April got off to a fantastic start when Warner Bros. dropped a new trailer for the upcoming, Greta Gerwig directed Barbie movie as well as character posters for the film revealing a wide array of Barbies and Kens — and a few extra characters as well. In the mix of characters for the Barbie movie revealed by the posters were various humans as well as two characters that may have struck some as unusual, Michael Cera as Allan and Emerald Fennel as Midge… a very pregnant Midge at that. With all the other “doll” characters having roles — particularly the Barbies — with careers like lawyer, physicist and even president, Allan and Midge seem like unusual outliers. But for fans of the actual Barbie dolls, these two characters are significant and have an interesting history all their own.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Who is Allan?
Allan is actually a real doll in the Barbie lineup and was first introduced by Mattel in 1964. Officially named Allan Sherwood in a series of novels (yes, there’s novels. It’s a whole thing), the doll started out as “Ken’s Buddy” and was set up as a boyfriend for Margaret “Midge” Hadley, Barbie’s best friend who had been introduced in 1963. Allan’s big selling point was that all of Ken’s clothes would fit Allan. The doll was initially discontinued in 1966 but reintroduced in 1991 where here married Midge (complete with an elaborate wedding gift set that featured multiple dolls) and then again in 2002. He hasn’t been seen in the lineup since. The look Cera’s Allan sports in the Barbie character poster is inspired by Allan’s original outfit he made his debut in.
Who is Midge?
Introduced in 1963, Midge Hadley was Barbie’s best friend and the third doll introduced in the overall Barbie line (the first two being Barbie and Ken). Midge was initially introduced as a response to criticism that Barbie was too mature for children so, while Midge had the same body proportions as Barbie and thus the two dolls were able to share clothes, her face mold was fuller than Barbie’s. The doll also came in three different hair colors and an option of with or without freckles, but the red hair with freckles combination was ultimately the most popular. The doll was available from 1963 to 1966, then again from 1988 to 2004, and then again from 2013-2015.
Midge is actually a very controversial doll.
In 2002, several years after Midge and Allan’s “wedding”, Midge was paired with a reintroduced Allan for a family line, known as the “Happy Family’ line of dolls that saw the pair with their three children, including a newborn, Nikki. The Midge doll at the time was sold with a “pregnant” belly containing a tiny baby Nikki inside the magnetic, removable womb. The doll also did not have a wedding ring and was packaged without Allan or with Allan featured on the box. These details led to controversy with some consumers claiming that the pregnant doll was inappropriate for children or that it promoted teen pregnancy.
“It’s a bad idea,” one consumer told USA Today in 2002. “It promotes teenage pregnancy. What would an 8-year-old or a 12-year-old get out of that doll baby?”
“There’s enough teenagers getting pregnant as it is,” another parent said. “I think they’re glamorizing it, and it’s horrible. I work in maternity and I see 10, 11, 12-year-olds coming in pregnant and they’re crying because they don’t even know what’s going on.”
Walmart ended up pulling the doll from shelves and a new version of the doll — one that wasn’t pregnant, had a wedding ring, and featured Allan on the packaging — soon replaced her on shelves. Interestingly, there was no such backlash to an Allan doll being sold with a stroller, though that was the last time Allan’s been seen in the Barbie lineup since. Midge was last seen in the Barbie lineup in 2015.
What’s interesting about this weird moment in Barbie history is that Fennel’s Midge for the Barbie movie is dressed almost identically to the Happy Family Midge — and specifically the controversial pregnant Midge. Given the details we’ve seen thus far in the character posters in terms of outfits as well as some of the clothing spotted in the trailer, it’s pretty clear that the Barbie movie has paid significant attention to Barbie’s rich history, including some of the less pleasant corners of it. It will be very interesting to see what else comes to light as we get closer to the film and once, we actually get to head to Barbieland ourselves when the film opens in theaters.
Barbie will be released exclusively in theaters on July 21st.
