I have been trying not to buy too many dolls lately (which is in itself extremely difficult and i'm not doing great, at all. You could in fact say that i'm failing miserably.) but I have been scratching that itch by buying doll clothes.
You see, I have a goal. I am trying to obtain an example of every Sindy outfit made during the Pedigree years (1963-1986) and it's an interesting project.
what I have found the most surprising, is how common some outfits are vs others and which eras are so much more represented. The very early 60s stuff is quite easy to find while the late 60s stuff tends to be a lot rarer and I can't quite figure out why that is.
Anyway, this means buying big bundles for a handful of pieces to complete sets or get new bits I didn't already have. It means buying tlc lots to repair. it means a lot of doll clothes to identify and enjoy.
And inevitably, I end up with non Sindy stuff that I like enough to keep for other dolls.
So let's get into this!
So this is the ebay listing photo for bundle 1 (I'm actually going in reverse order from most recent to older because whatever) and it's not a terrible picture, it shows all the stuff. Some bundles they just shove it in a pile and go "here ya go" and it's a bit of a mystery box. I have had a few of those too lol.
So with this bundle what caught my eye were the vintage Sindy bits. I recognise the brown duffle coat and the houndstooth cape. I also see a pair of 80s peddlepushers in red, a blue jumper with Sindy written on it, a brown jacket that I know comes from a 70s fashion pack, a floral Sindy blouse from the 70s and a blue and red dress I know belongs to Tammy's sister Pepper. We also have Sindy's scooter/moped and a random clone doll but those weren't a factor in my bidding.
I also picked up this from Vinted at the same time:
Which has a lot of Sindy stuff in it.
They arrived at the same time and I opened both to photograph.... and forgot what came in which bundle. Whoops.
So what's here?
Bundle 1 - This piece surprised me. It's beautifully made and i couldn't initially work out what it was til I did a lot of searching. It hasn't got any labels but it appears to be Skipper's little romper that she would wear under a skirt. It's unusual to get Barbie stuff from the 60s and 70s here in the UK, Barbie wasn't sold over here until some time in the mid to late 70s I think. I can't find any accurate info on this, but I do know her very early dolls weren't sold in the UK and as a result, the really old ones you find over here tend to have been imported by collectors.
Bundle 1 - This is vintage Sindy, though at some point the lace trim at the bottom has been removed and a new hem added. I wonder if the lace tore or something. it's a purposely wide fitting garment which swamps modern fashion dolls and is quite loose even on a 60s Sindy, but that was just the look of the time. Tammy had an identical outfit, or rather, it seems Sindy took her cousin's outfit and added it to her wardrobe. What I find more surprising is that Sindy didn't use more of Tammy's fashions for her initial release.
Bundle 2 - This looks Ken sized and it's a bright yellow shell suit made of that crinkly nylon stuff. I couldn't id it unfortunately.
Bundle 1- This could very well be home made. It's a bit big on a modern doll so i suspect was made for a larger 60s girl. It's a cute little dress though and only needed a small repair to the Borderie Anglaise at the front.
Bundle 2 - I didn't recognise this piece at all. 1986 Sindy isn't an area I know much about and it's not overly well documented anyway. It was the last year of Pedigree's production before Hasbro took over and a lot of it was reused fashions from previous years. They did however produce a handful of new pieces. This would have had a little lacey slip blouse thing too which I might actually have a couple of. I got a pair of them in a bundle a while back and thought they were really pretty, never occurred to me they were 1: Sindy and 2: belonged with a sleepwear set.
I'll have to reunite these pieces.
Bundle 1 - Unfortunately this jacket is missing a button. It's beautifully made and fully lined with proper button holes. I believe it was made for Penny Brite which means it was made at some point in the 60s and would have originally had a little matching hat. Penny was a smaller doll, standing only around 8 inches tall so this jacket would be a strange length on a Barbie but it's adorable. I've never been a big fan of Penny herself, she's a young child doll with a very open mouth smile, two things that generally don't appeal to me at all, but she had some really gorgeous outfit pieces.
