Up to that point, there really was no adult doll for little girls to play with. It was the genius of Ruth Handler [co-founder and, later, president of toy manufacturer Mattel, who created Barbie] to realise that little girls wanted to play at being big girls. She came to the idea by watching her own daughter play with paper dolls. They were very frustrating to play with – the little paper tabs were always tearing off or not really connecting, so the clothes fell off all the time – but they allowed you to pretend to be an adult. That is still, to this day, what keeps Barbie so popular. It’s estimated that one sells somewhere around the world every few
