Before we start, i'm sorry about the quality of the photos. My back was still absolutely killing me and it made me a bit rushed to get off the floor before I did more damage.
But we've reached the 1980s at last!
The 80s are perhaps the most chaotic of Sindy's decades, ending ultimately with the near demise of Pedigree toys and the acquisition of Sindy by American company Hasbro.
So let's get into it!
The 1980s, Sindy's problem years.
80s (and late 70s) Sindy dolls are, generally speaking, the easiest dolls to find on the secondhand market. They're identified by their generally larger, softer heads which have less blush than the 70s dolls.
But they were a pretty diverse bunch regardless.
The 1980s
1980 saw the release of a new "funtime" Sindy, another blonde on a basic body as well as another release of the now ubiquitous Ballerina and the horrifying Sweet Dreams Sindy who for some reason just WOULD NOT DIE. She must have sold well for Pedigree to keep making her, that or they just were determined to traumatize as many kids as possible.
We also got "styling Sindy", also known as "zombie sindy" or "ghost face sindy" due to her unfortunate complexion. See, Pedigree must have screwed up their vinyl mix AGAIN resulting in a doll who's head, over time, turned from pink to a horribly sickly greenish white. YIKES.
Of course, it didn't impact JUST Styling Sindy, but a few of their other releases as well. Like this poor Ballerina.
Early 80s Sindys are a mixed bag and whether or not they have the ghastly vinyl bleach is pretty arbitrary but particular lines are more prone to it. Styling Sindy being the most infamous. Some of them seem to have been made with properly mixed vinyl, but a large percentage have turned to ghouls.
poor dolls.
The first couple of years of the 80s focused mainly it seems on clothes and accessories, the doll releases are predominantly rereleases of previous dolls or basic dolls in quite simple outfits.
She got a camper van, a pool, an entire bathroom set (including the toilet she had to hold her bladder for until 76) all now in a "lovely" shade of yellow and brown. Ahh the 80s, the era taste forgot.
She also got a giant hair drier thing like the ones they had in hair salons. Did people genuinely have these in their homes? it's bizarre.
1982's ballerina has two variations, but it's never been clear WHY. Was this another vinyl shrinkage fuck up or a conscious decision? Whatever the case, the Hong Kong ballerinas, and several of the other releases from the same factory have significantly smaller heads than the other dolls and they are ROCK HARD.
These pretty girls are referred to as "sad face" Sindy dolls because they look more sulky than usual.
Apparently at this point Sindy was being made in Hong Kong, China and the UK, but I can't find any specifics on that. Certainly by the 80s British manufacture was starting to become very rare. Sindy had been being cast overseas for decades at this point, with just finishing touches made in the UK so they could still claim she was "british made". The same was done with the NZ dolls in the 60s and 70s. So long as they were cobbled together in a factory in NZ it didn't matter where those bits were actually made, they could claim "nz made" and get sweet tax rebates and shit.
*eyeroll*
Anyway, 82's Ballerina Sindy now has hinged hands so they don't fall off after a short amount of play. It's rare to find an 80s ballerina missing her hands, while a vast majority of 70s ballerinas have lost theirs.
These hinged hands also now allow the doll to bend her wrists rather than just rotate them. Bonus!
This ballerina is really floppy due to her elastic perishing and I haven't got the tools to restring her right now. It's fiddly and it hurts my fingers anyway. But that's why her limbs all look like they aren't fitting their sockets. She's too loose.
Ballerinas no longer use the double cup waist that was still being randomly used in the 70s ballerinas alongside the standard waist. The double cup has been totally phased out at this point. A pity I think, because it did give the doll that little bit more mobility but I assume they had good reason.
the 80s dolls feature the same rubbery arms with wire inside for posing and the same wired legs with posing ankles as the late 70s ballerinas. A LOT of dolls have broken ankles, they weren't overly robust sadly.
The change between the high blush 70s heads and the rather plain 80s heads is striking though.
70s ballerina looks kinda pissed while 82 looks just a bit concerned.
The double cup waist I think adds height to the 70s girl, and coupled with 82's shrunken head, it makes the height difference quite obvious.
super weird.
I really do wonder if they fucked up their shrinkage again. What is up with the Hong Kong factory and vinyl mixtures?
One fun thing about the 80s dolls is the hair style variety. Previous Sindy dolls have generally stuck to one or two hairstyles, the chignon of the ballerina, the curled ponytail of the basic dolls, the flip curl of the older dolls, the 60s bobs....
One of the most extreme variations was the "Diana" cut seen here. Sunshine Sindy, Holiday Girl, Party girl (in brunette) and Pop Singer all sported this short style supposedly inspired by the Princess of Wales.
Some have better surviving hair than others. Holiday and Sunshine are unfortunately quite prone to frizz like this.
