Toy Time!: From Hula Hoops to He-Man to Hungry Hungry Hippos: A Look Back at the Most- Beloved Toys of Decades Past

Toy Time! Charming, playful, and full of photos of vintage toys, Toy Time! is an exploration and celebration of the toys that roused our imaginations, shaped our memories, and touched our lives. Full description

Chapter 1

My Dolly and Me

The doll is arguably one of the most classic playthings of all time. From the Pyramids to the present day, doll play in some form or another has been a part of every human civilization. Since play is really preparation for adulthood, it’s only natural, no matter how sophisticated the culture gets, that this basic human impulse—to take care of our young ones—would be timeless. It is the unchanging biological imperative of being human.

But a big change in how we played with dolls would come in the middle of the twentieth century. While doll play had traditionally involved a little girl taking on the role of the mommy, as women’s roles in the culture changed, so, too, did the roles of dolls. Baby dolls, of course, never went away (though they got new features and became more realistic as the decades went on); the fundamental instinct to nurture is something that seems to be wired into little girls no matter what else is going on.

In the post–World War II years, as the culture began to focus more on youth, and the teenager became something to be idolized (at least by little girls), dolls began to reflect different stages in girls’ lives. They also began to be best friends, upending the traditional mother-daughter relationship between a little girl and her dolls. The most famous, of course, was Barbie, the Original Teenage Fashion Model, but she wasn’t always the most popular. After all, what was a grown-up figure and a fancy wardrobe compared to a doll who could talk, like Chatty Cathy (introduced in 1959, the same year as Barbie), grow her hair, like Beautiful Crissy, and even drink, eat, and—yes—poop, like Baby Alive?

But whether best friend or baby, dolls have long been a way for little girls to begin the process of trying on roles and imagining their future lives.

Barbie 1959

No toy in history has been more exhaustively analyzed, written about, loved, and, frankly, loathed, than Barbie. Never before in the history of toys—or popular culture, for that matter—have a few ounces of plastic had such a profound impact on so many. Volumes have been written about her, and her importance as a cultural icon has been well known for more than half a century. To some she is an institution: a trendsetter that empowered and paved the way for millions of young women. To others, she is the emblem of what’s wrong with our culture, promoting an unrealistic standard of beauty and forcing girls to adhere to dated and pernicious gender stereotypes.

Why We Loved Her

Given her stature in the culture, Barbie’s history has always been defined by this tension between the joy she has brought to millions and the controversy she has courted. But the fact of the matter is that Barbie, like any toy, “lives” only in the imagination. She is neither heroine nor villainess, but only what she is imagined to be. (A shrink would call that projection, and Barbie Millicent Rogers has had it all.) Fortunately, her little plastic shoulders have repeatedly proven more than equal to hold the weight placed on them over the years.

Barbie’s history is well known, but it bears repeating that in the 1950s, when she first came on the scene, there was no such thing as a fashion doll. There were baby dolls, naturally, because girls were inevitably going to be mothers. But the only dolls that let girls play with fashion were paper dolls. As the story goes, the idea for Barbie was born when Ruth Handler, a partner in Mattel, watched her daughter, Barbara, and her friends playing with some paper dolls and found herself wishing there were a more lifelike fashion doll for girls, one that allowed them to act out being teenagers and even grown women. Despite what some of Barbie’s detractors say about the doll today, Handler believed passionately that this type of play would help girls build their self-esteem.

So Handler approached the Mattel executives (all men), who rejected the idea. However, not long afterward, while on a trip to Germany, Ruth found a doll that appeared to validate her vision—and prove, at least to her, that a teenage doll would work with contemporary American kids. Called Lilli, the popular German doll confirmed Ruth’s belief that there was a market for a doll that was grown-up and beautiful and had a killer wardrobe. She brought Lilli back to the United States and used it as a loose model to create an entirely new design for a slim, attractive eleven-and-a-half-inch-tall plastic doll. Ruth finally convinced Mattel to test the doll, and hired designer Charlotte Johnson to create the clothes. Finally, she named it Barbie in honor of her daughter.

At first, the toy trade was luke-warm on Barbie, the Original Teenage Fashion Model, in her black-and-white swimsuit and ponytail. They’d never seen anything like her, and they were dubious about her commercial prospects—that is, until

little girls got her. First-year sales of the dolls topped three hundred thousand units at about four dollars each (a lot at the time), with fashions sold separately.

As the Barbie doll became a bigger and bigger a hit, her world started to grow, as Skipper, Stacie, Kelly, Midge, Ken, and other friends joined her social circle.

Why We Also Hated Her

Still, it was not always smooth sailing for Barbie.

