Ruth Handler had noted that her daughter Barbara preferred
playing with paper dolls that looked like adults rather
than like children. During a trip to Europe with her daughter,
Handler noticed a German doll named Lilli and bought it
for Barbara. In fact, the Lilli doll was based on the
character of a prostitute in a comic strip drawn by Reinhard
Beuthin for die Bild Zeitung. The Lilli doll was first
sold in Germany in 1955. The dolls were manufactured in
Hamburg, where legal, licensed prostitutes are ubiquitous.
The doll was marketed to adult men in bars and tobacco
shops, not to children. M. G. Lord, in her Forever Barbie:
The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll, characterized
the original doll as a "gag gift for men, a pornographic
character."
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