he doll is arguably one of the most classic playthings of all time. From the Pyramids to the present day, doll play in some form or another has been a part of every human civilization. Since play is really preparation for adulthood, it’s only natural, no matter how sophisticated the culture gets, that this basic human impulse—to take care of our young ones—would be timeless. It is the unchanging biological imperative of being human.
But a big change in how we played with dolls would come in the middle of the twentieth century. While doll play had traditionally involved a little girl taking on the role of the mommy, as women’s roles in the culture changed, so, too, did the roles of dolls. Baby dolls, of course, never went away (though they got new features and became more realistic as the decades went on); the fundamental instinct to nurture is something that seems to be wired into little girls no matter what else is going on.
In the post–World War II years, as the culture began to focus more on youth, and the teenager became something to be idolized (at least by little girls), dolls began to reflect different stages in girls’ lives. They also began to be best friends, upending the traditional mother-daughter relationship between a little girl and her dolls. The most famous, of course, was Barbie, the Original Teenage Fashion Model, but she wasn’t always the most popular. After all, what was a grown-up figure and a fancy wardrobe compared to a doll who could talk, like Chatty Cathy (introduced in 1959, the same year as Barbie), grow her hair, like Beautiful Crissy, and even drink, eat, and—yes—poop, like Baby Alive?
But whether best friend or baby, dolls have long been a way for little girls to begin the process of trying on roles and imagining their future lives.
o toy in history has been more exhaustively analyzed, written about, loved, and, frankly, loathed, than Barbie. Never before in the history of toys—or popular culture, for that matter—have a few ounces of plastic had such a profound impact on so many. Volumes have been written about her, and her importance as a cultural icon has been well known for more than half a century. To some she is an institution: a trendsetter that empowered and paved the way for millions of young women. To others, she is the emblem of what’s wrong with our culture, promoting an unrealistic standard of beauty and forcing girls to adhere to dated and pernicious gender stereotypes.
Given her stature in the culture, Barbie’s history has always been defined by this tension between the joy she has brought to millions and the controversy she has courted. But the fact of the matter is that Barbie, like any toy, “lives” only in the imagination. She is neither heroine nor villainess, but only what she is imagined to be. (A shrink would call that projection, and Barbie Millicent Rogers has had it all.) Fortunately, her little plastic shoulders have repeatedly proven more than equal to hold the weight placed on them over the years.
Barbie’s history is well known, but it bears repeating that in the 1950s, when she first came on the scene, there was no such thing as a fashion doll. There were baby dolls, naturally, because girls were inevitably going to be mothers. But the only dolls that let girls play with fashion were paper dolls. As the story goes, the idea for Barbie was born when Ruth Handler, a partner in Mattel, watched her daughter, Barbara, and her friends playing with some paper dolls and found herself wishing there were a more lifelike fashion doll for girls, one that allowed them to act out being teenagers and even grown women. Despite what some of Barbie’s detractors say about the doll today, Handler believed passionately that this type of play would help girls build their self-esteem.
So Handler approached the Mattel executives (all men), who rejected the idea. However, not long afterward, while on a trip to Germany, Ruth found a doll that appeared to validate her vision—and prove, at least to her, that a teenage doll would work with contemporary American kids. Called Lilli, the popular German doll confirmed Ruth’s belief that there was a market for a doll that was grown-up and beautiful and had a killer wardrobe. She brought Lilli back to the United States and used it as a loose model to create an entirely new design for a slim, attractive eleven-and-a-half-inch-tall plastic doll. Ruth finally convinced Mattel to test the doll, and hired designer Charlotte Johnson to create the clothes. Finally, she named it Barbie in honor of her daughter.
At first, the toy trade was lukewarm on Barbie, the Original Teenage Fashion Model, in her black-and-white swimsuit and ponytail. They’d never seen anything like her, and they were dubious about her commercial prospects—that is, until little girls got her. First-year sales of the dolls topped three hundred thousand units at about four dollars each (a lot at the time), with fashions sold separately.
As the Barbie doll became a bigger and bigger hit, her world started to grow, as Skipper, Stacie, Kelly, Midge, Ken, and other friends joined her social circle.
