Doll-A-Day 2019 #28: Poppie Fresh

  I'm very late getting today's post up. Emma and I took Ivy back to college yesterday,and when I got home I went straight to the bath tub and bed. I hate leaving Ivy at school, but before we left she was already given a big hug by her friend Esther and greeted by several other friends,so she's in good hands.
  Today's doll is one that will be familiar to many of you,but not necessarily directly. She's this girl.

She looks familiar,right? You probably know her brother a bit better than you know her.

In fact, you may not know her at all. Her name is Poppie Fresh.

Poppie Fresh was Poppin Fresh, The Pillsbury Doughboy's sister. (You can see my post on the history of Poppin Fresh and my Uncle Rollie toy HERE.)
There were other members of the family,which were not used in commercials,but were produced as toys. these included Grandmommer and Grandpopper,younger siblings Bun Bun and Popper, a dog,Flapjack, and a cat, Biscuit. You can see my post on Bun Bun and biscuit HERE.

Bun Bun,Poppie,Biscuit,and Poppin Fresh.

She appeared in  the early 1970's, and seems to have been faded out by the end of the decade.

The doll is dated 1972.

She was created, (but not designed), by a woman named Carol H. Williams,working with original Doughboy creator Rudy Perz.
 

Carol H. Williams

Poppie's tag line was 'The little girl with the big ideas'.
 

These dolls are notorious for collecting dirt stains and marks. Once it's on there. even dust is hard to remove to the point where they're white again.

This Poppie doll is 6" tall.

This size Poppie and Poppin Fresh dolls came on plastic stands.

Poppie advertised Pillsbury's sweet products,like cinnamon rolls. Her first product was danish.
 

It's been debated whether Poppie is Poppin  Fresh's wife or sister. This ad refers to her as his 'little helper',and her creator has referred to her as 'childlike' ,and  'a young girl',so I think she's his sister.

  While Poppin Fresh is famous for being poked in the belly,it was decided, after what Williams described as a 'huge discussion', not to allow such behavior with Poppie. Williams felt that it would be inappropriate to have a large male hand poke the stomach of a small girl who hadn't consented to it. Concerning the decision,Williams said in 2017, "We in no way wanted to normalize abusive behavior towards women". Was it ever considered abusive behavior towards the Doughboy? He seems to find it ticklish. You can watch one of her commercials HERE. (She seems to find it amusing when Poppin Fresh is poked and left with a chocolate finger print on his stomach.)
  Carol H. Williams is also credited with the tagline for the famous Secret deodorant campaign, 'Strong enough for a man,but made for a woman'. Williams rose through the ranks at the advertising firm of  Leo Burnett,where she created Poppie, becoming the first woman to be creative director,and eventually become the Senior Vice President. In 2017 she was accepted into the Advertising Hall of Fame,becoming the second African American woman,and the first African American woman in a creative position in advertising, to do so.(The first was Catherine L. Hughes, the founder of Radio One, the country’s largest African American controlled multimedia company.) Today Williams is the founder,president, and CEO of her own advertising firm,Carol H. Williams Advertising. That's no small feat,considering statistics from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reported that fewer than 1 percent of executives in advertising, public relations and related services are African American women.
 

  Poppie is pretty much forgotten now, but she appeared on quite a few products in her day,like magnets,and as a small finger puppet version of today's doll. She's even been used for more recent products,like a salt and pepper shaker set with Poppin Fresh,
That's it for today. Tomorrow is just another doll.

Doll-a-Day 2017 #230: Pillsbury Bun Bun and Biscuit

  The day before yesterday we saw Mr. and Mrs. Mouse, which I got yard saling a couple of weeks ago.
 

Today we're looking at another few dolls from that day. They're Bun Bun and Biscuit.

Bun Bun is the baby sister of Poppin Fresh,(The Pillsbury Dough Boy.).

Biscuit,which I got two of, is their family cat.

These dolls are actually finger puppets. These two came in a set that also included the family dog,Flapjack.

Bun Bun,who is 3 1/2" tall, should have blue eyes and  a blue heart on her bib.

Biscuit is 2 1/2" tall. She should have blue eyes and a blue nose.

See you tomorrow for Shrunken Saturday.

