Sunbonnet Babies

Until recently, I had no clue how far back the history of Sunbonnet Babies went. And I really didn't think about how closely Knickerbocker followed the original design when introducing their Sunbonnet Babies vinyl dolls in the 1970's. Here is a good place to read the history of them. I love that in 1875 it was a young female artist who created them in a challenge to show expression without showing a face. They were a hit and became plate art and then children's primer characters in the early 1900's.

Just think, some 100 years later, in 1975, Knickerbocker created a doll line of them. That's is beyond wonderful, to me!

These characters of Molly, Mandy, and May,
surely where what inspired Holly Hobbie, created in the 1960's. And this is where it becomes apparent that in a way we Strawberry Shortcake lovers owe it all to Bertha Corbett and her creation of the Sunbonnet Babies.  See, Holly Hobbie was a contract worker for American Greetings and created a nameless character that very much resembled the sunbonnet babies, but was still her own own creation.  It was a hit with American Greetings and became Mrs. Hobbie's namesake. One of the leaders at AG was convinced this needed to be a rag doll and created the prototype himself. In 1974, Knickerbocker obtained the license to create the Holly Hobbie rag dolls.  A few years later, much the same thing occurred from an illustration by American Greetings affiliated, Muriel Fahrion.  If, in 1875, the Sunbonnet Babies weren't created out of a challenge, would there be Holly Hobbie?  If Holly Hobbie hadn't happened,  would we have Strawberry Shortcake now?  I shutter to think of life without all of these beloved characters. 

Obviously, I'm a huge Strawberry Shortcake fan, but before my love for her, I was a major fan of Holly Hobbie.  In fact, much of my fashion, room decor, and play-time was inspired by her. But before her, I had my Sunbonnet Babies.

I still have mine, and they sure show the love they received nearly 40 years ago. I also have a set of them still in their cellophane covered boxes, which I got off ebay a few years back. They are terrific little 6 inch dolls that came with their bonnets, dresses, smocks with their names on them, shoes and socks, and pair of underpants.  There was a blond, a brunette, and an auburn haired doll.

What drove me nuts as a 3 or 4 year old, and still does, is that they were not specifically designated as a character. What I mean to say is, the dolls were in-box,  in their outfits, but the aprons had the names randomly printed.  So sometimes the blond was Molly, but then another she'd be Mandy, etc, etc. You can see an example of that in the below pics. I always wondered what what the story was behind that. Seems like have have a google search in my near future.  In all of the pics of the dolls here, the pink writing is always Mandy, but the 2 names written in blue switch around.

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At any rate, I believe I settled on the brunette being Mandy, the blond as May, and Molly was the Auburn. I still have some of the doll clothes my mother and grandmother made for them. And the high chair and buggy set my gramma got me that fit these dolls. I need to unpack those and show you it all some time. For 40 years their storage place has been in a empty generic laundry detergent box!

 

If I were writing this before I moved a year ago, I'd be able to open up the cabinet to my left and pull the box out and show it all to you, but alas, I did move and many things are still unpacked.

Anyway, as this blog continues, you will come to know well that I have a major adoration for the Knickerbocker toy company and had many of their toys as a child and now love many that I didn't didn't even know existed back then.

So, did you have the Sunbonnet Babies on your radar as a child?  Did you know the history that I have recently learned and shared here?

For the Love of Honey

I have no idea when exactly I got the Honey Hill Bunch clubhouse set.

 I had to have been little more than a toddler. What I do recall is that is was this line of dolls that implanted my love of dolls, and more specifically, little dolls.  Yesterday, I went through a bucket of my old toys I had sitting on a shelf near my desk.  2 of my Honey Hill kids were in there. 1 was Darlin' and the other was Li'l Kid. Darlin' is missing her smock and her nose. For some reason, I have a feeling I was the one who bit it off.  Anyway, I washed all the toys in the sink, including these girls. I put a touch of Fructis conditioner in their hair and it came out amazing. I have to say I've conditioned a lot of dolls hair and Fructis gives the best results.  The above pic is of them today after they've dried.