Still, it was not always smooth sailing for Barbie. As the feminist movement emerged in the late 1960s and early ’70s, as women were rejecting traditional roles, Barbie became anathema to the women’s movement and almost became passé. That is, until Mattel’s Jill Barad led a total revamping of the brand under the banner “We girls can do anything!”—somewhat mollifying many of Barbie’s feminist detractors but more importantly lending her new relevance and appeal for a new generation of girls who came thronging to the restaged Barbie.
And then, there was the matter of Barbie’s body. Long attacked for being an impossible representation of the human form (it is said that were she a real person, her narrow waist would be physically unable to support her ample bosom), Barbie’s “real world” measurements (36–18–33) have always been a lightning rod for protests, thought to cause poor body image and lack of self-esteem in young, impressionable girls.
So in 1997, Mattel made a “more realistic” body for Barbie, and it bombed. It turned out that little girls didn’t really care whether she looked like a real woman or not—they liked her familiar, rail-thin, fully developed body.
Barbie’s “look,” like that of any fashion icon, has been in a constant state of reinvention since she first came on the scene. For example, her pillbox hat of 1962 gave way to the Carnaby Street–inspired fashions of the late 1960s and then to the contemporary fashions of today. Mattel maintains a huge design staff that keeps Barbie au courant at any time. Designing a costume for Barbie has become a coup for high-end fashion designers; more than seventy major couturiers have created clothes for Barbie, and more than 150 designers claim her as inspiration (including Tony Award–winning costume designer Gregg Barnes, who has said it was a childhood dream come true when he designed the costume for Barbie Live in Fairytopia).
For a woman of her generation, Barbie’s résumé is impressive indeed. She’s had more than 110 careers—including that of yoga teacher, air force pilot, chef, paleontologist, photographer, news anchor, scuba diver, and computer engineer. She’s run for president twice and been to the moon. She has lived in more than 150 countries, and the Barbie brand has consistently generated global revenues of more than $3 billion annually.
But her career is far from over. If the past is prologue, she will continue to adapt to and reflect the world around her, even as she reaches what would be her golden years, were she not eternally a teen. As long as young girls continue to fantasize about what they will be when they grow up, the Barbie doll will be there to help them play out those dreams.
n 1959, the talking doll was not a completely new phenomenon. There had been dolls that said “Mama” if you held them at a precise angle and then didn’t budge. But these were clunky and often malfunctioned. As far back as the nineteenth century there had been dolls with a literal phonograph record built into them (Thomas Edison even got involved in making them). But they didn’t work very well, either, and they cost a whopping $10, or about $255 in 2013 dollars.
Chatty Cathy, however, was the first working and affordable talking doll. Unlike her predecessors, she could be picked up and played with while she talked. Chatty Cathy was chatty indeed, and, at the mere pull of a string (which would activate a small record sewn inside her), could say as many as eleven different things, including “Let’s play house,” “Please change my dress,” “Tell me a story,” “Please take me with you,” “I hurt myself,” and, of course, that staple phrase of talking dolls then and now: “I love you.” (In versions made after 1963, she got even more talkative, adding seven new phrases to her repertoire for a total of eighteen.)
Chatty Cathy was a peer for little girls. She was a best friend who talked! She wasn’t a baby who had to be taken care of; she was a playmate who could share all the dreams and adventures that little girls imagined. It was the talking that created her special magic. When Mom, a sister, or a best friend wasn’t around to play house or say “I love you” … Cathy was.
But Cathy was more than just a chatterbox. She was also tremendously fashionable; over the years, her chic wardrobe was continually expanded. Plus, Mattel eventually made versions of the doll with different hair and eye colors—even an African American version—so little girls of all colorings could have Cathys that looked more like “Mom.”
Chatty Cathy was one of the most popular dolls of all time, despite the fact that she had a lot of competition, even during the peak of her popularity from the early to mid-1960s. Ideal’s Betsy Wetsy and Tiny Tears were big rivals for young girls’ affections, with their gimmicks such as growing hair and magically appearing makeup (which gave rise to what today is called, at least in the toy industry, “the feature doll”).
But for all these bells and whistles, the doll that ultimately edged out Chatty Cathy was the womanly yet mute Barbie, who had also been introduced in 1959. What did Barbie have that Cathy didn’t? Among other “endowments,” Barbie allowed the child to imagine ways the dolls could play with one another; play wasn’t limited to just Cathy and the child.
