The Collection - pt 3 - Sindy and friends

There are a fair few boxes in the wardrobe that look like this when you open them. No rhyme or reason, not entirely dolls. Just random STUFF put away wherever.

This particular box is labelled:

Which I suppose is one way to put it.

I've removed the few dolls and relabelled it as "husband's stuff" because 90% of it IS.

but this is a good representation of how messy my doll collection actually IS right now.

the boxes i'm going through now are MOSTLY Sindy, but not entirely.

so this is boxes like..I dunno
I've already lost count omg.

These are the only dolls in that box.

2 Sindy dolls, a Sindy friend named Mark, A Susy and a Simba "Fashion Model".

Yes, RANDOM.

This is Jodie, one of my older Sindy dolls. She came to me with utterly mangled hair so I gave her the style of makeover I gave my inherited mangled dolls as a kid. See, my cousin liked to hack all her barbie's hair off for some reason, because she was a horrible child or something. My sister on the other hand kept her dolls beautifully intact. I inherited dolls from both my cousin and my sister and it was like night and day. My Sister's dolls were all perfect, with long smooth hair and their outfits all pristine. Like me my sister was raised to treat toys with respect of you lose them and don't get replacements. My mother in fact regularly just threw out broken toys and I remember the tears. They weren't even things broken intentionally, they'd just reached the end of their life span and ceased to function. Clockwork or windups who's windup function failed, bath toys too full of mold and ick to salvage, lego the cat pooped on (yeah that happened, ew) it was thrown away.
And I would grieve because I loved those damn things and was sentimental about them.

I remember begging my father to repair toys that broke before mum found out so she wouldn't throw them away. Which makes her sound like a monster but I don't actually think she would have if it was an accident, least I hope she wouldn't have, but child me was SO SCARED she would.

as a result my sister's and my own toys were played with very well but always put back in their places so they wouldn't get lost or damaged. Certainly neither of us would have ever dreamed of hacking our doll's hair off.

but my cousin? Well, she had like 20 Barbies to my sister's 3 so I suppose she had less value in them. And apparently it's a common thing for kids to do because hacked up dolls are REALLY common to find.
I can just imagine my mother's reaction had either of us done to dolls what my cousin or the little "darling's" who's dolls, like this girl, i rescue, did. She'd have absolutely hit the roof!

Anyway, because I had a big box of dolls my cousin had "made over" and being a very "reuse recycle" kinda kid, I really wanted to make them pretty again. It broke my heart they were so mistreated so I remember getting a razor and shaving one's head so she had a trendy short cut instead of the hacked to bits grossness (i'm not talking like she wanted to change up their look, they were really spitefully and with no clear purpose beyond just being a shit hacked up). I spiked one's hair up with gel.
I made them look "tolerable".

Jodie was done in a similar way. Her hair was hacked to hell, balding in places, uneven, just awful.

I paint dyed it to make it pink, rooted in two long strands at the front with some random hair I had from some other project and spiked the whole lot up with some pva glue.

I keep meaning to redo it properly, like actually rerooting her with a proper mohawk but there's a certain punk charm to how shittily done her hair is and so she remains in my collection like this.

I actually really do like her.

I still wish I understood why kids DO THIS though. Where's the respect?I get wanting to give dolly a new look but there's a distinct difference between cutting the doll's hair into a wonky bob and snipping it into balding chunks and scribbling all over them in pen.

The other Sindy in the box is my "throw everything at this reroot" doll.

She was an experimental reroot that I had a lot of fun with. She has hand rolled dreads made from wool roving, yarn, embroidery floss and ribbons all rooted into her hair to give an effect of cybergoth or raver style dread falls.

It's heavy and thick but a lot of fun to run your fingers through.

I wonder sometimes if I should paint her lips bright purple or something.

Sindy dolls lend themselves to extreme styles really well I think.

and don't worry, this doll was balding and awfully damaged when I started hahah. I only ever reroot dolls with crap hair.

I feel guilty tearing out good hair.

This is a Simba Supermodel doll. I had another of these in an earlier box.

They're kinda like.. a bit Moxie Girl/Bratzish with fully jointed bodies that are a little flimsy feeling.

Then we have Susy. She actually came to me MIB which is rare for me and vintage dolls but she was crazy cheap.

Susy was one of the many European Sindy equivilants.

There were a lot of them. Petra, Suzy, Tanya, Fleur.. the list goes on. Seems just about every country at one point in the 80s and 90s had their own fashion doll who was to them what Sindy is to the UK and what Barbie is to the US.

