Wiltshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. And the man comes out, the owner...
He looks at it and he says, I want to buy this. You know, where's your manufacturing plants? I'll come and see you. They were in an old Chinese laundry. But she walked out of there and she describes feeling like she'd taken a drug.
making a sail meter high. Bye. And in pretty short order they had a shop. and they were making toy furniture for dollhouses. But then Elliot started having ideas for actual toys.
So as the company grew, Ruth really handled the business end. She never had an idea for a toy in the early days. Ellian and his team of men came up with the toy ideas. And in the 1950s, they were coming up with guns and rockets and airplanes. And they weren't going to make anything that was made by other toy companies.
They always wanted to come up with something in a new way.
So when they made a gun. It was absolutely, it was so realistic. Their Winchester rifle, that when Ruth brought it to the offices of Winchester. I met with the CEO and pulled the gun out. He ducked under the table.
Guns were scarily realistic. In 1952, I believe it was, her PR people came to her and said there was a new TV show coming up. and they want to do advertising differently. They want to do an ad every 15 minutes. and you have to pay for the whole season in advance.
It'll cost half a million dollars. but we think it's worth it. Mattel at that point was worth Half a million dollars. And so she basically bet the whole company On going into television, which no one did. When you bought your toys for your kids at Christmas.
you use the Sears catalog. Your parents handed you the catalogue and said, See what you'd like us to get you. You did not watch television and come in and say, I saw a toy on TV, there were no toys on TV. In the toy they were advertising in that very first ad was called the Burp Gun. It's broken the sound barrier.
It's the Mattel Thunderburp with the real vibrasonic sound chamber that's loaded forever and ever. The Tommy Burp is $250. The No Battery, No Cap Thunder Burp is $3. Get both wherever toys are sold. And remember, you can tell it's Mattel.
It's swell. Swell. Swell. So she pays the money, she puts on the ads, and the TV show, the new TV show, is The Mickey Mouse Club. That's right!
It's time for the Mouse Keteers! And so, as you can imagine, they couldn't keep up with the burp guns. President Eisenhower wanted one for his grandson and they had to go find one that was broken and repair it to get it to the president. But then she had an idea. She now had two children, a daughter, named Barbara.
and a son named Can And Ruth had had this idea watching Barbara play with her friends that they really liked playing at being adults. And they could only do it with paper dowels 'cause there were no adult actual doll dolls, except ones that you put on the shelf, not that you played with. Girls were meant in the fifties. to play with baby dolls. and train themselves to be good mothers.
But not to play with the doll towels. And so Ruth had had this idea in her head that Little girls want to play being big girls. It was the mid-1950s By then the family was doing quite well financially, although they were not the top toy company and she had her eyes on being that. but they took a trip to Europe. And when they were there, they were in a toy store in Switzerland, and there was a doll that was a 12-inch, what we call a fashion doll.
and it was dressed in beautiful clothes. And it's clearly an adult woman. It has breasts and it's got this figure. And then she sees the style. And Barbara says, I want one of those.
And Ruth says, so do I. And she actually bought three of them. Brought them back to the States and said to her person who did the manufacturing. go to Japan because we were making everything in Japan then. It was after World War II and Japan was rebuilding its economy, doing manufacturing and actually plastics were the new thing and Japan was the best place to build anything out of plastics.
They had the most sophisticated machinery. And this doll was going to require some very sophisticated molding for those little hands and feet.
So a man named Jack Ryan took the doll to Japan. and they started manufacturing it.
Now All of the men at Mattel, and it was all men in the design department. said to Ruth, You are crazy. This is A stupid idea. Until she came back with the actual doll. And you've been listening to Robin Gerber, author of Barbie and Ruth, tell one heck of a story.
What a life! The 10th and last child of Polish immigrants. Her mother was sick, and the next thing you know, she's raised by her sister. Who ran a market, and that determined the rest of her life. She fell in love with business, met a man who loved business too, and loved his wife like his wife loved him.
When we come back, more of the remarkable story of Ruth Handler and Barbie. Here on Our American Stories. Ha ha ha ha. Shh! You won't believe what my new friend just told me about dinosaurs!
