Karen, I don’t know if you meant your blog headline to have a double-meaning or just arrest the eye, but in case it was the latter: the original Barbie does, indeed, appear to have been based on a likeness of a ?woman of ill repute.? As I wrote in my advertising book Selling the Dream

True mass marketing to children, according to many analysts, has a specific birthdate: October 3, 1955. That was the date of the first national broadcast of the Mickey Mouse Club on ABC. Ten years earlier, Elliot and Ruth Handler had created a toy company out of their garage. It was called Mattel (a combination of the first names of a partner, Matt Matson, and Elliot). Initially, they specialized in musical toys. Then they branched out to other lines, including a new ?Burp Gun? (the term referred to the sound the cap gun made when fired). At first sales were lean. Then ABC approached Mattel with the idea of an exclusive yearlong sponsorship of its new Disney-themed children?s show. Although the price of $500,000 was the Handlers? entire net worth, they decided to take a chance. While a few toymakers had dabbled with local TV ads (Hasbro?s Mr. Potato Head may have been first on the tube in 1951), a nationwide buy was a new and risky idea. But it paid off: within a month of the first broadcast of the Mickey Mouse Club, Mattel was swamped with orders for its Burp Gun. By Christmas 1955, it had shipped more than a million units and grossed over $4 million. The Handlers had hit pay dirt ? as they would a year later when, vacationing in Switzerland, Ruth purchased a ?Lilli doll? (originally designed for men and based on a prostitute character from a German adult cartoon) and was inspired to create Barbie, named after her daughter.