Barbie
It's from 1959, before you were born.
- Maker
- Mattel
- Type
- Fashion doll
- Debuted
- 1959
- Note
- Over a billion sold worldwide
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About
As of 2026, it's 67 years old.
Barbie strutted onto the scene in 1959 as an 11.5-inch fashion icon at a time when most dolls were babies you were supposed to practice mothering. Creator Ruth Handler named her after her daughter Barbara, and the idea — a doll a girl could imagine being rather than caring for — was so novel that toy buyers initially thought it would flop. It did not flop.
Across the decades Barbie has held something like 250 careers (astronaut before America put a woman in space, president many times over), survived endless controversy, and become one of the best-selling toys in history. In 2023 she got a billion-dollar movie and turned the whole world pink for a summer.
Glamorous, endlessly reinvented, and impossible to ignore, Barbie is the doll that outlasted every trend by simply becoming whatever the moment needed.
Barbie through the years
Barbie debuts
Unveiled at the New York Toy Fair in a black-and-white swimsuit.
Ken arrives
Barbie gets a boyfriend, also named after a Handler child.
'Math class is tough'
Teen Talk Barbie's phrase sparks backlash and a rethink.
Barbie the movie
The film grosses over $1.4 billion and dominates pop culture.
