Friday, June 28, 2019

Doll-A-Day 2019 #178: Shoppin' Sheryl

  I haven't mentioned yet that we have some new babies around here. You know, you think if your cats never leave the house, they can't get pregnant. What you never imagine is another cat breaking into your basement! A couple of years ago somebody tried to break into our basement. (Selling the copper pipes out of someone's basement is a big enterprise around here, and we live right down the street from the recycling place.) They broke a window out. I replaced the window with a board, which I cut to fit perfectly and put in there nice and tight. I don't know how it got loose.Somebody must have tried to break in again, because there's no way the cat pushed it out. In any case, Ken went down to feed the girls,who were taking their turn at staying in the basement. (The boys had stayed for a while. See, my son brought home 8 cats a few years ago when his friend moved away and couldn't take them. There was a mother and 6 kittens,and one other cat. He wouldn't allow anybody to have a kitten because nobody was good enough.Well once they grow up, nobody wants one. I even tried to interest the readers of the blog at the time with this post. Anyway, I can't have all those cats in the house, so the girls and the boys were taking turns. ) There were so many cats that Fuzz couldn't afford to have them all 'fixed'. We figured if the boys were fixed, which they needed to be so they wouldn't spray,then the girls couldn't get pregnant. Then Ken went down to feed the girls and found an intruder in the basement! He couldn't catch him,so we couldn't seal the window again until we knew he was out. Ken couldn't figure out how he even got in until daytime when he could look outside and he found the window out again. If it hadn't been below freezing temperatures the girls might have left,but they weren't stupid. In any case, we finally got the stranger out,and I hoped it was a girl. No such luck though.I figured as much since he had a chewed ear and only one eye. He had been a fighter. So one day I heard mewing from the basement. We discovered Columbia had had a kitten. Just one though,so we felt lucky. Ivy named it Thalberg,after 1930's movie producer Irving Thalberg.

This is Thalberg. Like all the kittens except possibly one,she has thumbs!


We were so relieved that there was only one kitten! That is, until a couple of weeks later when Ivy went down to see Thalberg and found Gastine's kittens! There are six of them!

The one in the front is Mordred.

Ivy named all the kittens. This is Mordred. Mordred takes after his Siamese grandfather. He has peach coloured ear tips and tail. He's a wild climber. He's the one kitten who may turn out not to have thumbs,(mitten hands).
This is George and Fred. They have thumbs, and back feet thumbs too! Fred has a short tail with a tuft of hair on the end. George is my favourite.
George.
And Fred.
Lucky Merlin has found a home already.

Morgana is the baby Ivy wants to keep. You may have gathered from the names that Ivy is very into the TV series "Merlin".
Little Arthur Freed,(named after 1930's movie producer Arthur Freed), will be living with Emma's boyfriend. He seems to be the only long haired kitten, and he looks very Siamese.
   Emma's boyfriend is taking Arthur, and my sister found a home for Merlin. That still leaves at least three kittens,(Ivy has a soft spot for Morgana.),and both mommies, who still need homes. All but possibly Mordred are polydactyl cats, meaning they have mitten hands.
  So, anybody willing to come to Ohio and adopt a kitten?
  Today I'm giving you a break from the Travel dolls! Instead, today you're getting this little girl.


She's Shoppin' Sheryl.


Shoppin' Sheryl was made by Mattel.


She's from 1970.
She's 15 inches tall.


She has a typical Mattel face.


She resembles so many other Mattel dolls of the 60's and early 70's,with her cute face,big round eyes, and chubby cheeks.


 Her blonde hair is in what we used to call 'dog ears',but now they're called ponytails, or even pigtails,(which were braided when I was a kid.).


Sheryl had quite a gimmick. 



She came with a 'mini market',and  she could be made to pluck items from the shelves and put them in the shopping cart she also came with.


  That walking thing really works. When her legs are put in place and she is rocked gently back and forth,her legs flip forward one at a time. (the leg that she's rocked off of comes forward.)


  The left hand grips when the button in her side is pressed,and releases when the button is released.



Her right hand has a magnet in it. It helps her hold her shopping cart.


She has a twist waist.
 This is Sheryl's original outfit. It consists of  a one piece shirt and jumper,and white shoes.


Her tulip shaped real pockets echo the tulip shapes on her shirt.

There was another 1970 doll who used the Shoppin' Sheryl head sculpt. She was a Montgomery Wards exclusive named Busy Becky. Becky was a red head,who shared Sheryl's twist waist,grasping hand mechanism,and magnetic left hand. Becky's theme was house cleaning, and her magnetic hand was made in the form of a cleaning mitt.
 
She must have the 'walking' ability too.

