Chabel by Feber - Spain's own Licca Chan

 

 

One thing I really love about doll collecting is learning about other country's BIG doll lines, the ones that had a large impact on people's childhoods and yet never broke any other markets. 

 Chabel is one such doll. 

If you're a Spanish Millennial then you probably know her, otherwise, let me tell you a little from what i've managed to glean from my research. 

Chabel was a doll line released in 1983 by a company called Feber (who still exist as a subsidiary of Famosa now). Inspired by Japanese anime and manga which was becoming popular in the country at the time, the story goes that a deal was struck with Takara to use Licca Chan's likeness. However I can't find any confirmation that this is for sure what happened. But there's definite heavy inspiration from Licca if nothing else. 

 Chabel was by the sounds of it, a very successful brand. She had fashion packs, accessories and playsets and even stationary and shoes for kids. But her reign was short lived. In 1993 Feber stopped producing dolls completely, and Chabel was retired. It's unclear what happened, as their 1991 turnover was great, but soon after financial issues arose and the company pivoted to what they still produce today, outdoor toys and playhouses. They were acquired by Famosa in 2006 and exist now rather like MGA's Little Tykes or Mattel's Fischer Price. They in fact seem to make very similar products to Little Tykes, lots of little ride on car things and playhouses and slides. 

 Anyway, in the 8 years of her existence, Chabel stood her ground against foreign dolls like Barbie and was well remembered enough to get a reproduction doll produced by Famosa and Giochi Preziosi in 2024. 

Today i'm going to be looking at a vintage 1989-90 Chabel, and the 2024 reproduction doll. And let's see how she compares with Japan's own Licca Chan. 

 

I stumbled upon Chabel by chance when browsing vinted and was taken by this unfamiliar but at the same time so familiar looking doll. 

a google search then informed me of the reproduction doll existing and then I ended up going down a rabbit hole trying to find out more.  

This particular Chabel is from the late 80s, 88 or 89 I believe. The line was called "Diffusion" for some reason and featured 6 dolls. It doesn't look like they had names or anything, I can't even find any clear numbering to differentiate them so go figure. 

We'll call this one "sport dress" because of the pattern on her pinafore. 

She's a very small doll, standing a little under 9 inches tall.  

 (photo from https://www.todocoleccion.net/)

So while mine came secondhand, originally her box would have been a fairly simple almost bag shaped number with a card handle. 

My doll did come with her purple case but not whatever the green bag thing is (Bolso-Llavero? Is that a brand? I don't know), or the black uh.. are they glasses? or her knee high socks. She is however wearing the rest of her original outfit including shoes and hat. 

The back of the strange shaped bag box.. thing, shows the whole line. Sports dress is third in. Interestingly, of the 6, two are brunettes but I also find the variation in hair styles and lengths quite interesting. 

Her tagline says something like "the youngest and trendiest fashion for Chabel" 

The Feber logo is all over the bottom. Do you think they wanted us to know she was made by Feber? lol. 
 

Chabel has wired limbs. Her arms bend impressively and hold position while her legs seem to have very limited clicky articulation, but I don't know how well they would have posed when she was new. They feel weak and barely bend at all now. 

Her arms are discolouring thanks to the internal wire. 

As for her outfit, it's two pieces. A little blouse/shirt that doesn't actually fasten shut in any way and the pinafore dress that velcros at the back. Mine has weak velcro that's not really doing much. There are two tiny decorative beads being used as buttons on the bib of the pinafore, they add a little detail that makes her outfit feel a bit more special I think. 

For some reason her dress has French text all over it that translates to something like "winter sports" 
Which is baffling because nothing about her outfit screams "winter" and nothing screams "sports" either. 
What a bizarre choice. 

There's actually two variations of this outfit. The first release is this one in grey, but there's a refresh one from the following year who's dress is a bitter brown but has the same text.  

She comes with a little hat with a molded bow on it in a sort of teal colour that matches her blouse. It's squishy vinyl and fits her really well, the squishiness helps it grip her head. 

Originally she would have had earrings, little flowers I believe. 

 

 

Excuse how dusty she is, I hadn't noticed before I got bright lights onto her. 

her face is unusual in how her eyes are painted. The brown line that makes up her lash line overlaps the black in a way that reminds me of children's drawings and her pupils have three dots with one being literally a gap in the paint showing her skin tone underneath. The pupils remind me of buttons. Her irises are a very dark blue and not very evenly painted. 

she has uneven eyebrows which give her a sort of quizzical expression and soft pink lips. 

