Doll-A-Day 2023 #57: Little Honeymoon

   I saw today's doll at the doll show last Sunday, and to me, she seemed like the weirdest idea. She's Little Honeymoon.

  This is Dick Tracy's granddaughter! Some of you may not be familiar with Dick Tracy. I grew up with Dick Tracy being a trench coat wearing, 1930's looking police detective in comic strips in the newspaper.  The comic strip premiered in 1931. In the late 1930's and early 1940's there were movie serials based on the strip. Then in 1990 there was a Dick Tracy movie with Warren Beatty as Dick Tracy, Al Pacino, as the villain, Big Boy Caprice, and Breathless Mahoney, played by Madonna.

  So how did Dick Tracy, a 1930's police detective on Earth, get a space granddaughter? This confused me. But I guess while I wasn't paying attention, in the 1960's, while I was busy being a kid who was aware of, but did not actually read the Dick Tracy comic strip, the strip was busy getting involved in all things space and 'moon'. That was the height of the space race, after all. In 1946 Tracy introduced the two way wrist radio, which was futuristic. In the 60's it was advanced to a two way wrist TV. So I guess the comic strip always had a tendency toward science fiction and futuristic gadgetry. 

   In 1964 the strip visited the moon, and Dick Tracy's son, Junior, married a moon woman named 'Moon Maid'. (Good grief. Was Dick Tracy like the Smurfs? Did everything on the moon have to be called 'moon' something? If everybody on the moon had to have 'moon' in their name, wouldn't they run out of names pretty quickly?) 

  Anyway! Also in 1964, Junior and Moon Maid had a baby, with antenna and magnetic hands, and named her Honeymoon. (Sometimes they just called her Honey.) That same year, Ideal manufactured the Honeymoon doll.

She looks similar to Ideal's Thumbelina in the ad. She doesn't in person though, as you can see in the picture at the beginning, which I took at the doll show She did not come with magnetic hands, which I think was a missed opportunity by Ideal! She does, however, come with 'her own moon costume complete with a wing collar in glimmering silver, plus her own removable space helmet', and 'moon hair', whatever that is. It can be washed and combed, whatever it is. (It looked like thin yarn to me, so I'm wondering just how comb-able it really is.) According to the J.C. Penney catalog, it's acrylic yarn.

 I wonder what happened when kids did try to comb it, because you know what happens if you comb yarn! Also according to the catalog ad, her face is 'painted with iridescent features'. Her eyes do look pretty creepy. She also has a cotton cloth body that is 'plastic foam filled', and she 'coos when you squeeze it'. The box says she cries when you 'press her tummy'. Well who doesn't? 

  Apparently, after the moon landing showed there was no life on the moon, the Dick Tracy comic strip dropped most of their moon inventions and all the moon storylines, and tried to pretend they never went to the moon. They even eased out Moon Maid. (They killed her off!) They kept Honeymoon though, and Junior remarried. Okay, how did they explain Honeymoon's spaciness, if they were trying to pretend they never had any moon references? (They had very quickly forgotten about her magnetic hands right after her birth.)

  That's today's doll. It's a weird one. I never knew Dick Tracy had gone all spacey...but then, that's what they wanted, isn't it?!