Elliot Handler Elliot Handler Elliot Handler (April 9, 1916 – July 21, 2011) was an American inventor, businessman, and co-founder of Mattel. With his wife, he developed some of the biggest-selling toys in American history, including Barbie, Chatty Cathy, Creepy Crawlers, and Hot Wheels. Handler was born to a Jewish family in Chicago, Illinois, on April 9, 1916, and grew up in Denver, Colorado. He studied industrial design at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. In 1929, he met his future wife Ruth Mosko at a B'nai B'rith dance for teenagers. They later married and had two children: a
Performo Toy Company other toy companies and other luxury goods producers while the movie tie-in enabled Disney's nascent toys and novelties business to weather the hard times of the Great Depression. "The Simpsons" episode "The Day the Violence Died" bears a remarkable similar story line to the Grove–Disney debate. In the July 15, 1933 edition of the Middletown Press and Journal, the Performo Toy Company announced they were filing for bankruptcy. It is believed that the Great Depression forced them to padlock their doors. Performo Toy Company The Performo Toy Company was established in 1925 by Torrence Leroy Dietz, in Middletown, Dauphin County,