Today's doll is actually two! It's a couple of Bottle Time Baby dolls.
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| They were sold separately. They are about ten inches tall and are wearing their original outfits. |
Bottle Time Baby is from 1984.
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| She has hair sculpted on the back of her head. Remember that for later. |
They're obviously Mattel dolls, as you can tell from their faces. I'm guessing they were sculpted by
Martha Armstrong Hand. There's a resemblance to Baby First Step, and many other Hand creations for Mattel.
As you can see from their name, and their mouths, they were meant to be bottle fed, and they did, indeed, come with a bottle. (The girl has worn paint on her lips, so I'm guessing she was fed a lot.) But there was more to their bottle than just feeding. These dolls had another gimmick: Their box exclaimed, "Twist bottle and he wiggles!" The bottle activated their arms and legs. I wondered why their limbs made ratcheting sounds when I tried to make them sit down, and their arms moved in unison with their legs.
The boy has straight hair, and the girl has a head of curls.
It's not as cute from behind. Well, his isn't.
Both have thinly rooted hair, but the boy's straight hair looks thinner. It has trouble laying down. I pulled some of it forward and pulled his visor down to make it stay, so he has some bangs.
I don't think it was meant to do that though.
The girl has curly bangs, and I'm pretty sure they were meant to be that way.
There's a thin spot in the hair between the back and the bangs, for the visor to sit in.
He doesn't have a thin spot like that though. He still has a string where his visor was sewn to his head.
His whole head is a thin spot. Unlike his sister, he has bangs sculpted on his forehead.
So I put the 'bangs' back.
They both have painted eyes .
That's today doll. And don't think you're done seeing Baby Beans. Martha Armstrong Hand sculpted those too. Anyway, see you tomorrow.
Well that is interesting, you put a bottle in their mouths and they jiggle their arms and legs. How does that happen? I know that is "baby like" but I am curious about the mechanism that allows that to happen. They remind me of my Chatty Baby Sister and Chatty Baby Brother.
ReplyDeleteI think there must be a switch in there, because they move when you twist the bottle. Oddly enough, the Chatty dolls were some of the few that Martha Armstrong Hand did not sculpt.
DeleteBad hair or no, these dolls are awfully cute. I never would've thought to stick a bottle in a doll's mouth to utilize their gimmick! Don't forget too that babies often have patchy hair as they grow. They can end up looking like punk rockers, like I did for a spell.
ReplyDeleteOh I'm well aware of the weird ways babies can lose their hair! :) Where do you think Fuzzy got that nickname? Everything fell out but a mohawk on top! Emma lost everything but a ridge along the bottom in the back, and was bald for ages. I had always wished I had saved a lock of Emma's hair when she was a baby, because it was dark auburn and totally different from how it became later. But she had hardly any hair, so I didn't think I should take any. With Ivy, who also had dark auburn as a baby, (Fuzz's never changed: bright orange from birth.), I thought, "Well, she's going to lose it all anyway. I'm saving some!" So I cut a small rectangle out of the back of her hair. And then she didn't lose it! It stayed and grew slowly. She had a rectangle out of her hair for ages!
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