Becky came with loads of cleaning accessories and a cardboard house background. To see a page with loads about Becky go HERE.
  That's the doll for today. Come back and join us for another one tomorrow.

13 comments:

  1. Oh no! So many kittens! I hope you’re able to find homes for them all soon. When my Finn’s stray mother had his litter, I had a hard time homing all of them. By the end, I was giving away bags of cat food with them, but the last kitten still went to a local no-kill shelter.

    It might be worth your while to call around to local vets and such and see if any of them can suggest a place like that, and also to see if any of them do discounts on spaying through your local humane society or other animal welfare groups that have an interest in keeping the unwanted pet population low.

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    1. We took these kittens' grama and the odd cat out from the ones my son brought home,to the no kill shelter not long before we discovered the kittens. Lori actually took them for me. She volunteered at the shelter. She also worked at our vets office and she has told me about a place near here where theyy take all the shelter cats for 'fixing'. It's supposed to be the cheapest place around and they are very good.

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  2. Mattel had such neat stuff back in the day! I think if they'd revisit some of these old concepts they might recoup their losses.

    Oh, Hemmingway cats! I'm blessed enough to have one myself, but boy, the claws on those extra toes can grow uncontrollably. I hope you can find homes for those sweet babies!

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    1. Most of our grown cats are ok with the extra claws,but there is one who has the biggest hands you have ever seen.He has two thumbs and HUGE hands,and when he claws the carpet it comes out in chunks! I have had to completely block my bedroom floor with stuff every day so he can't claw the rug. It's a pain,but I hate to shut them out of the room entirely because they like to lay in the window. Plus,with the door shut there's no flow through of air,and it gets so hot in my bedroom.
      There were so many good,fun ideas back then.Can you imagine how much something like Sheryl and all her accessories,or Becky,would cost these days?! I suppose a doll who cleaned house might not be as popular these days either.

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  3. We have a cat who does not exactly have an extra toe. She does have an extra claw, and that pushes one toe out, making it look like she has a "thumb." So she does look like she is wearing a mitten. Fortunately, that extra claw between her "thumb" and a toe, does not grow uncontrollably, or cause her discomfort.

    Speaking of Hemingway cats, did you read that some scientists did genetic sequencing on Lil Bub's DNA? They were hoping her genetic mutations would give them insight into DNA research they are doing with humans, particularly Lil Bub's osteopetrosis (dense bones.) They also discovered that although Lil Bub was found abandoned in rural Indiana, she does have the same genetics as Hemingway's famous cat colony.

    I wish that we could take a kitten, but we already have two cats and a rabbit, which is quite enough in the size house that we have. :(

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    1. Our most mitteny cat is Arky.He had a HUGE thumb,plus a tiny extra thumb in between the thumb and the other toes. He has no trouble with them at all.
      I hadn't read that about Lil Bub. That's strange. I wonder of somebody stole a kitten from Hemmingway's place during a trip to Florida and brought it home to Indiana?
      I wish you could take am kitten too! Do you have an inside bunny? We had two(at different times). Most people don't realize they will use a litter box. I don't know how people let them run loose in the house all the time though.I would think they would chew everything to pieces!

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  4. Considering how long those cats have been in Florida, I imagine some of them have gone to new lives elsewhere, if for no other reason than to keep the population in Key West down.

    Yes, our bunny is indoors. He gets free run of my daughter's room during the day; she has pretty much chew-proofed it. He goes in his hutch at night, and he uses a corner of his hutch instead of a litter box at all times.

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    1. I don't know how you chew proof a room from a rabbit! We didn't know about litter boxes when we had our first bunny,but he had a corner of his cage he used. He liked to lay in the fireplace.There is a ceramic gas heater in it,and he used to get behind that.I think he thought it was a den! Our second bunny had a litter box, and he used it all the time.But he liked to play with it.He would pick it up and throw it around his cage!

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  5. Awww those are such cute little kittens! I hope you're able to rehome them all.

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    1. I hope so too. There is a no kill shelter here, but I would rather find them homes. So far only two have homes for sure.

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  6. What an interesting doll. Her hands are very cool.

    Matt and Elliot (Mattel) should make a Shopping Sherman doll to balance things out (laugh).

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  7. Wow, that's a lot of kittens! I hope you were successful eventually in finding homes.

    The doll is cute, the shopping concept was always a popular one. Bonus when they had tiny food items and even a cart! I think a doll like that would work today.

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    1. Amazingly, all those kittens found homes, including Ivy's Morgana. Arthur is now a beautiful fluffy long haired Siamesey looking cat. Fred has become a father!

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Thanks in advance for your comments.