I find them facinating.

Susy was made by a company called Creation and Distribution (which is one of the most uninventive company names i've ever heard of omg) and she's a pretty dang well made doll. Hefty like most dolls of the era with lovely soft hair and a pretty little face.

Her body is very 90s Barbie with the slightly bent arms and tiny little hoof feet.

Mark was one of Sindy's friends in the late 80s. He was married to her friend Marie and for whatever reason the wedding set they made for Marie and Mark drew inspiration from the wedding of Fergie and Prince Andrew.
I... don't actually know why.

Aside from Marie having red hair too. And it being the "big thing" of 1986.

But that's why Mark is wearing this royal outfit.

He's an unusual looking boy with quite a big and kinda mushy featured head.

lol.

this girl lives in her box loose in the cupboard.

I usually don't buy boxed dolls, she was a gift from my mother and sister and probably cost them a fortune. She didn't come in her original outfit but I actually prefer this outfit anyway. It's cute.

I have the original dress somewhere, I found it in a charity shop lol. It needs an iron, it's very very creased up.

Old doll boxes are interesting though, you can't see the doll at all, just a photo of them on the front. Thankfully the photos tend to be pretty good representations and quality control in terms of faces was pretty good.

Being a mid 70s doll Funtime Sindy is from an era Pedigree actually gave a shit.

Also in her box separately is my Tonner Sindy.

She is a freaking beautiful doll. This is my second one, with actually rooted lashes. The first ones they did just had clumpy wierd glued in lashes and mine, like many others, fell off immediately.

I complained and Tonner actually sent me a replacement.

She's lovely.

I mean she was bloody expensive (like £80?) but she's beautiful.

This one is my "very old doll" box.

All the dolls here are from the early 60s.

Eeep.

These are my 3 Paul dolls (Sindy's surgeon boyfriend).

First release in a suit of the period which as you can see is a bit odd fitting. It's because early dolls used human tailoring and fabrics so have quite bulky seams and working pockets and fasten at the front like real clothes would. Which is cool, but leaves them kinda... a bit ill fitting.

This suit is made of thick wool so yeah... warm.

He's from 1965 as is his outfit. It's not complete, i'm missing his tie (It's a small ribbon), his socks and his handkerchief.

This guy looks kinda hungover lol.

Rooted hair Paul came out a year or so later (Paul was only made for like 3 years, poor guy. He wouldn't get another doll till the late 80s)

Poor guy's hair is really dry and a bit crazy. I need to try to tame it. 

And Mini Paul who for some reason is WAY SMALLER than the others. They made Mini Sindy dolls as well and nobody seems to know WHY.

Their smaller in every dimension meaning regular clothing doesn't fit, regular shoes don't fit and their heads are usually wobbly.

It's really bizarre.

Did Pedigree just screw up their shrinkage and decide to just release them anyway? I dunno.

But mini Paul looks a bit startled. He uses the same mold as the 65 Paul just shrunk right down.

I love that the early Pauls have hazel eyes, it's really unusual.

You can see my two mini sindy dolls here. See they're TINY!

Nancy is my Made in England (MIE) Sindy doll, she's from like 64 sort of time? I think?

Like most vintage dolls her hair is pretty dry but all there.

She's cute.

Her neck is slightly warped so she has a perpetual tilt to her head lol.

Her outfit is vintage as well. The shoes are later.

Ether is a Made in Hong Kong Sindy from 1966. She has MUCH thicker hair and it's also shinier and softer and just generally nicer.

Her outfit is vintage too.

She's in very very good condition. I remember blanching a bit at paying what I paid for her 10 years ago and since then Sindy prices have just gone INSANE so yeah... eugh.That's why I don't have more 60s Sindy dolls, despite loving them.

For some reason the mini sindy dolls they did in two styles. The MIE style and the Hong Kong Style.

this girl is Hong Kong style with the poofier hair.

She has a beautiful face but she's missing some fingers and oh my god her head wobbles SO BADLY.
apparently they were all like this, they're like bobbleheads. Their neck isn't seated correctly into the neck at all and they kinda feel cobbled together from spare parts.

Look at her legs for example

this is 60s Pedigree QC at its finest and precisely why we don't have British manufacture now.

One of her legs is a good cm or 2 longer than the other, and it's not that one has warped, the legs are just totally different legs. Like they took a right leg from one box and a left from another.

this isn't uncommon. 60s and early 70s Sindy dolls often have this problem. They're referred to as "friday night dolls" because the theory is they were just kinda hastily cobbled together to meet quota before the staff called it a week and went to the pub.

