African American Dream Glow Ken doll

African American Dream Glow Ken doll, wearing a suit, with moulded plastic hair, brown eyes, and black skin. Dream Glow Ken has a glow-in-the-dark star pattern on his pink waistcoat (vest) and a glow-in-the-dark corsage. A white version of Dream Glow Ken was released at the same time and wearing the same outfit. Both dolls were released alongside African American and white Barbie dolls, wearing dresses with glow-in-the-dark star pattern ball gowns. There was also a Hispanic Dream Glow Barbie, though no Hispanic Ken was released. There were a number of outfits and accessories in the Dream Glow Barbie collection, all of which featured a glow-in-the-dark element.

This doll and others in the Barbie range have the term "AA" appended to their official names, to denote that they are the African American version of a doll.

The Ken doll was created by Ruth Handler, the inventor of the Barbie Doll, as a partner for Barbie and was first released in 1961. Ken has at various points in his history been Barbie's friend, boyfriend, and husband. His full name was originally Kenneth Sean Carson, though he has mostly been marketed as just Ken.

This doll was released three years after the first black Ken doll by Mattel, Sunsational Malibu Ken, which was released in 1982. The first Ken doll of colour had been released in the late 1970s, however: Hawaiian Ken, who was depicted as an indigenous Hawaiian man (and who pre-dated the first Barbie of colour). There had also been black or African-American dolls in the Barbie range before Barbie and Ken dolls specifically. Barbie's friend Christie and her boyfriend Brad were the first African American dolls released by Mattel in the Barbie line, having first been released in the late 1960s. For the 60th anniversary of the Ken doll in 2021, Mattel claimed that their range of Kens was the most diverse ever.