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My one advice to them. Pick areas you can scale. Don't pick the shiny little toys on the side. For example, If anybody has more than 10% of what they had for customer service Ten years ago? They're already five years behind.
If anybody is not using AI to make their developers who write software, 30% more productive today. with the goal of being 70% more productive. Yeah.
Wow.
So we are not asking our clients to be the first experiment on it. We say, you can leverage what we did. We're happy to bring out all our learnings, including what needs to change. in the process, because the biggest change is not technology. is getting people to accept.
But there's a different way to do things. To listen to the full conversation, visit ibm.com/slash smart talks. 10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points. You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract for $250,000.
This is where mindset comes in.
Someone will be eliminated. Pressure is coming down. This It's Trainer Game. Watch it on Prime Video starting January 8th. And we're back with Our American Stories and with Robin Gerber, author of Barbie and Ruth, telling the story of Ruth Handler, who came up with the idea of Barbie.
Went all the way to Japan despite the misgivings of the men at Mattel who thought she was crazy. That is, until she came back with a prototype. Let's pick up where we last left off. Here's Robin Gerber. So, Ruth did a couple of things to kind of give herself a foundation.
She hired a woman out of the best design school in LA to go live in Japan. And make little clothes for the style that would be beautiful and perfect and realistic with little zippers and snaps and buttons. And A whole wardrobe. Because in Switzerland, the doll that she bought, if you wanted new clothes for that doll, you had to buy another doll. And she thought that was stupid.
She called it the razor-razor blade theory. Make the doll, and then create clothes.
So the first Barbie had 21 outfits. Mix and match his fun to do a fun Beware. Up to you. There are sweaters and skirts and flags and heat. There are a lot of styles from which to choose.
And she did one more thing. She hired The most famous public relations person in America at the time. It used to be if you bought a car, it was advertised, has good steering, it has good tires. This man named Ernest Stichter was a psychologist from Austria. And he came and he said, You should be selling.
your products in a way that appeals to people psychologically.
So if you're selling a car, you should have a beautiful woman sitting inside a convertible.
So that then subliminally Men are thinking, oh, I really get the woman with the car. No one had done this before Dictor came along. And lots of people were angry about it. And said it was manipulation, but Ruz said the biggest corporations in the country were using him.
So she hired him. to do a study of wood mothers by their daughter. and it dolved out. And he ran the first focus groups ever in America, and he did focus groups on this. and he discovered the mothers absolutely would not buy such a towel.
But their daughters went crazy for it. All toys were sold at Toy Fair, which happened once a year in March. By then, Mattel was a big enough company. They have quite a big display area of She had this gorgeous display.
So they come up with this song that very much presents to Dal as if she's a real girl and she's. Got good grooming and all these pretty clothes. You make me Ooh. Ooh, my body. is really really Are these small and so Her clothes and figure look so neat.
Her dancing outfit rings a bell. At party, she will cast a spell. Purses hats and gloves tomorrow. And all the gadgets, gals ado. Barbie dressed for swim and fun is only $3.
Her lovely fashions range from one to five dollars. Look for Barbie wherever dolls are sold. And Dictor had said to her. Here's what my research shows. I know Present this doll as a teenage fashion model.
and tell mothers that she will help their daughters with good grooming. then you can get over their difficulties with getting this down. You can tell it's Mattel. It's...
Well And the buyers come into Toy Fair and they come in and they walk around and see the room with the doll with Barbie. And They don't put in any orders at all. They say, You're crazy, Ruth. No mother will buy their daughter a doll with breasts, and off they go. And Elliot said it was the first time he ever saw her cry.
She went to their hotel room she called Japan. She tried to stop production. She was devastated. But a few months later In June, School led out. And while these little girls had been watching the Barbie television hat.
They said to their mothers, I want that towel. They sold 300,000 dolls by the end. of 1959. May I help you, ladies? We'd like to see the newest Barbie club.
