has recently had her 40th birthday. It all started in the 1950s when Ruth Handler saw her daughter, Barbara, and her friends playing with paper dolls. They liked to imagin the dolls beeing different persons who were working, swiming, playing with friends etc. Ruth, who owned the company Mattel with her husband, understood that pretending how the future would be was part of growing up for kids. She did some research and found that there was room on the market for a doll like . Mattel had been making lots of toys before but when Ruth said th ....