Believe it or not, Barbie (0) originally was a real person. Her name was Barbara (Barbie) Handler. In the early 1950's, Barbie's mother (1) her and her girlfriends play with adult female dolls. Her mother knew it was important for girls to (2) what it would be like to be grown up. Since most of the adult dolls at that time were paper or cardboard, Barbie's mother (3) to make a three-dimensional female adult doll. One that was lifelike enough to serve as an inspiration for little girls’ dreams of the future. She took her ideas to the ad executives at the Mattel Corp., the company that she and Barbie's father had (4) in the garage many years before. The all male committee (5) the idea saying it would be too (6) and with little market appeal to the mass. She had gone on a trip to Europe and returned with a Lillie doll, modelled after a character in a German comic strip. She then spent lots of time designing a doll (Barbie) to (7) Lillie. The result was the Barbie Doll. Mattel finally agreed to back her (8) and Barbie debuted at the American Toy Fair in New York City in 1959. Girls went wild over her and set a new sales record for Mattel the very first year at 351,000 sold at $3.00 each. Since then the Barbie Doll's popularity has rarely wavered and today, with (9) one billion of her look-alikes sold, the product line is one of the most successful in the history of the toy industry. After the toy fair, Mattel was so swamped with orders that it took several years for supply to catch up with (10) !