NZ Sindys are even worse, they're proper frankendollies because sometimes Pedigree would send the wrong bits and it took 3 months for a boat to get from the UK to NZ with replacements so they just made do with mismatching bits.

Oh pedigree.

I mean we can laugh about it now but yeesh.

This is the other Mini Sindy who actually came in her original outfit.

It's a teeny tiny version of the original 63 "Weekender" outfit. Only TEENY!

She's missing a LOT of fingers. and like her sister, is a bobblehead. Her head wobbles really badly.

Again though, beautiful face.

Both these girls came to me fully aware they had fingers missing (super common with older sindy dolls, they had really soft hands and splayed fingers, they're very fragile) but they were so pretty I couldn't pass them up.

I had tried to repair them but I didn't do a great job. I should have another go at some point.

And this is Tammy. The inspiration for Sindy.

The story goes that back in the early 60s Pedigree was looking at a new toy and stumbled upon Barbie who was taking off in the US and thought "ooo I wonder if that'd work over here". They polled parents well, mothers, but the british mothers HATED Barbie, they thought she looked hard and harsh and unfriendly.
They wanted a softer, sweeter doll and Ideal's Tammy fit the bill perfectly.

So they approached Ideal and made a deal. They could use Tammy's likeness, even her tagline (the doll you love to dress) but they couldn't use her name.

So Pedigree made Sindy, based on this doll.

So Tammy is kinda like.. the cousin of Sindy ultimately.

And she is DAMN pretty.

can't you see the family resemblance?

She's very rare to find in the Uk, in fact this girl I actually got from America where she's not that uncommon. Tammy was only sold for a few years but clearly in enough quantity that she's not that rare in her country of origin. I'd love another, i'm just too cheap to pay the price on ebay. lol.

This girl is immaculate and I love her. She's I think the oldest doll in my collection, having been made in about 1962.
the outfit is a Tammy outfit as well.

MORE sindys! hahah, this lot seem to be almost entirely 80s dolls.

I shoved Jodie and the reroot into this box too you see?

Some Smirky Sindy dolls.

So the first girl in the Jem outfit was bought waaaaay back when I first started collecting Sindy. She is I believe a reroot, though wasn't sold as such. Her hair is too nice to be original.

She's done in the style of the Disco Magic dolls but yeah.. isn't.

The blonde and brunette beside her however, ARE. These are authentic Disco Magic Sindys. Now, Disco Magic was an interesting line because it's pretty much the LAST Sindy doll Pedigree did.
this was the point Pedigree were in trouble, their parent company Line Brother's was going into administration and things weren't really great.
The year before Pedigree had, in a last ditch effort to breathe new life into the flailing Sindy brand, which was struggling against Barbie who'd gained popularity in the UK in the late 70s and become ubiquitous in the 80s, had relaunched with a whole new face sculpt.

the 1986 face sculpt is known by collectors as "Smirky Sindy" because her ducklips make her look like she's smirking.

She wasn't popular and within the year Hasbro had bought Sindy and that was the end of that.

But the Disco Magic dolls, so, they are... really quite awfully made. Their bodies are okay as are their faces but they used really cheap hair for them so over the 30 years it's turned to wire wool. I've never seen one with hair that isn't just wretched and I suspect it was crap out of box.
their outfits too don't seem to have been made great and are made from fabrics which were probably super fashionable but just don't stand the test of time at all. Like shiny plasticky shit.

finding one in their original clothes is VERY difficult. Finding one with hair that isn't shit? Also really difficult.

They did 3. A blonde, a brunette and a redhead all with a pink flash at the front.

I've never found a redhead with hair that isn't horrendeous going for a price i'm willing to pay. They are not common at all. I don't think they sold that well to be honest.

My brunette is wearing a reproduction of her original outfit. She would have originally worn a gold and black stretch jumpsuit with a red jacket shirt thing over the top with huuuge lapels, held closed with a thick black fabric belt with printed on buckle.

The blonde came in a silver long dress with one long sleeve and one sleeveless, very 80s. And a huuuuge freaking bow in her hair.

The redhead came in a blue jumpsuit with a pink skirt over the top with sparkly shimmery plasticky sleeves and such.

It's worth noting that 86 is ALSO the year Jem was released and Barbie and the rockers, so this line was VERY MUCH trying to catch a trend and was probably rushed.