As dolls go, Cathy still has a small but loyal collector following. But while she can still be found online and at antiques shops, it’s very rare to find a Chatty Cathy that still talks. Whether it’s a broken pull string or a disintegrated rubber band that once turned on her speech unit, Chatty Cathy’s parts are virtually impossible to repair or replace. Sadly, many of the existing Cathys don’t have a lot to say anymore.
They say the maternal bond is one that can’t be broken. Perhaps that explains why Chatty Cathy dolls still hold a special place in the hearts of women who grew up in the 1960s and ’70s, who still fondly remember Cathy as their first best friend.
he 1960s were an era of huge innovation and change in the doll business. Today, so-called minidolls are common toys, but in 1966, when Mattel introduced the diminutive Liddle Kiddles, there was nothing like them around.
Liddle Kiddles were dolls that were supposed to be real little kids, just like the kids who played with them. But rather than being role models, like Barbie, or babies to nurture and mother, these dolls were intended to be a kid’s peers. And unlike Chatty Cathy, who was one best friend, the Liddle Kiddles were a gang of buddies—just like kids had in their neighborhoods.
There were twenty-four dolls in the original collection, and they stood on average only about three inches tall. The soft, plastic bodies could be shaped into different poses, thanks to a wire armature inside. The dolls all had names that rhymed—however forced the rhyme was—with “Kiddle.” The winter doll, for example, was “Freezy Sliddle.” The bedtime doll was “Beddy Bye Biddle.” And so forth. There was even a boy doll, “Howard ‘Biff’ Boodle.”
The dolls were inexpensive and had lots of different accessories, and their hair could be combed and styled—fixing hair always being an important component of doll play. The dolls also came with storybooks that chronicled the fictional adventures of the various Kiddles, while promoting collectibility at the same time.
Based on the success of the originals, Mattel soon extended the line to include Storybook Kiddles, animal Kiddles, and different special dolls for the holidays, including Easter, which was becoming a toy-purchasing period of the year, and, of course, Christmas.
One of the problems with the Liddle Kiddles was always with the wire armature. Too much play would wear out the plastic exterior, and the wires would poke through. So when Polly Pocket, who was not only made entirely of plastic but came with her own protective shell, came along in 1989, she quickly became the miniature doll of choice.
Today the original Liddle Kiddles can still be found in online auctions, and there are rumors that a small company is trying to bring the originals back.
hanks to the success of Barbie, by the end of the 1960s, there was a huge and growing market for teenage dolls.
What was unique about Crissy, however, was her hair—which could actually “grow,” allowing little girls to style her tresses over and over in many different ways. Her flowing red locks, which could reach her feet when fully extended, were operated by a dial on the back of the doll, and would spool or unspool depending on which direction the dial was turned.
While she wasn’t the first doll with growing hair, Crissy was the first to be broadly advertised on television, and many kids remember singing along with the commercial: Beautiful Crissy has beautiful hair that grows.
She was such a hit that over the next several years, her parent company, Ideal, introduced new styles and even a friend for Crissy named Velvet. Ideal also introduced versions of Crissy who could move and pose in different ways, such as the 1972 Look Around Crissy with a swiveling waist and a pull-string-activated turning head, allowing girls to imagine that she was just like the real women on the famous Breck shampoo commercials.
Crissy, Velvet, and, later, Tressy, were popular throughout the 1970s (there was even a Baby Crissy, a large-sized doll on the scale of Tiny Tears or Thumbelina who became a huge hit in 1973), but were soon superseded by Pretty Cut ’n Grow, a doll with yarn hair that kids could cut, in the late ’70s, and Playskool’s Dolly Surprise, with her growing ponytail, in the late ’80s. For as big as they were, Crissy and gang remain collector’s items today.
here was nothing new about the drink-and-wet doll by the early 1970s. Betsy Wetsy—who could “drink” water in one end and, well, you know what on the other—had been a staple since 1935 and had even inspired other dolls, such as the lesser-known Dy-Dee doll.
But drink and eat and wet and poop … now there was an innovation. And it dovetailed perfectly with little girls’ age-appropriate fascination with their bodies and natural processes. Targeted at young girls around the age of, or having just completed, toilet training, Baby Alive occupied a very natural place in the child’s consciousness and world.
