Ruth Handler essays

Ruth Handler essays Like all the other businesses, selling toys is just as brutal and difficult as. Not only you have to compete with other brands for top selling, you need to capture your consumers ¡Ã‚ ¯ interest before the fifteen minutes end. One season, every child in America absolutely has to have the latest battery-operated robot. Then suddenly next season, it ¡Ã‚ ¯s an action figure of a game based on a new Blockbuster hit. However, sometimes a toy outlasts fashion to become a culture classic, beloved by several generations of children. The Barbie doll is such a toy. When Barbie first appeared in 1959, many industry experts didn ¡Ã‚ ¯t think she ¡Ã‚ ¯d last for the rest of the season, much less than the rest of the century. She was a grown-up doll with grown-up clothes and a full-breasted figure. The experts thought there is no way it could make a success since little girls wanted to play at being mothers. But Ruth Handler, the woman who created Barbie and brought her to the market; said little girls wanted to play at being bigger girls. Handler ¡Ã‚ ¯s instinct was right. By the mid-1990s, sales topped $1 billion worldwide, and typical American girl between the ages of three and ten owed an average of eight Barbies. Ruth was born in Denver, Colorado, on November 4, 1916. She was the tenth and last child of Jacob and Ida Moskowicz who fled Poland to make a new life in the U.S. Ida Moskowicz was forty when Ruth was conceived. And just six months after Ruth was born, Ida had to have gallbladder surgery; she was in no condition to take care the baby. Her eldest daughter Sarah and her new husband Louie Greenwald agreed to look after young Ruth. The couple owned a drugstore across the street from Denver General Hospital. By the time Ruth was ten, she was spending most of her afternoons there, working the cash register, and serving soft drinks and sandwiches. The Greenwalds didn ¡Ã‚ ¯t force her to work, Ruth wanted to do it. And it was quite an experie...