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SPEAKER_03: This Women's History Month Encyclopedia Wamanica is brought to you by Mercedes-Benz. Mercedes-Benz celebrates all women driving change and is indebted to those trailblazing women who punctuate the brand's history, like Bertha Benz and Evie Ruskvist. These women defied the odds to change the auto industry forever, and Mercedes-Benz applauds the tenacity and courage it takes to pave the road ahead. Listen along this month as we share the stories of inspiring women in charge and at the top of their fields. Powered by Mercedes-Benz.
SPEAKER_06: Happy worst ever019
SPEAKER_03: were highlighting a brilliant entrepreneur and inventor. She was the genius behind the creation of the best-selling children's toy of all time, the Barbie doll. As the founder and president of the world's largest toy company, she helped revolutionize the toy industry. Her long and illustrious career also included plenty of scandal and intrigue. Please welcome Ruth Handler. Ruth Mosco was born in Denver, Colorado on November 4th, 1916. Her parents, Jacob and Ida, were Polish Jewish immigrants who'd recently emigrated to the United States. Ruth was the youngest of their 10 children. By the time Ruth was born, Ida was already in ill health, so from the age of six months, Ruth lived with her oldest sister, Sarah, and her husband, Louis. They eventually became her permanent guardians. As a child, Ruth was quite the tomboy. She rejected all things considered overtly feminine, like ironically playing with dolls. She was also apparently very bright. When Ruth was 16 years old, she attended a dance hosted by a Jewish youth organization where she met a young aspiring artist named Elliot Handler. The two soon began dating, even though Ruth's family didn't approve of the match. They assumed Elliot would end up a starving artist and hoped Ruth would find someone with brighter prospects. When Ruth decided to move to Los Angeles, her family was relieved. She had landed a secretarial job at Paramount Pictures. But not long after, Elliot moved to LA as well to attend art school. By 1938, the two were happily married. Just three years after that, they welcomed their first child, Barbara, followed three years later by their son, Ken. When Ruth and Elliot were newlyweds, they moved into their first apartment together. They came to realize that between the two of them, they had very little furniture and they couldn't afford to buy much else. Elliot, who was still in art school at that point, was absolutely fascinated by a new material called plexiglass and decided that he could design and make additional furniture and accessories from the acrylic plastic. Ruth was so impressed with his designs that she decided to start a side business out of their garage. With the leftover plastic, they made cigarette holders, bookends, candle holders, and other small household items. Ruth, who still worked as a secretary at Paramount, would go on sales calls during her lunch break. Soon after, Elliot dropped out of art school to work on this new endeavor full-time. The young couple moved to another apartment and rented out space nearby to use as a workshop. In almost no time at all, the new business was attracting investors as a highly profitable enterprise making costume jewelry and gifts. But by 1945, Elliot was growing tired of the business. At the same time, Ruth had gone into partnership with a man named Harold Matt Matson to make other household items out of plastic. They convinced Elliot to come aboard as their designer and named the new company Mattel, a combination of the names Matt and Elliot. After Matt had to walk away from the business due to illness, Ruth and Elliot were left to grow the fledgling Mattel on their own. During its first full year of operations in 1945, Mattel hit the jackpot, earning more than $100,000 in sales of plastic dollhouse furniture. But competitors quickly caught on to their game and began manufacturing furniture at lower prices. Ruth and Elliot were not deterred. They moved on to other kinds of toys that could be made out of plastic, like little musical instruments. Unfortunately, these items were also undercut by competitors. Ruth learned a lot from these early failures, including that to be successful, they needed to create original, high-quality products that couldn't easily be replicated by other toy companies. Ruth and Elliot also learned that selling their products was much easier than getting financing. Banks weren't all too keen on investing in businesses as small and precarious as theirs. In 1955, the business was growing at a fast clip thanks to a timely investment from Elliot's brother, and Ruth and Elliot decided to do something that would revolutionize the toy industry. They sponsored a 15-minute weekly segment on Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Club. The sponsorship was massively expensive, essentially equal to Mattel's net worth at the time, so it was a