Baby Alive drank regular water from her bottle, and she ate special food that looked like strained peas. The mechanism in the doll pushed the fluid and the solid through a tube until the inevitable happened, and the miniature mommy was required to make a diaper change.
Baby Alive also moved and made baby sounds, so little girls got a fairly complete mommy experience. Though this level of realism was a bit controversial, little girls loved the doll because it allowed them to play the role of the grown-ups who knew that diapers were “for babies”—and they certainly weren’t that anymore! So, adult objections or no, Baby Alive became the top-selling doll of 1973.
Baby Alive needed to be cleaned out regularly to keep operating, and there are many stories about little girls who, having run out of the food included with the doll, tried feeding her all kinds of real food … and the results weren’t pretty. There are tales, too, of the nefarious ways boys played with their sisters’ Baby Alive dolls, like feeding them clothesline, pulling it taut from the other end, and watching in hysterics while Baby Alive chewed her way across the line. Tears and time in the corner to “think about what you’ve done” generally followed.
Novelty dolls such as Baby Alive generally have a life span of only a couple of years, but when Kenner relaunched the doll in 1990 to a new generation of girls, it was just as popular as it was the first time around. Despite its very basic and, by the early ’90s, primitive function, the new version sold more than nine million dolls.
ne of the things that most hit toys have in common is that they “break the rules.” In the early 1970s, lots of dolls were breaking the rules. They had to in order to keep up with the fierce competition in the doll market, as dueling companies fought to capture a coveted spot on little girls’ wish lists.
Breaking rules was big in 1973. That was the year that Baby Alive broke the rule that you can’t feed your dolls food. With that dolly Rubicon crossed, it probably shouldn’t have been surprising that it was also the year another taboo was shattered: You can’t take your dolls in the bathtub.
Rub-a-Dub Dolly was a watertight plastic doll, designed specifically to be taken into the tub. Parents loved it because it put an end to temper tantrums at bath time (or tragedies when a non-submersible dolly took a dunk). Little girls were delighted that now when they went into the bath, their dolls could come, too.
Rub-a-Dub Dolly also had a tugboat shower (sold separately, of course) so she could float up-right in the tub and rinse off above the surface while little girls got clean.
In all honesty, there really wasn’t anything special about this doll. What sold it was novelty—and perhaps also the commercial, an infectious tune with a silly rhyme that caused many an earworm when the doll was launched:
You give her a bath when you’re in the tub.
A bath’s so much fun with rub-a-dub-dub.
That pretty much says it all.
Unlike Baby Alive, Rub-a-Dub Dolly really didn’t do anything other than not get ruined when submerged in the tub, so once Ideal stopped advertising it, the sales dried up, so to speak.
Tyco reintroduced the doll in 1990, but her new tub time was comparatively short, so for the most part the toy lives on in our memories—and the commercial lives on on YouTube, where nostalgic adults can hum along.
and 
h, they began innocently enough … as these things often do. In 1976, artist Xavier Roberts made dolls by hand and sold them at local craft fairs to pay for his college tuition. But, as his story went, these weren’t just some ordinary dolls; they were Little People, and kids didn’t just own them; they adopted them.
This twist on the classic narrative of doll acquisition was enough to make them so popular that in 1980, Roberts started a full-fledged manufacturing operation out of a refurbished medical office in Cleveland, Georgia. He named the place Babyland General Hospital. Since Fisher-Price owned the name Little People, Roberts needed a new name, and in a weird burst of inspiration, decided to try to sell the idea of children coming from the cabbage patch. (When you think about it, this fiction made just about as much sense as the notion of children coming from the stork.) At Babyland General, kids could see their soon-to-be adopted dolls “born” in an elaborately staged vegetable garden. Thus, they were aptly named Cabbage Patch Kids.
This small operation started to attract big attention, and parents all over the United States soon clamored to get their hands on one of the dolls while they were still one of a kind. But in 1983 an unlikely suitor—the toy company Coleco, previously known for its air-hockey tables—came calling, bought up the rights, and began to produce the first mass-market Cabbage Patch Kids. Cleverly recognizing that much of the dolls’ appeal was the fact that each one was different, just like every real child, Coleco figured out a way to make each doll unique by varying everything from eye color to hair to clothing. Extending the narrative even farther, when children sent in proof of adoption, the doll would get a personalized card on its first birthday.
