Happy Birthday Sindy (Part 4) - Hasbro and beyond.

It took me a while, but i'm finally back to Sindy. It only took me what, like a month of procrastinating? 

So let's just dive in to the Hasbro era shall we? 

One of the most divisive of the Sindy eras, I have a soft spot for the 87/88 Sindys particularly. 

Lets get to it.

So back in 1986 Pedigree was in trouble. Their parent company had gone under and they were close to the end themselves. American company Hasbro swept in with a deal to take over the license for Sindy and got straight to work on redesigning her yet again. 

Sindy wouldn't go down with the sinking ship of Line Brothers and their subsidiaries.

From what I understand of it, Hasbro set up a UK office to deal with their new doll line. They had relative autonomy, designing and researching but ultimately the big boss back in the States had the final say, particularly on big expenses like new sculpts or tooling. 

Sindy may have been owned by an American company, but she was still being designed and marketed by British employees. 

What's interesting to me about the acquisition of Sindy by Hasbro is how much money they look to have invested into her relaunch. 

They invested money in advertising from Easter to Christmas, pushing their new brand hard to the UK audience. 

The 1987 catalogue features 8 different doll lines comprising 17 Sindy dolls and 1 Paul (back for the first time since the late 60s.) Alongside these dolls there's also 15 different mix and match separates in  different colourways (39 different individual fashion packs by my count), 6 accessory packs (hats, glasses, belts, handbags), 6 shoe packs, A fashion boutique playset, 3 fashions for Paul, 6 lingerie sets, 4 evening wear fashion packs, 6 sport themed fashion packs, 2 budget fashion packs, a house and multiple furniture sets to fill it, a horse and a bright pink range rover. That's an enormous amount of stuff all at once and Hasbro really seemed to have a lot of confidence that the investment would pay off.

The new Hasbro Sindys were remodelled with totally new heads. They kept some of the bobble headed-ness of the original dolls and the big eyes but lost the side glance, the rooted lashes and the hamster cheeks.

Hasbro's 87 Sindy came in blonde hair only and three skin tones. Pale, slightly tanned, and very brown. 

She also had two eye colours. Most had purple eyes but a select few had blue. 

There were also three different body types used. 

Hasbro reused the Pedigree body sculpts for these girls. The ballerina/active dolls used the 80s ballerina body while the standard doll used the "Smirky" body with rubbery limbs from the year prior. Finally the "budget" dolls used the budget "smirky" body from 86 as well. 

The "budget" body, like the 86 budget dolls has no waist joint and hard unbending legs.

You can tell the "smirky" body apart from earlier pedigree bodies due to the more detailed collar bone and sculpted abs. It's hard to see in photographs but this girl's got a really toned belly lol. 

 

 

Because these girls use the same body as the prior year the dolls can share clothing and shoes which was a really good idea from Hasbro there. 

 

 

They can also share bodies <_< lol. 

 

Smirky Sindy had a smaller neck knob than earlier Pedigree dolls however, so any older heads, including the 1985 ones are too loose on the neck and wobble about badly. 

 

You can also swap the arms and legs around with older Pedigree dolls which is quite useful for restoration as Hasbro girls are VERY common and usually quite cheap to purchase. The active and standard bodies use the same legs and arms as the Pedigree dolls so you can harvest these girls for parts if you're so inclined. Ahem. 

 

 

In only 2 years Sindy is unrecognizable.

One of the really cool things about these 87/88 girls is the quality of their fashions. This girl is the iconic City Girl: Match N Set peach variant. I have the purple one as well but this girl was the first one I grabbed. 

Both of these girls came on the active/ballerina body and came with a layered outfit designed for mixing and matching like all the rest of the City Girl line. 

Her base layer features a pair of leggings (trousers in the case of her purple sister) and a baggy tee with a high collar, all cinched around the middle with a belt. 

the belt is made of some sort of plastic rather than ribbon however, which makes it honestly quite difficult to use. It's also prone to tearing. I feel like a ribbon would have been substantially better here.

Everything else is soft cotton and fastens with plastic poppers or has elastic.

