Elliot Handler is the co-founder of toymaker Mattel and the inventor of Hot Wheels. He was an American businessman, inventor, and co-founder of Mattel. Handler worked with her wife Ruth to build a legacy of best-selling toys like Barbie, Chatty Cathy, Hot Wheels, and Creepy Crawlers. He died at the age of 95 in July 2011 in his home in Century City, California.
Details of Elliot Handlers Family Life
Elliot Handler was born on 9th April 1916 in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in the west side of Denver, Colorado. He went to the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California to study industrial design. Handler met Ruth at a teenager’s dance in 1929 and they started dating for years before getting married in 1938 and had two children Barbara Segal and Kenneth. Handler died of heart failure in his home in Century City, California in July 2011. His wife Ruth died in 2002 and his son Ken also passed away in 1994. His daughter Barbara got married to Allan Segal. They had five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
Elliot Handler’s wife Ruth Marianna Handler
Ruth was a businesswoman and inventor. Together with his husband, they opened a toy manufacturing company called Mattel. She invented the Barbie doll and made over $100 million in sales and was the first president of the company from 1945 to 1975. She faced a lawsuit from company partners after the Securities and Exchange Commission showed the company was falsifying financial documents.
Career Life of Elliot Handler
Handler while still designing light fixtures got in a partnership with Harold and designed a miniature piano that sold 300,000 orders but made a loss as they mispriced the product. In 1954, the couple joined their friend Harold Matson and formed a garage named Mattel selling picture frames. They bought out their partner Harold and turned the company to make toys. Ruth concentrated on marketing and their first successful projects were musical toys like a child-size ukulele, Uke A Doodle, and a cap gun.
They marketed the cap gun called Burp Gun on television. They made toys for cartoon and television characters like Porky Pig, Mr. Ed, Herman Munster, and Bugs Bunny. They made talking toys like Charmin Chatty, Tiny Chatty Baby, and Chatty Baby. Ruth invented a teenage doll in 1959, wearing a black and white swimsuit with a tiny waist, bust, and slender hips named Barbie. It was a breakthrough for the company as it was the top-selling fashion doll in the world and was in the Fortune 500 making over $100 million in sales in 1965.
Handler introduced high-speed, powerful, and high-performance vehicles for the boys and became a top-selling toy brand. Together with designers he re-invented the cast toy cars and fast spinning plastic wheels producing over 10,000 different hot wheel models such as Evil Weevil, King Kuda, and Beatnik Bandit. Mattel brought smaller dolls called Liddle Kiddles trying to represent all children in the US. In 2006, Handler celebrated his 90th birthday, at Mattel’s headquarters, in El Segundo, California. Mattel became the largest toy maker in the world in revenue.
