Greeting Doll Friends!
As I've mentioned before, I had a little doll collection in my adult life, prior to children. It consisted of a few dolls I owned in my childhood, such as My Friend Mandy by Fisher Price or Kimberly by Tomy, and some I bought here and there in my early 20s because I loved them when I saw them, like my Heidi Ott dolls. Well, three of those dolls were 11" Effanbee dolls. Here is a (bad, predigital) photo of the ones I had then.
This is a photo from a scrapbook page of mine where I am discussing my hobbies. It shows my collection of "My Friend" dolls and the three Effanbee dolls I owned at the time. This was before I did much doll shopping on eBay but as I recall, I got these three on an auction on eBay. I loved them at the time even though I knew their costumes were incomplete. They had such pretty faces! As I've reported before though, when I had my kids when I turned 30, I lost my mind and got rid of all my dolls (other than the ones I was going to "save for my kids to play with"). The Effanbee dolls went then...
So recently I was thrifting and glanced up at top shelf and who did I see staring back at me? The same Effanbee doll from before! Ok, not the same one... Not even the same model... But the same pretty face mold. This one had dark hair and was still in her original box! So I plunked down my $3.99 and brought her home.
Isn't she pretty? She arrived named Holly but I already have a doll named Holly and so my dear daughter renamed her Hope.
She is 11" tall and has sleepy eyes. She'd never been removed from her box and I was thrilled to get her! I realize as I write this that I didn't unbox her step by step to show you how she was packaged but it was pretty standard.
The costume is interesting in that the collar, cuffs and sash are all separate pieces from the dress itself. All top notch costume, very well made. I love her.
So... Not long after that, again, thrifting, I made a very interesting discovery. I was lucky enough to get to Goodwill just as they were bringing the new stock carts out from the back. All the really good stuff at Thrift Stores usually never makes it off these rolling carts out, people take the best right out of it and put it in their own carts! I am no exception. When I saw a load of dolls, all in plastic bags and tagged like they'd been in an estate sale, I grabbed every single one up into cart. I knew I wouldn't buy them all but it gave me a chance to look them over well and make decisions. All of them were Effanbee dolls and it was literally the first time I realized that Effanbee made dolls with faces other than the pretty one above. Uh oh. That would likely be dangerous knowledge... But I'll get to that later. I decided to buy four of the seven they had there. I left a Mae West, a Charlie Chaplain and a Winston Churchhill doll there because I've never been into dolls of adults. That left me with these.
As you can see, Hope is standing in middle of the four I bought. I got them in bagged sets for $3.99 a bag!!! So they were only $2 each!! I love thrift stores! Aren't they fabulous?!? To the left there is Flossie and Freddie, twin 11" dolls and to the right you see 13" Lotus Blossom and Little Tiger. They are all vinyl, with poseable arms and legs and are made very well, as is their costuming.
I was having way too much fun checking them out and didn't take as good a pictures as I might should've but here is some of me checking out Lotus Blossom's costume. It's so lovely! Every detail is made so well!
Here is the mark on the back of her body. She was made in 1982 and her doll artist was Jan Stafford.
Here is Little Tiger in costume (minus shoes, one was broken) with his little kite.
Here is Lotus Blossom with Elizabeth (18" Just Pretend doll) and Simone (14" Heart for Hearts doll) all redressed with Simone wearing her outfit, which fit like a dream! More on them all later, just had to come show you how my latest obsession, Effanbee dolls, got started! I will come back and show much better details of the dolls later! I kept Freddie and Flossie's original names because they just seemed to "fit" but wanted something different for Lotus Blossom and Little Tiger because those are a mouthful! I decided it'd be cute to keep their names if I could come up with them in an alternate language and so decided to try Chinese first. It was perfect! So Little Blossom became Ha'n and Little Tiger became Hu'! Perfect!
Well, that's it for this time Doll Friends! See you next time!!
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