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 after resigning, they continued to create new ideas. One project Handler took on in the 1980s was Barbie and the Rockers. She was credited as a writer of the 1987 film "". Handler was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1997. She died in California from complications of surgery for colon cancer on April 27, 2002, aged 85. Her husband Elliot died nine years later at the age of 94. Ruth Handler Ruth Marianna Handler (née Mosko; November 4, 1916 – April 27, 2002) was an American businesswoman and inventor. She served as the president