Bundle 1 - Another child doll, this dress is from Tammy's little sister Pepper. Pepper is the same size as Sindy's sister Patch, though they look quite different. Pepper is usually blonde while Patch is always a brunette. Pepper is also slightly slimmer, which always fascinated me because why didn't Pedigree just use the Pepper molds like they did with Tammy and Sindy?
Anyway, this dress will fit Patch too and it's adorable. I have a Pepper and a Patch somewhere in my storage boxes, I don't recall what they're wearing though.
Bundle 1 - Deluxe Reading, who made Penny Brite, also made Suzy. Suzy is a bit of a weird one because they had multiple different scales of doll called Suzy for some reason. Their small baby one was Suzy Cute. I've had some of her accessories before and I think I once had a doll of her, but she's a baby doll so definitely not my taste at all. like Penny, she had some cool little outfits though. This coat needed quite a large repair at the collar and would have originally had fluffy fur trim which has, over the years, felted. Though personally I think I prefer it felted as it makes it less Santa-like.
The jacket is a little too short for a standard fashion doll, but I suspect it'll fit Pepper/Patch fairly well as they're so much shorter.
Bundle 2 - I've often wondered why they stopped making lingerie for dolls. Granted modern women tend not to wear petticoats and slips like this much anymore, but it still seems a curious omission that was so so common even into the early 90s and then just... stopped.
This skirt needs an iron I think. It would have originally come with a bra, two pairs of underpants and a little romper/teddy sort of thing all in matching purple with lace trim.
Now, I admit, I am not often inclined to dress my dolls in undergarments like this, just like I tend not to display them in sleep wear, but I do appreciate the realism of having these, especially the little dolly bras because it feels like such a bloody normal garment for a woman to have you know?
Bundle 2 - My label is wrong, this was actually released in 2013. But it's a curiously modern addition when so much of the second bundle is 70s and 80s stuff. There's just random 2010s bits sprinkled in there. I always find that interesting.
Anyway, this is a cute fashion pack. It's from the era of half print dresses though, but we're prior to the "print all the details on too" stage of Mattels' cheapness so we have some nice trims and ruffles and different textures and materials being used. I love the check top and I feel like the other pieces would look great with the right accessories.
Bundle 2 - And we're back to the 80s. This Sindy mix and match skirt is really detailed. Sadly the popper has bent so it won't fasten, I think i'll have to replace it. The pockets at the front aren't working pockets but they sell the illusion well.
And then on the back there's two real pockets. How many doll clothes do you know of that have detail on the back like this? And see, this is why I love Sindy clothes. Vintage doll clothes in general tend to have a level of realism you simply don't get in modern stuff and it delights me to see. I love realistic clothing in teensy tiny scale.
Bundle 2 - Another Sindy piece. This would have come with a pair of light blue knee length shorts. it's a very very versatile piece and quite timeless too.
Amusingly, Google Lens is convinced this piece is for a human baby. I knew it wasn't, but I couldn't remember the year so I had to trawl the Sindy museum archive to find it. i'd love the rest of this outfit because it's really cute.
The blouse was in bundle 1, the dress in bundle 2. By some fluke they're from the same year. The Mix and Match blouse is gorgeous, I love the fabric. There were a few variations of this blouse but this one is delightfully 70s with those big flowers.
The dress has, like many of these Weekender pieces, faded a bit over the years. The blue seems to be quite prone to this while the red and white remains quite vibrant. I've had a few of the skirts that are made from the same material and were released as mix and match pieces and all of them have the exact same aging where the blue fades and goes kinda patchy. Weird huh?
What is nice to know about this dress and the skirts that match it are they do appear to be colour fast. I've soaked a few filthy ones now and had no colour run so don't be afraid to wash them gently. The white can look quite grubby otherwise.
Bundle 2 - This dress is SO common to find. It was sold on the American release Sindy but also sold in the UK as a fashion pack. The Sindy Museum is quite scathing about this dress, calling it ugly but I actually quite like it. The pattern is very country cottage with a dark blue background and a cream lace trim.