Over this Sindy gets a patterned jacket with wide lapels (this pattern was reused for some of the fashion packs for more mixing and matching), a long skirt (a soft cotton circle skirt for purple, a pleated heavier cotton for peach), some ankle socks and (not pictured because I dont know where they are) a pair of little slip on shoes and a beret. 

Most Hasbro dolls also had earrings, which curiously are often glued to the doll. They can be pretty fragile unfortunately. 

These two girls are the brown skin and blue eyed versions which are usually fairly easy to identify as only a couple of lines used this combo. 1988 Club Disney who used the budget body (shoeless doll here) and 1988 Supercool Sindy who had a standard body. 

Supercool here is wearing bits of the City girl original outfit and fashion pack. 

Club Disney is wearing a Skipper outfit which interestingly enough, actually fits pretty well. Barbie stuff from this era doesn't fit well, it's too wide in the shoulders, too big in the bust and too narrow in the waist. Modern Barbie however fits okay. 

The City Girl mix and match fashions came as individual pieces in most cases. You'd buy a jacket, or a skirt, or a top. The selection was massive and expanded on again in 1988 giving you a whopping 90 different packs overall to add to your collection!!! And that's JUST the "fashion mixers" there were also the full fashion packs released over those two years.

Sindy here for example is wearing one of the fashion mixer skirts from 1988 (called "ra ra skirt" in the catalogue. Though I always thought those were shorter... go figure. ) 

This abstract splotchy patterned fabric came in several colourways and was repeated through the whole line, which allowed for you to match things if you so desired.

For example, this cardigan. Which incidentally, has real pockets which is just delightful.

You could even add a coat or, as the catalogue calls them, a "hooded jacket". This particular one is from 1987 but the same style was used in 88 as well, with different colourways.

I adore these fashions. They're really nicely made, brightly coloured and such a time capsule of the period's fashion trends.

Clashing patterns, longer length skirts, baggy tops and belts to cinch them in around the middle are so very late 80s and I love it.

Unfortunately, despite Hasbro's enthusiastic attempt to relaunch Sindy, this particular model only lasted 2 years. 

1988 saw 7 new dolls added to the lineup, a kitchen cafe playset, a dresser/hutch for the dining room, 8 more full fashion packs, the afformentioned fashion mixers (over 50 different garments) and a couple of new Paul dolls (Sindy's "friend" as the catalogue claims. Lol.) 

But having failed to gain as much of a foothold as they're hoped and with Hasbro eyeing the international market, 1989 saw another redesign for Sindy. perhaps her most major transformation since the 70s. 

Okay so this is Rainbow Sindy who's technically from 1992 but I don't own many of this era of Hasbros and the point here is the face and body sculpt. 

1989 saw Sindy ditch her shorter body and rubbery limbs to become more Barbie-like in stature. 

 

 

She gained height, her waist got cinched in to extreme proportions, her limbs became slimmer, her neck longer, her head smaller and gone was the ball joint, replaced instead with the more fragile toggle system Mattel had been using. 

Sindy's new face sculpt was.... something.

Initially she had blue eyes, but we'll get to that. 

Sindy's eyes are similar to her 87 and 88 dolls, large, round, forward facing with spiky painted lashes and a paler bottom lash line. She now has an open mouth smile like a lot of dolls of the time, a california tan (not exactly possible in ol' blighty by maybe it's out of a bottle) and a snub nose that's always brought to mind a pug in my mine. (is that mean? that's probably mean)

I've never liked this face sculpt. I think it's goofy looking.

Mattel was ALSO not a fan of this face sculpt, accusing Hasbro of copying Barbie and trying to confuse consumers. 

and I mean, they have a point. Even to this day people confuse Sindy dolls for Barbies because of their similar face and body shape.

Judges agreed that Mattel had a point here and the lawsuit dragged on til the end of 1992 (the year Rainbow Sindy here was released) when an agreement was finally reached. Presented with 5 different potential head sculpts, Mattel's CEO was requested to select one they felt Sindy could use. A new head was selected, and Sindy had yet another makeover. 