Lil' Kid has some staining.(probably from spending umpteen years in a bucket with my rusty Coca cola transport set)


But other than that, their clothing is bright and strong. I am extremely impressed. See, while I have always loved my dolls, I was also a bit of a tom boy. These dolls went in the sandbox, in toy cars on mud "racetracks",  took baths with me,  and shared my pillow. And they probably did those things daily over the course of a few years. I know I didn't play with them for spans of time in those years, but they truly were favorites of mine. And how I loved that playhouse.  There was so much for the kids and I to do! And of course they interacted with their often times neighbor, and another favorite of mine, the Tree Tots Firehouse.

I remember there being some kind of import placed on that The Honey Hill Clubhouse was just my set, not a hand-me-down from my 3 older siblings, and not something for them to play with.  That probably basically meant that my oldest brother would catch heck for taking their heads off and hanging them along the basement stairs the way he did with my sister's Barbies.

Maybe something about this set being "just mine" spurred my love for it.  But I think that the interactivity of it, along with those soft little bodies that still feel good in my hand, and great hair for hair play really made it a toy with lots of playability. And, perfect for me, it combined dolls and tom boy things. Spunky was a character  from the set that i really identified with.

I still have some of the pieces of the playset. The felt tree canopy and  tent cloth have long ago disintegrated , but the rest of it could be brand new with good washing.  I remember having 2 Darlin's, too. So of course they were twins!

Besides the  clubhouse set there was a later, Baskin Robin's Ice cream shop set and a couple vehicles. I had all the characters shown on the Clubhouse box, but there were later releases of others as well.

There was also a paper doll set and coloring book, which I am sure I had as I was a major investor in the paper doll and coloring book markets as a kid!


Thank you Mattel for the smile on my face now, and the hours of smiles as a child the Honey Hill Bunch gave me.

Back to the Future

What comes up so often in the Strawberry Shortcake collecting world is whether something is honoring the original line and theme created in the 80's.  I've touched on that in the last blog and it's really been out there this last week as we got to see pictures from The Bridge Direct booth at Toy Fair 2016.  They tied into the original line in a major way!



Now, last year The Bridge Direct released a 5.5" and a 15" ragdoll of Strawberry herself! We all swooned with delight. But, I think none of us really expected anything more than that as they were celebrating the "35th birthday" of Strawberry. I think we were thinking of it as a one and done kind of offering like the fantastic Hasbro 30th anniversary set.
A short little aside here is that so many of us wondered why Orange Blossom had her Party Pleaser outfit in that set and not her regular one. The shocking, and all too simple, answer when the question was posed to a rather stunned employee of Hasbro when we were planning the Strawberry Shortcake Con at Hasbro HQ that year, was that they didn't realize that was not the everyday outfit! OMG, do your research, people! But, I have to say I like the Party Pleaser (PP) outfit better anyway! 

OK, back to those fabulous birthday dolls!  I don't recall if they were the first things to come out after American Greetings had sold the Strawberry brand to Iconix, or not, but at any rate the brand was newly owned by Iconix and many in the collecting world were worried what the legacy would become. Personally, knowing what Iconix did with the wonderful Peanuts brand, I was more excited and hopeful.  I felt confident they would protect our Strawberry and I feel like so far they are doing well.

Strawberry had felt rather stagnant for so long to me, under American Greetings far reaching arms. There was so much potential not being explored. The brand had long ago become an evergreen. Why weren't we seeing Strawberry everywhere?

Really look at what Iconix did with another evergreen brand --Peanuts.  It is everywhere and it's so wonderfully done. It completely protects the original look and theme of Peanuts, while putting it in feature movies, on mugs, clothing of all sizes, bedding, candy, kitchen wares, etc, etc. The company name alone implies that they want their brands to be true icons, if that means anything at all.

That is the potential I saw when they bought our Strawberry. They didn't spend $105 million to sit on it and do nothing.  But, I was surprised it came about so quickly in dolls from The Bridge Direct and in such perfect dolls! I really can't help but wonder what went on behind the scenes to bring back these vintage dolls.

And now this year at Toy Fair while there where great new dolls that belong in the modern world of Strawberry Shortcake revealed.