This particular version feels shorter than normal, but the hem looks normal so hmmm. it was never a full length dress anyway, it only comes to below the knee but something feels "off" about this particular example. I'll have to dig out my other one and see if i'm just misremembering.
Bundle 2 - More mid 2000s. This came with a pair of shimmery shorts but I didn't photograph them because I already own them and so the duplicate went straight into my "rehome" bag.
It's a nice halterneck top which I think would look amazing with jeans.
Fashion Fever and Fashion Avenue were such damn good lines for clothing. I wish Mattel would revive that level of quality. *sigh*
Bundle 1 - one of Sindy's original debut outfits, the duffle coat is iconic. For some reason I didn't already own one though. This one is missing one toggle, which is a bit annoying but I suspect once it's on a doll you'd never notice. I may be able to find a replacement at some point. Like all of the 60s stuff, it's very thick and bulky and kinda swamps the doll it was designed for. But I adore it for the attention to detail. Those big working pockets on the front, the toggles on the sleeves, the warm wool material. It's a wonderful thing.
Bundle 1 - The cape has a little stain on it which I haven't tried to remove yet. I already own one of these. They seem to have been quite popular because you see them a lot. It has little buttons on the front but fastens with poppers and there are two little sleeve holes at the sides. It's very very 60s.
Bundle 1 - This pink check blouse came originally with a pair of pink dungarees which I sadly do not have. It is, like most Sindy shirts, a very versatile piece that can be paired with a lot of things and look great.
Bundle 1 - This is one outfit i've never actually seen in real life. I always assumed the jacket was textured or at least some sort of thick plasticky material because of how it photographs, but it turns out it's actually made of quite fragile, very thin polyester with a stripe pattern. It's smooth and shiny and satiny but it's also extremely delicate. This one had a completely shredded seam where the material had torn and disintergrated so I had to sew a new seam along the side a little further in that originally. It looks fine on the doll though. it also needs to be pressed to get that kink out of the bottom.
It has little gold buttons and quite delightfully, I actually have the tan bellbottoms that went with it already in my collection. They are, like the jacket, very thin and fragile feeling. Which is unusual for Sindy stuff, usually it's pretty tough.
Another mix of items from both bundles. These are all from the 70s and 80s. The two identical tops I already have a version of and I have like three pairs of these peddlepushers but all of them have issues. I might be able to cobble together one decent pair from them all though lol.
The red flared trousers I KNOW are Sindy, I just can't quite pinpoint which outfit they're from. Likewise the other red trousers look like Sindy in their construction but don't match anything in the catalogue so i'm not sure. There's a pair of white trousers that are very similar with the waist band and pleats at the front but they're a bit shorter and fasten with velcro instead of a popper. Pedigree almost exclusively used poppers on their clothes, velcro is very rare to see and generally is only used on their tops when it is used. So I don't think the white ones are Pedigree.
The blue top needed a repair at the neck seam and on the shoulder, i'm pleased to report that it's almost as good as new now. It would have come with some jodpur. I might have them, I have a fair few random pieces of Sindy riding stuff that I never use because I think they're fucking ugly and I was never very keen on horses in the first place. Still, as a jumper this top will be great. it screams 80s to me.
There were also a lot of random bits I couldn't id. This top for example, which is really small and fits Bratz. Initially I thought maybe it was home made but the way the velcro is attached as a very very thin strip along the edge (allowing the garment to be worn either way around and look fine) screams factory to me.
The trousers I did identify. Again, they fit Bratz pretty well but they're actually from a 70s doll made by Bradgate called Silky. Her fashions turn up quite regularly actually, I keep stumbling upon them.
The Barbie sized jeans are either Fashion Fever or My Scene, they scream early 2000s.
The shirt might be home made but I feel like it's far more likely it's just a cheaper brand. I feel like the buttons need redoing because they're too close together and it looks weird.
