Doll-A-Day 2017 #157:Baby First Step

  We had a very nice weekend. Saturday we celebrated Emma's birthday with her. We shopped, and ate at The Cheesecake Factory,and basically hung out with Emma all day. Sunday Emma threw her tea party,and I spent part of the day making mini Battenberg cakes,small lemon tea cakes with sugared roses on top, and mushroom and Parmesan vol-au-vent. Emma had lots of goodies already. She and Ivy made tea sandwiches,and hors devors,and there were cookies and pastries. This weekend put two pounds back on me! Fuzz and his girlfriend Shanna joined us all in the evening. It was the first time we had all been together since Christmas,so any weight gain was a small price to pay.
   Today's doll is this cute little girl.

She's Baby First Step.

This Baby First Step was made by Mattel in 1965.

There were other versions over the years, but this is the first one.

Later there was even a talking Baby First Step.

Talking Baby First Step at the bottom. Notice that 'Baby Step' has the same face, and shoes and socks as baby First Step. I think the skates are the same too.

She has one of those typically '1960's Mattel' cute faces,with very rosy cheeks.

There are a lot of very similar looking Mattel dolls from this era. Baby First Step strongly resembles Mattel's Dee Dee, from 1965. If Dee Dee had inset eyes instead of painted eyes, they'd pretty much look identical.

She's 18" tall.

Baby First Step's gimmick was that she walks. You can watch a YouTube video of Baby First Step walking HERE.

And you can watch the original commercial for the doll HERE.
She's operated by 2 D batteries.

The battery door is in her back.

The doll in the far right of the line up above is misleading. the legs never reach that far apart when she walks. 

This is her original dress,with built in bloomers.

Her legs are hard plastic. Her arms are a different type of hard vinyl,more like Chatty Cathy limbs.

She has her original hair ribbons too.

 It's hard to completely clean up her hairdo with those ribbons in there. They are on two small locks of hair that still have the original rubber bands on them. The ribbons are in their original bows. I am really awful at tying bows, so I hate to redo them. They'll never be the same!

Her shoes and socks are original because they don't come off.

Her socks are cotton, and look like they would be removable, but they aren't because the shoes are permanent and not removeable.
  She also had roller skates that clipped to her shoes. That was how skates really worked in those days. Skates came with a 'key' that was used to widen them so they could be fitted onto the shoes. The key was then used again to tighten the skates so they wouldn't come off. It was also helpful that there were ankle straps on the skates. Of course,I had skates like I have just described,because I'm old. I never learned to skate. I did learn to fall quite well though.
    Her head is a softer vinyl. She has sleep eyes and 'real' lashes. 

Her hair is a combination of colours,rather than just straight blonde,which makes it more realistic.

  I got this girl at an auction here in town. There were two daughters in the family whose things were being auctioned. I know this because there were several dolls being auctioned, and there were two of  all of them.Besides Baby First Step there were two Charmin Chatty dolls, and two Susie Sunshine dolls.One sister must have been quite young when they got their dolls, and one old enough to look after her dolls,because every pair contained one beautiful near minty doll, and one really loved and worn one. This Baby First Step belonged to the older sister,but I identified with the younger sister. My sister is six years older than I am, and we had the same thing going. Her dolls always looked nice, and mine were messy and bedraggled. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't keep my Penny Brite's legs from permanently swaying to one side,my GI Joe from looking mangled, or my Swirl ponytail Barbie's hair from becoming a mess so horrible she eventually needed to have her head shaved and resort to wearing Fashion Queen Barbie's wigs.

Come back tomorrow for another doll.

Doll-A-day 2017 #156:Puppetrina

  Ok. I confess. I bought this doll for myself and then justified it by telling Ken to give it to me for Easter. (Since I'm on a diet I was trying to go candy free.) I am awful. But I have been wanting one,and when I happened across this one in her original dress for a really good Buy It Now I couldn't wait for Ken to...forget to buy it. So I bought it myself. She's Puppetrina.

Puppetrina, as her name suggests, is not just a doll. She's also a puppet.

 

More on that in a minute.

Puppetrina was produced by Eegee in 1963.

 I bought my doll second hand and without her box. Here's how she would have looked in her box.

 

She measures about 22" tall.

Her head and arms are soft vinyl.

Her legs are hollow plastic.

She has  very striking eyes,with 'real lashes'.
 

Her eyes are sleep eyes.

Her cheeks are very blushy,her lips very bright and glossy, and she has two tiny molded and painted teeth.

 As pretty as she is from the front...

  

 ...she has a somewhat odd profile.

Kind of  like 'Henry', from the old "Henry" comic strip.

 She had a trip to the beauty parlor and laundry when she arrived here. I washed and ironed her clothes. Once she was unclothed I washed her, and washed and conditioned her hair.

The hair turned out pretty well. It's fairly smooth. She has a replaced hair ribbon, and is missing her shoes, but she does have her original clothes.

 She has a heavy cotton pinafore.

 Under her pinafore there is a dress with a cotton skirt and knit top half.
 

The whole outfit has sort of a nautical look. 

Maybe that's one of the reasons I like her. I love sailor suits. There were also several outfits, available separately,made for Puppetrina.
 Under the dress she has striped underwear/body.(the shoulders are connected to her arms,but the body of the underwear isn't connected.Her body is foam...

I rolled her underwear up to show this part of her body. The undies connect in the crotch with a snap.

...surrounding the plastic parts that are strung together. The upper half has springs that attach to clear plastic pegs under Puppetrina's shoulders.
 

Mine weren't connected, so I took her apart to fix that. I thought it would fix the floppiness of her head, but it made no difference at all.

She has a pocket in the back of her underwear which allows her to be operated like a puppet. One arm is operated by a thumb, and the head and other arm are operated by the other fingers.

 The back of the box instructs the owner how to operate Puppetrina.

 

What it doesn't tell you is that she is, in Ivy's words,"The worst puppet doll in the whole world". For one thing, neither my hands nor Ivy's were really big enough to properly operate Puppetrina. For another thing, if our fingers were any longer they still couldn't have operated her any better, because the cup shaped plastic bit in her head where the fingers go is extremely short. If the fingers could go in farther her head could be held up, and moved much better. But even though I have small hands, they are bigger than a child's.I wonder just how well little hands could operate Puppetrina, because their fingers are even shorter than mine,(although, not by much!),and I couldn't do much with her. It took the entire span of my or Ivy's hands to reach both arms with our thumb and fingers. She doesn't have a wide range of movement with those arms anyway.

 That's about the extent of it. Her arms are a bit long too,and with no bend in them, she can't do much that doesn't look awkward.

Not quite sure what she's doing to this guy.Looks like one of those very slappy massages.

In spite of the drawbacks, she is apparently 'loaded with play value'.

This ad is a little scary.

Let's have a last look at Puppetrina.

 

See you tomorrow for another doll.