Finally I have 2 blonde Smirky sindys. One is a basic bodied one who uses a whole new body, unique to the Smirky sindys. It's sort of athletic with defined abs and a very flat stomach and very solid with solid unbending legs.

The other one uses the standard Pedigree body with the bendy legs.

They did ones of the standard ballerina body as well.

Almost ALL Smirky Sindy dolls are blonde. White blonde at that. They use a hair fibre that again, is kinda unique to the Smirkies. It's very thin, almost cottonwoolish in how soft and flyaway it is. And it's WHITE. A few have kinda silvery blonde as well. It's a weird fiber and so whispy.
I've seen one with the yellow blonde nylon of previous Sindy dolls which I suspect was a transitional doll using hair they had leftover stock of.
and they made one or two brunettes but that's about it.
The brunettes are VERY rare.

Smirky Sindy isn't overly popular, she has a pretty strange face. Her lips are pursed and it's all a bit ... odd.

She has a certain charm I think, but i'd never call her a pretty doll.

Four rerooted Sindy dolls.

the first girl is a very modern style, asymetrical in a copper colour with brown painted eyes. I really like her, but she's uh.. not so popular among the sindy people who seem to prefer a more traditional style lol.

The blue girl has amazing bright blue hair, super pretty colour. It's Poly fiber though so it's kinda dense and a bit coarse.

The brunette used some Poly hair as well. I don't think I like it so much. It's very dry feeling. Looks lovely but it's not so nice as Nylon to style I don't think.
I prefer Nylon above Saran too, because Saran likes to stick to itself and drives me INSANE.

The final girl is a partial reroot with brunette streaks. She was missing some plugs. I gave her freckles to make her a bit different.

 80s girls!

- Daphne and Berkeley are the same doll, 1984 Cut and Style Sindy.

Daphne is in much better condition. They have a hole in the top of their heads for their "growing hair". I think the idea was those little "darlings" who love hacking doll hair could hack to their hearts content and mum and dad just would have to buy replacement hair swatches instead of a whole new doll.
they have a hollow compartment in their body to store the hair and you pull it out the hole in the top of their head to make it longer. It doesn't work that well to be honest.
It always looks odd and the hole in the head is fugly. I usually put hats on them.

Daphne's hair is a much shinier blonde and is longer and fuller than Berkeley. Berkeley was free, I found in a charity shop but she was SO mangled (her legs are chewed to hell as are her arms) that the store clerk said she couldn't charge me for her. So.. yay? I wasn't about to let them throw her out, poor girl.
Her hair is much duller, shorter, thinner and just different in both texture and colour suggesting they're likely varients of the same doll. Pedigree wasn't exactly that consistant with their dolls.

- Then we have my blonde Starlight Sindy. She's actually one of my first ever Pedigree Sindy dolls. When I decided to start collecting Sindy dolls she was one I found for a nice price I was willing to pay on Ebay and without me knowing well.. anything about the dolls.
She came with her hair in loads of teensy little braids which I thought was kinda cool and kept like that for years till I worked up the courage to see what it looked like out of them.

to my surprise I learned she had crimped hair! The tiny braids were likely preserving her crimps or resetting them and what I had assumed was cut hair was actually SUPPOSED to be rooted asymetrically as they're meant to have their hair in a big side ponytail.
Her name is, according to my list (I USED to have a list) Amy.

She's wearing a Liv dress. Damn Liv had good clothes.

- The brunette with bunches was one from a big bundle of "tlc" sindy dolls I bought that turned out not to need much tlc at all!
I was kinda disappointed in a way lol.
She doesn't have a name, or at least, I never named her and added her to this list. The list stopped getting updated somewhere around 2013 so.. yeah...

She is probably a 1984 Stardance Sindy (So many similar named sindy lines right? Starlight, Star Dance bah)

I dunno what her ugly 70s shirt is from, just that it's fabulous. Probably Action Girl or something.

- The girl with the teensy tiny face is a "sad face" sindy. So named because their tiny little hard heads make them look a bit sorrowful.

She is named Erin and is probably from around 1982. She's on an active/Ballerina body. She came to me with a small bundle of other dolls but I think I sold on most of them. I can't really remember.

That's bad right? lol. It was a long time ago though.

Her clothing I think is Fashion Fever.

- Sleepy Sindy or "sweet dreams" Sindy to give her her proper name. She was made for a few years surprisingly (as she's WIERD, yet they made her for like 3 years. wtf pedigree?). She has sleep eyes, like old baby dolls. So when you lay her down her eyes close.
It makes her look STRANGE though.
She also has a unique neck knob to accomidate that eye mechanism. It's a wierd shallow knob rather than the ball Sindy dolls usually have.