It's also maybe worth mentioning that the 80s dolls generally have significantly less makeup than earlier dolls. Not only is their blush more subtle and pink rather than red, they also tend to have pale pink or coral coloured lips instead of the old bright red.
I have to assume this was simply the fashion of the time. Or perhaps Pedigree were simply trying to appease conservative parents.
Whatever the case, I find it interesting how comparatively neutral 80s Sindy's makeup is, opting for more of a "nude" look.
Sunshine, Holiday and Pop singer all only came in blonde. Party Girl was the only brunette made with short hair. There was no redhead. By the 80s the redheads were becoming increasingly difficult to find, excluded for most lines completely.
1984 gave us Star Dance Sindy, a girl with puffy curled pigtails who came wearing the ever popular 80s aerobics gear.
We'd had a pigtails doll before but I don't own one that isn't...weird (i'll show you in a moment) so I hadn't included her. The pigtails dolls are rooted with a part line that runs all the way to the nape of their neck and they're a pain in the arse to restore if some little dear decided to comb the parting out. -_-
Sindy dolls of the 70s and 80s are quite sparsely rooted, as you can see from this girl's hairline. Pedigree were pinching pennies I think. The ballerinas are particularly bald as their hair is designed to be in ONE specific style and NO OTHER.
I mentioned my "odd" other pigtails girl. We don't actually know who she is because her hair is rooted super strange and others have dolls with the same pattern. She may be some budget uncatalogued release for a specific store or something.
But these short pigtails are the style of the 1979 Funtime and Keep Fit dolls. We're fairly sure this specific girl is neither though, because her hair is rooted into her EARS rather than behind them.
Wtf Pedigree?
And yeah it's easy to just say "oh, that's a factory error" but no. I asked other Sindy people and multiple shared their own hairy ear girls!
So what the fuck!??
84 also gave us Masquerade Sindy, who came in a fancy long cream gown and held a mask and fan. Well... I say "held", more "a mask and fan came with her and you could ram them onto her hand and hope for the best"
Suffice to say, the mask and especially the fan are hard to find these days.
Masquerade has unique hair, it's extremely curly and tied into a high updo that's slightly to one side of her head.
Look at those curls!
She's also unusual in that she's one of the few Sindy dolls to come with pierced ears. Masquerade would have originally had red plastic gem earrings but it sounds like they broke quite easily.
She also is one of the few 80s dolls available in all three traditional hair colours. Blonde, brunette and auburn. This one is auburn, which honestly is more like a light brown.
Speaking of unusual hair colours however, we have 1985's Space Fantasy.
She came in a silver and pink gown which seems not to have aged well. Often you see them where the silver foil is starting to decay. Which is a pity.
Space Fantasy has a very pale head compared to her body, they all look to be like this. I don't know why. Probably Pedigree fucking up their vinyl again right?
She has very red lips which is very unusual for this era and her hair is rooted in this dramatic widows peak pattern.
Her pale pink hair is worn in a high ponytail.
She's a distinctive doll. Pedigree didn't really attempt any fantasy coloured hair beyond this one doll and a 1986 colour change doll, which is a pity because Sindy rocks fantasy hair colours.
Star Light Sindy is one of my few dolls wearing her original clothing. Sadly most of my girls have come to me nude.
Star Light came in blonde or brunette and interestingly, my first Sindy I purchased when I first got into dolls was a blonde Star Light. This one was a birthday present from my mother and sister. So I have a soft spot for Star Light Sindy.
The Brunette girl came in a green jumpsuit made of this strange foil material. Blonde came in a red version.
Like Space Fantasy she has bright red lips. It looks like bright lips were back in vogue for 85.
Her hair is crimped and styled into a side ponytail.
You can see how the foil material just doesn't age that well. While this one is holding up fairly well for a 38 year old garment, it IS showing a lot of creases and cracks in the foil layer.
She would have originally had little green heels but they're quite hard to find.
Premiere Sindy was another 85 release. She has a really lovely face, again with the red lips and very dark eyebrows.
Her hair is unusual, it's an ash blonde colour and a very wispy thin fiber that doesn't feel like any of the other doll's.
I wonder if it's kanekellon or something, but i'm not good with doll hair.
Whatever the case, it's so wispy and cottonwool like that you can see her scalp quite easily through it. Poor girl.
Her hair is soft, just really thin. It would have originally been in tousled curls but it's more just tousled these days.
She's the other 80s Sindy that came with earrings. It looks from catalogue photos that they were long drop earrings which no doubt broke easily too.
I start to understand why Pedigree only made two dolls with earrings. They kept choosing designs that couldn't stand up to play.
Now it wouldnt be the 80s without some sort of gimmick doll would it?