big risk. But it started to pay off almost immediately. Soon Mattel was becoming a household name, and Ruth and Elliot were receiving mail sacks every week full of orders from around the country. Four years later, in 1959, Ruth and Elliot would go on to revolutionize the toy industry yet again with the introduction of what would become the best-selling toy in history, the Barbie doll. The doll, named for their daughter Barbara, was an almost instant hit. Not only did kids clamor for the dolls, but they also wanted the clothes and accessories that were sold separately. The next year, Ruth and Elliot produced the first talking doll. It also became a massive hit. By 1965, Mattel sales were at more than a hundred million dollars. In 1968, they introduced yet another gangbusters toy concept, Hot Wheels miniature cars. As Ruth and Elliot reached higher and
SPEAKER_03: higher levels of success, they were aware that there was significant risk in this kind of exponential growth, coupled with the fact that about half of their product line went essentially obsolete after a single year on the shelves. In order to continue creating newer, better toys that would feed the public's appetite for novelty, Mattel's research and design department employed more than 300 people. Ruth and Elliot decided to diversify Mattel's holdings through a variety of worldwide acquisitions. This included a 50 million dollar Circus World theme park in Florida and a movie called Sounder. Though seemingly a smart idea, these business moves signified the end of Mattel's meteoric rise. Ruth described this mistake in her autobiography as follows, we should have stayed in the toy business, accepted a slower growth rate, and resisted the temptation to acquire so freely. Our organization was not really equipped to evaluate and control so many diverse companies, and our internal auditing capability was inadequate to ferret out the problems in advance. As the business soured, Mattel tried to keep up appearances. In 1971 and 1972, they even issued misleading financial reports in order to make it seem like their income was equivalent to orders that had been placed rather than orders that had actually been fulfilled. The next year, after assuring stockholders that everything was fine, the company reported a loss of 32 million dollars. Mattel's stock plummeted and the SEC started an investigation. As the person in charge of the company's finances, Ruth was indicted by a grand jury in 1978 on charges of false reporting to the SEC, conspiracy, and fraud. She pleaded no contest in exchange for avoiding a potentially lengthy prison sentence, and instead received a $57,000 fine and 2,500 hours of community service. Elliott and Ruth were also pressured to resign from the company, which they did after turning over 2.5 million shares of their own stock in Mattel as part of the settlement. In 1970, Ruth was diagnosed with breast cancer. After going through a successful mastectomy, she found herself deeply unhappy with the few options available at the time for breast prosthesis. Never want to settle for the status quo, Ruth decided to put her own entrepreneurial and innovation skills to work one more time. She designed and built her own lifelike prosthetic that she called the Nearly Me. Ruth formed the company Ruthton Corp. to market and distribute her new prosthetic to breast cancer survivors around the world. Ruth died on April 22nd, 2002 from complications related to colon cancer. She was 85 years old. Ruth Handler's creative genius changed the world in more ways than one. Her legacy is still evident on toy shelves across the world. All month we're talking about women in the driver's seat. For more on why we're doing what we're doing, check out our newsletter, Womanaka Weekly. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Encyclopedia Womanaka. Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator. Talk to you tomorrow. I want to tell you about a new podcast I think you might like. In plain sight, Lady Bird Johnson is an eight-part series that recasts the former first lady as President Lyndon B Johnson's closest advisor and most indispensable political partner. You'll hear Lady Bird in her own words as she documents through audio diaries some of the most critical and impactful moments in our nation's history. Hear how Lady Bird Johnson quietly shaped the future of our country and influenced the Johnson presidency. On In Plain Sight, Lady Bird Johnson, wherever you listen to podcasts.
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SPEAKER_06: Do you hear it? The clock is ticking. It's time for the new season of 60 Minutes. The CBS News Sunday Night tradition is back for its 56th season with all new big-name interviews, hard-hitting investigations, and epic adventures. No place. No one. No story is off-limits. And you'll always learn something new. It's time for 60 Minutes. New episode airs Sunday September 24th on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
