"They didn't think that the public would accept a doll with breasts for children. I knew they were wrong." Ruth Handler, creator of Barbie.
Wrong to the tune of 172,800 Barbie dolls sold every day. 
But it wasn't easy. She and her husband Elliott and a partner named Matson formed Mattel Corporation to sell picture frames. Then doll house furniture. Then novelty toys. Handler noticed that her daughter, Barbary, preferred playing with adult paper dolls than children's dolls. On a trip to Germany, she found a "pin up" type doll with 38-21-33 measurements, and a slightly more modest prototype of Barbie soon followed.
But no one at Mattel was eager to do the doll. Handler insisted, and Barbie made a profit the first year, and has generated more than $2.2 billion in sales.
Years later, Handler had a mastectomy. Disappointed with the prosthetics available, she "developed a new range of prosthetic breasts called Nearly Me," and eventually sold that company for $1 million.
