In The Beginning There Was Lilli -
Ruth Handler is credited with creating the legendary doll, Barbara Millicent Roberts aka Barbie. The doll was first introduced in 1959, and Boy-O-Boy what a debut it was!! Mothers and little girls around the world snatched them up in droves! For the first time, midcentury children could play with a doll that looked like a woman, not a little girl—a doll with a sassy ponytail, heavy eyeliner, a healthy dose of side-eye, and a distinctly adult body.
How To "Bild" A Doll Empire
Once upon a time, Barbie had a secret older sister named Bild-Lilli. She was sexier, sultrier, and very popular, especially with her target audience, men! Lilli was originally a comic strip character depicted as a buxom, flirtatious and racy "working girl". And though the risqué 1955 doll has largely been overshadowed [and out marketed] by the success of her American toy sister, she plays a integral part in the origin story that created an American icon. I like to call her the Marilyn Monroe of dolls.
Lilli hails from Germany and was supposed to be a one-off comic. However, due to her popularity she became a fixture in the papers. In 1955, Lilli dolls made their way onto the shelves of tobacco shops and adult stores in the German-speaking world. The dolls became a beloved gag gift popular among guess who? Yep, men.
Ruth Handler was enchanted by Lilli’s womanly shape—but not because of her appeal to men. Here was the kind of doll she had envisioned. Handler admired Lilli’s different costumes and her 11.5-inch form. The doll proved that her dream was possible, after all. According to art historian Carol Octman, “Handler decided to reinvent this pornographic caricature as the all-American girl,”.
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.”- Oscar Wilde. Hmmm, Not Always, Dear Oscar!
Soon, Lilli was on her way to Japan with a Mattel researcher who had been tasked with finding a manufacturer. As Gerber notes, the doll’s over-the-top body and exaggerated face were softened by Mattel’s design team. But the Barbie doll that resulted still looked a lot like Lilli.
When the doll debuted in 1959, she was billed as a fashion model, and she was an instant hit. Handler’s gamble worked—there was simply nothing like Barbie out there. But to some, including Lilli’s creator, Barbie looked an awful lot like Lilli. “I was outraged when I saw this doll,” recalled Rolf Hausser, whose toy company created and sold the Lilli doll. “This was my Lilli with a different name. What had these people done? Had they stolen my doll? I didn’t know what happened.”
Greiner & Hausser struck a licensing deal with a Mattel rival, Louis Marx, who began using the Lilli head molds to create “Miss Seventeen,” a less successful Barbie competitor. Then, Marx and Hausser sued Mattel for infringing on Lilli. But the lawsuit was unsuccessful, and Hausser sold the copyright and patents to Lilli to Mattel in 1964 for a small sum. Hausser’s company soon went bankrupt. But that wasn’t the last time Lilli would rear her ponytailed head: In 2001, Greiner & Hausser filed another lawsuit against Mattel claiming it had been pressured into the settlement and seeking royalties on every Barbie sold since 1964. The case was eventually dismissed.
Living In Her Sister's Shadow
So was Barbie really a Lilli knockoff? “Well, you might call it that,” Ruth Handler’s husband, Elliot, told biographer Jerry Oppenheimer in 2008. “Ruth wanted to adopt the same body as the Lilli doll with some modifications. Changes were made, improvements were made. Ruth wanted her own look.” Today, though, Mattel downplays the connection. “Ruth was inspired by watching her daughter play with paper dolls. The Bild Lilli doll proved it was possible to manufacture an 11 ½ inch doll,” a Mattel spokesperson told HISTORY. Today, there are over 100 Barbie dolls sold every minute—and her long-forgotten, more risqué sister has become a historical footnote.
Credits
https://www.history.com/news/barbie-inspiration-bild-lilli