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 baby doll

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.

The Empire State Building lit up in Red for Valentines Day!

Illustration from the book

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

Razz Golliwog courtesy Trendle Int'l

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?

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

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.

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!

But we are a little bit puzzled by the folks who are complaining that the toy industry advertises too heavily to children. And that during tough times, it’s not right, because it makes parents feel bad to have to say no! (Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood: http://www.commercialexploitation.org/ )

Nobody likes commercials, we’d rather watch the show without them. And the toy industry certainly does market to children… better get used to it – always has and always will.** That’s how children learn what’s out there.

But if you want to blame TV commercials for not buying your kid a doll… well then you really are in sad shape. Dolls don’t have to be expensive; better yet, make one yourself. Some old rags and needle and thread… a few hours and you’ve got yourself a doll.
Here’s one from Martha Stewart

Our advice? Don’t look for excuses or outside sources to blame. Little girls love their dolls unconditionally, it doesn’t matter if they are small or home made. And the smile on their faces when you give them a new doll? Priceless.

**Doll ads from Sears catalogs from the last century get lots of money from collectors; and fashion dolls were themselves originally advertisements. In the 1800′s dolls were dressed in the latest European fashions and sent to America so ladies could see the latest styles!

But to a large extent… new toy safety regulations passed in August by the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act.

Lead:Scope: Materials and substrate of any children’s products.
Requirement: The limits on lead in children’s products will be established as follows and according to this timetable:
1. 600 parts per million (ppm) – effective 180 days after enactment of the Act
2. 300 ppm – effective 1 year after enactment of the Act
Lead in paint and surface coatings (Sec. 101, part (f))

Scope: Children’s products
Requirement: The limit will be reduced from the current 0.06 percent (600 ppm) requirement to 0.009 percent (90 ppm).

Testing: The Act allows for consideration of alternative methods of testing for lead in paint including x-ray florescence technology (XRF) when the total weight of the paint or surface coating to be tested is no greater than 10 mg or no more than 1 cm2 of surface area. Additionally, the Act calls on CPSC to study the effectiveness, precision and reliability of XRF and other alternate methods for measuring lead in paint and surface coatings – and if determined to be at least as effective, precise and reliable as other methods the agency may promulgate regulations governing the use of such methods.

Expense : Testing – Every Doll now has to be tested. That means you need the ‘sniffers’ that can actually detect lead content. Not cheap.
Expense : Reporting – Not only do you have to get good results, but now everyone down the chain has to have them too… from the giants like Wal-mart and Target, to little ole’ me and our three online doll stores.
Expense: Compliance officer. There is so much regulation, testing and reporting needed, that the manufacturers are hiring folks to oversee their compliance. And these folks need to go to China pretty often as well. Expensive.

Tracking Labels for Children’s Products (Sec. 103)
Scope: Children’s products
Requirement: Effective one year after enactment of the Act, manufacturers must place permanent, distinguishing marks on a product and its packaging, to the extent practicable, that will enable the manufacturer and ultimate purchaser to ascertain: the name of the manufacturer, date and location of production and identifying production information (cohort, batch, run number or other identifying information). This provision recognizes that flexibility is needed for different types of products and allows the manufacturer to use its own tracking systems.
This section also stipulates that advertising, labeling or packaging of a product, if it references a consumer product safety rule or standard, must be in compliance with that rule or standard.

Expense: Data Entry, Printing costs, Additional employees. Every baby doll, needs to be identified, labeled and tracked from the factory right into your hands. That’s every single, solitary doll.

Labeling Requirement for Advertising of Toys and Games (Sec. 105)

Scope: Retailers, manufacturers, importers, distributors, private labelers of toys and games
Requirement: Any advertisement that contains a direct means for the purchase or ordering of product, must also contain any and all applicable cautionary statements that are already required under the FHSA on or near the product. (e.g. If a game has a small parts warning, this cautionary statement must be repeated in any point-of-purchase advertising such as a catalog or online retailer.). The legislation stipulates the language, type style and layout that must be used in the cautionary statement in advertising. It is incumbent on the manufacturer, importer or private labeler to inform the retailer of such a requirement for the product in advertising and the retailer to inquire of the supplier. CPSC, within 90 days of enactment, must promulgate regulations related to this requirement. Effective 120 days after enactment for internet websites; 180 days for catalogs and other printed materials.

Yup, that’s Addie and I… we advertise on the internet, so we need to go back and check that every single product has the right wording, the right layout, the right type size and the right location as specified by this law. (We are still waiting to find out the particulars from the government)

There’s more, but we think you get the point. Even though we have never had a product recalled, even though we have always made it a point to do age recommendations, the rules are stricter and more expensive to comply with now.