Bundle 1 - This 70s rainbow thing needed a lot of repair, it was very very damaged but the fabric is so fabulously of the era. I have no idea what doll its for though. I suspect something small and wide, like Suzy Cute.
Bundle 1 - I recognise this skirt, which makes the fact I can't identify it all the more frustrating. It's also Bratz sized, or Mary Quant Daisy... or Silky... It's made of thick woven material and the pattern is just amazing, I love it so much.
This is kinda Barbie sized but clearly for a doll with a smaller bust than Barbie. But no idea who. It's a cute dress, I really like the material.
Bundle 2 - Two more Barbie dresses from the 2010s, probably. I couldn't identify them beyond them being Barbie.
Bundle 1 - This set is adorable! The trousers had tears on both legs on the side opposite the seam, so I ended up turning over the hem and shortening them to hide the damage.
I have no idea who's clothing this is. The top is too small for Barbie, it doesn't quite fasten. But the trousers fit well. I feel like this was some budget pak release but for what doll line I cannot say. But it's cute and I like it.
Bundle 2 - More Barbie stuff. Also likely from the 2000s -2010s. The tie dye top and those purple shorts are especially nice and the pink flares absolutely scream 2000s fashion trends to me.
Bundle 1 - I think the purple check underpants and the blue lacy thing are both actually Suzy Cute. It feels a bit wrong for the lacy thing to belong to her, but it does look rather a lot like her default outfit, just missing the little trim on the front.
(photo from facebook)
As for the orange skirt, it looks a lot like several Sindy skirts but she never had any in orange. So it's probably from a similar but more budget friendly line.
Bundle 2 - This is a nice coat too. It's made of some sort of fleecy felty feeling material and it fits Barbie/Sindy. it's not Sindy though, i'm fairly sure of that. Could be Barbie? Could be something else. I don't know.
Bundle 1 - Oh god this bloody wedding dress is so familiar. I swear I had it as a kid but also, that i've had something very much like it multiple times in bundles.
It has velcro on the back which is a pain in the arse because it snags on all the lace constantly.
I've never much cared for doll scale wedding dresses. The only wedding dress I think i'd ever display on a doll would be if I could get a scale version of my own dress, that would be awesome.
Bundle 1 - A stained teensy tiny Rockflowers outfit. I soaked this overnight and it looks like that got quite a lot of the staining, so yay. It's missing the hook on the back to fasten it though, i'll have to figure out a fix there.
Now what's quite serendipitous here is that I actually recently purchased a naked Rockflowers Lilac doll and was having a hell of a time finding clothes for such a tiny doll (she's about Pippa/Dawn sized). So getting one of the outfits from the line (I believe this jumpsuit belonged to Heather) is just delightful. Once its dry i'll see about getting Lilac dressed up. She's currently wearing some Barbie Extra Littles stuff.
Which gives you some idea of how tiny she is.
Another mixture of bits.
The spotted pants belong to Barbie I think, and they're cute.
The tennis dress, least... I assume it's a tennis dress, is very crumpled and needs pressing. It's also quite small, too small for a Barbie at least but too big for a Bratz. So hmm.
Likewise the little purple peplum thing is too small for Barbie and too big for Bratz.
The oversized jumper is made from a felty fleecy material that's very thin and very fragile. I repaired a hole at the back but it's not a garment that feels like it was really designed for long term play. As a result I suspect it's from a cheap doll. It is however quite a nice shape as a big slouchy jumper, very in keeping with the 80s aesthetic. It might actually be from a boy doll but Sindy will probably steal it anyway.
Bundle 1 - Barbie sized leather/vinyl waistcoat. this thing is awesome. it's stiff and thick as all hell but it's fabulously retro.
Bundle 1 - This is too big for Barbie, but it's also quite strangely shaped if you fasten the poppers on the back. I think it was made for a doll with quite a large bust going by the shape, but a narrow neck. Hmm. Porcelain doll perhaps? The style looks maybe Romanian? I'm not totally sure. it could just be a 70s style "peasant blouse". I suspect it may fit some 1/4 scale dolls but I couldn't get the quite tight sleeves over the hands.
