Ideal's 'Honeyball'

  Well, we'll be going to England very soon now! Ken is counting down the days. (Ok, and even the minutes.)

  

We're not excited. We just like to pack...for weeks now.

  I am trying to get on a better sleep schedule so I don't have jet lag when we come over, but my sleep has been so thrown off since I have been having to pick Ken up from work at 3 or so in the morning and then come home and take a shower and try to go to sleep. I tried to sleep between taking Fuzz and picking Ken up last night, only to have Emma call me and wake me up to say, "Who wants to get on this changing my sleep schedule thing I'm going to do, with me?!" I said, "I was doing it, but you woke me up." And then she told me she would pick Ken up, so I could have gone to bed anyway!

  As I told you yesterday, Ivy got her hair cut. When Emma texted us the picture of Ivy's new do I said to Ken, "I wonder if she saved me some hair". I have always saved some hair when the kids have had haircuts. Not only because I'm sentimental, but because it's interesting to see how the colour has changed over the years. Emma's was pale blonde when she was tiny and it's now brown. Fuzzy's seems to be the only one that is relatively unchanged. Anyway, I doubted she would, because I didn't think she would think to, or she'd be embarrassed to ask the beautician to rescue it. But when we got home she met us at the door with a bag of hair. 

The other piece is mine. Ivy gave me a trim a couple of nights ago, and yes, they are the exact same colour.Even Ivy thought it was hers.

She didn't save it all, but she saved me the biggest piece. Aww. Thanks Ivy.
  On other matters, welcome to our newest follower,All4 Barbie. Thanks for joining us!  All4 Barbie has a few blogs, which you can check out by clicking the name in our followers list.
  For the record, this post contains a few photos I borrowed from the internet for reference purposes. I will gladly remove them if I'm asked.
A while back I was finding loads of old dolls at Salvation Army. It's been pretty slow lately, but this summer I did find this girl.

The hair ribbon seems to be original, but the outfit is modern.

I passed her up a few times, but when she was half price I decided to get her. As it turns out, she's a rare doll. She's Ideal's Honeyball.

Honeyball is a weird name. It makes me think of 'Butterball', which in turn makes me think of a big dead, naked turkey.
 

Gross.

But I digress. Honeyball has a vinyl head, and a wired foam rubber body. 

This makes her very poseable, and squishy soft.

 

This blurb appears on her box.

It also makes her dangerous, as she's somewhat edible, as little kids could bite chunks out of her squashy foam body. Kids do that. How do you think my squiggley rubber dog ended up like this?
 

Yes, those are my childhood teeth marks and staples his ear.

(So I bit  my toys. It felt good,ok? That's not nearly as strange as the reason I have this dog. I fell in love with the dark green version my sister brought home from school. 
 

Here's the maker. I can't read it, can you?

He belonged to her friend, and my sewing sister brought him home to sew him a black velvet FUNERAL SUIT! The friend had decided he had died and she was going to bury him! I was horrified! I begged my sister to ask her friend if I could have him instead, but to no avail. After that I tried to find a green one like the dead guy, but all I could find was this slightly smaller orange one.)
Now what was that I said about digressing? 
Posing her also makes her foam wrinkly.

 This particular girl has never been posed very much, so I didn't want to do too much posing with her and wrinkle her now.

 So she did a lot of head posing.

She has a cute little pudgy belly.

And strange looking mold spots on her,uh. You know.

She was produced in 1966.

 I had never heard of her before, but apparently she was popular enough to have been made in a couple of different sets, (At least.)

This is from a 1967 catalog,

 

For a foam rubber doll she sure seems to have taken a lot of baths. Although the version below seems to be made of vinyl instead of foam. By the way, she's the most adorable doll, although I'm not sure if that's official...

Maybe they discovered how edible she was and changed her...

She also had a wardrobe and a puppy!

1968 Sears catalog. The Playroom Case and outfits were sears exclusives.

The above ad doesn't mention the Playroom Case being musical,and the inside is different,but the front looks the same as this  'Musical Play Room'.
 

This orange sun suit seems to be what most of the Honeyball dolls came in.

The Musical Play Room included drawers for her clothes, a room area, and a plastic toy 'record player' that played music when the handle was turned. Pretty neat idea.

I found this one for sale online.

  Honeyball is about 10" tall. Because of the foam she's very light. I have a foam Raggedy Andy I got in answer to my desperate wish for a Raggedy Andy when I was a kid. He has this same arrangement, with the wire armature and soft foam body. (And no, I never bit him... that I recall.) He's super poseabe too, although I was always very wary of posing hm too much, lest he get all mangled like the wire covered foam Pluto I have.Plus he had the same wrinkling problem as Honeyball, even back then.(Both Raggedy Andy and Pluto  are somewhere in my house. When I come across them someday I'll show them to you.) I'm really surprised Honeyball's foam body is in such nice condition. I would have thought the foam would have started to deteriorate,but it seems fine.

She got her hair combed part of the way through her photo session. 

I couldn't get the hair ribbon out, so I did the best I could. The ribbon is attached to a bobby pin and I think it must be stitched in too.
  Just thought I'd show her to you since she's supposed to be rare and a lot of people might not have seen her.