Kallan

"He's Ken's buddy! All of Ken's clothes fit him!"

- Original "Allan" packaging

Kallan is the slash ship between Ken and Allan from the Barbie fandom.

History
Allan was one of the earliest characters in the doll-line, introduced in 1964 as Ken's buddy. The packaging points out that Allan can wear all of Ken's clothing, since they use the same model. The character was discontinued only two years later when Mattel received concerns that Ken and Allan were "too close" to be friends. He was then rebranded as "Alan" when he got married to Barbie's then-best friend Midge, but the collection showing Midge pregnant with Alan's child sparked another controversy, leading to even more bad press for the character. Thus, Allan/Alan was rarely featured in tie-in media, to the point where many longtime fans believed that Ken has no life outside of his love for Barbie. He still sporadically appeared in the doll-line, mostly to celebrate milestones of the brand and remind the public of Barbie's roots. By the time the Life in the Dreamhouse series debuted, Allan's character seemed to have been phased out for good, with his role as Ken's male friend (frenemy) and Midge's love interest being filled by a new character named Ryan. Thus, announcement of Allan being a character in the Live-Action movie confirmed suspicions that it would be a throwback to the franchise's origins.

Barbie (2023)
Ken and Allan are both residents of BarbieLand, with the narrator pointing out that Allan is Ken's buddy and the only one of his kind. When Ken goes surfing to impress Barbie but gets knocked back from the waves, Allan cries his name, though Ken turns out okay. Barbie later invites Ken to one of her daily parties that evening, with Allan attending. Both Ken and Allan witness Barbie confess her feelings of death, but play it off just like the other Barbies and Kens.

When Barbie realizes that something is deeply wrong with her and is told by the Weird Barbie to go to the real world, Ken sneaks into her car to accompany her with Allan staying behind. When Ken later returns to BarbieLand, having been radicalized by a very warped idea of the patriarchy which the other Kens eat up and use to turn BarbieLand into "Kendom", Allan is the only one who disapproves of the Kens brainwashing the Barbies into their personal slaves and suffers in silence. When Barbie returns to Kendom with Gloria and her daughter Sasha in tow, Allan sneaks into their car when Sasha tries to return to the real world with her mother, much like Ken did. He explains to the two of them that he can't stay in Kendom a minute longer, finding the Kens' toxic attitudes and love for leather to be repulsive. When Sasha tells him that he can't come to the real world, Allan reveals that a bunch of Allans have escaped to the real world before to form N*Sync, which is the real reason why he's the only Allan in BarbieLand. Allan warns them that as soon as the Kens figure out how to build a wall instead of just mindlessly stacking bricks on top of each other, nobody will get in or out. But when Sasha has a change of heart and wants to save the Barbies after all, Allan fights off the Ken construction workers to give them time.

Allan is later seen being part of Weird Barbie's resistance against the Kens, along with the main Barbie, Gloria, Sasha and the other Barbies and Kens who are seen as mistakes. He happily assists them with unprogramming the mindcontrolled Barbies and is there to witness the main Ken finally realizing his true worth without Barbie.

Behind the Scenes
Michael Cera (Allan's actor in the movie) read his character as being "obsessed with" if not outright in love with Ken and his desire for Ken to be happy drives most of Allan's actions in the movie. He outright described Allan's feelings towards Ken as "distant yearning".

Fanon
Allan had never been a popular character within the toy-line, being remembered as one of the few characters invented by creator Ruth Handler and not much else. Interest in shipping Allan with Ken first sparked when the character was announced to be played by Michael Cera in the movie, with essayists pointed out that Allan's gimmick was that he could wear all of Ken's clothes, which was received far more warmly than it was in the 60's.

When the movie actually came out, many were left baffled as Allan hardly had any personal interaction with Ryan Gosling's Ken (or any other Ken for that matter). People nonetheless noticed how Allan's arc about being a sattelite for Ken paralleled Ken's own arc about being Barbie's sattelite. That, combined with Allan often being read as gay and Ken not ending up with Barbie after all led to Kallan being the most popular ship for Ken to originate in the movie.

Fandom

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