This is Ken sized, but like.. a slim ken? Interestingly, this shirt has poppers on the cuffs as well as down the front, which means you can actually get it ON the doll. It could be home made, but it could also be budget factory made. It's machine stitched but not overlocked. It needs a few more buttons down the front.
A small yellow stripey top, a little satin feeling purse in bright red and a denim hat who's elastic has failed. A random assortment for sure.
the top I have no idea. It doesn't seem to be Barbie, it's too boxy shaped for her rather ample bosom and too short.
The purse looks modern. It opens and is partially lined, but it fastens with a popper so hmmm.
The hat I am certain is for a Sindy-like doll because it's too big for a Barbie, but it's quite shallow so it fits any doll a bit strange. It might just be because the elastic has perished, but it's a strange fitting hat. It fits more like a flatcap than a cap, the brim sticks straight out in line with the top of the hat rather than there being a peak. But I don't know, it's very odd.
All these went straight into my "rehome" pile. The rainbow half print Barbie dress is fine, but it's jut a bit boring. It's one of those generic tube dresses with only half print and a plain back, they made hundreds of variations of this same dress shape and I just can't be bothered with them.
The rustly nylon princess skirts can fuck right off. They sit bad, they feel bad, just nope.
I already own the High School Musical shorts, the sparkly fashion fever shorts and the strange fashionistas skirt with the sewn on belt.
there's also a tutu which probably came from a Barbie or something.
and Simba's Ariel tail and bra. The bra is the most interesting thing i think, I don't see them very often while I see the tails all the bloody time.
The clone that came with bundle 1 is a curious one. I had assumed she was a generic Barbie clone but she actually looks more like Tressy. Even her hair curls the same way Tressy's does, down to that random straighter chunk at the front that sticks out. Huh...
No growing mechanism and her neck attachment is strange but if she was a copy of tressy, they'd have had to cut the neck piece off the head to attach it to this body.
The head has no markings and some strange molding defects at the hairline but her hair is actually really thickly rooted and pretty decent quality. It's dry because she's like 60 years old, but it's fairly soft and on par with a real Tressy or Sindy's hair quality.
Her body however is hollow plastic. It's not the really awful blown plastic with the massive chunks of flash that deforms as soon as you put pressure on it, but it's definitely a cheaper body with some obvious seam lines.
Her body looks a bit like Tressy's too, but the waist is wider, the boobs pointier and she's shorter.
She's marked "t.t" on her back but I can't find anything about them online.
I asked the doll clone people because they know their shit and someone found this from a book. Seems she was sold in Germany under the name Gaby and nameless in France. But no further info on what TT stands for. Wierd.
She got this awesome 60s felt outfit. Sadly it has some colour bleed on the dress but it's still freaking cool.
I touched up her paint a bit to make her a little more refined. i find clones often have crazy eyes with wonky eye shines and it bothers me. I didn't actually do a lot. I painted in some lash lines at the top and bottom, added a black line around her iris and extended the pupil on one eye to even them out, then repainted the eye shines so they were a little more even. In photos her eyes look a lot darker but they aren't really, I didn't touch her eyeshadow at all. I did fill out her lips because it bothered me how underpainted they were. Tressy herself does a similar thing and I like to fill those in too. I think it softens the expression a little.
Here she is alongside some legitimate Tressy dolls. She's a little shorter and her feet are smaller, allowing her to wear Barbie shoes which legitimate Tressy dolls cannot achieve. However her hands are very much like Tressy's hands only strangely, a little wider.
She has quite a different shaped butt too (lol) so her body is definitely not a tressy copy, but i'd say it's quite inspired by the shape. It looks more like a Tressy shape than it does Barbie, she's quite curvy.
So, the other bundles I genuinely don't remember what came in what, so i'm just gonna do them all together in one big glut.
