Rare Ideal Pepper outfit: Hyland Fling

  For those of you interested in Ideal's Tammy and family dolls, I thought you might like to see these pictures of Tammy's sister Pepper's outfit Hyland Fling.(Yes, the 'highland' was actually spelled 'hyland'.)
 

 It's a cute dress with matching tam hat. These are the only pieces I had, but it also included red tights, short black boots,a storybook,and a googly eyed dog with a leash.The dog was a weird little wire bodied dog like the ones that used to be sold as car air fresheners when I was a kid. (I still have a few of those.)

Three snaps in the back. If I'm remembering correctly, the hat band is vinyl.

 Wool fabric and a real metal chain and heart.

Gold buttons and plastic-y pocket flaps, but no real pockets underneath.

The white shirt is attached.

  I can't find the year it was produced.
  I don't have it any more, since I agreed to sell it in exchange for keeping the Skooter doll, or whatever it was, that was also in the auction box. I came across the auction pictures recently though, and since the outfit is rare, I though some of you might be interested, or could use these pictures to help identify this outfit if you find one somewhere.

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.

Rebodying a 'Dress Me' body Susie Sad Eyes

  After a freezing cold, rainy day yesterday, today was really quite warm and very sunny.I spent the day  transplanting hosta plants that my neighbor wanted to get rid of. I started transplanting them last spring. I moved part of them, but I never got the other half until today. All together I must have gotten over 100 hostas from her! They should perk up the front of my house where it's too shady for most things to grow.
  A while back I did a week of posts about Big Eye dolls. I showed you a platinum blonde Susie Sad Eyes head that I found in package on a 'dress me' type doll body at Salvation Army.(You can see that original post HERE.) I wanted to rebody her on something with more poseability than the 'dress me' body, with it's unmoving legs. It was only recently that I realized I had a body that was the right scale, and even the right skin tone for the super pale Susie. It's a jointed body from an 8" Mattel Harry Potter doll. I thought you might like to see what Platinum Susie looks like on her new body.

T
This particular Harry body has jointed ankles, as well as knees, hips, shoulder, elbows, and neck. The neck joint also makes the head able to tilt. Some of the Harry Potter dolls don't have the jointed ankles.The shoes are from one of the Mattel Hermione dolls, which have the same or similar body.

Brand new, but she still had a green spot on her nose!

The cute little dog shirt is a Barbie shirt, the shorts belong to a Stacie doll I think. I have no idea who the socks or the jacket belonged to.

In this photo, and the next one, you can see what a perfect match the skin tone of the body is for Susie's head.

The neck hole in her head is a little big for the neck knob on the body, so her head is a bit loose. I put some sticky tac on the neck knob to try to make her head less floppy.

She looks so cute.

I love how her body looks like a real kid's body in this pose.

  If you read the Big Eye Week posts you'll know I love Susie Sad Eyes and Susie Slicker dolls. I'm glad to finally have a body for this head.

A Happy Reunion: One Woman's Search for Her Favourite Childhood Doll

  I received a message in my comments the other week that led to a story I have to share with you. The message was from a lady named Debbie,who had seen my post on  Doll-A-Day 94. 

The star of Doll-A-Day 94 was this red haired girl with freckles, wearing a pretty flowered raincoat.

  The doll was the same as her favourite doll from her childhood. Here's what she wrote:
"I have been looking for this doll for a bizillion years....it was my favourite doll when I was a little girl. Any chance you remember where you found it? Or would you be willing to part with it? Please let me know. Thanks so much!!!!"
  I asked the lady to send me her email address and we would discuss the matter in private. She did, and we have exchanged several emails. I have several dolls with similar faces and bright orange hair from my own childhood. That and the pretty rain coat are what attracted me to 'her' doll. I wondered if it was the face that was the same as her old doll,or did hers actually have the raincoat too. She was pretty sure this was the same as her doll, raincoat and all.:
  "It's funny you say that you have some other dolls very similar with bright orange hair. My old doll did have bright orange hair but the same or a similar face to this one.  I then thought maybe I remembered the hair wrong,  lol. I had named her Cindy but my Mom thought maybe she was already called Cindy when she got her for me.   I have been looking for her for many many years but am going by memory as I don't have any pictures of her.  :( "

  I had described the raincoat girl as having 'strawberry blonde' hair. I sent her some pictures of other dolls with a similar face and bright orange hair in case one was closer to her old doll. She was still pretty sure it was the same doll though.
 "I think I could be remembering Cindy's hair being brighter but in reality I think it's like the flowered raincoat doll. I got the doll when I was very wee so not sure what outfit she originally came in and then one day I decided in my youthful non-wisdom to sell her at a garage sale. I've been searching practically my whole adult life for her. And this is the closet I've been ever able to find!" (It's just as I always say: Beware all you teens who can't wait to sell your childhood loves for a dollar here and there! Someday you may regret it!)_
  I had another look at raincoat girl's hair, and it was a brighter orange than I thought. So yay! Even closer!

  I was curious as to how she finally managed to spot my pictures and find 'her' doll after all these years. Here's what she said:
 Basically I have been googling "red or orange hair dolls 1960s" and it brought up a bunch of pictures as well as sites.  I was looking through the pictures and came across the doll and then clicked and found your website. Very excited as it was the doll I remembered.  When I showed my brother the picture he immediately remembered my doll Cindy.  It was fantastic.  I have spent many years going antiquing and to doll shows and not finding anything close to what I remembered about my doll. Until now.

Wow! I am thrilled to be able to reunite her with her 'lost love'!  "Cindy's" new owner is pretty thrilled too.:
 "This is sooooo exciting.  I can't wait to see my pretty doll again in person!"

   Today I got an email from Debbie saying 'Cindy' had arrived home at last.

We got the doll today. Yay!!! I'm so happy to have her here. Thanks so very much again. I can't 

thank you enough for reuniting me with "Cindy".

She even sent me a picture of the two of them, together again:

   What a wonderful story! I'm so happy I got to be a part of it!