Barbie did not begin as a doll, but as a kind of page-filler. In the summer of 1952, the German publisher Axel Springer was poised to print a new newspaper—a conservative tabloid based on the British gossip rags angling to compete with the great new medium of the age: television. But just as the first edition hit the presses, Springer and his staff faced a problem. Amid the pasting of pictures and inverted pyramids, the editors had ignored a narrow chasm on the broadsheet that was too small for a photo, but too large to leave blank. Springer needed something to fill the space and so he turned, at the last minute, to a cartoonist acquaintance. What he got was “Lilli”—a thin, blonde, and slightly austere woman who looked like a caricature of Marlene Dietrich. Lilli, in the original sketch, was visiting a psychic. The caption read: “Do you know the address of a tall, beautiful, rich man?”
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