Or at least the interesting bits.
80s Sindy jackets. I have Superstar Sindy's full outfit somewhere, she never wears it because it's kinda ugly.
I have two of these purple jumpers. And the belt is for Superstar's outfit but the popper is damaged so i'll have to fix that.
I have two of these purple jumpers. They came with the pink trousers, it's a pretty um... colourful 80s ensemble lol.
The green dress is a duplicate as well. It came with silver fishnets but they're quite ill fitting and out of scale unfortunately.
I have two of these capes too.
The yellow top should have a little apple decal on it. If you look close you can see where it was. I wonder if I could find a similar patch that I could sew or glue in place.
The 60s quilted jacket is the best condition one i've had and it's not brilliant. I've had a fair few but the quilting stitches fail and the fur lining tends to come off. It's a pity really. This one I can probably save by just reinforcing the loose threads on the quilting. I don't know if this is the original fur, pedigree made a lot of variations of their clothing over the years according to what they could source so it wouldn't be out of the question for this to be how it came.
I don't know who these belong to but they're so soft. Both the nightee and the dressing gown are see through and made of really light material that's extremely pleasant to touch.
Sindy got a fair few sports jackets like this one.
The striped knit dress would have come with red knitted tights underneath but I don't have them. I have some knitted leggings that are close though, and once you put the boots on you'd never know they didn't have feet.
I think it's fun when companies reuse fabrics for different garments. Both of these are Barbie. One is a swimsuit coverall, the other is a tie on skirt.
Oh hey, it's Tammy's original outfit.
This fur trimmed cord coat is unmarked and it's absolutely gorgeous. Nicely made too. Now apparently it was made by Shillman, who made a lot of clone dolls. This particular line was called "Mini Mod"
It looks like it would have had a belt originally.
Isn't it sad to think that even the clones back in the 70s had better clothes than Modern Barbies do today?
(I did a price conversion and I THINK at £1:49 usd this was about $6 or what, like less than a fiver? in today's money. Maddie herself is listed for $4 in 1981 which would be about $15 while a basic swimsuit Barbie would have set you back around $5 with a more detailed one like Pretty N Pink being $8.)
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| Ebay listing photo |
I've said it before and i'll say it again, tlc bundles bring me much joy. I honestly get more enjoyment out of fixing very very broken dolls than I do from deboxing something brand new and perfect.
This particular bundle caught my eye on Ebay. I've been wanting another Tammy for a while but she's hard to find over here and tends to sell for quite a lot when she does appear.
My first Tammy came all the way from the US a good 15 or so years ago and she's beautiful, but since then i've craved another, especially a darker haired one who seem to be a lot rarer than the blondes.
Tammy came with a few hair colours. Platinum blonde, honey blonde, dark blonde, light brown, dark brown and auburn brown.
yeah... what? The various blondes are the most common that i've seen.
Anyway, this bundle was 6 broken dolls and one extra head. I snapped it up for an absolute steal.
So my first task was to get the heads back on the dolls. Recapitation if you will.
One Tammy had her original ring piece but it had torn away from her neck and needed regluing. I tried so many times to get it to stay glued, I was starting to give up home but it finally held enough for me to shove the head back into the body.
It's fragile though.
the other Tammy had lost her ring so I had to construct something for her. People online have used silicone for sealing bathroom tiles and stuff to construct a new piece but I didn't have that so I used my hot glue gun. My logic was that hot glue is squishy even when dry, so should flex like the original vinyl so I could get it INTO her body. And this did work, but I had to ram the plug into the hollow inside her neck, glue the shit out of it so it wouldn't come out and then glue more. I wanted her to still be able to move her head so I had to get the connection just so.
