Weird History

Barbie Was Originally Based On An Extremely Risqué German Doll (2022x44)

: 13, 2022

Young girls in America grew up with the squeaky-clean image of Barbie, but the truth is that the history of Barbie and Europe's Bild Lilli doll go hand in hand. Bild Lilli is a doll with heavy makeup, a fierce backstory, and a curvy body eerily similar to Barbie's and some have described her as "Barbie’s ballsy European precursor." Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler first encountered Bild Lilli in Switzerland in the mid-1950s, and saw the doll's potential for American consumers. But Lilli was a very different kind of doll than what Barbie eventually became.