Barbie's prototype was! She was based off the Bild-Lilli doll, based off a character of a naughty comic strip sold in German tobacco stores as a gag gift for men. Barbie's creator, Ruth Handler, had been trying to convince Mattel to create a fashion doll, saying that "little girls wanted to pretend to be bigger girls." So she bought several Lilli dolls to show the male toy designers, and despite their initial resistance, Barbie was eventually born. Mattel went on to sell more than three hundred fifty thousand Barbies in her first year in 1959.