The third standard Tammy was all in one piece. She was sold as having "short thin hair" and yes, that is technically true but I was genuinely expecting cut pieces and bald patches. She has neither of those, her hair is just short. And having looked at a lot of Tammy photos trying to work this out, it looks like some dolls do have shorter hair.
hmmm.
there's not much info on Tammy out there unfortunately but I would predict this girl may be a "transitional" Tammy from just before they moved over to the "grown up" style. I say this because Grown Up Tammy (the doll with the more Barbie-like body in this image. That's Misty's body, not hers though) had a very short "pageboy" hair style that was fashionable at the time (1965). Short haired Tammy's hair looks like an attempt at a similar style.
of course it's not out of the question that someone cut it, but it's pretty even and has a soft curl to it that frames her face, kids aren't usually very good at haircuts.
All three girls are slightly different to one another, and I don't just mean their hair colours.
#6 as she was labelled in her ebay listing photo has blonde hair in the typical Tammy curly style. it's quite dry so i'm still pondering how to get it to look a bit nicer.
Her eyes are quite wide and her eyebrows quite arched which makes her look a bit pissed off.
#1 has a dark blonde hair colour. It's a little shorter than #6 but the same sort of style. Her eyes have a thicker lash line at the top which gives her a softer expression. Her face is slightly narrower too.
#4 is a brunette, though her hair is still a bit honey toned rather than a true brown. Her hair is very very short and styled to curl toward her face on both sides. Like the other Tammy dolls her fringe is rooted as two thick pieces that curl toward one another and leave a gap in the middle. I'm trying to tame this down to a solid fringe because I think it looks nicer with this style.
Her head is smaller than the other two and she looks, weirdly enough, more like Sindy than Tammy. But she's marked Ideal and Tammy on her head and back.
Now Tammy and Sindy do use the same molds, but they're distinguished by the way the heads are painted and the hair style. so this girl is interesting in that she almost straddles the line between both. Her hair style is closer to Sindy's and her eye shape too but she has the characteristic heavy blush of Tammy and the greyish eyes instead of blue.
Here is my first Tammy and a first Sindy. Sindy tends to have red lips, more spidery lashes, blue eyes, thinner brows and much rounder eyes.
So #4 feels like the missing link. She's a bit Sindy, a bit Tammy. It's very interesting.
What's also interesting is that my first Tammy has red lips too. it never occurred to me that this wasn't typical. But all three of these new girls have coral lips.
Sadly, as I said, there's not really much information about Tammy out there. She was made from 1962 to 1966 and had a few variations over that time. Some have hollow legs, some have wired legs.
I did manage to find a copy of a book by Cindy Sabulis which has been preserved on the internet archive library, but it doesn't tell me a lot beyond the information that tammy came with a reddish brown hair colour that was called "Tosca" (what is the deal with doll companies in the 60s using random words instead of "red"? Sindy's red hair is called "titan")
All of my four Tammys are "standard" tammys as far as I can tell. "pos'n" Tammy had a braided bun on the top of her head.
#6 has squishy arms which the other two new girls don't have. They bend easily but as they have no wire inside, they don't hold. They all have hollow unbending legs.
While they all have the same markings on the back of their heads (Ideal Toy Corp BS 12) they have different numbers on their upper backs.
#6 with her squishy arms is marked 4 under the usual markings.
#1is marked 2
#4 is marked 1
I couldn't tell you any difference between body 1 and 2 though.
The book doesn't explain what the numbers mean either, so hmm. No idea.
Sadly I learned nothing much. But it is nice to know that a long out of print reference book has been preserved online.
Anyway, the next dolls to work on were the Peppers. Pepper is Tammy's little sister and both these girls needed some major help.
#3 for some reason was in pieces, which was a very easy fix. The squishy vinyl rams back into the sockets with a bit of force or some heat. I elected to just shove because I couldn't be bothered boiling the kettle but eh.
However, her biggest issue is that she's lost a whole foot. Poor thing!
I pondered whether to just amputate the messy frayed up plastic but in the end I decided instead to form a stump for her out of hot glue so it would be bulky enough to fit into a shoe at least. I figured once she had shoes on you'd never notice.
7 on the other hand had bad staining to the side of her face that looked like bruising. Probably dye transfer. She was also missing a large amount of her paint.
