CANBERRA, March 21 (Xinhua) -- The Australian inventor of the toy craze Shopkins has for the first time featured on the Forbes list of billionaires, joining 32 other Australians on the 2017 list of the world's richest people.
Joining the likes of mining magnate Gina Rinehart, property mogul Harry Triguboff and entrepreneur Andrew Forrest, Manny Stul made his Forbes list debut on the back of the popularity of the Shopkins toys, sold by Moose Toys.
The toys are sold throughout 80 countries across the world and are extremely popular with young children as they are cute cartoon reproductions of common supermarket items, such as cupcakes, fruits and vegetables.
Stul, worth 1.4 billion U.S. dollars, was born to Polish parents in a German refugee camp and came to Australia after World War II. He is one of almost 200 debutants of the worldwide list - with many new inductees coming from Asia.
Mining magnate and the head of Hancock Prospecting, Rinehart remains Australia's richest person (worth 15 billion U.S. dollars). She is ranked 69th after coming in at 127th last year, and was the best performing female billionaire in 2016, according to Forbes.
"Unlike all the other women ahead of her, Rinehart also has bragging rights for actively building her fortune," Forbes said.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates remains the world's richest person with 86 billion U.S. dollars to his name.
