Doll-A-Day 2023 #23: Pepper

   Today's doll is one I forgot I had, and I have no idea where it came from as far as the fire! I remember getting her at a doll show, but I swear I put her downstairs with the rest of the Tammy collection, She's Pepper.

  Pepper was made by Ideal.

  She was the little sister of Ideal's Tammy doll.

     She stands 9 inches tall.

Pepper was produced from 1963 to 1965, longer than any other member of Tammy's Family.

This Pepper is a little more unusual because she has strawberry blonde hair.

The most common Pepper's came with brownish blonde hair.  

Like this Posin' Pepper that belongs to Emma.

  What I really want is the Pepper with the carrot orange hair. She's super expensive though, so at the moment I am settling for this girl.

  Pepper also has cute freckles.

She has standard jointing, at the neck, shoulders, and hips.

She can sit, but it's a bit awkward looking.

  Pepper had her own wardrobe, and lots of really fun accessories.  Some of the accessories in the Tammy and Family line were so cute and realistic. I think my favourite is Pepper's reel to reel tape recorder. If I was at home right now, I would show you mine.

  When I bought her she was wearing this dress. It's not a Pepper dress, and it might be home made. It looks all right on her though, for now.

  You can see my posts on my other Pepper dolls HERE, HERE, And HERE. And you can watch a vintage commercial for Pepper HERE.

  That's the doll for today. Hopefully tomorrow we will be retrieving my camera battery charger from the house, so I can use my camera and continue this without having to use my phone. I still don't work very well with that thing. I am not a modern person at all. I'm lucky I can do this! In any case, I'll be back tomorrow with another doll.

Doll-A-Day 2023 #11: Marx American Family Dollhouse Boy

**UPDATE: Thanks to our reader, Beth, for letting us know that this boy is from the American Family Dollhouse Family by Marx. Thanks Beth!**   

Today's doll is another little fellow. He's this boy by Marx.

  I don't know much about this kid. He's about 4 inches tall.  

I know he's made by Marx, in Hong Kong.

He has books under his arm.

And as you may have seen, a slingshot in his back pocket.

So are the books just a ruse, to make him appear studious? While he's planning on shooting rocks through your window?

He has white 'sneakers', as they said in the Old Days.

He has some wear. I've heard of digging your heels in, but this kid appears to have dug his toes in. And off.

His hair is molded and painted.

But I have always wondered what set he's from. He doesn't look like your standard dollhouse or playset kid. He has a smart aleck look about him. He reminds me of a Chuck Jones character. (Chuck Jones was an animator and director, known for the later Warner Brothers cartoons, and "How The Grinch Stole Christmas". You know a Chuck Jones character when you see it!)

Looks like he's 'had his nose to the grindstone' too...

In fact, he reminds me a lot of the the animated version of the main character from the movie "The Phantom Tollbooth". 

Not enough hair on the doll though, and I'm sure they didn't make toys from the movie.

  "The Phantom Tollbooth" is a wonderful kids book by Norton Juster. I loved that book as a kid, and read it to Emma, I believe, when she was small. The movie I didn't like as much. (Apparently Norton Juster hated it.) It was directed by Chuck Jones, who had previously directed the Academy Award winning short film adaptation of Norton Juster's "The Dot and the Line", in 1965. "The Phantom Tollbooth" starred Eddie Munster...uh. I mean, Butch Patrick!

I guess Butch Patrick looked a little like a Chuck Jones character himself.

  The story concerned a crabby, bored kid named Milo,(Patrick), who comes home from school one day to find a mysterious package in his room. The package contained a build it yourself kid sized tollbooth and a kid sized car. With nothing else to do, Milo puts the tollbooth together, and as per the instructions, chooses a random place to go in The Kingdom of Wisdom, and drives through it. When he does, his room disappears and he enters into a different world. (In the movie, this is the point where everything becomes animated.) I always got a sort of Alice in Wonderland feeling from it. (The book, not the movie.) The previous "The Dot and the Line" used math to tell a story. 'Tollbooth' uses words. No. I mean it really uses words. It's full of imaginative word play. Unfortunately, not only kids, but most adults these days, might not get most of the puns, but that's all the more reason to read the book! 

