TIL Barbie dolls were originally inspired by a German comic character, "Bild Lilli"

credit to u/hoopsnek for their informative imgur post

78 points · 6 comments · view on lemmy.world

6 Comments

DavidGarcia@feddit.nl · 6 pts · 3y (2 replies)

Wikipedia says 1952 to 1961, not 1940s. Pretty important difference lol

testacctpleaseignore@infosec.pub · 2 pts · 3y

Links for the lazy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilli_(comic_strip) 1952-1961
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild_Lilli_doll 1955-1964

JimmyDean@lemm.ee · 1 pts · 3y

Unbeknownst to most, Barbie actually started out life in the late 1940s as a German cartoon character created by artist Reinhard Beuthien for the Hamburg-based tabloid, Bild-Zeitung.

I just pulled the date from this description under one of the images on imgur, if it's inaccurate that's why.

Grimpen@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 3y

You might get a kick out of Netflix's "The Toys That Made Us". It has a Barbie episode, and they do talk about Bild Lili a bit at the beginning.

GreyShack@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3y

And CF the British comic strip "Jane" - which ran from the 1930s through to the end of the '50s.