 

 Her hair is pulled back just at the top and I think originally would have been tied with a bow but finding clear images is proving very very difficult. 

there's not a huge amount of clear info about Chabel online, and what little I did find and translate didn't tell me much about this specific release. 

 

 I did find this catalogue image from 1989, but it doesn't tell me anything. However the hair style on sports dress looks to be the same as sailor hat at the end of the line, and she definitely has a bow, you can see it in the picture. 

 

It also demonstrates how these slim bag-like boxes would have been displayed, which illustrates how flat and skinny they actually are. Looks like it fit 12 to a case, which is impressive. 

 

We should bring back small little bag boxes like this, they look like they didn't use much plastic and look super easy to open and recycle. 

 

 So that's the original vintage Chabel, now it's time to debox the repro. Then we can compare them and see how well they did on the repro.

 

Repro Chabel is based on one of the "high school College" line (high school college? Is it one or the other? Make up your minds!). Specifically, the "Harvard" doll. 

Now first I want to tell you about the doll she's based on.

 

The "High School College" line were made in 1989 as well, and like Diffusion, came with 6 variants. Unlike Diffusion, they actually all had clear themes/names. All of them were based on a famous university except one, who was simply "Chabel University" 

 

 

The five schools are Cambridge, Yale, Harvard, St. Catherines and University college.  

I don't know why they chose these ones specifically or quite what the outfits have to do with those places but there you go. (it also looks like they did a deluxe set that had multiple outfits and one doll? Interesting)

Each of the dolls came with a little patch that had the crest of the school on their top and by the looks of it, also came with a little patch for you.

 

 I don't know why there appear to be two different boxes in this catalogue image though. But releasing the dolls and also releasing their outfits as a fashion pack seems to be something they did quite often. I kinda like that as an idea because it means you don't have to buy a whole new doll if you just wanted a new outfit for your doll. 

It's hard to tell but I feel like the bottom box is triangular? I can't find better images of it but I was wondering why the repro box was so strangely shaped when the original boxes looked to be pretty normal. but what's the difference between the rectangle box and the triangle box in terms of release? I'm rather confused. 

I do want to take a moment to shout out this blog for the info about this line. They have an amazing collection, it's well worth a look. 

 

 So, repros wierd triangular box has a pretty plain back that just features the doll herself, the logo and que bien. 

Not a lot here.

 

This box has a LOT of plastic, the whole front and top are plastic and to open it you have to remove a lot of little circular bits of tape, lift the flap and pull the whole inner plastic clamshell section out. 

The doll and her accessories are laid out nicely. The doll herself is held in place with a lot of little plastic ties that are even attached to her clothing in several places. The accessories, interestingly enough, are actually sandwiched between two pieces of plastic clamshell. 

 

 

This means you have to peel the plastic away from the backing card to get them out, which is frustrating as it tears the backing card up. It does keep the accessories in place very neatly though and means they don't need to be tied or taped in place. So ... swings and roundabouts I suppose. Means you can't really use the box for display afterwards, but does mean the accessories are easier to remove in the first place. 

She also comes with a certificate of authenticity that's individually numbered. It's hard to read in photos because it's white on a yellow background. Mine is number 6558. I don't know what the edition size on this was, but it seems like it was pretty big if we're into the 6000s.

 

 

The same number is also printed on the back of the doll, which is pretty neat. It means each certificate goes to one specific doll, linking them together. It also means if you lose the certificate, you still have that number. 

 

For the record, the original doll doesn't have anything written on her back. The repro has some pretty gnarly body mods going on huh? 

 

 Chabel came free after only a little struggle. 

 

Immediately one big difference strikes me between her and the original doll. Her head is ROCK hard rather that squishy. Her body is also made of a firmer more matte plastic. She still has bendy vinyl limbs, but they're firmer and less rubbery feeling than a vintage doll. That's not just age, they make these bendy plastics differently nowadays. 

 

The other thing I notice is her outfit no longer bears the Harvard coat of arms. I assume this was some legal thing, so now she has a newly designed "chabel university" symbol instead. (which curiously, isn't the one the original Chabel university doll had either... what?) 

but that does raise the question, why, of ALL 6 of the college dolls, didn't they just do a repro of the one who wasn't a real university? Why Harvard specifically? Was she the most popular one? 
It's a bit weird. 