Pedigree decided to resurrect (poorly) the old hair growing mechanic from dolls like Tressy in the 60s and 70s. It was a gimmick that really never quite went away, with dolls like Dolly Surprise just adding a motor to "improve" things.
in the case of "Cut n style" Sindy, Pedigree really took the idea and then half arsed it.
She has no actual mechanism, no winder, nothing.
Like other dolls of this sort her hair comes out of a hole in the top of her head and is fed back into her hollow body cavity, but without a winding mechanism every time you try to brush it it pulls the hair switch longer.
Cut n Style has a unique body that's hollow to accommodate her hair. The hair "cartridges" (as pedigree called them) were really just a baggie that held a braided length of hair you could feed through her head hole.
Her back piece... lid.. thing... doesn't really stay in place well which is I suspect why so many of these dolls are missing theirs.
The body being hollow means no waist joint, which results in a very unique body that's wider in the waist and a little more realistic looking.
She uses the same limbs as a standard doll, but with this unique torso which makes her a little wider in waist but narrower in the hips. Strange.
A lot of Sindy torsos have a hole in their neck knob but Cut N Style has a distinctively large hole for the hair to feed through.
As the name suggests, this girl was designed so kids could happily cut the doll's hair over and over again. Pedigree even sold spare hair cartridges you could mail away for.
She was successful enough that she got two releases. Cut N Style and Dazzling Sindy, who came packaged in a fashion pack outfit.
This may explain why there's two different hair fibers for the same doll. I own two of these dolls who are identically except one has paler blonde soft hair while the other has very yellow blonde coarse hair.
No idea which is which though, or if it's just a factory variation thing.
Her hair is a pain in the arse to style, it likes to stick out everywhere and I have never figured out a way to hide her bald patch so she has to always wear a headscarf or bow.
but now we reach the "troubled" years for Sindy. 1985 was the last year a lot of Sindy collectors consider Sindy was really "Sindy". Big changes were about to hit, and they were about the hit HARD.
Sales were down, Pedigree was struggling and competition with American behemoth Barbie was making things extra difficult.
Pedigree needed to do something, and it needed to be big.
So they got together and came up with a whole new look for Sindy.
And thus the collector named "Smirky" Sindy was born in 1986.
Gone was the baby face, the rooted lashes, the downcast mouth and general sulkiness. Now we had a doll with a moulded smile which unfortunately, thanks to her narrow painted lips, made her smirk look a little forced.
Poor Smirky was given moulded duck lips and a massive forehead which wasn't overly flattering.
Smirky Sindy had lightweight flyaway hair that came predominantly in this one shade of pale blonde. Her lips were orangey red, her eyes side glancing with a smudge of blue eyeshadow. Her body was near identical to previous years.
This particular girl is suffering from some sun yellowing on her torso.
I say the bodies were "near" identical because the neck knobs are different. Smirky Sindy has a smaller neck knob and a narrower neck than earlier Sindy dolls. So while you can ram a smirky head onto an older body, an older head wobbles on the smirky body.
the limbs all look to be identical however.
Smirky Sindy bodies seem to be particularly susceptible to yellowing.
While most of these dolls came in blonde blonde or blonde, a couple of lines offered brunettes.
Disco Magic (Brunette pictured here) even went so far as to bring back the traditional 3 colours of brunette, blonde and auburn with different outfits for each.
Sadly the Disco Magic outfits predominantly used a shiny foil material that doesn't survive.
They also used a different hair fiber than the other smirkys, one that has a tendency to turn into frizzy dry wool over the years. Damn.
We also got a gimmicky hair colour change doll who had brown hair that turned blue when you applied cold water. Her hair change gimmick hasn't survived so nowadays you usually find her with her hair "stuck" in either a blue state, some in between state, or more rarely as the original light brown.
The 1986 reboot of Sindy looks to have had a lot of money pumped into it. They advertised like mad, created a whole new logo and box design and released quite a number of dolls with this new look.
But 1986 was a big year for dolls and competition was about to get ferocious.
Hasbro launched Jem, causing Mattel to hurriedly launch Barbie and the Rockers to beat their rivals to the punch. Barbie was already overtaking Sindy in sales and with the launch of a new doll line from Hasbro as well, poor Sindy was struggling.
At some point this year it looks like Pedigree, struggling to keep their heads above water and with finances in trouble, accepted a deal from Hasbro.
Initially the rumour was that Hasbro was looking to buy out the whole company, but in the end they only purchased the rights for Sindy herself. Clearly someone high up saw the potential of the British fashion doll to put the money into acquiring her, but this did mean Sindy was no longer British owned.
Hasbro's relaunch came only a year later in 1987, marking an end to Pedigree's era after 23 years.
I wonder if Sindy has an identity crisis after all these changes....
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