Several years ago, almost a decade ago now I think, there was a big push to put out Barbie dolls of different body shapes, and breaking with this idea that “Oh, she has this perfect unattainable figure.” I think Barbie has been used as a stand-in. I was at a women's rights protest, this is several decades ago, and there are signs that are like, “I'm not your Barbie doll.” Take, for example, this Ken doll dripping in Russian fashion. It is one of four dolls and the only male doll in the Barbie Fashion Model Collection (BFMC). 4. Brunette Ken Doll (Japan)

I think in part this is meant to sell different outfits, which was another part of Ruth Handler's genius, really, was that you can buy one doll and then have all of these different outfits that you need to buy for her. You'll need to buy Barbie's park-walk outfit or Barbie's bridal gown. Tamkin: Yeah. And I'm not trying to say that Ruth Handler was consciously going through all of this, but I do think it's important that it comes out of this certain point in American history. Klimek: To read Emily Tamkin's feature story about the history of Barbie, and my piece about groundbreaking Ken dolls through the years, visit SmithsonianMag.com. But when Ruth Handler first came out with Barbie, one of the things that she heard from others in the toy industry was like, “Nobody's going to want to buy this curvy, quite adult-looking doll.”They took extended family trips together. They had the trailer that we would load the Barbies up into for road trips. Klimek: Let's hear another piece of archival audio that gets into the increasing sophistication of the hair on these dolls.

The tale of Ken’s tortured existence began, as many a toy’s, with a board meeting. Two years after Barbie’s breakout debut, Mattel’s financial advisors sought to convince cofounders Ruth and Elliot Handler to expand the brand into the profitable world of product licensing, according to Barbie Bazaar, a 1990 series of articles by the doll collector A. Glenn Mandeville. Save for the presence of Ruth, it’s easy to imagine this discussion resembling the roundtable of male executives in suits who represented Mattel’s top brass in the Barbie movie. The Handlers were initially concerned that assigning Barbie a fixed biography might limit children’s imaginations during play. They nevertheless agreed, per Mandeville, that “select firms would be allowed to develop the personality of Barbie, under the watchful eye of management of Mattel.” With that obstacle cleared, the floodgates opened. Out came vinyl record totes, Barbie novels, and, crucially, Ken.The Spanish were remarkably guarded about their methods for processing and cooking chocolate throughout the 16th century and into the 17th century, such that when they went public in the 18th century, they really, really dominated this European trade in cacao. And also had avoided a significant degree of competition by not telling everyone how magical these beans were. If you look at the video, they're dressed in this very 1950s, all-American, clean cut garb. They're getting married; they end up at the aisle. Mattel's official line was that this was an attempt to modernize Ken based on the results of a survey that was conducted among their customers.

All of this, at the same time, you have Barbie and Ken, who were like, classic. The all-American man and the all-American woman. At the same time that the American Jews are sort of like, “Well, what does it mean to be an American Jewish man or an American Jewish woman?” She has this impossible figure and she's very beautiful, and you can dress her up in different ways. But at the same time, Barbie's always breaking that mold, because the clothes that they assigned to her, as we talked about, are of any profession. And once you give a girl or boy a Barbie doll, they can play with it and have it, as Ruth Handler said, be anything. And do anything. Tamkin: Yeah, I mean, it wasn't just Ken. They built out the Barbie fam. So there's her friend Midge, there's her little sister Skipper, and then Ken. It basically was like, “Well, Barbie needs a boyfriend.” Only 100 of these dolls were ever made. They are from the "World of Barbie" National Convention and were table host gifts.Tamkin: I think that my Kens sort of fell into the traditional Ken paradigm where, you know, he was always in relation to Barbie. I can't remember ever having a Barbie game where the plot centered around the Ken.