What you need to know:
Barbie isn’t the only doll to get her own movie. Chatty Cathy, also created by Ruth Handler, will have the film adaptation of her.
It’s more than a fact Barbie it is one of the biggest film productions of 2023. And it is not for less if we take into account that the brand and the doll have been part of pop culture for practically always. However, Did you know that there is another doll from the creators of Barbie that will also have its own movie? Goes the story of Chatty Cathy.
First Barbie, Mattel’s biggest hit
The toy industry wouldn’t be the same without Mattel. And in that sense, the history of this same company would not be the same without Ruth Handler and Elliot Handler.. They co-founded the company in 1945 with Harold Mattson (Mattel being the name combination of ‘Elliot’ and ‘Mattson’).
The beginning of the company is curious because they started making picture frames as well as some furniture. Later, they began to make houses and furniture for dolls, and from that moment they fully entered the toy industry.
Throughout the 1950s, both Ruth and Elliot realized that there was a market that could be successfully marketed: dolls… and this is where began development of Chatty Cathy by the creators of Barbie.
The story is well known: Ruth Handler created Barbie based on a German doll known as Bild Lilli. But his biggest inspiration was his daughter Barbara, whom he saw constantly playing with paper dolls while projecting his future dreams onto those improvised toys. Hence the slogan “You can be whatever you want to be”.
Barbie arrived in 1959 to soon become Mattel’s biggest hit, with everything and skepticism that existed before its launch. Yes, believe it or not, the creators of Barbie did not fully agree on the launch of the doll and in the previous years, they had Chatty Cathy on their radar.
Chatty Cathy, the other doll from the creators of Barbie
Mattel and their search for the ideal doll they would release would be intense. On the one hand, as we have already said, Ruth Handler was interested in creating a doll that had the appearance of an almost adult adolescent. that she could have fashionable clothes and accessories, and that she would eventually have different professions.
However, the company’s executives – practically all of them men – did not see the proposal so favorably. The main argument was that parents would not buy a doll with breasts for their daughters. Barbie suffered a bit to go on the market, in that sense.
But the creators of Barbie, along with the development of their most famous toy, were thinking of a different doll. As The Guardian notes in a 2002 obituarywhile Ruth Handler was trying to float her idea, her husband Elliot and the Mattel board of directors had more faith in Chatty Cathy.
At this point, some may wonder who Chatty Cathy was. Regularly, she is considered ‘second most popular Mattel doll of the 1960s’ (behind Barbie herself, of course). She was one of the leading figures in the nascent trend of the time to launch talking dolls.
‘Talking Cathy’ (in her literal translation) had the appearance of a little girl and included a pull cord to say any of her 11 random phrases. Its launch took place in 1960, just a year after Barbie. And although it is true that it did not achieve the same success as Ruth’s idea, Chatty was well received by the public.
Time passed and with Chatty Cathy, the creators of Barbie had another winning franchise under their belt. The little talkative girl also had different versions over the years, from babies to singing dolls, and the releases were expanded with editions of different physical features, ethnicities, among other things. Here an old commercial rescued from the 60s:
Chatty Cathy’s influence on the entertainment industry
It is true that with Chatty Cathy, the creators of Barbie did not achieve the same success as with their stellar doll, but they had a notorious hit. As we mentioned above, it was one of the releases that innovated the concept of talking toys.
And if it is seen on the negative side, there was also criticism for being a doll that directly or indirectly, ‘educated’ little girls to focus on motherhood. Decades passed and her popularity waned considerably as a result of Barbie’s own success, the arrival of new talkative toys, among other details.
With everything and that, Chatty Cathy had her influence in the entertainment industry at different times. One of the most remembered examples is in the 1963 episode “Living Doll” in the series The Twilight Zone (either The unknown dimension in Latin America), where we see a terrifying possessed doll based on the Mattel toy.
And in more recent times, toy story 4 introduced an antagonistic character named Gabby Gabbyshown as a 1950s talking doll that is broken down.
According to director Josh Cooleythis ‘tender’ villain is based on the living doll from the chapter mentioned in The Twilight Zone. But as for her name and appearance, the obvious inspiration for Chatty Cathy. And references to the iconic doll are also seen in series like How I Met Your Mother either Arrow. And that’s not all…
A movie about Chatty Cathy is in the works
The creators of Barbie left a legacy with the latter that, as we now know, has extended to major film productions with Greta Gerwig’s new movie with Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. And if all goes well, we’ll also have a movie based on Chatty Cathy.
It was at the beginning of 2022 when it was announced that Mattel Films, hand in hand with the production company Aggregate Films by Jason Bateman, are producing live-action movies based on children’s dolls like Chatty Cathy herself or the also popular Betsy Wetsy (which was a baby doll that drank water and urinated) released in the 1930s by Ideal Toys.
For now, this project remains in development and is part of the more than 40 films that Mattel Films has in its catalog based on toys and other brands (here we show you 9 of the films that intrigue us the most from that list). We’ll see what happens in the future with the movie of the other doll from the creators of Barbie that you might not remember.
Interview with the cast of Barbie
And since we are talking about Chatty Cathy, the other doll from the creators of Barbie that will have her movie, here we leave you the interview with Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling and America Ferrera about the premiere of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. . Check what they told us.