Little did Coleco’s executives know that by Christmas 1983, they wouldn’t be able to “grow” enough Cabbage Patch Kids to keep up with the surging demand. As the holidays approached and Coleco’s “patches” began to run dry, panics began to erupt in the aisles of toy stores. Stories of fistfights over the toys made the news, and some determined parents even flew to Europe or Asia to adopt Cabbage Patch Kids, some on the black market and some from legitimate stores in countries where the craze hadn’t hit.
Due in part to all this media exposure, Cabbage Patch Kids were the first of the major toy fads of the 1980s and ’90s to completely sweep the culture. And it wasn’t just among kids; the fantasy of having a unique baby was so seductive that some adults took to treating them as though they were real, adopted children!
The Cabbage Patch craze shattered another cultural taboo. For the first time, boys found the fantasy of parenthood appealing, and many parents bought the dolls for their young sons. Boys adopting dolls? The world was certainly changing.
By the time that first generation of Cabbage Patch Kids neared their third or fourth birthdays, the craze died down, Coleco went into bankruptcy, and the orphaned Cabbage Patch Kids were in search of a home. Eventually, Mattel took them over and tried to bring them back to life with special fifteenth anniversary dolls, but it seemed the magic was gone. That is, until QVC started selling collectible editions, which became a hit with women in their twenties and thirties—now with real kids at home—who longed to be reunited with their long-lost adopted sons and daughters The brand has changed hands many times, and as the dolls’ thirtieth birthday approaches, current owner Jakks Pacific is planning to reintroduce new versions of the original dolls that started it all.
he was born in 1977 as a drawing on a line of cards from American Greetings. But by 1979 she had leaped off the paper to become a bona fide three-dimensional toy sensation.
The original Strawberry Shortcake, and her cat, Custard, were, of course, scented (advances in plastics technology in the late 1970s allowed the fragrance to be embedded in the doll and last for a long time), and that was a big part of their charm. As any mom who has caught her young daughter experimenting with her perfume will attest, little girls love scents, and these dolls were no exception. In fact, young girls were so enthralled by this fragrant doll and her feline companion that Strawberry Shortcake’s world quickly grew to more than thirty characters, each one scented like her eponymous dessert—Apple Dumplin’, Raspberry Tart, Huckleberry Pie, Angel Cake, and so forth—and each with an accompanying pet. A fad quickly ensued.
Part of the appeal of Strawberry and her gang was how cute they were, and she is remembered for ushering in a decade of cuteness in the toy world, paving the way for some of the biggest hits of the 1980s, including Rainbow Brite, Rose Petal Place, My Little Pony, and the Care Bears. Thanks to her large cast of characters, she also established girls’ collectibles as a category in its own right. (Ironically, collectible dolls—or as they were more euphemistically named, action figures—had been popular among boys for years.)
Strawberry Shortcake toys—and books and TV shows and related items—continued to be popular well into the early 1980s. At the height of Strawberry fever, more than twenty-five million dolls and thirty-five million accessories were sold. But by the middle of the decade, the sweet smell of success finally started to wear off, and by 1985 the toys were out of production.
Still, a strong whiff of nostalgia for Strawberry Shortcake remained in the air, and over the years, different manufacturers have attempted to bring Strawberry back, though these later adaptations haven’t been as popular as the originals. The first versions are in the hands of loyal collectors, some of whom claim they can still perceive a faint trace of fragrance.
orses. Long, flowing hair. Bright colors. Glitter. More glitter. Put any two of these together and you may have a decent concept for a girls’ toy. Put them all together, and you’re likely to have a hit. That’s exactly what Hasbro did in the early 1980s with the introduction of the My Little Pony line. Its success gave an entirely new meaning to the concept of a “stable” brand.
Girls have always loved horses. National Velvet, My Friend Flicka, and similar movies have delighted for generations, and the classic literature for young girls is full of horse stories. Barbie had a horse, and over the years there have been many different model and toy horses for little girls to play with and display.
But My Little Ponies weren’t just toy horses for a girl to love. They were an entire universe of horses who acted just like humans—and yet no actual humans were allowed.
Hasbro’s first line of six My Little Pony dolls in 1982 were named Blue Belle, Butterscotch, Cotton Candy, Minty, Blossom, and Snuzzle, each with different markings of her hindquarters. The horses weren’t soft or cuddly—they were made out of vinyl—but that only seemed to enhance their appeal.