Notice how they have very different body shapes? #3 is a standard Pepper while #7 is a later one from 65, she would have been designed to go with the grown up Tammy doll so she's slimmer and a little taller and like grown up Tammy, her head and neck are no longer one piece.
#3 was a pretty straightforward fix. I gave her some socks which are a bit long and tucked the excess under her foot so these Sindy sized sneakers would stay on. Works a treat, she can stand unaided and everything.
She got the original Pepper dress from the earlier clothing bundle and the Susy Sweet jacket which I think suits her well.
Her paint is in pretty bad condition. She's missing chunks from her lips, most of her eye and pretty much the entire eyebrow.
I reblushed her and gave her back her freckles. No my paint work isn't as neat as her original paint, but it's better than it was. She looks complete now.
I gave her a small top from the earlier clothing bundle and a rainbow high dress which is maybe a teensy bit too tight but I thought looked really cute.
Pepper is an awkward size for me as I don't have that many pieces of clothing for 9 inch dolls and what I do have tends to be for much much slimmer dolls.
She stole some Sindy sneakers which are a little big.
So that's 5 dolls rescued after only 2 days work. Not bad I think.
Misty reclaimed her body (weirdly enough, Grown up Tammy has a different body to her friend Misty, which is a curious decision on Ideal's part. They could have saved money having them share a sculpt. Go figure)
Misty has a fabulously smug face but sadly she's lost her hair. I'll need to reroot her but I can't quite stomach it right now. I'd have to pull all that stubble out and doing that always really hurts my hands because my joints suck. It does however mean I could give her a hair colour other than blonde. Now listen, I have nothing against blondes, I just find it really boring that almost all dolls are blonde so when I have the chance, i'll always pick a different shade.
I wonder if a nice auburn brown might look nice with those green eyes.
she needs a little touch up on one eye, there's a paint error.
She's also missing one finger, which i'll need to rebuild but i'm out of milliput and nail acrylic, my two go tos for such work. (I think in her case milliput will be best as it's a whole finger rather than just the tip)
Grown up Tammy got shoved onto a random clone body. I tried her on a Barbie-like body but her neck piece is too fat and it looks strange. This clone body fits well but the colour is completely wrong. Still, i'm not sure I care enough to reject it outright. A body is a body after all.
Like Misty, Tammy needs a reroot but unlike Misty, she does still have some of her original hair at a length that might be saveable. I'm pondering if I could get away with simply over rooting this head so the short cut pieces are just incorperated into the rest, it would save me some time and of course, the awful that is pulling the hair out. But i'd have to find a matching hair colour for her to make it as seamless as possible. Just pulling it out and starting again would be easier on that front, but nghhh... my fingers!
anyway, both are going in my "projects to do later" box for now. I can't face it right now, it may be a while before I can. or perhaps at some point i'll come into some cash and pay someone else to just do it all for me.
But all in all, I think I did pretty well.
i'm very happy with my new girls. I just need to find somewhere to display them.
My other Barbie You create dolls got bodies too. This one is the rainbow dress wheelchair doll's body which is a smidge more saturated in colour but works well enough for me.
I also did an Aliexpress order and picked up this adorable Licca-chan head. I really liked the short bob and the red colour. It's actually a somewhat unusual tone that doesn't photograph that well. It's red red but it's also slightly desaturated which gives it a slight pinkish cast to it. It's hard to explain. It isn't the auburn brown tone it looks in my picture though.
But it's also not quite as red as the aliexpress images.
Her body is one of those Azone copies Ali sells for Blythe knockoffs. I picked it up at the last doll meet and figured i'd find a head for it eventually.
I like the combo. It's a more mature body than Licca usually has but I hid some of the curves with a baggy top.
Her boots are also aliexpress, I think they're monster high? They're cute boots and they fit this body really well and give her a stable base so she can stand unaided.
and with that... I think that's enough for now.
I've got more pictures to edit and a rant incoming about overpackaging but that shall have to wait til next time.
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