Prior to that, the rumour at least has always been that Sindy was given purple eyes in an attempt to appease Mattel.

now, what's strange about that is that 87/88 Sindy had purple eyes. Why? Who the hell knows. She just DID. But then several of the 89 and 90 sindys have purple eyes, some even have green eyes so.... uh... 

Maybe Hasbro just liked Purple eyes?

She kept the body shape though, which I find interesting as this body shape is ALSO an issue in how often the two dolls are confused.

Sindy has a teensy tiny "hasbro inc" on her lower back. So if you're ever in doubt, check here.

The new Sindy had the same sized feet as the older dolls, but they were designed for heels rather than the flats Sindy traditionally sported.

Interestingly, they were still less high heeled than the BEACH DOLL (Club Disney) from the year before. Wtf?

Hasbro Sindy, despite being very similar to Barbie, was never able to share outfits easily with her American rival. Sindy's waist was wider, her bust smaller and her feet substantially larger.

However, the 89 body was also slimmer than the dolls from just a year prior which made backwards compatibility less than ideal. While she COULD wear the clothes, they gape oddly around her shoulders (her arms are a lot skinnier remember) and her waist (which is more cinched). In the case of this outfit, which fits the 88 dolls pretty well, the top kept slipping down off her shoulders and the skirt was baggy around the waist despite the layering of the thick top underneath. 

So yeah... not great.

For an awful lot of collectors, this is NOT Sindy. 

She's too Americanised, too Barbie-like and lacks the charm that drew them to Sindy in the first place. 

to others, this is the Sindy of their childhood. 

in fact, my first Sindy was a 1991 Tennis Star Sindy. She was a gift from a classmate for my birthday. 

I remember preferring her more proportionate feet to Barbie's little hooves but being endlessly frustrated the two couldn't share clothing. 

1993/1994 saw the phasing out of the old controversial head sculpt and the phasing in of the new Mattel okayed one. 

Sindy lost her dimples, getting a softer smile. She got a new nose too. Her jaw is, i think slightly wider as well. 

Overall I feel like the newer head is substantially softer looking and I vastly prefer her.

For most of her run Hasbro Sindy only came in Blonde, Blonde or Blonde, but in 1994 we got a couple of brunettes at last. 

Wild Hair Sindy, Surprise Jeans and Monte Carlo all came with a blonde and a brunette variant. (the brunettes tend to have green eyes as opposed to the common purple eyes with the blondes)

A year later we also got Crimp and Bead Sindy who came again in a blonde and brunette variant. 

Paradise Sindy was also available in both hair colours.

No redheaded Hasbro Sindys were ever made unfortunately. Though I suppose with that tan.... 

Ahem. 

A pity though. I always liked redheaded Sindy dolls. 

One issue I have with the Hasbro bodies is they tend to disintergrate over time. The jointed bodies break at the knee joints while the regular ones are prone to seeing their leg pegs disintergrating. This is happening to several of my Hasbros, they're dropping limbs all over the place. 

And it's curious because none of my Barbies of the same era do that, nor do any of the older Sindy dolls. Whatever Hasbro made these dolls from, it's crumbling after 30 years and that's a real pity.

Alongside Barbie the newer Hasbro girl is recognizable, however despite this, she's STILL confused for a Barbie doll. 

But Mattel made their agreement, and so Sindy got to plod along in Barbie's shadow. 

And this she very much did. Unable to compete with Barbie even in her native UK, by 1998 Hasbro were ready to surrender and hand over the rights to someone else. 

I can't find much info about the exact specifics here, but whatever the case, in 1999 British company Vivid Imaginations took over Sindy's license from Pedigree (who yeah, still exist. Somehow) and started producing dolls. 

Sindy was, for now at least, back in the hands of a British company.

Vivid's dolls look to use Hasbro's molds, but I can't be totally sure of this. 

certainly they are VERY similar. 

Vivid's dolls are always blonde and usually blue eyed (some look to have purple eyes). They also have rock hard heads with no markings.

 

 

The bodies are VERY similar to the Hasbro bodies, to the point where I think they just modified the Hasbro sculpts or reused their molds. 

