Mattel for Barbie (film series). Mattel purchased The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1971 for $40 million from the Feld family, whom Mattel kept as management. Mattel sold the circus corporation by December 1973, despite its profit contributions, as Mattel showed a $29.9 million loss in 1972. In 1974, an investigation found Mattel guilty of issuing false and misleading financial reports, banishing Elliot and Ruth Handler from their own company. In 1991, Mattel moved its headquarters from Hawthorne, California to El Segundo, California. Arthur S. Spear, a Mattel vice president, took control of the company in 1975, who
Ruth Handler manufacturing. The company's first big-seller was the "Uke-a-doodle", a toy ukulele. Ruth Handler claimed her daughter Barbara, who was becoming a pre-teen, played with paper dolls by pretending they were adults. Handler noticed that in such play, children would act out future events, rather than the present. Handler noted the limitations of the paper dolls, including how the paper clothing failed to attach well. She wanted to produce a three-dimensional plastic "paper doll" with an adult body and a wardrobe of fabric clothing, but her husband and Mr. Matson thought parents would not buy their children a doll with a