For the next few years, My Little Pony was win, place, and show with little girls. They inspired a movie, a TV show, and as women who remember their avid collector days will recall, all kinds of pony paraphernalia, ranging from socks and T-shirts to pens, notebooks, and Trapper Keeper folders.
Over the next ten years, the pony world kept growing, and My Little Pony soon came in a variety of shapes and sizes—unicorns, flying horses, princesses, brides, baby ponies, rainbow ponies, and so forth—each with a magical, whimsical name. As the line grew, the prevailing logic was that if something could be part of a little girl’s play-time fantasy, it could be a pony … and indeed it could.
My Little Pony continues to inspire imaginative play among young girls, thanks to new adventures, entertainment, and a continually expanding product line. My Little Pony also has a huge nostalgic following among women who grew up in the 1980s. Perhaps the most unexpected development in the world of My Little Pony fans, however, has been the emergence of a relatively small, but passionate, band of male collectors, mostly in their thirties, who call themselves “Bronies” and who (unironically) share their love of all things My Little Pony both online and at conventions.
hat was it about the early 1980s that inspired so much sweetness? The Care Bears first appeared on greeting cards in 1981. Two years later, they had graduated to the world of plush toys. They were originally introduced as “Roly-poly little bears who live high in a land of rainbows and fluffy clouds called Care-a-lot” and who “regularly come to earth to make humans feel better and help them share their feelings with others.”
Their sweetness (bordering on saccharine) reflected the popular taste for the touchy-feely pervading the culture at this time, but instead of running for the insulin (or the ipecac), humans all over the world went running for the Care Bears, and they couldn’t get enough. And it wasn’t just kids; the Care Bears phenomenon touched people of all ages. There was a bear for virtually any occasion you could think of—and they came in all the colors of the rainbow (the blue Grumpy Bear was the lone exception, a wonderful antidote to all the sugar). And, in the very ’80s spirit of gender neutrality, the Care Bears appealed to many boys as well. As the thinking went, everyone could use a hug from time to time.
Like any successful species, these roly-poly bears were soon reproducing like rabbits. Soon Care Bears cousins came along, representing many corners of the animal kingdom, including—you guessed it—rabbits.
The Care Bears starred in two full-length movies and their own TV show, which ran for two years with more than seventy episodes.
After a whopping forty million toys were sold, the Care Bears’ popularity inevitably waned, their work of making humans feel better and helping them share their feelings with others presumably done. But then, in 2002, a whole new generation arrived from the land of Care-a-lot, and in turn a whole new generation of Care Bears fans was born.
Today, Care Bears toys can still be found on store shelves, largely unchanged from their original look. Parents enjoy sharing them with their kids. And, like many toys of the 1980s, they have a huge kitsch appeal as well. For those who take their nostalgia a little more seriously, there are also fervent fan sites devoted to the bears, and the original toys are highly prized collectibles.
n the cavalcade of cuteness that ushered in the 1980s, Rainbow Brite joined the Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake in bringing sweetness to little girls’ lives.
But where the bears brought hugs and Strawberry came bearing fruit, Rainbow Brite was all about color. The backstory began with Wisp, an orphan (it’s always best in these stories to get the parents out of the way) who was transported to a colorless world. But once Wisp befriended Starlite, a horse with a rainbow tail, releasing the seven Color Kids from captivity, Wisp magically became Rainbow Brite, now with the responsibility to care for all the color on Earth. It was a big job, but this little girl—with her attendant sprites—was up to the challenge.
Though an adult might look at this unlikely tale as excessively cloying, children ate it up, and the toys were a huge hit, in part thanks to the popular TV show that ran from 1984 to 1986.
Rainbow Brite proved to have less staying power than some of the other dolls that debuted in this period, and like many a rainbow she soon faded into a memory, though one cherished by many.
There were various attempts to revive the character in 1996, for the twentieth anniversary of the toys in 2004, and again for the twenty-fifth in 2009, but they never found the formula to make her shine again.
As the generation who loved her grew up and discovered irony, poor Rainbow had a rough time of it. More than almost any other character of the period, Rainbow Brite has become fodder for parody. The Cartoon Network show Robot Chicken, for one, has taken special delight in trashing the character.