 

Vivid's dolls lack a waist joint and have painted panties, they're also made of a more matte plastic but otherwise they're pretty similar to the Hasbros.

Vivid's dolls are marked "sindy" on the back while Hasbro's just say "hasbro inc".

Vivid seems to have had two skin tones for the most part. A sort of slightly tanned one and a paler one. 

I think the Vivid dolls are quite a bit prettier than the Hasbros and I think it's to do with the darker lip colour a lot of them have and the smaller eyes.

Like the Hasbro girls, the vivid girls can mostly wear modern Barbie stuff (though it's loose around their tiny little waists) 

Unfortunately, an awful lot of the Vivid dolls are very gimmicky or princessy. 

The doll with the shorter hair here is Sabrina (the teenaged witch) which was a bizarre crossover. Not exactly British huh? 

The other girl I think might be Birthday Pet Surprise. 

The Vivid dolls tend to wear a lot of pink and i'm gonna be honest here, a lot of their outfits feel quite cheap. 

Vivid also produced a Fairy Princess Sindy to tie in with the movie of the same name. 

 the art style is legitimately terrifying.

There's a review of this abomination that I found here if you're interested.

I hate it so much. 

Anyway, we got a doll for this movie and Vivid went all out giving her a whole new unique head sculpt for... some reason.

She's actually pretty cute, though she has wretched hair.

She uses the same body as the other vivid dolls and originally would have come in a shitty pink princess dress with crappy wings sewn to the back of it. 

bletch.

 

She arguably looks more "sindy" than the hasbro or other vivids do. Like all the other vivid dolls, her head is rock hard though. 

Vivid made quite a few dolls in their short time with the license. 

During this time Sindy also got a new "friend". A guy named Robbie and random babies were added, though it's unclear if they're the "little sister" like Barbie or actually her children. 

Hasbro's Imani (or rather, Olmec's Imani, licensed to Hasbro) seems to have been transformed into Mel for Vivid as well. I'm certain they're the same sculpts. 

I wonder if Hasbro just handed over all the stuff as part of the deal, or if Vivid took over the factories or something. 

goodness knows. 

Sindy was outsourced to other manufacturers throughout Hasbro and Vivid's times. Funskool handled the Indian market for example, while Giochi Preziosi handled parts of Europe. Hasbro even appear to have acquired the Ceppi Ratti Tanya doll factory (An Italian fashion doll) and produced Sindy dolls using the Tanya molds for the Greek market. 

Honestly it all gets pretty convoluted pretty fast. 

Anyway, 

Vivid produced Sindy until 2001.

During that time we got some frankly bizarre crossovers from Sabrina to Digimon, but also some very quintessentially British lines. These include "Manchester United Sindy", Children in Need Sindy (with her very own plush Pudsey) and  RSPCA Animal Hospital Sindy (anyone remember that show? lol)

We also got a lot of babies, mermaids, princesses and fairies because of course we did.

according to the 2000 catalogue Vivid's big strategy was to keep prices down, they wanted most of their lines to be under £10 making them a "budget" alternative to Barbie. 

this certainly explains the cheaper feeling outfits. 

their tagline to retailers was "when you're number 2 you try harder" which I think is quite amusing. 

But they just couldn't compete and so Sindy once more was handed back to Pedigree to license out to another company and try again.

the next attempt came in 2003 from the enthusiastic New Moons. 

Their tactic involved another complete rehaul, Sindy would no longer be a young woman but a 15 year old girl who wore tracksuits and trainers (that's sneakers to those outside the uk). 

She was also now 6.5 inches tall. 

New Moons were so certain of their new direction that they committed to a 10 year plan. They produced stationary and accessories for kids under the brand and invested in a huge amount of advertising and PR. 

Babi A Fi has a wonderful rundown of the random products released for this relaunch here

 Initially Sindy was just available in this dinky lil' half size, but for the 2004-5 season they also produced 10 inch tall dolls. 

One of the big oddities about the New Moons sindy dolls is their distribution model. It looks like the vast majority were store exclusives, only available in retailers of assorted homewear or footstuffs, rather than toy stores. M&S, Woolworths and Safeway are not places I would think as a first port of call for a new doll line. 