And then WOW, There were lots of and lots of new dolls that were Vintage style!
Check it all out here , thanks to idlehandsblogspot.  We owe you such debt of thanks!

So now that you've stopped drooling over these amazing photos, do you think Strawberry can be Iconix's next Peanuts? Can a "girls" brand make as big of a splash? Will toy stores pick up this line and run with it? Will these dolls get endcaps on the front of aisles rather than the back like the current vintage doll at Target? What's to come?

I have no idea, but I'm excited! And hopeful!

Ode to 1991's

Since mentioning the THQ(Toy Headquarters) 1991 dolls yesterday, I keep thinking about them. This little lady from my collection is one of my favorites from that line:

One thing I really appreciated about that line of Strawberry dolls is how they honored the old quite directly, but put a new spin on it.  I like the real girl/doll world interplay.

I was a young adult when I bought these dolls. I've always appreciated the style choices the designers made for them. I found, and still find, all the clothing, just perfect! I want to get hands on and dress and redress these dolls!  Still, I spent days deciding whether to free them from the their blister packs, then when I did, I sure as heck spent hours dressing and redressing them and mixing and matching the 2 outfits each came with. Of course, being a purist, I always ended the sessions putting them back in their proper outfits, but I digress. . .

In 2003 Bandai was the next toy company to have the doll license and they went completely into the zone of the characters as real little girls, proportionally sized,  rather than mini girls in a big Strawberry world.  But of course they lived in things like cakes and berries and what not, so it wasn't too literal in the "real world" sense.  They honored the vintage well, but less directly in the looks of their characters. And also brought in some terrific new characters. More on that another time!

Anyway, Back to my point, which is the 1991 dolls ended up being this somewhat perfect bridge between the original Kenner era, and the forth coming Bandai era, though they surely didn't know that at the time. I pause now to wonder if 1991 had any influence in the decisions about the Bandai era? Hmmm

 I'm not sure why the 1991 dolls weren't a sensation. Maybe it was "to soon" after the end of the Kenner years? Maybe. At least partially.

I think this is the most under-celebrated era of SSC. It came and went quietly, and people collected them now, but quietly. Conversation in the SSC circles I'm in don't often turn to the THQ era with much depth at all. I say we take today to celebrate the 1991's!!!

Hello, Strawberry Fans!

Hello out there!

 I feel like most of my life, in some capacity, I've spent my time waiting for Strawberry.

 What do I mean by that? It's simple, really. Since I've been a young child, I've been waiting till the next time I could see Strawberry Shortcake. Whether it was the cartoon on Saturday morning, or going on a trip to the local K-mart and spending the whole visit in the Strawberry Shortcake section, or as an adult waiting for the next licensee to to share what's "coming soon", I've been waiting for Strawberry.

In those times between Strawberry sitings, I tend to fill my dolly needs with other collections, and that, I hope will be part of this blog, as well.

I must admit, I've never ever been a morning person. So, try as I might, even as a 7 year old, I rarely awoke early enough to watch the Saturday morning cartoon in the 1980's.  As an adult, I do find the voices hard to take, but I so thoroughly enjoy the animation. Someday, I will watch one straight through!

As a child, I was completely in love with the entire line of Strawberry Shortcake and at times barely more than noticed the other dolls in the aisle. BUT, they were expensive dolls and ones my mother was not overly fond of at the time. So, alas, I had no strawberry dolls of my own. I would play with friends dolls and dream about them and stare at them in the Sears catalog till those pages were soft and limp.

My first SSC dolls of my own were in 1993 when Kmart again was my Strawberry hero. I was away at college and found the 1991 series on clearance! My heart went pitter patter! I had a very limited budget and so each week I'd go back to Kmart and get another of the dolls, until I had them all. It was a euphoric experience each and every time!

Then, some years later, this odd new thing came around, called ebay! What was the first thing I searched for? I don't remember! BUT one day it finally occurred to me to type "Strawberry Shortcake" into the ebay search engine and in that moment I hit the return button and thousands of auctions were at my finger tips, I fell down the rabbit hole. I knew it. And I was happy!

I hope you'll continue on with me as I discuss all things dolly, while I'm waiting for Strawberry!