We had a Mattel African-American Forum at the time, and we had a team of people creating the full story of the So In Style line of dolls." Perkins and McBride-Irby both feel like Barbie has ...

and failed to represent African cultural features. Yet Black Perkins counters that if Mattel had implemented "drastic" changes to the Malibu Barbie prototype, she doesn't believe the doll would've ...

Mattel released the African-American Barbie and Ken dolls in 1980. Though there had been an African-American doll in prior collections, the one shown on the right was named as the official African ...