As you may or may not know, I am a big reader, so it was kind of a slam dunk for me that I would pick up Renee Rosen's book Let's Call Her Barbie, a historical fiction novel about Ruth Handler and the creation of Barbie.
I'm not finished the book yet so this is not a book review post (stay tuned for that, though!). But one thing in the book did inspire me and make me want to talk about something in particular - the first Barbie TV ad.
We have probably all heard the broad strokes of the Barbie story (after all, it featured heavily in the Barbie movie): Barbie was one of the first dolls to hit the market that represented an adult woman, rather than a baby doll. She was intended as an aspirational figure for little girls, rather than a way for them to roleplay parenthood.
This isn't quite true, of course: Little Miss Revlon, for example, hit the market before Barbie did and was also a representation of an adult woman.
However, you can see signs in her proportions that she still looks more childlike than Barbie did.
But Barbie's more adult appearance necessitated a different approach in marketing. But Mattel was not new to a different approach in marketing. In 1955, Mattel sponsored the Mickey Mouse Club to advertise toy burp guns, becoming one of the first toy companies to invest in advertising year round rather than just the Christmas season: and more than that, marketing to kids rather than to parents.
Barbie's marketing targeting children more than parents is apparent in more ways than, like the toy burp gun, being advertised in the Mickey Mouse Club slot: the prominent jingle throughout the ad is from a child's perspective and prominently features the line, "Someday I'm gonna be exactly like you."
Although of course they zoom in on Barbie in a wedding dress at this point; emphasizing, perhaps for the benefit of the parents, that Barbie as an aspirational figure had very wholesome aspects and wasn't all bust and swimsuit. An interesting point given that Ruth Handler is known for having said that she did not want Barbie to settle down and get married; that Barbie may model wedding dresses or daydream about marriage, but her ring finger was to remain empty.
(I can't help but nitpick that article though: it cites pregnant Midge as being from 1982, but Midge didn't even get married until 1991. The Happy Family "pregnant Midge" doll debuted in 2003. Always factcheck!)
But I'm getting off-track. It's interesting to look back on the really early days of Barbie and the marketing of Barbie and see how things have changed - and what things haven't. Note the prominence in the TV ad on the zip, and this print ad.
Tiny zippers, coats with luxurious carefully tailored linings? We certainly don't see that anymore.