Living Dolls Week:Doll-A-Day 182: The Pillsbury Doughboy's Uncle Rollie

  This week we're looking at 'living dolls',characters in movies, TV, and other media, 'portrayed' by 'living dolls' like The Pillsbury Doughboy.(His real name is actually Poppin Fresh.)

These days Doughboy is created using CGI, (computer generated imagery), but back in his early days he was portrayed by  a puppet, using stop motion animation.

Doughboy in his first commercial,back in 1965. He has since appeared in over 600 commercials for 50 different Pillsbury products.

This original Doughboy stop motion figure sold online for $600. Not really that expensive for an American advertising icon. He looks like he must have been the puppet used for getting the belly poke.The original clay Doughboy figure for stop motion commercials cost $16 to make.

 The Pillsbury Doughboy ad campaign was conceived by Rudy Perz, and the original drawing was by Martin Nodell, the creator of the Green Lantern.Pretty weird, huh? The original voice of the Doughboy was by Paul Frees, who was also the voice of many cartoon characters, including Boris Badenov in the Bullwinkle cartoons.He was also the Little Green Sprout in the Green Giant commercials, and the Ghost Host at Disneyland's Haunted Mansion attraction. He also dubbed in a lot of Tony Curtis's 'female' voice in "Some Like it Hot"...
 

You don't say?

...and Humphrey Bogart's voice (which was weak from his esophageal cancer and could barely be heard in many scenes) in Bogart's last movie, "The Harder They Fall". Pretty versatile guy.
   I always wanted a live Doughboy. Alas, the closest I could come was the rubber toy, which I found available in bins at the grocery store when I was a kid. I begged my mom to get me one. She refused. I don't know. Maybe they were only available if you bought Pillsbury biscuits. In our house we only ever had homemade biscuits. (When we went to my Dad's stepmother's house they were so exotic: They ate canned biscuits, which in the 60's were tiny little things that you could peel and eat layer by paper thin layer. I loved them. I loved Mom's too, but the canned ones were something special since we never got them any other time. These days I prefer homemade biscuits, and we bake them in the same pan my Mom always made biscuits in.)
   Doughboy is so well known he's been parodied and even had other characters based on him. (Who didn't realize that the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from "Ghostbusters" was a take off on the Doughboy? "Something from my childhood that could never hurt us.")

Maybe crossed with The Michelin man.

   I still love the Doughboy though, and I have made up for that childhood loss. My first Doughboy was one of the originals that I saw a bin full of when I was a kid. I found him at a porch sale years ago.

Like this guy.

  After that I added the more recent Doughboy. (And remember, I'm old, so when I say 'recent' I mean sometime in the last 20 years...)

You can tell the old from the new by the eyes and Pillsbury symbol on the hat. Old Doughboy has much lighter blue eyes and symbol than New Doughboy.
  Then came a keychain, a fridge magnet,a cookie jar, a giggling Doughboy doll,a beanie, a tiny beanie...Well, you get the idea. I didn't remember him having a family, but apparently in 1974 they made loads of characters, including his... sister? wife?... Poppie Fresh (It's up for debate, but I think she's his sister.)...

Poppie. Got her doll too.

 ...his little brother Popper, his little sister Bun Bun,and his grandparents, (Or are they his parents?), Grand Popper and Grand Mommer. They even had a dog(Flapjack) and a cat,(Biscuit),who were also dough blobs, of course.There was also the extremely rare Uncle Rollie, who is our doll today.

I found him at the bottom of a box at a yard sale. I hadn't ever heard of him, but he was obviously a Doughboy relative. I didn't realize how rare he was since I had never heard of him. I also didn't know Uncle Rollie came with a blue car, so I wasn't even looking for his car.Afterward I went home and looked him up to see who he was, and found out about the car. So  I went back to see if they had the car. No such luck.The car had a rumble seat you could put one of the other finger puppet dolls in.(Doughboy, the little brother and  sister, etc.)

He's not in the best shape, but as rare as he is, who's going to complain?

He's pretty small, at only 3 3/4" tall.

So, with all that, I still haven't gotten a live Doughboy.

"Who-hoo!"

 He's not even real anymore, let alone alive. He's all CGI and it's just not the same.

However, that pig from the Geico commercials...

Wheeee!!!