Of course, Barbie, the famous teenage fashion model doll by Mattel. May I arrange a showing of her wardrobe? Oh, yeah. Win love. Uh So She and Elliot build this great company and Really fulfill their greatest dreams, which were not about money.
They were extremely generous to their own family. To the community. They particularly supported civil rights causes. She did not discriminate at a time when there was tremendous discrimination. Which ones would you like?
I think oddly. All of them! You can tell they're Mattel. They're swell! If you own Mattel stock in the 1960s...
You got double-digit returns every year. I mean they were making a huge amount of money. They get to the nineteen seventy early seventies. And corporate America comes up with this great idea. that the way to grow your company is to buy up other companies.
And so she hires someone from Lytton Industries who's supposed to be an expert in this strategy. And she goes out and they buy Wringling Brothers Circus. And they buy a company that makes playground equipment. And they buy a movie company. They make the movie sounder.
and they're buying all these companies. with Mattel stock. Because Mattel's stock is through the roof. It's just... very valuable.
The only problem is There are some problems within the company.
So, a factory has a fire in Mexico. And that quarter they actually lose money. but their deal to buy Ringland Brothers depends on the stock price being at a certain level. And if their quarterly report shows this loss, then the stock price might drop. And they would devastate the deal.
So Ruth engages in a practice That was not uncommon at all. which was called Bill and Hold. That it was wrong. It was fraudulent. Saying that they had sold so many units and delivered them, but in fact they had And Companies did it because they believed they'd make up the money in the next quarter.
And they always had it, Michelle. But this time they didn't. and there's a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation. By the late seventies She was pushed out of the company by the board, she and Elliot, even though he wasn't involved. They were both pushed out of the company, they found it.
And as this is going on. Ruth suddenly. has breast cancer. and she has a mastectomy. It was A terrible time.
She thought about suicide. She started gambling a great deal. And then one day it hit her. That if she wanted to find clothes as someone with anastectomy, it was very, very difficult. She went to a store to buy a dress and the salespeople and a prosthetic to go with it.
And the prosthetics were just like a ball of rubber. And the salespeople would throw them over the door of the dressing room 'cause they didn't want to look at her. She felt humiliated.
So she had this idea that she could create a realistic prosthetic so women could feel good about their bodies again. And so she built a new company doing that. And that helped her. find herself again. And even more than that, she started fitting women who needed the prosthetics.
And in doing that, she made a connection. that she had never made before with women because she pretty much didn't work with me. She didn't really have friends.
So It really changed her life. She said she'd discovered a kind of happiness she hadn't really known before. By then, there were Barbie collectors, so there was a big community that really wanted to meet her and knew who Ruth Handler was. And right around that time, a woman took over as CEO of Mattel, Jill Barad. And The Barbie brand was not doing too well, and Jill Barad said, I need Ruth Handler back here.
And she brought her back into the company. And they went around the world together, you know, talking about Barbie and Jill said she couldn't keep up with Ruth Handler. She was at the 42nd anniversary of Barbie. at the head table, back of the company, back of Mattel. Yeah.
I've talked to many, many Barbie owners over the years. And What they say is The Tao helped me. realize my dreams. The Tao helped me pretend to be what I wanted to be and it could be anything. It's exactly what Ruth said.
Little girls want to play at being big girls. It's one of the greatest high concept ideas. ever in America. She built a global icon. from that idea.
And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by Aron Madison Derricott. and a special thanks to Robin Gerber, author of Barbie and Ruth. Pick it up wherever you buy your books. That's Barbie and Ruth. And what a story.
The idea of hiring a woman from the best design school in LA and designing a wardrobe for Barbie, sending her to Japan. How brilliant in 21 outfits. What a story, the story of Ruth Handler. Here on Our American Stories. Is it?
Shhh! You won't believe what my new friend just told me about dinosaurs! Is your child having conversations you never imagined? Are they learning without realizing it? It's not a tablet.
It's not a toy. It's Miko Mini Plus, the AI-powered companion that turns curiosity into endless learning. Hear the future of playtime. Meet the extraordinary Miko Mini Plus. Only at Costco.
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This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.
Mm-hmm.
