Barbie – An actual-life story of greed, debauchery and suicide

It is certainly one of Hollywood’s largest gambles of the yr: an £80million throw of the pink fuzzy cube, betting that audiences will embrace the adventures of an 11 1/2-inch plastic plaything delivered to life. Margot Robbie stars as Barbie, the preferred doll in world historical past, reverse Ryan Gosling as her boyfriend Ken.

In a vibrant, candy-coloured world they lead a pre-teen woman’s imaginative and prescient of the American Dream, soaking within the Malibu solar, cruising in Barbie’s bubblegum pink Cadillac convertible, and modelling fabulous fashions.

Indeed, the development of Barbieland, which is nearly fully fluorescent pink, from the lifesize variations of the doll’s well-known Dreamhouse to the roads and lamp-posts, brought about a global scarcity of pink paint. But behind Barbieland’s neon facade one thing is deeply fallacious.

The residing doll finds she now not floats down effortlessly from the penthouse of her Barbie Dream Home, her rest room bathe abruptly runs chilly, and – oh, the horror – her stiletto-ready arched ft are inexplicably flat!

Her shiny, completely happy world is collapsing, and Barbie is offered with the identical existential selection that confronted Neo in The Matrix: “You can go back to your regular life, or you can know the truth about the universe.”

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Except as a substitute of selecting between a blue or pink tablet, Barbie should resolve between pink stilettos and earthy Birkenstock sandals.

Barbie chooses to stay in her pretend world, however is compelled to go away anyway, travelling with Ken in her pink camper van, pink speedboat, pink tandem bicycle, pink snowmobile and pink area rocket earlier than reaching the actual world, the place she has a impolite awakening.

But in the identical approach that Barbie discovers life’s harsh realities behind her world’s pink plastic gloss, so does a darkish facet cover behind the real-world creation of the queen of the toy field.

The delusion, 64 years within the making, is that Barbie was the brainchild of Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler, named after her toddler daughter Barbara.

The Ken doll, arriving three years later, was named after Handler’s youngest son. Barbie’s design was perfected by a former missile engineer employed by Mattel – Jack Ryan – and was an instantaneous smash success.

But just like the film, actuality was very totally different, tainted by medicine and debauchery, greed and betrayal, fraud and suicide – scandals which may shock many mother and father whose kids innocently play with the long-legged doll.

Barbie’s creators agree that she was impressed by a near-pornographic burlesque doll from Germany named Bild-Lilli that Handler got here throughout whereas holidaying in Switzerland in 1956. Handler additionally claims to have been impressed by watching daughter Barbara play with paper dolls, and wishing for higher. “If it hadn’t been for Barbie, I would have never come up with the idea for the doll,” Handler claimed.

She employed Jack Ryan to design Barbie primarily based on the Teutonic toy who Ryan mentioned was “looking like a hooker between performances”. When the primary Barbie prototype arrived trying too attractive, Ryan filed off her nipples.

With Barbie a toy retailer triumph, Ryan was fast to assert credit score, saying he had designed the doll to look extra like an actual lady. He had developed the know-how that gave her versatile legs and arms, and gave Barbie her hourglass form. He even claimed that Barbie was named after his spouse, Barbara.

Handler in the meantime dismissed Ryan as merely “someone who had done some of the design work”. Ryan, an unbiased designer somewhat than a Mattel worker, had correctly foregone a wage in trade for a 1.5 p.c share of Barbie’s gross income.

Selling 100,000 dolls every week, inside three years Ryan was incomes $750,000 yearly and commenced residing like a Roman emperor – Caligula.

He raced via 5 disastrous marriages, together with one to Zsa Zsa Gabor, indulging his ardour for wild intercourse orgies, prostitutes, and cocaine. At Mattel, he employed shapely younger ladies to assist his designers “be more creative and thrive”.

More than one billion Barbies have been offered worldwide, however Handler grew grasping. She was indicted for securities fraud, and pleaded no contest to manipulating Mattel’s inventory value by falsifying gross sales and earnings information.

She was sentenced in 1978 to 5 years probation, 2,500 hours of neighborhood service and fined £46,000. The ensuing shareholder lawsuit value Mattel one other £24million. She was compelled out at Mattel in 1975, and died in 2002, aged 85.

Handler’s daughter Barbara wearied of her namesake doll. “I think of her as a bimbo,” says Barbara, now aged 82. “It bothers me. I really don’t like her.” She by no means gave her personal daughter a Barbie to play with, and admits: “I’m tired of being Barbie doll.”

Ken, a New York property developer, insisted he was nothing like his beach-loving vapid doll doppelgänger, saying: “I was a nerd. All the girls thought I was a jerk.” His two daughters by no means performed with Barbie both, preferring stuffed animals. “I really don’t like her,” he added. Ken died of a mind tumour in 1994, aged 50.

Inevitably, Barbie has her personal darkish facet. With an impossibly tiny waist and breasts so giant that in actual life she would topple over, she has been criticised by feminists for serving as a sexualised and unattainably curvaceous function mannequin to impressionable little ladies.

There have additionally been some questionable variations of Barbie, together with the Slumber Party Barbie who got here with a eating regimen e book titled ‘Don’t Eat’; the speaking Barbie who hated maths; and Barbie’s pregnant good friend Midge – performed within the film by British actress Emerald Fennell – with expandable stomach, withdrawn from sale after American moms complained that she inspired teen pregnancies.

In current years Barbie has been redesigned with a thicker waist, and given extra aspirational professions – astronaut, scientist, pc engineer, presidential candidate – to accompany her greater than 200 jobs together with trend mannequin, waitress, flight attendant, secretary, floral designer and babysitter.

This yr noticed the arrival of Down Syndrome Barbie.

A toy business phenomenon since her debut in 1959, Barbie continues to promote greater than 58 million dolls a yr in 150 international locations, and the approaching film is predicted to set gross sales hovering.

It’s commonplace for a star to be hiding a scandal or two, however mother and father seeking to the Barbie movie for good, clear enjoyable would possibly need to take one other take a look at her darkish, wicked and doubtful origins.