Forever Barbie_ The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll - Lord [73]
By 1969, Mattel shared its Toy Fair showrooms with the likes of Shindana's Baby Nancy, a doll with authentic black features and a kinky "natural," and later with Talking Tamu, who said eighteen different "now" things like "Cool it, baby," and "Can you dig it?" Mattel ceded toy store space to Shindana rag dolls Sis, Coochy, Wilky, and Natra. And it watched Shindana score its first million-dollar hit with a stuffed talking doll that featured Flip Wilson on one side and Geraldine Jones, his female alter ego, on the other. Pull the doll's cord and it squealed, "The devil made me buy this dress!"
The world of Shindana—of top Mattel brass working side by side with the founders of Operation Bootstrap, the Watts-based job training program under whose auspices the toy company was formed—was a far cry from the way the thirtieth-anniversary issue of Barbie magazine depicted Barbie's world in 1966. "Our inner cities burned but the pot roast couldn't," the caption says under a picture of Barbie at a Tupperware party. "Mom and Dad and the leaders they elected tried to keep a lid on things." As I said in this book's opening chapter, studying Barbie sometimes requires the ability to hold contradictory ideas in one's head at the same time. When it comes to Mattel and representations of racial diversity, this is especially true.
Although the Handlers have not been part of Mattel for twenty years, the company can still be viewed as a cousin to the Hollywood studios. Mattel actually did get into the movie business in the seventies, when its Radnitz Productions produced the Academy Award-winning Sounder, another multicultural product that predated the multicultural vogue. Securities analysts consider toys part of the entertainment industry7, and corporate toymakers, like corporate moviemakers, keep their eye on trends. Beginning in the seventies, when nonwhite Americans became more visible in movies and on television, they became more visible as dolls. In 1980, Mattel issued Black Barbie and Hispanic Barbie—which, however imperfect, were still the first mainstream leading ladies (as opposed to supporting actresses) of color. Corporations also keep their eye on their bottom line. By the mid-eighties, businesses woke up to the fact that there was an audience for multicultural merchandise. Between 1980 and 1990, gross income among African-American and Hispanic households had increased 155 percent. And according to data from the 1990 U.S. census, these groups combined had a gross income just under $500 billion.
Traditionally, the needs of ethnically diverse consumers had been met by smaller companies—the equivalent, in movie terms, of independent filmmakers. In the seventies, Shindana introduced two Barbie-like fashion dolls: Malaika, taller and stouter than Barbie; and Career Girl Wanda, about three-quarters as tall as Barbie and as proportionately svelte. But in 1991, when Mattel brought out its "Shani" line—three Barbie-sized African-American dolls available with mahogany, tawny, or beige complexions— there could be no doubt that "politically correct" was profitable.
"For six years, I had been preaching these demographics—showing pie charts of black kids under ten representing eighteen percent of the under-ten population and Hispanic kids representing sixteen percent—and nobody was interested," said Yla Eason, an African-American graduate of Harvard Business School who in 1985 founded Olmec Corporation, which makes dolls and action figures of color. "But when Mattel came out with those same demographics and said, 'Ethnically correct is the way,' it legitimatized our business."
Some say that the toy industry's idea of "ethnically correct" doesn't go far enough, however. Ann duCille, chairman