The Doll Blog

March is my favorite month of the year. It’s my birthday month, Spring, (which more importantly, here in the North Country, means that Winter is almost over. And we get 10 to 12 feet of snow - we’re really, really, really ready for winter to be over!)

And of course, its Hinamatsuri, The Japanese Dolls Festival. No self respecting doll blogger should allow Hinamatsuri to pass by without mention!

The Doll’s Festival is also a celebration of the young girls in the family, and well wishes for their health, growth and happiness.

Most Japanese families with girls have hina-ningyo dolls, set up on display once a year for the holiday. Here’s some pictures:

Unfortunately, I am not an expert on Ninygo Dolls, so I won’t go into further detail. But I am the father of a daughter, and I make my living selling dolls: We have so many useless holidays in the US… I wish we had a dolls and daughter’s day here like Hinamatsuri!

Hi Folks!
Just back from the 2009 American International Toy Fair that was held in the Jacob Javitz convention center in NYC last week.

It is my sincere pleasure to report that my friend Fanny Wong won the inventor/designer award at the fifth annual Wonder Women of Toys Awards, presented by Women In Toys and ‘Playthings’ Magazine, and I couldn’t be happier!

When Addie and I were just starting out, Fanny was a big help to us, because she was already manufacturing the ethnic baby dolls we needed for our customers. We had a good working relationship for years, and then she invented what we think may be the most perfect baby doll ever!

Nighty Night Dolls are perfect baby dolls because they are soft, safe starting at age 2, machine washable, are available in ethnicities, are absolutely adorable — dressed in their sleepers and carrying their teddy bears dressed in matching sleeper - are large enough for two or three year olds to play with yet light enough to carry etc. They are our most popular cloth baby dolls - year in and year out. here’s a 10 second clip from our YouTube video

Fanny designed them.

PS: For all you Sleepless in Seattle fans, I stay in the Pennsylvania Hotel each year when I’m at the show, and it’s just down the street from The Empire State Building… and yes they do light it up in red on Valentines Day! Here’s a picture.

Golliwog Dolls are based on the children’s books by Florence Kate Upton, the first book featuring a Golliwog was written in 1895. The popular black faced minstrel baby doll went on to appear in many more books and as an advertising character for the next hundred years. However, the ‘word’ golliwag, has come to be an insult in England; much the same way ‘Sambo’ from The Story of Little Black Sambo, did here in the states about 30 years ago. (And which eventually helped contribute to the demise of the 1000+ Sambo’s restaurant chain!)

Can a doll be racist? Or is it the mental stuff that both races bring to the doll that is the problem? Face it, some people are racist, and both sides of the color line know what it means to call someone a wog or golly. etc. For over a hundred years, the golliwog image has been ubiquitous in England, both as a doll, and as an advertising mascot by a jam and jelly manufacturer on their label and their promotional materials. On the British ebay©, there are well over 200 listings for collectible dolls and merchandise.

We don’t sell Golliwog dolls, although we do sell dozens of black baby dolls. Golliwogs are still sold in England, by Trendle International.

I guess the bottom line is: If someone gave us a Golliwog, would we be embarrassed to put it on the shelf with the rest of our doll collection? And if not, should we be?

Let’s cut right to the chase. The first and only African American Ty Girlz © are named Sasha and Malia. Ty Inc. spokeswoman Tania Lundeen says the dolls aren’t based on the Obama daughters. She says Sasha and Malia were chosen because “they are beautiful names.” Really? Check out the Social Security Administration list of 100 top Baby names for the last 10 years? They are three to four hundred down. Nothing to do with the new girls in the White House? Hmmm.

Next we hear that Michelle Obama is pissed… she thinks it’s exploitation. Well she’s right, it is. But who is being exploited? Do you think that maybe there was a little political milage gained every time those two little ‘Daddy’s Girls’ were photographed living their “normal” little fishbowl lives for the last year? I mean after all, who didn’t know about the first daughters? Color me doubtful, but I think that there was a little exploitation of the girls during the campaign as well.

