Tarpley Hitt

A company called Strike 3, owner of Vixen and Tushy, has clogged US courts with lawsuits, mostly against porn watchers who feel shamed into settling privately

This piece is adapted from Barbieland: The Unauthorized History by Tarpley Hitt. Copyright © 2025 by the author and reprinted with permission of Atria/One Signal Publishers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

“Ken was to be the first new character in the Barbie universe, and so his design raised questions about the norms of that world.”

For years, Gagosian's heads of security, Anthony Johnson and Andre Headley have protected masterpieces, welcomed billionaires, and become legends in their own right.

Almost exactly 64 years after Barbie's first Toy Fair, I flew to Berlin. It was March 4, 2023.

It was easy for toy magnate Louis Marx to picture Barbie's downfall. He'd orchestrated many a toy's obsolescence. How many times had he seen a solid product, remade it in cheaper plastic, using cheaper labor, and sold his own for less? “He was the big bully on the block,” Hot Wheels designer Fred Adickes once said. “He'd go to a toy fair, see what was there, and he'd knock it off quickly.” There was a reason all his friends were generals and baseball players and not designers or inventors. “He made very few friends in the toy industry,” a British toy executive remembered. “He always believed that if he got friendly with his competitors he couldn't knock off their products.”

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