But as inconvenient and expensive as this may be, we’re still for it. A child’s life is too important. We will do whatever we can to safeguard it.

The ‘baby doll’ is being added to The Strong National Museum of Play’s “National Toy Hall of Fame!

Strong Museum Rochester

From the press release:

Cradle it, feed it, take it for a stroll. The Baby Doll, with its newborn features and realistic qualities, brings out the nurturing side of pretend moms and dads. Loved by children (especially little girls) since the late eighteenth century, manufacturers have made such dolls ever-more lifelike. Most early baby dolls were made of papier-mâché or wood, followed in the mid-1800s by wax, porcelain, and composition, and in the 1950s by plastic and vinyl. In the mid-1850s, a patented German device allowed dolls to say “mama”; and an 1879 patented design made way for a drinking doll that could hold water in her head and then return it to the bottle. In 1933, Effanbee released its Dy-Dee doll, which could drink and wet. The Betsy Wetsy doll soon followed. Today’s dolls can crawl, cry, eat, dirty a diaper, and—thanks to 1990s microchip technology—talk back via voice-activated commands! While the baby doll comes in hundreds of different styles, it continues to inspire children to imitate parental roles and foster their own sense of identity.

Assuming you are like me, you’ll want to know what else is on the list…

To date, the following 41 toys have made it into the National Toy Hall of Fame®: Alphabet Blocks, Atari® 2600 Game System, Barbie®, Baby Doll, Bicycle, Candy Land®, Cardboard Box, Checkers, Crayola® Crayons, Duncan® Yo-Yo, Easy-Bake® Oven, Erector® Set, Etch A Sketch®, Frisbee®, G.I. Joe™, Hula Hoop®, Jack-in-the-Box, Jacks, Jigsaw Puzzle, Jump Rope, Kite, LEGO®, Lincoln Logs®, Lionel® Trains, Marbles, Monopoly®, Mr. Potato Head®, Play-Doh®, Radio Flyer® Wagon, Raggedy Ann & Andy™, Rocking Horse, Roller Skates, Scrabble®, Silly Putty®, Skateboard, Slinky®, Stick, Teddy Bear, Tinkertoy®, Tonka® Trucks, and View-Master®.

The parent company of Barbie and Fisher-Price, American Girl Dolls, and a major stake holder in Corolle, is cutting staff. 1000 in a round announced 11/6, and then another 260 from it’s Intellivision video game division announced 11/10. (Approx 3% of their workforce worldwide)

Mattel has traditionally been pretty loyal to it’s folks, so this is somewhat of a surprise, but they are saying that they will offer benefits to the laid off employees. I looked at their financial statements, and their third quarter results looked pretty good. But like everybody else in the doll industry, costs are up, (Chinese labor, testing expenses to meet new Congressional mandates, fuel to ship all these toys halfway around the world, and of course slowing consumer demand) so some method of cost cutting had to be found. I’m sorry it had to be people’s jobs.

Mini Calin Yang by Corolle

PS: Hey can I make a suggestion? We carry a large selection of Corolle Baby dolls and Asian Corolle baby dolls at our sites, and you would not believe how ‘overpackaged’ Corolle dolls are for shipping. You want to save money? Put more dolls in a bigger box, and you’ll surely reduce your costs. But hey, I’m just a lowly retailer at the end of the shipping chain… what do I know?

Well the results are in! And The Cabbage Patch Doll auction went — Palin Beats Obama!
The Cabbage Patch Presidential and Vice-Presidential Doll Auction Results were:

Cabbage Patch Kids Vice President Candidate Sarah Palin Doll
Giving Works Item
100% of the proceeds go to Marine Toys for Tots
113 Bids Sold $19,000.00

Cabbage Patch Kids Presidential Candidate John McCain Doll
Giving Works Item
100% of the proceeds go to Marine Toys for Tots
68 Bids Sold $6,000.00

Cabbage Patch Kids Vice President Candidate Joe Biden Doll
Giving Works Item
100% of the proceeds go to Marine Toys for Tots
60 Bids Sold $3,550.01

Cabbage Patch Kids Presidential Candidate Barack Obama Doll
Giving Works Item
100% of the proceeds go to Marine Toys for Tots
96 Bids Sold $8,400.00

You know what? Everybody won with this one. God Bless America, Cabbage Patch Dolls and Ebay, and of course, the Doll bidders.