In the midst of all that jumping around, the industry as a whole has grown dramatically, generating $12 billion in retail sales last year, up from $7 billion in 1980. Since its founding, in 1945, the company has risen from obscurity to become the world's largest toy manufacturer, plunged to near bankruptcy, and pulled itself back together.
Mattel's own history reflects the whimsicality of the entire enterprise. Fads have come and gone, and companies have followed. While Barbie and her family have been a sturdy, reliable success, the business of keeping children amused has been volatile. Since then the Barbie trade has been everything that the toy trade in general has not. But the ones that did make their way into stores were snapped up so fast that Mattel had trouble supplying replacements. Buyers thought, among other things, that she was too small and too busty to catch on with little girls and their staid, Ike-loving moms.
She has a discontinued black friend of Tutti's (Tutti is Barbie's tiny sister, fraternal twin of Todd) that was sold only in Germany.īarbie was not an immediate hit when she was introduced to the toy trade twenty-seven years ago. She has Barbies with Asian features that are sold in the United States.
She has Barbies with Western features that are sold in Japan. She has an original 1959 Barbie (along with the box it came in), worth perhaps a thousand dollars. (Mattel says that Barbie's vast wardrobe has made the company the world's largest producer of women's wear.) Spread out on the table before her are numerous Barbies, Kens, Midges, Francies, and other dolls, along with a broad sampling of their furniture, dogs, horses, automobiles, and, of course, clothes. She is giving a lecture titled "The Barbie Family" to about a dozen members of a doll-collecting club in the basement of Brooklyn's St. She is also the president of the International Barbie Doll Collectors Club, the editor and publisher of the International Barbie Doll Collectors Gazette, and one of the world's leading authorities on the world's leading fashion doll. If all the Barbies ever sold were laid end to end, they would span so many football fields that you would soon realize that more than 250 million Barbie-family dolls have been sold.Ĭronk is a contagiously cheerful middle-aged housewife from the Bronx. When you pulled apart the legs of Guardian Goddess, a sort of outer-space Barbie introduced in 1980, her arms flew up and her clothes fell off (Mattel, unlike Ruth Cronk, does not include Guardian Goddess in the Barbie family). When you rotated the arm of Growing Up Skipper (1975), her breasts got bigger. When Ken was introduced, in 1961, Handler wanted him to be what is referred to nowadays as "anatomically correct," but Mattel's (male) marketing department said no. Barbie and Ken, her boyfriend, were named after the real children of Ruth Handler, Barbie's creator, the wife of one of the founders of Mattel, Inc., and the driving force behind the company for many years. For example: If Barbie were blown up to human size, her measurements would be 39-21-33. He has recorded for television and Imax film scores, as well as major symphony orchestras and numerous classical, pop and jazz ensembles.Uth Cronk knows more interesting facts about Barbie than most people know about anything. He has performed with the New York Trumpet Ensemble, The New York Big Brass, The London Brass, and the Montréal Symphony and has been a soloist with the Minnesota Orchestra, North Carolina Symphony, Oregon Symphony, Florida Orchestra, Les Violons du Roy, and the Bach Society among others. Lazarus has performed his own compositions for the Montréal and Ottawa international jazz festivals, live on Radio Canada, for music videos that have aired nationally on Canadian television, and as an opening act for Tony Bennett. Olaf College, and has performed and taught master classes in every US state, Canada, South America and throughout Europe and Asia. He has been on the trumpet faculties of Princeton University and St. He has been a member of the Dallas Brass, Meridian Arts Ensemble, Canadian Brass, and currently the Minnesota Orchestra. Lazarus made his main stage Carnegie Hall solo debut with the New York String Orchestra at the age of 19 while still a student at The Juilliard School in New York. The trumpeter/composer’s eclectic career has been met with acclaim from critics worldwide.
CHARLES LAZARUS CHRISTMAS FULL
Charles Lazarus is known for his distinctive blend of lounge/exotica and funk fi… Read Full Bio ↴ Charles Lazarus is known for his distinctive blend of lounge/exotica and funk fired jazz.
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