Let’s crawl into the “way back” machine and take a little trip back to Christmas 1973. That’s the year, under our aluminum Christmas tree (more on that in the future) Santa had finally left for me a Ken doll. Barbie, of course, was no novice to the dating world. She’d been spending time with my cousin Don’s G.I Joe any chance she got. But in 1973, the man who was modeled specifally for her walked into her life.
He wasn’t the blonde Ken doll with plastic hair with which you’re probably most familiar. I had a special Ken doll…the “Mod Hair Ken” with combable, brunnette hair. I mean this was the seventies!! I always wondered why he was mod and just recently discovered that it was because he had mod length hair. Too funny!!!
He was decked out in a beautiful brown outfit…brown pants, brown checked jacket with great wide lapels, and a white mock turtleneck dickie!!! Yes, Mod Hair Ken had a damned dickie. What moron came up with this thing??
It gets worse…
Mod Hair Ken also came with press-on facial hair. You read correctly…PRESS-ON FACIAL HAIR!!!! He could don a mustache, a beard, a mustache and beard, and/or lamb chop sideburns.
He wasn’t the blonde Ken doll with plastic hair with which you’re probably most familiar. I had a special Ken doll…the “Mod Hair Ken” with combable, brunnette hair. I mean this was the seventies!! I always wondered why he was mod and just recently discovered that it was because he had mod length hair. Too funny!!!
He was decked out in a beautiful brown outfit…brown pants, brown checked jacket with great wide lapels, and a white mock turtleneck dickie!!! Yes, Mod Hair Ken had a damned dickie. What moron came up with this thing??
It gets worse…
Mod Hair Ken also came with press-on facial hair. You read correctly…PRESS-ON FACIAL HAIR!!!! He could don a mustache, a beard, a mustache and beard, and/or lamb chop sideburns.
Why would a little girl want a Ken doll who wears a dickie and has press-on sideburns? He looked like a damned swinger!!! Were the Ken doll creaters at Mattel on LSD?!?!?
Needless to say, that combable hair quickly became cuttable hair as soon as I pulled out my handy dandy safety scissors. By the time I was through with him, Mod Hair Ken looked like he’d laid down with dogs and got up with a severe case of the mange.
Poor Mod Hair Ken would often be the pilot of my Barbie airplane stumbling down the aisle with only one sideburn and half a mustache, barefoot, and looking like a homeless mangy mutt. Or sometimes the driver of the Barbie camper drunkenly setting up the plastic table and popping the canopy wearing only his lovely brown pants and receiving a severe sunburn to the bare spots on his scalp and hairless, well-defined chest.
Soon he was tossed aside and just became a mean guy who would come out of the pile to be the guy that high fashion Barbie laughed at openly. He was definitley the joke of all the other dolls. Even the father of the sunshine family with his blonde bowl haircut and round, empty, blue eyes was more popular with the chicks that Mod Hair Ken.
What did Barbie decide to do? Well, Barbie ran back into the stiff and figid arms of G.I Joe and lived happily ever after.
Chick out…
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