 

 

The outfit is pretty simple but nice enough. It's made of a soft knit in a sort of teal colour with orange trim and pleats that are made of a stiffer cotton. 

The top is baggy with extremely deep arm holes. This makes dressing the doll pretty easy, but it also means she sort of flashes her chest from the side lol. 

the skirt is elasticated while the top has velcro part of the way down the back. 

Her socks are very soft and go on without too much hassle, a testament I think to how much stiffer and less tacky modern bendy vinyl is. They're a little oversized too, which helps. 

Her shoes are black lace up shoes that fit perfectly with socks on, but are a bit big without. 

 

The hat is identical in sculpt to the one Sports Dress wears, but it's a lighter bluish green colour. 

 But while the original hat is squishy and rubbery and thus fits the doll head really well and stays on, the new hat is hard plastic and ends up fitting a little too loose. It falls off very very easily. Which just shows what a difference material can make huh? 

Chabel comes with a few little accessories. A lunch pail, a pair of glasses and a "hi fi" walkman with headphones. 

The pail actually opens which I ALWAYS love. She needs a thermos or something to put in there. 

The hi-fi system is a bit unusual in how it's constructed. It's three separate pieces with a hard plastic box with a sticker for the tape deck itself, a rubbery hose piece for the wire and hard plastic headphones in orange and blue. 

While the hi-fi tape deck thing has very little detail on it (it is basically just a little blue box) they did bother to mold little dials on the side. One for tuning and one for volume I assume? So maybe it's actually a radio and not a tape deck? I don't know. I mean usually those things did both but there's no other buttons on it so perhaps this was just a radio. 

Whatever it is, it's very very simple but designed with a little hook so it can be attached to the doll's clothing. 

of course, if you attach it to Chabel's waistband then her shirt rides up. So the only other place is her sleeve which is a bit strange. 

But also, the headphones don't actually fit. If you push them down all the way so they're against her head they miss her ears by miles and if you hike them up to touch her ears, the top piece sticks up ridiculously and they fall off. 

 even the image on the side of the box illustrates this poor fit. As well as showing off the sleeve mounted radio. 

maybe headphones just looked like this once upon a time, I don't know. I don't remember old headphones sticking up like that, they were usually adjustable weren't they? 

Whatever, they're strange and they don't stay on if you try to put them over her ears anyway. 

Also, the little tube piece comes off very very easily. Sure it's easy to put back ON, but it's annoying how easily the three pieces detatch from one another. I'd be inclined, were I to ever use the headphones as an accessory (you know, if they FITTED HER) to glue the tube to the two parts. 

but as it stands they go back in the box and go live in the attic. 

 

now all that said, one accessory that DOES work and does so delightfully, is the lunch pail. Chabel has her fingers curled just a little bit inward which allows her to actually hold her bags. It takes a little trial and error, but if you can get it just right, she'll hold the thing like a champ until you move her too aggressively or take it away. 

I think this is a marvelous feature. It's always annoyed me that dolls come with bags they can't wear without a load of elastic bands or sewing the damn thing to them. It's why most of my dolls are never displayed with their bags, because they can't sodding hold them and it pisses me off. 
Chabel can hold her bag and this is brilliant. 

I also appreciate the design that went into those hands. They're just curled enough to allow her to hold stuff, but not so much as to give her permanent fists.  They still look relaxed and fairly neutral when she's empty handed. I appreciate that. 

And so, at last, here they are together. Repro and original 1989. Yeah it would have been nice to have the actual 89 Harvard doll, but given how bloody rare this doll is outside of her native country, i'm fortunate to even have THIS one vintage example. 

The two dolls are made of very different plastic but I do think they're using the same mold. The original has slightly wider hips and shoulders as a result of the vinyl used for her limbs but beyond that, they are awfully close. Same grippy hands, same featureless feet, same teensy tiny waist and small bust. 

What did surprise me was how poorly the repro doll hid her molding marks. I assume these holes have something to do with the internal mechanism for the clicky/bendy limbs but while the repro only has the one little hole in her leg, repro has 11! What the heck? 

Repro also for some reason doesn't have holes in the soles of her feet. Those holes are usually part of the molding process, so presumably the extra holes she has up her leg are a result of not having this one. But why so many holes? What's IN there? 