At some point Chad Valley took over distribution and she ended up pretty much only sold in Woolworths. 

Woolworths went under in 2008 and Sindy went down with it. The license wasn't renewed and that was it for Sindy for the next few years. 

The New Moons/Chad Valley Sindys are odd little things. 

Their bodies are tiny little spindly things with extremely slender bodies, skinny limbs and a head that can't tilt at all and is really stiff to turn. 

Their hair is generally not overly great nylon so prone to frizz and easily tangled. In the case of this girl, she also has tinselly shit in there so that only makes it even harder to brush.

She's shockingly pale (that's probably fairly accurate for Britain lol) and despite standing a similar height to the 80s Sindy, she's substantially more slender. 

I really don't think any 15 year old girl has a figure like this New Moons.

Because she's so skinny she cannot fit barbie or sindy clothing. It all hangs off her tiny little frame. This is frustrating because almost all of these dolls came wearing an excess of pink or tracksuit-like outfits which are NOT my cup of tea at all.

Sindy came with three different face variations. The first, who i "lovingly" refer to as "corpse sindy" due to how dead she looks came from a 2 pack with one of her friends (the new moons release decided instead of giving us blonde and brunette sindys, they'd give us a whole cast of friends for Sindy to have. They're basically the same just with different hair and eye and skin tones. Kinda like Bratz there <_< >_> hehe) Anyway, she's "winter Sleigh fun" and came with a second doll and a sled. Several of the dolls had this strange small eyed paint job which looks off to me. Her eyes are too widely spaced and too small for such a big round head imo. Makes her look like those Tree Change Bratz or something.

The second doll in I don't actually know which doll she is. They made a LOT of dolls for those few years and there doesn't appear to be any catalogue or anything to compare to. This face is softer and closer to the small 6 inch counterpart with a painted open mouth smile and wider larger eyes. 

Finally we have "Turkish Sindy", this particular face style appears to have only been used for dolls sold in Turkey which is... a whole thing. Apparently there's a big market for Sindy in Turkey for some reason, but that doesn't explain why they got these dolls and the uk for the most part didn't. 

dead stock with these faces HAVE been found on ebay uk, suggesting that perhaps they were very very end of New Moon/Chad Valley's run with the license. Perhaps they couldn't find a UK retailer to take them or they just never made it to shelves with Woolworths collapsing. 

whatever the case, this face is my favourite. It's substantially cuter and quite reminiscent of the Vivid Imaginations Fairy Princess. 

There were also two body types. The one I already showed you, and the gummy monstrosity. 

This body makes me profoundly uncomfortable. I think it's the seamless nature of it, it just triggers some major squick when I look at it. 

It's entirely soft gummy feeling vinyl with wires inside. She has internal joints at the knees and elbows but you can also bend anywhere else with a little more pressure.

So yes, she's very very poseable, but it feels so gross to manipulate this body. It feels like skin or something and it's just... eugh. 

it also attracts dust like mad and makes dressing her really difficult because her whole body CLINGS to fabric. Pulling clothing onto her is like trying to get stockings/leggings onto clicky legged dolls, it sucks. 

DO NOT LIKE.

The tiny doll is a lot cuter. She has what seems to be the same sculpt, but dinky and little. She also seems to have better quality hair than her larger sisters which is strange. 

This one I think is wearing lil Bratz jeans which gives an idea of how dinky they are. 

the original clothes these small dolls came in are NOT to my taste generally at all. I have heard a lot of Sindy collectors refer to the New Moons girl as "chav sindy" which is kinda mean. I mean granted, she did seem to get an awful lot of pink tracksuits, but she also got a lot of shapeless jeans and ugly pink jackets too. 

Why do doll companies ram pink down kid's throats? I often wonder if a lot of little girls only like pink BECAUSE they associate it with toys. 

Her body is like the bigger dolls. Extremely skinny and yet simultaneously quite mature. 

this body does NOT read regular 15 year old girl at all. She's more like a bloody model!

She came primarily wearing sneakers/trainers and had minimal makeup. Like the bigger dolls she also had several friends. 

