Mattel products

The company Mattel Creations was founded in 1945 by Harold Matson and Elliot Handler, who used an acronym of their names to name the business. 

In the beginning Mattel has been oriented to the framing and manufacturing of toy furniture. In 1947 they oriented all the activity to the toy sector.

Mattel is one of the first companies to pretest children's reactions,with moderate successes such as the Burp Gun and Fanner 50 pistols. to an agreement with the Mickey Mouse Club television program to advertise its products outside of the Christmas season.

In 1959, Mattel revolutionized the market with the launch of the Barbie doll. Until that year, all the dolls aimed at the female public had children's forms, so Ruth Handler proposed creating an adult-looking one to play with and dress her.

Although the directors of Mattel have been very reluctant to Barbie, Ruth manages to convince them presenting her as an adult reference in which the girls could look. In 1961 the male counterpart Ken is launched.

Today Barbie is the best-selling doll in history, it is an icon of children's toys and has been sold in more than 150 countries.

Mattel becomes one of the main toy multinationals; after going public in New York in 1963, its profits quadrupled to $100 million in less than two years. In addition to Barbie, other successful collections were published, such as Chatty Cathy (1960), one of the first talking dolls on the market, or the Hot Wheels scale cars (1968).

Since 2002, all the production of Mattel has been outsourced to China.