Cross-Dressing Ken
Cross-Dressing Ken
In July 1990 Carina Guillot and her 12-year-old daughter, Jocelyn, were visiting relatives in Florida when they wandered into a Toys 'R' Us store and spotted something very unusual. Standing there inside a sealed cardboard package among the ranks of Ken dolls dressed in their standard-issue outfits was one very unique Ken decked out in a purple tank top and sporting a lace apron on top of a polka-dotted skirt. Mrs. Guillot immediately thought, "Oh my God, now we have a crossed-dressed Ken."
Being avid collectors of Ken and Barbie dolls, Carina and Jocelyn Guillot knew that this was no run-of-the-mill Ken. They immediately took the doll up to the front of the store where the employees examined it and confirmed that the packaging and seal were intact. This appeared to be a valid, untampered Mattel product. Excitedly, the Guillots bought the doll and took it home.
Within days news of the cross-dressing Ken had reached the national media. It was featured everywhere: in national newspapers, on the radio, and even on TV programs such as the Arsenio Hall show and the Joan Rivers show. Mattel was at a loss to explain how this one doll had managed to break ranks and shine forth in his true colors. Pundits theorized that Ken had finally gotten sick of living in Barbie's shadow and had come out of the closet once and for all. This truly appeared to be a Ken doll for the nineties. The Ken frenzy reached a peak when a collector offered the Guillots $2,000 for the doll, quite a mark-up from the $8.99 they had paid a few days before. Reportedly someone else then bid $4,000. The Guillots turned the offers down.
The speculation finally came to an end when a Toys 'R' Us night clerk, named Ron Zero, admitted that he had dressed up the Ken doll as a prank and had then carefully resealed the package with white paper glue. "We always did crazy things like that," Zero claimed. "We'd hang dolls in the aisle or put Ken and Barbie in the Barbie house with Barbie spanking Ken." Toys 'R' Us found Zero's prank so amusing that they fired him four days after he confessed.
References/Further Reading:
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"Dressed-to-frill Ken is hoax," St. Petersburg Times (August 22, 1990): 1B.
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