Simu Gets The First Asian Male Barbie Doll And It's....

Simu Liu is the first Asian male to get a Barbie Ken doll and the internet is debating it. Come on Barbie, let's go party. I mean listen guys, the internet always needs to debate something and Simu Liu is the very first Asian American celebrity to get a Ken Barbie doll because of the new live action movie where he plays an Asian version of Ken. Now anytime you're the first person to do something in an American institution that's like almost 100 years old since 1959 is acknowledging you, the internet gets split because you kind of get to be the first Asian to get something that a lot of Asians thought we'd never get. Not necessarily that they care that much but you're still the first one. So are we supposed to celebrate Simu or are we supposed to pick this apart and be mad that the Ken doll doesn't really look like him and that we're mad Simu's in the movie? Right, I mean it's the internet guys. People can feel about anything how they want to feel about it. Make sure you like, subscribe, turn on your notifications from silly to serious. Always breaking it down, Andrew. This is probably more in the silly category, right? Right, so actually Simu was not the very first Asian Ken doll. There was one called Samurai Ken but it essentially looks like a white Ken doll in yellow face. So I don't think that was extremely popular at the time and then also there was. It looks like it's from Team America like Action Force or something. Yeah, but there has been several iterations of an Asian female Barbie doll but the first one was in 1981 from Dolls Around the World and it was called the Orient and it looks like a horrific Halloween costume. So that probably wouldn't fly anymore. So thank you for the progression. Also they've had Anime Wong one which they did last year which was very tasteful. Well obviously Barbie's trying to transition into what like a new world, right? A new era. Right, right. And this kind of goes along with the movie, right? Because the movie is not designed to be just like teenage love and fun like it was in the 1970s and 80s, right? It's like the whole vibe is more meta for this new live-action Barbie movie. Oh no, the Barbie movie to me after watching the new trailer looks very much for a mature crowd and above 18 and overcrowd. It's very meta. It has a lot of commentary on like your world and being from a bubble and human behavior. Is it more like the Lego movie? You know how the Lego movie had the Legos acting like more like adults than you would think. They weren't acting like little kids. No, it's a movie that's supposed to appeal to multiple age groups especially even older people. But let's get into the comment section, David. As always there is a disagreement. Yeah, somebody said man I'm really glad for Simu. He's the first guy to break through all these barriers. I mean it's true. You like you know ever since he got chosen for Shang-Chi which was the first Asian Marvel superhero. It's led to like the first of a lot of things, right? One of the first Asian males. I believe the first native fluency English-speaking male to host SNL other than Jackie Chan, right? Because Jackie Chan doesn't count because Jackie Chan is from Asia. So Simu was like sort of the first westernized Asian guy to do a lot of things, right? But this produces a lot of positive comments. But like we addressed in previous videos, Andrew, it produces a lot of negative comments too, right? So the next comment was there are so many hotter actors than Simu. Why does he get all this groundbreaking stuff for himself? It should have been Manny Jacinto or this person that person xyz. Hold on. Let me break down this argument because I know people have been saying this about the Barbie movie. Like oh Simu doesn't fit into the Barbie movie. He's not pretty enough. I'm like technically Ryan Gosling probably doesn't fit either. He's too old and he doesn't exactly look like a Ken doll. And then Margot Robbie's like 32 years old and usually known for the Wolf of Wall Street or killing people in Suicide Squad. So to me you could say all these actors don't fit I guess. But again the movie is meant to be more about acting and it has such a larger message about it and it's written for like an older audience. I would say like 22 year old Zac Efron would have been more like actually like Ken if we were trying to find people who look like that that character from like 1959. If you want to just go watch the most beautiful faces on earth just go through Instagram or go watch some Netflix reality love shows. Those Netflix reality shows I think a lot of those people they don't have the talent to act but man some of those people gorgeous. Somebody said by the way guys maybe they pick Simu due to other factors other than just solely his looks. Asians are so