Dolls have been made in the likenesses of celebrities for forever. In fact one of our stores specializes in licensed dolls, everything from Sesame Street and Dr Seuss, to Fancy Nancy and Strawberry Shortcake. If I had to guess, I’d say Shirley Temple dolls were probably the longest running celebrity doll ever. Teddy Roosevelt wouldn’t shoot a tied up helpless bear at the end of an unsuccessful hunt and Teddy Bears have been the most popular toy in America ever since. There were Chelsea Clinton dolls, and Caroline Kennedy dolls (currently selling in the $300 range on Ebay). But of course we’re talking here about licensed dolls…. my guess is that if Michelle Obama and the US Attorney General want to make a case of it, Ty would have to buckle pretty quick.

So our take? We don’t believe that out of the 1000’s of African American girl’s names available that Ty randomly picked the same two names as the first daughters. Next? Michelle… chill. Be flattered and pleased that your daughters are such great role models. Life’s too short to be pissed at Ty. Make ‘em give you royalties!

As promised, the story of how a doll saved our business.

Back in 2002, the dot.com crash had hurt our ability to give as generously to charity as we liked, and we were looking for a new ’stream of income’ from which to rebuild our charity gifting. So Addie and I started our first eCommerce stores, one of which we called The Happy Baby Basket, and which featured various themed baby gift baskets.

We had an Irish themed basket with a stuffed Irish Setter with a four leaf clover hanging from it’s mouth; a New Jewish baby  Basket, with a Blue Teddy Bear in a kippa and the Star of David embroidered on its paw, and a basket for a newly adopted child with Ling, (shown above, wasn’t she cute?) etc. And for a year an a half we failed to sell a single basket. In fact, we couldn’t even find our site in the search engines!

So after a year and a half, we decided eCommerce wasn’t in the cards and decided to shut that portion of the business down. But since everything was already paid for, and our licenses had another 6 months to run, we decided to take the various items out of the baskets and sell them individually; to see if maybe we could recoup some of our inventory expenses at least.

So we listed all the items separately, the dolls, the silver piggy banks, the cute little 6 months custom tee shirts we had made up, etc. Now we had also been learning more about SEO and page ranks and everything else in that year and a half, and we must have done something right, because all of a sudden our Asian dolls were selling. ( Not for a lot mind you, maybe $12.95?… I don’t remember anymore).

Well, one of my favorite phrases is “you don’t learn a heck of a lot from the second kick of the mule!” and that was the case here as well. After a year and a half, something had happened, but what? So we called a few of the customers who had purchased with…”hi, this is the Happy baby Basket customer service follow up call. Thank you for your purchase… did everything go OK… and by the way, why did you buy that doll?”

And we kept hearing the same thing: ” We just came back from China with a newly adopted little girl, and we went into our local stores, and we couldn’t find Asian faced dolls. So we went online and found you!” We had found a niche market. Underserved customers with a need.

Today we have both PattycakeDoll.com and the SleepySoft.com as well as BooksAndDolls.com and MyAdoptedChild, selling Asian Baby Dolls, African American Baby Dolls and Hispanic Baby Dolls, and contributing thousands of dollars every year to children’s charities.

Hi friends;

I have a pretty serious request for all my readers today. I am going to ask, no BEG! - you all to go to this link and sign this petition. The US government, in it’s attempts to increase toy safety, ( a good thing ) has written rules that require testing of all toys for children.

Unfortunately, that also means that if you handmake rag dolls here in America, and sell them to your local toy store or gallery, technically you need to get your dolls tested as well. Or if you make one of a kind Art Dolls. If you make children’s clothes, quirky, fun and original.

That will cost you from several hundred to several thousand dollars per doll. Even if you use all natural organic fibers and stuffings, these new rules still require testing! So Art Dolls, (if they’re to be sold,) Folk Art and Crafts Dolls Children’s quilts etc., all of us will be poorer for this rule. If not corrected, it could mean the end of home crafted dolls. Can you imagine a world with nothing but Barbie™?

This petition is to ask that Congress amend the law to exempt these small American Cottage industries that make handmade dolls and toys from this expensive testing.

please go here to sign this petition

Please visit here for more information The Handmade Toy Alliance

Two of the suppliers to our doll sites have announced plans to discontinue in their current form.

Showstoppers, makers of fine porcelain dolls and gift dolls,

(Here’s one of their dolls)

sent us this email:

After almost 30 years of enjoying the pleasure of bringing you some of the most exciting dolls available anywhere, we have decided that 2009, will be a good year for us to take some time to get renewed, refreshed, and invigorated.
The uncertain economy, and factory conditions overseas, have played no small part in our difficult decision. This means that we will not be producing any new designs for 2009.