A similar situation happens with the arms but they do have the same number of holes here. Three in a little triangle shape. Repros are higher up her wrist and the opposite way up to vintage but that's about it. So i do wonder why three holes, do they have multiple wires or something? I don't want to strip off the vinyl to find out, but i'm really curious about how these girls are actually constructed. 

Both repro and vintage have similar bendiness in their arms. They can twist their arms a full 90 degrees and it's pretty impressive.  They can also move them inward, outward, twist them at odd angles. It does give them quite a range of motion but it makes me nervous about breakage. Still, the vintage girl remains strong all these years on so whatever is in there does appear to be pretty tough. 

Repros legs are very stiff to bend and only bend a little. It's closer to the "click" bend of old dolls but it doesn't FEEL "clicky". It also doesn't feel as gummy as the arms though. There's definitely some sort of structure inside there, but it doesn't have much give to it and this was as far as I could bend her leg without feeling like I was forcing it too much. 

it IS more range of motion than the vintage doll has, but for all I know the vintage doll's wires have snapped. 

So finally I put her alongside a Licca Chan. 
I don't own any old liccas, all mine are 4th editions and this particular girl is my oldest one, being a charity shop find from a good 15 years ago. 

Even without her platformed shoes, she's a fraction taller than Chabel. 

I already showed Sports Dress's button eyes but here they are again to remind you. 

Repro has more refined paint. More modern techniques. The old doll was probably hand sprayed and touched up which means human error and more misalignment while the modern doll is perfect in that way machine printing is. The brown lash line doesn't overlap on her eyes, it rims the black neatly. Her eyes are a brighter blue and evenly painted with no wobbly lines and the black of her eyes features three perfectly spaced white dots as opposed to the two white dots and one not even painted gap of the original. 
Her lashes are thicker and less spidery than the original as well. All in all, her eyes are a bit less characterful I think. They're just a bit TOO perfect. She also looks significantly more judgy but I think that's because her lips have less of an obvious painted smile. While Sports Dress looks quite cheerful, repro looks slightly dubious about her companion. 

 

 What is interesting about that missing dot is that Licca-chan does something similar. Her third dot isn't missing paint, instead it's painted pink or red and I wonder if that's what Chabel was trying to emulate. Notice also the brown lash line around the black, the long spidery lashes and the side glance. You can definitely see the inspiration. 

Now i'm not sure these dolls use the same molds, they definitely look alike even under the paint with similar noses and mouth shapes, even the bodies are similar but not quite identical. 

Of course, I don't own a third gen Licca who would have probably been closer in time period to Chabel, so I can't be sure those don't look a bit more alike. But certainly I can see how Chabel took Licca as heavy inspiration. 

 

 

 I do however have a repro 2nd edition Licca Chan. I think those are from the 70s. These little repros are a lot shorter and have quite a distinctive face sculpt which doesn't look much like Chabel at all. 

But you can definitely see the similarities between the 4th edition Licca and the Chabel in terms of shape. Licca has a larger bust and longer legs though. 
 

I do wish I had a 3rd gen to compare because looking at photos, they do look similar to Chabel's, but Chabel has unique hands with that grippy pose. 

 

Chabel is an interesting and cute little doll. I do like the small size, they're a lot easier to display because they take up so much less space lol. They're also a really good size to take places in just a small bag if you're so inclined. I think of Lottie's marketing where they talked about her size being a major consideration, small dolls are easier for small hands and kids love taking their dolls around with them so small and portable is a big bonus. 

I do find it interesting that Chabel does seem to have had such an impact in her native Spain despite a comparatively short run. She was only sold for around 10 years, which is nothing when you compare to Licca Chan herself, Sindy or of course Barbie. But she made her mark enough to justify a reproduction and that's pretty cool i think. 

I adore international fashion dolls, they're a glimpse at the fashions and sensibilities of different parts of the world at that specific time. I love how different the doll lines are across Europe, not only in their scale, but their inspiration and marketing. 

I would love more detail on the link between Chabel and Licca, but alas, I can't find much more than speculation and rumor. There's gotta be a story there and i'm so intrigued as to how a Japanese doll ended up being re-imagined for the Spanish market. 

 Anyway, 

that's all I have to really show you. I couldn't find much more info about Chabel beyond the repro doll's press release,  a couple of people's personal collections and a few catalogue pages.  

I stumbled upon her entirely by chance, she wasn't a doll i'd ever heard of previously and i'm quite pleased I did get to learn at least a little bit about her.