Saturday, February 23, 2019

Doll-A-Day 2019 #54: Connie's Collection: World of Love Dolls,Bonnie Breck, and a Clone

  Today we're looking at a group of dolls from my friend Connie's collection,and one of Emma's.



They're the World of Love Dolls.

This is Flower.
This is 'Peace'.

This is 'Love'.
This one is actually Emma's. This is  'Music'.



And I think this girl is an interloper! There seems to have only been one blonde World of Love doll.  I think she's Bonnie Breck. You decide below.
The World of Love dolls were made by Hasbro.


They were produced in 1971.


They measure 9 inches tall.

And so does The Interloper,who was also made by Hasbro.
Emma's doll has no clothes,so she gives you the opportunity to look at the body structure of the dolls.


Flower is wearing her original dress and hot pink boots. Peace has appropriated a Flower dress too. She came wearing a blue pants and shirt outfit with red and white stripes and a big star on the front of her shirt. And Love is wearing her original outfit.


 The Interloper is wearing clothes with a World of Love tag inside.(Maybe Music can steal her clothes.)


I'm not sure Peace and Love are supposed to have whitish lips.It doesn't look quite right, but it wasn't coming off either.
 


There was also an African American World of Love doll named Soul.


  Love, Peace,Flower,Soul, and Music. They all had hippy-type names. Except for one. The lone guy's name was Adam.(Huh?) You can watch a commercial for the World of Love dolls,(except Adam), HERE.
According to their package,the dolls 'look just like you'.

Groovy.

I don't know anybody with those pin point eyes.


Emma got this doll at an auction or a yard sale. She liked her because she was different,but kept her because Music reminded her of Zooey Deschanel,Emma's style icon.


I think it's the pinpoint eyes and big eyelashes.
As the booklet above says, the dolls have twist waists,rooted eyelashes and bendy legs.





 

A fault in the dolls seems to be that the legs melt to the torso,in a similar way to Dawn,Dusty, and Sunshine family dolls. The plastic of the body reacts with the rubber legs,and they meld together.

This is the Hasbro Bonnie Breck doll,which uses the same body as the WOL dolls.

It made these girls hard to sit down.



A whole selection of outfits were made for the dolls.
 
There was even a carrying case made.



And a beauty salon and wig set with a styling head.


And as I said, there was even a World of Love guy, named Adam.


The World of Love dolls resemble the Bonnie Breck doll, also made by Hasbro as a promotional doll for Breck shampoo, and using the World of Love doll body,and a very similar head. You may have seen my post on my Bonnie Breck doll HERE.


Ok. Now tell me. Is this Bonnie Breck?

 


Looking back on my Bonnie Breck post I realize I already figured out how to tell the difference between Bonnie Breck and the World of Love dolls. It's the eyes and ears. Bonnie Breck actually has more detail in her eye paint, and smaller, more detailed ears.

She's Bonnie Breck.
Here's Flower,with her pin point eyes.

 
That's my extra WOL Flower head on the left, and Bonnie Breck on the right. It does seem to be a different scupt,but very similar. They could be sisters.

Hasbro even used the same fabric as Flower's dress for Bonnie Breck's dress.


Flower's dress...
It's a bit hard to tell, but Bonnie has pinwheel eyes,not just plain blue with pin point pupils.


  Also in with this bunch of WOL dolls when I bought them at the sale of Connie's dolls,was another similar doll.

She's on the right, and wearing WOL clothes.
 
She looks so much like the WOL dolls,and is obviously made from the same molds,although of cheaper plastic.

WOL doll on the left, clone on the right.
She's only marked 'Made in Hong Kong' on her back.

The plastic her body is made of looks cheaper too.
The main difference seems to be that she doesn't have the rooted eyelashes the WOL dolls do,and she has much more detailed eyes.

You know,I think I prefer the clone!
  According to a British doll page I found, there were two issues of WOL dolls. The first had the staring eyes,and the second had more detailed eyes. Whether or not there were two issues here,I don't know. I have only ever seen the staring eyed WOL dolls,so maybe not. There was also apparently a British line of dolls called Disco Girls,made by Matchbox,which used the WOL body and a lot of the same clothing. (Hasbro dolls were made by other companies in Britain,like Palitoy.)
 

