This doll is what is known as a 'Sample Skipper', or 'Test Market Skipper'. She's wearing a vintage Skipper fashion called Let's Play House. It's a dress and pinafore and blue flats. There should be three coloured hankies in her pockets, but I forgot where I put mine!
Test Market is more accurate.'Sample' suggests that they were made in extremely small numbers and given away, which isn't true. Test Market tells you they were sold early on as normal Skipper dolls, but maybe in smaller numbers than later dolls. That is really what these dolls are. They are the earliest Skippers,sold at the very beginning of production before some final changes were made. So there are a few differences between these girls and the common Skipper dolls most people have. This one is even a little different for a Test Market Skipper.
For one thing, the word 'Skipper' is printed heel to toe on the bottom of the foot,instead of across the width of the foot,like later, regular Skippers.
The Test Market dolls are supposed to have legs that are made of resin,not plastic. I can't feel the difference. They have a slightly wider stance than later Skippers,and shorter,thicker legs. There are a couple of different stance widths even amongst Test Market dolls. This one doesn't have a super wide stance as some Test Market dolls do.
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| Regular Skipper on the left, Today's girl on the right. |
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| Regular Skipper on top. Test Market on the bottom. |
Another difference is the size of the feet. Test Market dolls have bigger feet. The thing is, this doll has slightly wider feet, but they aren't that much bigger overall.
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| Regular Skipper on the left,Test Market on the right. |
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| With the feet mixed up here,regular,Test Market, regular, Test Market,it's hard to see much size difference. But the word 'Skipper' is printed the right direction for each doll. |
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| Regular left, TM on the right. See what I mean? Just a slight width difference, barely enough to notice. |
The Test Market girl does have the typical non-flat feet of the TM dolls though. Regular Skippers have flat feet.
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| The TM Skippers have slightly tippy toed feet,like maybe they were originally going ot make her shoes with short heels. |
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| My leeks are once again seeding before getting big enough to eat! Why do they always do that?! |
They also have a double row of bangs,sometimes more, and the hair is a different type of fiber than the standard Skipper dolls too.
The body is marked '1' on the right cheek.
There is no printing on the inside of the neck rim of these dolls. That's a way to identify the heads. Be careful when trying to remove the head on a vintage doll though. Kids used to head swap all the time, but with age the vinyl has sometimes become weak,causing the neck to tear or split when removed or returned to the neck knob.
There's a great page for identifying vintage Skipper dolls,which you can see HERE.
That's today's doll.