They do go on to say:

We intend to use the second half of 2009 to re-evaluate the economy, and examine the value of the contributions we can offer to the doll and gift industry going forward. We will keep you informed of our progress.

Shortly after that, we learned that long time gift and plush retailer Russ Berrie is changing direction and will concentrate on it’s children’s furniture business; and is selling it’s gift business, (including the plush dolls and bears) to The Encore Group. It’s a complicated deal with licensing rights, subsidiaries, exclusivity clauses and such, but I think the sum total will be, that when we go to the toy show, we’ll be talking to different folks.

Addie and I have a soft spot for Russ Berrie, for it was their Ling Doll that turned our business from failure to success. We’ll devote a special entry to that story next time.

Happy Holidays to all our friends from ‘The Doll Blog’

We’re sorry to see KB Toys go… 460 stores closing after they sell as much as they can for Christmas. Second time for them in 4 years, this time it’s final. Ouch!

At any rate, we thought that our readers would be interested in the following information: It’s from the list of the top forty unsecured creditors filed with the court.

#1 with $27 Million + is Li & Fung Toy Island Manuf. in Hong Kong. Consolidators and shippers. This company would source all kinds of toys from China, bring them into the ports and then distribute them to the stores. More of a service industry than anything else, they would be responsible for very generic types of dolls.
#2 with only $1.3 Million is Mattel.
#3 Energizer battery $728 thousand
and down from there. In no particular order, Lego, Crayola, Hasbro-Milton Bradley etc.

They blamed the sudden downturn in the economy.

My Opinion? They had a poor business model. Selling toys is about selling play and fun. Successful neighborhood toy stores are an adventure and a pleasure to visit and explore. Not KB, - at least in my neck of the woods - (nor for that matter Toys R Us or Walmart or KMart either.) Their stores were never a pleasant place to visit, you just went in because you were looking for a particular toy and hoped they had it… they probably weren’t even your first stop in the Mall, they were probably a while I’m there I’ll check and see if they have… type of place. Plus, pardon my language but that 27 Million dollars worth of stuff on the shelves? IMHO, most of it was cr*p.

So put a bunch of cr*p in a store that was no fun to explore, never seemed to be part of the neighborhood, or care about your kids, like your friendly local specialty Toy or Doll shops… of course they failed. I just wonder that it took them so long. By the way… Toys R Us may survive online, but they’re next. Mark my words. Who was KB’s management as they emerged out bankruptcy four years ago?.. folks who came from Toys R Us!

Doll play is generally recognized as fulfilling many of the psychological needs of children; the need for play, first steps to learning to nurture, role playing and many more. But what about the Doll play of adults?

Elinor Peace Bailey is a renowned doll maker, teacher, artist, poet and author. Eighteen years ago she wrote Mother Plays With Dolls with the subtitle “…and finds an important key to unlocking creativity.” In the first part of the book Elinor describes her journey towards doll artistry, and in particular, her exposure to transactional analysis.

Now, if you are not familiar with TA, in simplest terms it teaches that we function from three personality states: Parent, Child and Adult, (and various subdivisions of these three) and that we act out to others and to ourselves through these states. As an example, when you are at work you might need to criticize a subordinate; you would be critical like a Parent.

Elinor believes that much of her creativity and artistry comes from her inner child. Her thoughts are that ‘play’ is a function of the inner child, and that creativity is a form of play — playing with materials, playing with ideas, etc.

Play, she believes is therefore intrinsically creative… free form, imaginative, open-ended, fantastical and childlike, and I think that this defines the difference between child play with dolls and adult play with dolls.

When children play with dolls, they don’t need permission to be creative, to role play, to be nurturing, to have an imaginary tea party. Psychologists for years have recognized doll play as healthy and therapeutic.

But when we adults play with dolls, I believe we get all those same benefits, PLUS, by playing like children we unleash our creative potential like children.

Thanks, Elinor for the insight. I’m going to go unleash some creativity now. I’m going to go play with my dolls. Bye.

PS: For my writer friends facing writer’s block… “Got Dolls?”