Ruth Marianna Handler was an American entrepreneur as well as an inventor. She was also the president of a toy manufacturer Mattel Inc. Do you know what Ruth Handler’s Net Worth was? In the year 1959, she invented the Barbie doll, which sells over a billion toys worldwide. Ruth was the founder and president of the world’s largest toy company, with 18,000 employees and annual sales of over $300 million. In the year 1974, Handler was forced to resign from Mattel, and in the year 1978, Ruth Handler was convicted of false reporting to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Handler was born Ruth Marianna Mosko in Denver, Colorado. She was the daughter of Polish Jewish immigrants Ida Mosko and Jacob Mosko. She had tied a knot to her high school boyfriend, Elliott Handler, and moved to Los Angeles in the year 1938. Her husband Elliott had decided to make his furniture from two recently discovered plastics, namely lucite, and plexiglass. Ruth Handler suggested doing this for commercial purposes, and later they started a furniture business. Handler also works as the sales department for the new business, signing contracts with the Douglas Aircraft Company and others.
What is Ruth Handler’s Net Worth?
The American entrepreneur and inventor ‘Ruth Handler’ earns an estimated net worth of $100 million. Ruth was born in Denver, Colorado, in November 1916 and died in April 2002. Ruth was the president of the toy company named Mattel Inc. and was best known for inventing Barbie dolls. She started the furniture business with her husband, Elliott Handler, before starting Mattel to produce photo frames with her husband and business partner Harold “Matt” Matson.
The company started making dollhouse furniture, and their first big hit was the Uke-a-doodle toy ukulele. Handler’s daughter, Barbara, was playing with paper dolls, and Ruth realized how limited they were. She found the German doll Bild Lilli which was a gift for adults and redesigned the design into a Barbie doll. She devoted the Barbie doll at the Toy Fair in New York in 1959. Ruth was also credited with writing the 1987 film Barbie and the Rockers: Out Of This World. Ruth Handler died on April 27, 2002, at the age of 85, from complications from colon cancer surgery.
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The Story Behind Barbie
Mattel Inc. was founded in 1945 by Ruth Elliott Handler and Ruth’s husband and partner, Harold Matson. They started out the company as a photo frame company which slowly grew into a toy company when its creators started making dollhouses out of scrap wood. But it was Ruth’s ingenuity that made Mattel an American brand. Barbara Handler, Ruth’s daughter, has loved paper dolls since childhood. She would play with them like they were adults, rather than children of her own age. As a caring mother, Ruth soon realized that children often prefer to grow up when they are playing.
Ruth said that children were more interested in their future rather than in the present. This gave Ruth the idea to make adult dolls that were not made of paper like all the others but three-dimensional. The printed plastic dolls can wear clothes made of real fabric instead of loose paper clothes like traditional dolls. In 1959 Ruth presented her new doll at the New York Toy Fair. And, it was named Barbie after her daughter. And after investing heavily in advertising in the Mickey Mouse Club, the sales of Barbie dolls led Mattel to success beyond Ruth and her husband’s wildest dreams.
About Ruthton Corporation
In the year 1970, Ruth was diagnosed with a severe disease of breast cancer. A modified radical mastectomy was perpetrated to save his life, but Ruth was not ready to live with the new deformity. At that time, there were few possibilities for breast prosthetics. As a motivated and resourceful woman, Ruth decided to build it herself. She designed and manufactured a realistic breast prosthesis called the Nearly Me. With it, she founded Ruthton Corp. and sells its products to cancer sufferers around the world.
Ruthton Corp. continued to produce many new products, though largely without Ruth’s own help. Ruth’s last major contribution to Ruthton was the production of the Barbie and Rockers doll line. In 1987 a film of the same name was made in which Ruth was credited as the writer. In 1997 Ruth was inducted into the United States Junior Achievement Business Hall of Fame. Ruth took her last breath in 2002 at the age of 85 from complications during surgery to treat colon cancer, but her legacy lives on. The Barbie doll was still one of the most popular and successful toys for young girls in America and around the world.
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