Doll-A-Day 97: Happy Birthday Fuzzy! The History of Tommy Doll

  Today is my son's 19th birthday. If I had thought it out better, I would have done his Fuzzy the Doll today instead of the 1st. Twenty twenty hindsight! Instead, today, while Fuzz is out with a friend, I'm covering a little of the history of the Tommy doll, and posting the pictures of Fuzzy the Doll that I couldn't get off my camera for the 1st.

 

Fuzzy in his favourite nose glasses and the hat he brought back from his trip to the Himalayas. By the way, this is the way Fuzz had him dressed. This is pretty typical of what Fuzzy the Doll always looked like, including the Luger and the dagger stashed in his pants.

  I originally wanted to make a doll of Fuzzy out of a vintage Todd doll. Todd has red hair, like Fuzzy. But Todd's were too expensive. In the end, it was a better idea to use a Tommy anyway. Todd would have been in pieces by now!
  Fuzzy the Doll was originally a Tommy that came with the set Big Brother Ken and Baby Brother Tommy. Why Mattel thought it was normal for Barbie and Ken, who were obviously MUCH older, to have baby siblings, I'll never know. I just feel sorry for poor Mrs. Carson and Mrs. Roberts!

The set was produced in 1996, when Fuzz was 1 year old.

This was the first Tommy produced, and the first and only relative Mattel ever gave Ken.

Tommy (and Fuzzy the Doll!) have a lever in their backs that make their right arms wave. Cute idea, but that gigantic lever makes it hard to get clothes on them! The outfit made for the doll is a pair of bibbed shortalls, which conveniently have no back in them. I traded them for Dr. Ken and Little Patient Tommy's blue shorts and red and white striped shirt, because Fuzz had an outfit just like it that I put on him a lot.

Hey, can't Doctor Ken get done for malpractice? Isn't it against the rules for doctors to treat their own relatives?

These days, now that Tommy's friend Kelly turned into Chelsea, (What?!), Tommy seems to have gone into hiding too. There hasn't been a Tommy made for a few years now. There were a few made with the tall skinny Kelly body, shortly before Kelly mysteriously became Chelsea. I don't think they've made any since then. Of course, now that Fuzz is a grown up and I don't have to supply a steady stream of Tommy's and Tommy clothes for Fuzzy the Doll, I don't keep up with it quite as well...

Originally Kelly and Tommy were supposed to be babies, with diapers, pacifiers, and bottles. Then they were starting school and doing all kinds of things.

Fuzzy is the adventurous sort.

The only other boy doll in the Kelly line, or produced in the Kelly size, was Ryan. he was originally just a friend of Kelly, produced for the Amusement Park series. Later he became Midge and Alan's son.

He also enjoys 'hanging'...Who knows.

Tommy doll appeared in various sets with Kelly, but he actually had his own gift set too. Tommy as Elvis contained three Tommy dolls, each dressed as a different version of Elvis, including Jailhouse Rock, the gold lame' suit, and of course, white jumpsuit Elvis.

I don't know what ever happened to the white jumpsuit, but Fuzzy and friends often wore the jail suit and gold Lame' suit, or pieces of them, anyway..

  Fuzzy the Doll was the first of what became a collection for Fuzz. He ended up owning most of the Tommy's produced.His second Tommy was for his 3rd birthday, when he got the Kelly and Tommy Power Wheels car with the African American Tommy and Kelly. Kelly ended up wandering off to live in Emma's Dolltown for most of her life, but Tommy became Fuzzy the Doll's best friend Little Purple.

Fuzzy decided "Little Purple" was the son of Emma's Very Velvet Christie.Christie came in a purple outfit and Emma had named her Mrs. Purple. That made him "Little" Purple, right?

Little Purple makes friends with a yak during their vacation to the Himalayas.(See my post on Doll Vacations.)

Gareth World with Little Purple, who is dressed as "a foreign dignitary" at the World's Halloween party. (See my Halloween photostory from last year.) Gareth is named after my son's real name, since there was already a Fuzzy the Doll.

It's a shame they stopped making Tommy. There needs to be a boy in the crowd.
Happy Birthday Fuzz!  

Doll-A-Day 91: April Fool! It's Fuzzy the Doll!

  Computer problems today have kept me from even writing until now, and I certainly can't do anything else. I can't even get my pictures off the camera! So I am forced to steal from myself, and use pictures from the blog for today's doll.
  I wanted a doll that would be a good representative of April Fool's Day, and I could think of no doll in this house that exemplified the spirit of April Fool's Day better than Fuzzy the Doll. You may have seen Fuzzy in my Halloween photo story. He's my son's doll, and he has quite a personality.

Fuzzy the Doll in the apple bobbing tub, wearing his nose glasses.

  When Emma was 6 years old I made her an "Emma the Doll", with her face on it. Fuzzy was 2, and he wanted a doll of himself. Fuzzy the Doll started life as a sweet little Tommy doll, whose hair I coloured orange. (He already had my Fuzzy's bowl haircut.) Both Emma and Fuzzy the Dolls developed personalities, which, thankfully, were far removed from the real Emma and Fuzzy. Fuzzy the Doll became well known for doing weird things, like hanging upside down by his 'hanging boots', and packing his suitcases for vacation with piles of money and all the weaponry he could fit in.(Why do boys have an obsession with weapons? I never let Fuzz play with toy guns, and yet, he would create them out of other things.)   

 As you can see, he no longer has the bowl haircut.He no longer has fingertips either!They have both been truely loved off of him.

  Emma and Fuzzy the Dolls became like members of the family. When I 'invited' Fuzzy the Doll to The World family's Halloween party for the photo story, Fuzzy dressed him for me.He's 18 now, but the outfits he put on all his dolls for me were still pretty typical of the way they always looked,(Including the nose glasses!) I returned the dolls to him as they were dressed for the party. When I asked Fuzz today if I could borrow Fuzzy for Doll-A-Day,he gave him to me and I discovered that he had redressed everybody after the party. Fuzzy was wearing red Tommy overalls, Hockey Tommy's shirt,the orange vest his best friend 'Little Purple" is wearing in the picture above, (Fuzzy got Little Purple for his 3rd birthday. He decided Little Purple was the son of Emma's Very Velvet Christie doll, whom she had named Mrs. Purple, thus he must be Little Purple.),orange shoes, and a big orange hat he got on 'vacation' in the 'Himalayas'! (As well as the nose glasses! Plus he had a dagger and a space gun tucked in his overalls!) Boys!

Fuzzy the Doll and his guide start up the Himalayan mountains in this picture from the doll's vacation emails.

  We'll see if the computer works tomorrow!