Doll-A-Day 2019 # 15: Mary Poppins Week: Jane and Michael Banks

  We continue our series on Mary Poppins dolls this week with the youngest characters from the original Mary Poppins movie, Jane and Michael Banks.

The boxed dolls are mine, and the loose dolls are Emma's. This means that we get to see them both ways.

Jane and Michael were sold in 2007,in the same series with the amazing Dick Van Dyke 'Bert' doll, and the Julie Andrews sculpt Mary Poppins.

Although the Bert and Mary dolls were sculpted to look like stars Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews, Jane and Michael did not get new sculpts of the actors who played the characters in the film.

And unlike 'Bert' and 'Mary', who are labelled on the box just that way, even though the dolls were sculpted in the likenesses of real people, 'Jane' and 'Michael' are labelled as 'Jane and Michael Stacie doll and Todd Doll', and described on the back of the box as 'Stacie Doll and Todd Doll celebrate a favorite classic film, dressed in recreations of ensembles worn in the iconic carousel scene'.



In spite of the box saying they are 'Stacie' and 'Todd', Todd actually had a his own head sculpt.

 

Jane and Michael were both made from the Stacie sculpt.

 

  Stacie is Barbie's sister. She's still being made, but is now taller and uses a different head sculpt. Jane and Michael use the Stacie sculpt that was used from 1992 to about 2008.

  They have the same articulation as Stacie too. They are jointed at the shoulders, hips, and neck. Their heads can tilt sideways and up and down a bit.

Their arms can move out to the sides as well as up and down.

Their legs, however, can only move back and forth. They do have click bend knees though.

All the dolls in the series were depictions of the characters from the part of the movie where they jump into one of 'Bert's' chalk drawings and end up in an animated world, where they race on carousel horses. The dolls were all packaged riding cartoon carousel horses.
 

It would have been great if they had come on three dimensional horses, but alas, these are only thin cardboard.
 

It looks a little different from the side!

Jane and Michael are about 8" tall.

Their costumes are fairy movie accurate.

  As we saw yesterday, these dolls weren't the first depictions of Jane and Michael in doll form. In the 1960's Horsman produced dolls of Jane and Michael.

 

In the original "Mary Poppins" movie 'Jane' was played by Karen Dotrice.

 

Karen was born into an acting family. Her father was Roy Dotrice, a well known actor whose last appearance was in 'Game of Thrones'.

 

Her mother was Kay Dotrice,an actress known for her stage work, as well as TV and movies. Even Karen's siblings are actors. Her sister Michele Dotrice is a busy working actor today, and her sister Yvette was active mainly in the 70's and 80's.
  Karen herself appeared in three Disney films. The year before 'Mary Poppins' she appeared in The Three Lives of Thomesina. In 1967 she appeared in The Gnome-Mobile. She also appeared on "Upstairs Downstairs". Since 1982 she has only appeared on a few episodes of "Young Blades",and in a cameo role in the new movie, "Mary Poppins Returns".

Karen with Lin Manuel Miranda on the set of "Mary Poppins Returns".

  The character of Jane Banks is played by Emily Mortimer in the new film. 
  Michael Banks was played by Mathew Garber. Michael only made three movies, all of them for Disney,and all three with Karen Dotrice, and two of them as her brother.

 

Sadly, Matthew died from pancreatitis at the age of 21 after reportedly catching hepatitis in India, which spread to his pancreas. 

   Come back tomorrow for another 'Mary Poppins' doll.