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In May 2021, a picture supposedly showing an Allan Doll, a buddy for the Mattel company's famous Ken Doll, was widely circulated on social media: This social media user's caption of Ken's Buddy wasn't conjured out of thin air. If you look at the bottom of the box, you can see that Allan was marketed as Ken's Buddy. This is a genuine product that was sold by Mattel. The vintage Ken doll website Somethingaboutaboy.com writes that Allan was first introduced in 1964: Pictures of the Allan doll have gone viral a few times on social media, as many people believe that Ken, Mattel's famous doll who has historically been marketed as Barbie's boyfriend, is actually gay. Some argue that Ken having a buddy named Allan supports this theory. When a picture of Allan went viral in 2020, the website Pride.com wrote: We simply do not have the resources to verify the sexual preference of these Ken and Allan dolls. We can say that we found a few advertisements for these dolls from the 1960s, and in both cases Ken was marketed as Barbie's boyfriend while Allan was marketed as Ken's best buddy. In one of the advertisements, you can also see Barbie's friend Midge. It doesn't appear that Allan dolls are still regularly available made by Mattel, but the company has released a few collector versions of these dolls over the years. The picture at the top of this article, for example, comes from a 50th anniversary set that was sold in 2014. The following video comes from the YouTube page Barbie Collector and supposedly shows the first commercial for Ken's buddy Allan.
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