  The movie was released in 1970, but filmed in 1968, which still means Butch Patrick was FIFTEEN when he appeared as Milo! No wonder he looks a little uncomfortable in that tiny car!

  A remake of "The Phantom Tollbooth" has been in the works since 2010. No recent word of the likelihood of it ever actually being made.

  That's the doll for today. I kind of strayed off on a tangent, didn't I? Sorry about that! If anybody can identify this kid, please leave a comment. See you tomorrow for another doll.

Doll-A-Day 2023 #8: Li'l Winking Herby Hippy

  Today's doll is one I don't own. But he's on my wish list. He's Lil Winking Herby Hippy.

  Herby was made by Remco. 

  He has molded and painted teeth. (I love dolls with teeth.) He's jointed at the neck, shoulders, and hips, and had sleep eyes. But the gimmick to this doll, besides the 'hippy' image, is that if you squeeze his stomach, he winks. 

He's in the same catalog as That Kid, which was a one year only toy, sold in 1967. I know this because he's one of my favouites. I've done two posts on my three That Kid dolls, which I always wanted and didn't get until recent years. (You can read the That Kid posts HERE and HERE.) So I'm very familiar with him. Some things I've seen say Herby is from 1968, so maybe he was sold both years. 

  1967 was prime Hippy time. Sgt. Pepper came out that year. The summer of 1967 is called 'The Summer of Love', but other events that year included the ongoing Vietnam War, and the civil rights protests. (If we'd have had love in the first place maybe we wouldn't have even had those two.)

'That Kid is all boy'. I always hated that phrase. What does that even mean?! It's usually used as an excuse for why a kid tears stuff up, or is violent. That doesn't make you a boy, and being a boy doesn't mean you have to do that stuff. I had a friend whose only answer to why her son tore the roof off her daughter's Little Tykes house and destroyed it was, "He's all boy!" No. He's all brat. And by the way, so Herby winks...okay, and is a hippy. (Notice it says he has 'long rooted hair'.) Does that make him a mischief maker?

The catalog description above says Herby 'wears little sandals'. The box doesn't picture him with sandals. I have seen one picture of him with sandals, and that was a doll complete with box. So I guess he did?

  Sandals notwithstanding, Herby came wearing a blue cotton shirt, orange pants, a beaded necklace, and an embroidered...necklace?  

  The Herby we photographed was at an antique mall. He'd been there for over a year when we took the pictures, and his price has remained the same. I don't think most people have ever heard of him, so the demand isn't great. I keep hoping they'll knock his price down.

  You can see lots of detail pictures of the in box Herby HERE.

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

Ideal's 'Honeyball'

  Well, we'll be going to England very soon now! Ken is counting down the days. (Ok, and even the minutes.)

  

We're not excited. We just like to pack...for weeks now.

  I am trying to get on a better sleep schedule so I don't have jet lag when we come over, but my sleep has been so thrown off since I have been having to pick Ken up from work at 3 or so in the morning and then come home and take a shower and try to go to sleep. I tried to sleep between taking Fuzz and picking Ken up last night, only to have Emma call me and wake me up to say, "Who wants to get on this changing my sleep schedule thing I'm going to do, with me?!" I said, "I was doing it, but you woke me up." And then she told me she would pick Ken up, so I could have gone to bed anyway!

  As I told you yesterday, Ivy got her hair cut. When Emma texted us the picture of Ivy's new do I said to Ken, "I wonder if she saved me some hair". I have always saved some hair when the kids have had haircuts. Not only because I'm sentimental, but because it's interesting to see how the colour has changed over the years. Emma's was pale blonde when she was tiny and it's now brown. Fuzzy's seems to be the only one that is relatively unchanged. Anyway, I doubted she would, because I didn't think she would think to, or she'd be embarrassed to ask the beautician to rescue it. But when we got home she met us at the door with a bag of hair. 

