Asian-Pacific American Playscale DAFs, Part 1

May is Asian-Pacific American Heritage month in the United States. The purpose of heritage months is to acknowledge and to celebrate a racial or ethnic category distinct from the overall American population.

Initially, I thought this Asian and Pacific American DAF post would be an easy one. Just select the Asian American action figures and dolls, copy those names, and then paste the names into a Blogger post. Easy, yes and no.

The technology was the easy part. The problem was choosing which characters to include as Asian and Pacific American. I realized that when I counted my APA dolls and action figures, I had been including not just Asian and Pacific American characters but also the Asian DAFs from other countries as well as DAFs by American companies whose dolls’ storyline anchor the dolls overseas. Puzzled?

Take Asian action figure Linh by Dragon. Dragon’s background for Linh is that she is Vietnamese. So Linh cannot be an Asian Pacific American figure. She is a Vietnamese action figure. What about many of the DAFs produced by American companies? How about Integrity Toys’ playline Jade? On the back of a Janay/Jade/Alysa box, Jade is described as being Japanese.

So I have below the DAFs with specifically a Asian American background. Why does the story origin count here? I mean, for my personal storytelling, any doll can be assigned or re-assigned any ethnicity or race that pleases me. My DAF world, my background. I restrict my criteria here to show how few Asian and Pacific American dolls exist. Oh my.

I will list Asian dolls and action figures with overseas Asian identities, in a separate list. Please refer to that post-to-come for DAFs that can be borrowed/usurped into an APA collection.

Photos of Asian and Pacific American dolls or action figures that I own will follow in a separate post.

Get Real Girl

Skylar Ron (Technically, Ms. Ron is Canadian Asian. For the purists.)



Get Set Club (GFive)

Gia



Hasbro

Aja from Jem

Banee from Jem

G.I. Joe Special Response Team

Additional reading about Asian and Asian or Pacific American DAFS by LorenJavier and
Peter J. Chen's homepage



Jakks Pacific

Alex from GirlForce
Jaz from the G.I.R.L. Force series
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson

Kenner 

Claudia Kishni from The Baby-Sitters Club series.



Mattel

Information about Mattel's Asian-American and Pacific-American dolls came from Wikipedia, KattisDolls, BarbiesAsianFriends, and Peter J. Chen's homepage.

Hawaiian Barbie
Hawaiian Superstar Barbie (Canada only)
Hawaii Barbie from the 2012 Dolls of the World collection
Becky from Barbie and The Sensations
Dana
Delia
Jenny
Kira
Lea
Lorena
Mari Nakano from Generation Girl
Miko
Nia
Nikki
Raquelle
Renee



MGA Entertainment

Jade from the Bratz
Sidney America's Next Top Model



Playmates Toys Inc.

1998 Kristi Yamaguchi Stars on Ice



R and D Dolls

Susie



Sideshow Collectibles

Odd Job



Smartees

Amanda



YNU Group

Emerald (Technically, Emerald is Canadian Asian. For the purists.)