The tiny dolls apparently were released first, with the bigger ones coming later. A strange choice to make Sindy 6 inches tall, but i've heard the makers of Lottie state that they made her small because their target market were younger kids with smaller hands. So perhaps the same rationale was used here. 

 

It's wild to think that these are ALL Sindy dolls isn't it? 

Also using the Chad Valley/New Moons bodies were the Hachette part works dolls from 2006 or 2007. For those who don't know who Hachette are, they're a publishing company who specialize in part works. Those magazines that come with one piece of a model or whatever and you have to collect several hundred and spend way more than the thing is probably worth to complete it. 

For Sindy the part works was short lived and actually not as exploitative. It came with a very brief magazine and a doll wearing a reproduction of one of Sindy's iconic vintage looks. 

An attempt was made to replicate the original Sindy look for her hard head, but the spindly body meant the reproduced outfits were far too small for an actual vintage doll to wear. 

this particular doll is NOT actually a Hachette part works doll, she's a British Airways doll who used the same base doll. She's also not on her original body, she's on a Liv body because I hated how limiting that tiny skinny body was. 

Anyway, the Hatchette dolls only lasted for 4 issues before the magazine folded. That meant 4 dolls, with the first, a blonde wearing a replica of the 1970s Sunsuit  costing £2:99. 

As an aside, I really wouldn't have called the Sunsuit outfit "iconic". It's not an overly common outfit for a start and certainly not one most people would immediately think of when thinking about Sindy. 

Whatever. 

Issue 2 featured another blonde, this time wearing the fancy white gown known as "royal occassion". This time the cost was £6:99

Issue 3 was a brunette nurse and issue 4 was a redhead wearing the absolutely definitely iconic purple and check dress the 1968 boxed dolls came in (the outfit itself is called Fashion Girl) 

Now what is odd is that the issue 2 doll, the blonde in the royal occassion dress, is the one I have seen less than any of the others. I find that bizarre honestly. Usually the later issues of a part works would be harder to find so i'm not sure what happened there. 

 Meanwhile, using these same moulds, in 2007 we also got British Airways dolls in reproduction 60s and 70s air hostess uniforms. (I can't find any clarification about which came first, the part works or the BA dolls so uh.... I dunno.)

There were 4 different outfits and each came in a blonde or brunette varient. These were supposedly sold via the in flight magazines and were around £12 each. 

A lot of them ended up on ebay in the 2010s and I picked up all of mine for silly cheap. Most of them ditched their outfits and bodies, but i'm not entirely sure where they all ARE right now. I have a lot of boxes of Sindy dolls.  

several years earlier in 2003 New Moons had produced another Sindy (again using that strange skinny little body) for British Airways. She was £10. I am.. honestly not sure why I didn't take a photo of mine, she was literally sitting next to me during all this so... uh... sorry?

 

 

She looks like this. I'm fairly sure that's the playline chad valley/new moons head, just with a different and more mature screening. 

 Anyway, this particular BA girl is one of the 1960s girls and her hair came in a bob. 

You can see alongside the 80s doll how much they tried to emulate the look but didn't quite manage it. 

These dolls also have absolutely no ability to tilt their heads in my experience, which I feel is really limiting as a teensy little tilt of the head helps give so much personality to a doll's pose. 

I did intend to continue talking about the dolls that came after this but i'm tired so i'll leave it here for now. I'll get to the rest at some point. 

there's BIG gaps in the Sindy timeline after this point. We have the 2014 Tonner line, the 2016 Tesco dolls and finally the 2020 Kid Kreation dolls.

I do appologise for how slow I am getting these blogs done. I'm finding it exhausting and painful to sit and take the photos and my attention span is getting increasingly bad from the ongoing fatigue. When I have a spurt of energy I want to use it doing something practical like chores or leaving the house, because those energy spurts are becoming so rare. It sucks honestly. Because I love dolls and I love sharing my dolls with the internet.

I have so many boxes of dolls to just OPEN let alone review and I keep thinking "today is the day!" and then it doesn't happen. *sigh* 

perhaps in the new year. 

perhaps.

but until next time, whenever that may be, take care everyone.