Disco Girls were made from at least 1972,to 1977. The Black doll,(She's British,so I can't call her African American. African British?),was named Domino, and is apparently,according to one collector of both, indistinguishable from the AA World of Love doll, Soul. 


The other Disco Girls have completely different faces and what looks to be different head sculpts altogether.




  Tomorrow is the start of Oscar Week. See you then!

11 comments:

  1. Love them. I like them all. But I like the clone the best. If I could, I would like to have one of each, WOL dolls, clone and DG dolls. 😄

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  2. Very interesting, I find your 'investigative' posts very informative.
    And do you know, you're the first American that I've come across who hasn't referred to a black doll as an African American doll! I'm impressed ;) I don't know why it bugs me, but when people refer to ALL black dolls as African American, I'm like "what????" For example, the number of times I've seen people refer to Caleb and Cora, the black dolls by Sasha Morgenthaler, as African American, it really annoys me for some reason, as those dolls are NOT American, they're British, having been manufactured in the UK! LOL yes, I'm completely nuts and who really cares what they're called, but you know how little things can sometimes niggle. Anyway, enjoyed your post and agree that the clone girl is the cuter of the two in the photo of the two girls together.
    xx

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    1. Thanks. I work hard on these posts and it's nice to know they are appreciated. I don't know what to call the non-American Black dolls. I feel like,as a Caucasian,I don't want to offend by using the wrong term.Not even all African Americans agree on what term to use. But not everybody is American,so what am I to do? I'd love to hear some African American/Black readers' opinions on this issue.

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  3. I have a set of these dolls, most of them in their original boxes. You are correct that the interloper appears CV to be Bonnie Breck. The second issue of the dolls had more detailed eyes, so they looked a bit less like stoners, lol. Also the 2nd issue Love had more platinum hair, and I believe some of the platinum versions had a different outfit.

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  4. Love appears to have partaken of some of the more interesting substances of the time. They all look somewhat like it, but Love is really bad.

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  5. You know, I don't think the one you're calling a clone is actually a clone. I think she might be a prototype for the dolls that ultimately were issued the next year (1972). The reason I say this is that the eyes look exactly like the eyes of the dolls that were issued in 1972. The only other major change was that Love ended up with platinum hair instead of the darker blonde shown here. What do you think?

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  6. The Hasbro Charlie's Angels dolls used the Love body, but their heads were very different.
    Also, in the 1980s, Plasty in Europe made its Peggy doll (Petra's sister) with the Love body. These bodies are very different from Mattel dolls, with that little screw that I guess is supposed to be a belly button.
    I once wrote about the camper made by Empire in the 1970s. It is usually listed for Barbie, but the vehicle is too short for her. It is sized for the Love and Charlie's Angels dolls or the Sunshine Family. https://skippercollector.blogspot.com/2015/06/empire-camper-always-misadvertised.html

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    1. Thanks. I never would have thought about the Charlie's Angels dolls using that body because they seem so much smaller. I guess it's because they have more in proportion heads than the World of Love dolls. I tried to look at your blog from your profile, but I can't get to articles. I did see that you are a fan of Jane Langton's Diamond in the Window! I loved Swing in the Summerhouse as a kid, (and still do.) but I didn't know any others existed until I started reading the books to my kids when they were small. Diamond in the Window was my oldest's favourite. I had a few nice email conversations with Jane Langton a few years before she passed away. I wish I had kept them. She was very sweet, and sent me a (free!) signed copy of her latest book in the series, with a cute drawing. When she told me there was a recent book about Eleanor and Eddy, (The Mysterious Circus), I had said I wasn't aware there was a book in the series we hadn't read, and that I would have to look for it. She said she would just send me one because she had plenty!

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  7. Hi i have the blond disco girl, but in the back says hasbro, si iguess in that times Matchbox and Hasbro joint forces.

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Thanks in advance for your comments.