The other piece is mine. Ivy gave me a trim a couple of nights ago, and yes, they are the exact same colour.Even Ivy thought it was hers.

She didn't save it all, but she saved me the biggest piece. Aww. Thanks Ivy.
  On other matters, welcome to our newest follower,All4 Barbie. Thanks for joining us!  All4 Barbie has a few blogs, which you can check out by clicking the name in our followers list.
  For the record, this post contains a few photos I borrowed from the internet for reference purposes. I will gladly remove them if I'm asked.
A while back I was finding loads of old dolls at Salvation Army. It's been pretty slow lately, but this summer I did find this girl.

The hair ribbon seems to be original, but the outfit is modern.

I passed her up a few times, but when she was half price I decided to get her. As it turns out, she's a rare doll. She's Ideal's Honeyball.

Honeyball is a weird name. It makes me think of 'Butterball', which in turn makes me think of a big dead, naked turkey.
 

Gross.

But I digress. Honeyball has a vinyl head, and a wired foam rubber body. 

This makes her very poseable, and squishy soft.

 

This blurb appears on her box.

It also makes her dangerous, as she's somewhat edible, as little kids could bite chunks out of her squashy foam body. Kids do that. How do you think my squiggley rubber dog ended up like this?
 

Yes, those are my childhood teeth marks and staples his ear.

(So I bit  my toys. It felt good,ok? That's not nearly as strange as the reason I have this dog. I fell in love with the dark green version my sister brought home from school. 
 

Here's the maker. I can't read it, can you?

He belonged to her friend, and my sewing sister brought him home to sew him a black velvet FUNERAL SUIT! The friend had decided he had died and she was going to bury him! I was horrified! I begged my sister to ask her friend if I could have him instead, but to no avail. After that I tried to find a green one like the dead guy, but all I could find was this slightly smaller orange one.)
Now what was that I said about digressing? 
Posing her also makes her foam wrinkly.

 This particular girl has never been posed very much, so I didn't want to do too much posing with her and wrinkle her now.

 So she did a lot of head posing.

She has a cute little pudgy belly.

And strange looking mold spots on her,uh. You know.

She was produced in 1966.

 I had never heard of her before, but apparently she was popular enough to have been made in a couple of different sets, (At least.)

This is from a 1967 catalog,

 

For a foam rubber doll she sure seems to have taken a lot of baths. Although the version below seems to be made of vinyl instead of foam. By the way, she's the most adorable doll, although I'm not sure if that's official...

Maybe they discovered how edible she was and changed her...

She also had a wardrobe and a puppy!

1968 Sears catalog. The Playroom Case and outfits were sears exclusives.

The above ad doesn't mention the Playroom Case being musical,and the inside is different,but the front looks the same as this  'Musical Play Room'.
 

This orange sun suit seems to be what most of the Honeyball dolls came in.

The Musical Play Room included drawers for her clothes, a room area, and a plastic toy 'record player' that played music when the handle was turned. Pretty neat idea.

I found this one for sale online.

  Honeyball is about 10" tall. Because of the foam she's very light. I have a foam Raggedy Andy I got in answer to my desperate wish for a Raggedy Andy when I was a kid. He has this same arrangement, with the wire armature and soft foam body. (And no, I never bit him... that I recall.) He's super poseabe too, although I was always very wary of posing hm too much, lest he get all mangled like the wire covered foam Pluto I have.Plus he had the same wrinkling problem as Honeyball, even back then.(Both Raggedy Andy and Pluto  are somewhere in my house. When I come across them someday I'll show them to you.) I'm really surprised Honeyball's foam body is in such nice condition. I would have thought the foam would have started to deteriorate,but it seems fine.

She got her hair combed part of the way through her photo session. 

I couldn't get the hair ribbon out, so I did the best I could. The ribbon is attached to a bobby pin and I think it must be stitched in too.
  Just thought I'd show her to you since she's supposed to be rare and a lot of people might not have seen her.