narrow-minded when it comes to understanding entertainment and media in a Western sense. That was a burn bro. Taking shots at the Asian beauty standards. Somebody said why does Simu's Barbie look like Elvis Wesley instead of Elvis Presley. Because it does kind of look like Elvis. Yeah oh they also said that it looks like Eugene Yang from BuzzFeed, Brett Rockman or or also Guy Tang the hairstylist. Yeah I saw some other ones too Mario Lopez. Oh yeah it definitely I would say this it doesn't look like Simu. It does look Asian but yeah it doesn't look exactly like Simu but but I he did I think want to say he's still got a unique mold for it. Right. Like that's like that's not the you know what I was thinking in my head. I was thinking that they still had all the skin colorings from 1959 right. So they couldn't really capture like a high brightish yellow. So they just went for like olive. Somebody said this doll is gonna go on sale. Nobody is gonna buy it or even let alone steal it. I think it could be a collector's item at least. I don't know if they're mass producing it too. I don't know if it's hitting shelves like because I don't even know if people are buying Barbie dolls the same way. Yeah that's a good question. I haven't seen the like CPG consumer package goods like statistics. You know I'm just not David I'm not you know it's kind of weird. I know it's weird to say this. I'm not really tapped in to the market of people who buy Barbies. Yeah but I am tapped into Asian American male representation. Man Simu is a friend of ours. I support him man. At the end of the day you know a lot of people want to criticize what he says in the micro. You can't argue against the macro though. Simu is helping out Asian American representation whether you agree with everything he does or everything he says. He's like a good guy and he really cares a lot about the community. Yeah and I think a lot of people always look at the pioneers of anything whether that's Andrew Yang or Simu Liu or these people who get kind of these rare opportunities. Jeremy Lin. Two Sports Illustrated covers. A GQ cover. I think he was in on Time Magazine. Jeremy Lin has survived all types of fire and comments and criticisms of oh his personality or this or his basketball player or you didn't shoot enough or whatever it is man. Like I just think you know you can always have your criticism but just always know what is most important and the macro is more important always. Now you can have your feelings about the micro but just understand the macro. Please please please. For sure I think also a lot of these guys especially like Simu, Jeremy they're trying to bridge the gap between the east and the west and this is gonna be one of the most defining things moving forward to be honest if you guys really like read a lot and understand you know things from a bird's eye view. I think that a lot of people hating on Simu for like getting this Barbie doll they're coming from a scarcity mindset. They're not coming from a growth mindset. They're like yo the pie is fixed the more you eat of the pie that's less pie for me instead of like let's work together and grow the pie right. Right do you think that some people say well it's okay that Simu got Shang-Chi because he's an action star in that but for him to get Barbie too that's supposed to be for pretty guys. Yeah I do think there's some of that in the sense of like wanting things to work the way you want them to work because you're like man he had think I was like so pretty so he get him in the pretty role. Well you could have got a bunch of different k-pop stars and a bunch of the Korean guys are prettier faces. Yeah and I feel like maybe people feel like the Asian stars once they reach that uh tipping point they're locked in for like every role right and I do understand that like I'm not gonna pretend like I can't put my mind in the mind of a critic right who's like picking things apart you can get where they're coming from. I get it. But at the end of the day man I hope that the Asian world like even between the actors could eventually get more bro-ish and maybe they could all do like a hangover movie together maybe it's a little bit less problematic because we're Asian or whatever but like something like a bro piece to uplift everybody you know what I mean. But I'll tell you this Andrew being in entertainment and having met like 90% of these guys not all of them are even bros themselves so why would they everybody else why would they put them in a bro flick? Right um anyways guys we're gonna wrap it up there you guys let us know in the comments down below are you excited about the Barbie movie? Does Simu's Ken doll look like him? What do you think about Simu being the pioneer of a lot of things you know um so please let us know in the comments down below until next time we out. Peace.