Doll-A-Day 2023 #274: Tonner Effanbee Alice

   I got this doll a few weeks ago at the first doll show of that weekend. (I went to two that weekend.) 

The dealer said she is a Tonner Alice in Wonderland doll, but I couldn't find her when I looked up Tonner Alice dolls. To further confuse me, her dress has an Effanbee tag.

  I did finally sort of find her on line. The doll that came in this dress was an Effanbee doll and a Tonner doll as far as I can tell. Tonner designed an Effanbee doll?  Her name was Ruth Ann. But she had straight hair and bangs, and a black ribbon Alice band in her hair. That doll originally came with a white rabbit. I have no idea why this doll is in this dress. It obviously fits her perfectly. I have no idea what's going on with these dolls. 

I don't know if she's the doll that belongs in this dress or not. If she is, there was more than one doll that came in this dress, because I've seen the original insert for the doll, and this isn't the doll it pictures. In any case, she's pretty, and I love her outfit. She's made of a really nice quality vinyl. The dress is very detiled and made of good quality fabrics.

Her dress is a thick cotton. 

It's trimmed in lace.

Her sleeves have little buttons at the cuffs, but they don't button. That's just for looks. They close with snaps. Notice the sleeves are lace trimmed too.

Under the dress she has a slip.

And over it she has a white eyelet pinafore.

It has three little buttons.

Her pinny ties in the back.

She has white tights and black Mary Jane shoes that really buckle and unbuckle.

She has a serious face.

  She has dimples and blue eyes with brush lashes.

If you gave her brown eyes and the right wig, she wouldn't make a bad Shirley Temple.

 There's some detail in those eyebrows.

She has great squiggley hair. And look at the details on her sleeves!

  

Ken and I took a day off today to relax a bit. The idea was to have a picnic/cookout at some point. But Ken didn't have his meat yet, for cooking, and he was starving. So we ate in Roscoe Village, which we went to just for fun, and he cooked out later. By the time we got to the park to cook out, it was getting late. I still needed to photograph this doll too. I was afraid it was getting too dark, but I think her pictures came out pretty nice.

She's 21 inches tall. 

What are these flowers called?! I can't think of the name!

Look at the side of her hair. That better not get messed up, because it's beyond me to fix that.

The tall flowers are zinnias, right?

  That's today's doll. See you again tomorrow.  

Doll-A-Day 2023 #264: Tonner Sindy Reproduction

   Today's doll is this Sindy doll. Sorry about the nudity, but I don't have any clothes for her. I bought her this way.

 I got her at one of the doll shows I went to a couple of weeks ago.

She's a bit tanned for a Sindy. Sindy was always very fair skinned. Well, she was British...

 She's a reproduction Sindy, made by Tonner. I think she may be the Chill in the Air Sindy, or possibly the chestnut haired Just Sindy. (Just Sindy was a basic doll that came in a swimsuit.) Chill in the Air was a dressed doll, limited to 500 pieces. Just Sindy with chestnut hair was a 1000 piece run.

Tonner began making Sindy in 2013, to celebrate Sindy's 50th anniversary. The sculpt was loosely based on a Sindy doll called Trendy Girl.

  This Sindy features a twist waist.

And a belly button.

  Her arms lift up and down, but aren't jointed in such a way as to move outward from her body.

She's 11 inches tall.

  Like Tammy, which I think Sindy always resembled more than Barbie, Sindy has tiny, childlike  hands.

I've never had a Sindy, (although I did briefly have a McDonald's Sindy, which I sold), but apparently she is known for having uneven legs The Tonner reproduction is no exception.

She does the scissor sit, so that's something Tonner left from the originals.

  The other thing unchanged from the originals is her ball jointed head. So she is able to look up and down and tilt her head a bit. She can look up a lot better than down. 

  She has eyelashes. I read that the first run had eyelashes that were glued into a groove above her eyes, and they fell out easily. The second run, which I think this girl must be from, had rooted eyelashes. They are really hard, almost like they are plastic, but they are actually hair.

  I like her natural lip colour.

  The other thing I love about her is her hair. Not only is it a beautiful dark auburn, it is super silky and soft. 

It flops around like real hair. What? Doesn't everybody's hair flop around? Mine does.

  It's a wig actually, but it's glued on.

  The colour was really hard to capture in a photo. The next one comes closer than the ones taken in direct sun, above.

  Sindy was made by Pedigree in England, and later Hasbro, Vivid Imaginations, and New Moons. Ken's sister Gloria had a Sindy as a kid. She thinks she may still have all her old Sindy stuff in her attic, or as they call it in England, 'the loft'.  In the late 1970's Marx made Sindy for the American market. They weren't successful. I keep reading that they made her look more American. What does that mean? What does an American look like? Americans are everything. We can look any way. How can you tell an American from an Englishman if they don't talk? Well, I usually can, but most people can't. 

  In the late 1980's the rights were bought by Hasbro. Hasbro produced a Sindy that had a more realistic sized head, who looked more like a standard fashion doll. This wasn't as popular as the original Sindy had been, but they continued to make small head Sindy until the mid 90's. Hasbro were sued by Mattel for copyright infringement at one point because Mattel thought the latest Sindy sculpt looked too much like Barbie. How they got away with that I'll never know. These days, and even then really, there are loads of companies that make fashion dolls, some direct rip offs of Barbie's face, and they get away with it. How can you copyright a realistic head anyway? Copying the face directly is one thing, but just making a fashion doll is another. I don't think Sindy ever looked like Barbie.

  The Tonner Sindys were, like all Tonner dolls, a bit pricey. The clothes made for her were too. I got this girl because she was an unbelievable price at the show. I might let her go to pay for what else I bought. But I'm getting quite attached to her. That hair and tilting head won me over.

  That's today's doll. See you tomorrow for another one.

Doll-A-Day 2023 #123: Tyler Wentworth

   Yay! Emma is home from the hospital! She's still in some pain, and tired. The pain medication and muscle relaxants they gave her make her sleepy, but she's so much better. It's terrible to see your kid suffer, even if they are an adult now. So I'm relieved to have her home and doing so well.

  My sister just retired. Yesterday was her last day of work, and we went to see her to make sure she celebrated. We hung a banner on her porch and parked across from her apartment to watch her come home and see it. She wasn't much surprised. The people at work had given her two cakes and bunches of flowers, both live and cut, and a bunch of balloons. We only brought her cheesecake...but it was good!

  While we were there I quickly photographed some of her dolls. She 'doesn't collect dolls'. Yeah. I remember saying that. Anyway, here is one doll she bought at a doll show we went to a while back. She's Tyler Wentworth.

  Tyler Wentworth is a Robert Tonner doll. She was produced from 1999 to 2018, when Tonner went out of business. At 16 inches, she's a bit taller than Ashton Drake's Gene, or at least, she looks like it. I prefer Gene.

  This particular Tyler is jointed at the neck, shoulders, elbows, hips, and knees.

  She was only wearing this teddy when my sister bought her, and she'd like to get her some clothes.

 She's cheap though. She sews, and I suggested she make some.

  Unlike me, my sister has brown hair, (grey now.), and I don't think she particularly likes red hair. She's glad she wasn't the one who got stuck with it. But this doll has red hair, and she doesn't seem to mind.

  She has a nice face, but I told my sister that Tyler needs a barrette, because that hair would drive me crazy. My sister said don't gook her hair up.

I am actually holding it out of her face to take this picture.

  My sister was concerned that I was photographing the doll on the kitchen table, and that she'd just 'look like she's sitting on the kitchen table'. But I assured her it would be okay.

  That's today's doll. See you tomorrow for another one.