The special-edition Black Barbie commemorating the 45th anniversary of this groundbreaking doll doesn’t just celebrate a toy; it honors a cultural revolution started by legendary designer Kitty ...

“But when you speak to the women who wanted a Black Barbie at the time, all they got was a friend of Barbie.” It was these concerns that led to the founding of Shindana Toys in South Central ...

The first Black Barbie was created in 1980 by Kitty Black Perkins. ... The doll helped to correct decades of Black girls and women not having toys to play with that looked like them.

Black Barbie stormed onto the toy scene as the “dynamite” antithesis to her Malibu sun-kissed, pink-obsessed predecessor, Barbie, in 1980.

In the Netflix documentary 'Black Barbie,' designers Kitty Black Perkins and Stacey McBride-Irby talk the evolution of the dolls and further tell PEOPLE about the differences they've made.

The Netflix documentary “Black Barbie” examines why the doll, which was created by designer Kitty Black Perkins in 1980, holds a strong cultural significance.

At its best, writer-director Lagueria Davis' film aims to challenge the level of responsibility placed onto Black Barbie and Mattel. Courtesy of Netflix In many ways, the release of “Black ...

"The dolls could do anything, and that was exciting,” Shonda Rhimes says of the Mattel toy at the center of Netflix's "Black Barbie" documentary. Watch Party Newsletter What to watch Win $100 ...

In 1980, they took it a step further by releasing the first-ever Black Barbie. Designed by Kitty Black Perkins, this wasn’t “Barbie’s friend Christie.” This was Barbie , and she was Black.

Three years later, in 1979, Black Perkins began work on the toy company’s first black Barbie. “I had a person that was in the hair department, a sculptor, a face painter, ...

Black Perkins bought her first Barbie doll from Toys R Us when she was 28 years old to prepare for an interview with Mattel. The company asked her to take a Barbie home and to bring it back in a ...

Thanks in part to its efforts to culturally diversify its doll collections, Mattel — which debuted Barbie in 1959 — started to create Black Barbies in 1980. And the number of Black Barbie ...