Another doll that's not really pretty but certainly very interesting.

She's wearing a Star Doll outfit.

-This is Xanthia, she's a Space Fantasy Sindy. Yes, she came with pink hair. it's glorious.
And yes, ALL the Space Fantasy Sindy dolls i've ever seen have a pale face that doesn't match their body.
Pedigree QC!
whooo.

Actually it may very well just be age that causes the faces to pale or the bodies to yellow/darken. Who the heck knows.

Her clothing is Barbie stuff I think.

- "Titan" or redheaded Sindy dolls are rare, they exist but they're rare. Quite a lot of lines only ever had a brunette or blonde version and toward the end, the blondes massively outnumbered any other hair colour.

As a result, the redheaded Sindy dolls tend to be harder to find and sell for more.

This girl has her original hair so you can see the colour of it (A lovely brownish red copper colour) but it was cut by some little "darling" and I neatened it up.
Her name is Carys.
I actually quite like her. Her short style is cute and funky I think, it suits her round baby face.

She wears Barbie and Liv stuff.

- My other Starlight Sindy. They did two, a blonde and a brunette. My Brunette was a gift from my mother for my birthday several years ago, so she's in her original outfit too.
My mother hadn't actually realised that she's a doll from the same year I was born, which made her an even more perfect present haha.

The blonde should have a red foil jumpsuit like this.

Very 80s.

70s girls.

I don't actually know what the first girl is. She might be a hybrid doll but with Pedigree you never can be sure if a doll came out of the factory like that or if someone later on rebodied her.
Pedigree had a bit of a tendency to just use random parts and cobble together dolls in a pretty chaotic manner.

She has a very hard very high colour 70s head and what seems to be a later 70s or even 80s body. She could be a transitional doll, from a point where the body changeover happened, or she could be a hybrid. I just don't know.

Her hair is shoulder length but looks to have been intended to be that length as it's even and curls under her chin nicely.

I just don't know.

Next to her is a much more obviously mid 70s girl. She's on a 70s body with hard unbending very skinny legs and a much more slender frame in general. She's probably a 74 Funtime or something similar.
She has quite squished fingers, like the early dolls they're splayed but made of a rather hard plastic so they're a little fragile, more fragile than the very very squishy hands of later dolls anyway.

Her hair is quite dry and wooly, which again is pretty common for the earlier 70s dolls.

Beside her is my Trendy girl, who was a lucky charity shop find. Not only is she a Trendy Girl (one of the ICONIC Sindy dolls and the one the Tonner Sindys were based off) she's also a redhead! Making her extra special.

She's wearing an outfit that's a bit older than she is.

Her hair is pretty awful and wooly and dry like all these older dolls but her face is VERY high colour and she has her original lashes which is nice. I mean they're clumpy and sparse but they're there. She's an OLD doll, give her a break lol.

note she has one leg longer than the other in the top pic? Yeah, Pedigree QC!

Side part and Center Part Sindy dolls were, even when I started to collect Sindy dolls always out of my price range. Now? Not a chance.

this girl I picked up for cheap because she's missing almost all her fingers. (she was like £10)

Poor girl. She's also really floppy. One day i'll either find her replacement arms or upgrade to a decent quality one, you know, when I win the lotto lol.

Her hair is wooly, her lashes are sparse, poor old girl is really feeling her age. (she was made in the late 60s)

And this little madam isn't even a Sindy. She's Pepper, Tammy's little sister.

She's no doubt who Sindy's little sister Patch was based off. They're both troublemaking sorts lol.

And Marie and Natalie.

Marie was released in 1986 as a new Sindy friend and only got 2 dolls. A budget release and her wedding 2 pack with Mark (Who was right at the top of this blog lol)
She came in her wedding dress but it was not in great condition and covered in glue and just yeah... gross.

Natalie uses the same face as Marie, it's even marked "Marie" on the back of her head. BUT, and here's the interesting bit, she was NOT a Sindy release. Pedigree it seems licensed out to BHS or one of the many british department stores to sell dolls for them and it was likely a way to get rid of leftover Marie heads, and so Natalie was created. She has cheap nylon hair, a whole new faceup and presumably came with a few outfits that were probably leftover sindy stock too.

She's an interesting piece of Sindy history for sure.

and that's the two Sindy boxes...
So far.
I know there's at least one more so yeah...