Amy Schumer Is BARBIE

[plastroncafe]

Originally Posted by TheSkeletonMan939

The purpose of that product was wholly different from that of Barbie dolls.

Hence the rebranding, but Barbie was directly inspired by the Lilli doll.
Who invented the Barbie doll and why? (howstuffworks.com)

But when an American woman named Ruth Handler spied a Lilli doll in a store while vacationing in Switzerland, she didn't see it as a prurient novelty. Instead, she thought it would be the perfect toy for her daughter, Barbara. Handler had observed Barbara and her girlfriends playing with paper dolls that depicted teenage girls or adult women. To Handler, that was their way of practicing for adulthood. Yet, aside from the two-dimensional paper dolls, no other dolls available in stores portrayed the mature female body. For that reason, she bought two Lilli dolls for Barbara during that Switzerland trip in 1956 -- and one for herself.

Ruth Handler was one of the co-founders of Mattel.

Ruth Handler planned to tap into that emerging kid consumerism with the extra Lilli doll she brought back stateside. With Lilli as her muse, Handler convinced her husband and the all-male design team at Mattel to follow her lead in filling the empty market niche for a more mature female doll. Mattel began crafting Handler's dream doll by 1957. They kept Lilli's general figure but scrubbed off some of her makeup, relaxed her smile and used soft vinyl instead of hard plastic to construct her.