As the feminist movement emerged in the late 1960s and early ’70s, as women were rejecting traditional roles, Barbie became anathema to the women’s movement and almost became passé. That is, until Mattel’s Jill Barad led a total revamping of the brand under the banner “We girls can do anything!”—somewhat mollifying many of Barbie’s feminist detractors but more importantly lending her new relevance and appeal for a new generation of girls who came thronging to the restaged Barbie.

And then, there was the matter of Barbie’s body. Long attacked for being an impossible representation of the human form (it is said that were she a real person, her narrow waist would be physically unable to support her ample bosom), Barbie’s “real world” measurements (36–18–33) have always been a lightning rod for protests, thought to cause poor body image and lack of self-esteem in young, impressionable girls.

So in 1997, Mattel made a “more realistic” body for Barbie, and it bombed. It turned out that little girls didn’t really care whether she looked like a real woman or not—they liked her familiar, rail-thin, fully developed body.

Where Is She Now?

Barbie’s “look,” like that of any fashion icon, has been in a constant state of reinvention since she first came on the scene. For example, her pillbox hat of 1962 gave way to the Carnaby Street–inspired fashions of the late 1960s and then to the contemporary fashions of today. Mattel maintains a huge design staff that keeps Barbie au courant at any time. Designing a costume for Barbie has become a coup for high-end fashion designers; more than seventy major couturiers have created clothes for Barbie, and more than 150 designers claim her as inspiration (including Tony Award–winning costume designer Gregg Barnes, who has said it was a childhood dream come true when he designed the costume for Barbie Live in Fairytopia).

For a woman of her generation, Barbie’s résumé is impressive indeed. She’s had more than 110 careers—including that of yoga teacher, air force pilot, chef, paleontologist, photographer, news anchor, scuba diver, and computer engineer. She’s run for president twice and been to the moon. She has lived in more than 150 countries, and the Barbie brand has consistently generated global revenues of more than $3 billion annually.

But her career is far from over. If the past is prologue, she will continue to adapt to and reflect the world around her, even as she reaches what would be her golden years, were she not eternally a teen. As long as young girls continue to fantasize about what they will be when they grow up, the Barbie doll will be there to help them play out those dreams.

In 1959, the talking doll was not a completely new phenomenon. There had been dolls that said “Mama” if you held them at a precise angle and then didn’t budge. But these were clunky and often malfunctioned. As far back as the nineteenth century there had been dolls with a literal phonograph record built into them (Thomas Edison even got involved in making them). But they didn’t work very well, either, and they cost a whopping $10, or about $255 in 2013 dollars.

Chatty Cathy, however, was the first working and affordable talking doll. Unlike her predecessors, she could be picked up and played with while she talked. Chatty Cathy was chatty indeed, and, at the mere pull of a string (which would activate a small record sewn inside her), could say as many as eleven different things, including “Let’s play house,” “Please change my dress,” “Tell me a story,” “Please take me with you,” “I hurt myself,” and, of course, that staple phrase of talking dolls then and now: “I love you.” (In versions made after 1963, she got even more talkative, adding seven new phrases to her repertoire for a total of eighteen.)

Why We Loved Her Back

Chatty Cathy was a peer for little girls. She was a best friend who talked! She wasn’t a baby who had to be taken care of; she was a playmate who could share all the dreams and adventures that little girls imagined. It was the talking that created her special magic. When Mom, a sister, or a best friend wasn’t around to play house or say “I love you” . . . Cathy was.

But Cathy was more than just a chatterbox. She was also tremendously fashionable; over the years, her chic wardrobe was continually expanded. Plus, Mattel eventually made versions of the doll with different hair and eye colors—even an African American version—so little girls of all colorings could have Cathys that looked more like “Mom.”

Where Is She Now?

Chatty Cathy was one of the most popular dolls of all time, despite the fact that she had a lot of competition, even during the peak of her popularity from the early to mid-1960s. Ideal’s Betsy Wetsy and Tiny Tears were big rivals for young girls’ affections, with their gimmicks such as growing hair and magically appearing makeup (which gave rise to what today is called, at least in the toy industry, “the feature doll”).

But for all these bells and whistles, the doll that ultimately edged out Chatty Cathy was the womanly yet mute Barbie, who had also been introduced in 1959. What did Barbie have that Cathy didn’t? Among other “endowments,” Barbie allowed the child to imagine ways the dolls could play with one another; play wasn’t limited to just Cathy and the child.

As dolls go, Cathy still has a small but loyal collector following. But while she can still be found online and at antiques shops, it’s very rare to find a Chatty Cathy that still talks. Whether it’s a broken pull string or a disintegrated rubber band that once turned on her speech unit, Chatty Cathy’s parts are virtually impossible to repair or replace. Sadly, many of the existing Cathys don’t have a lot to say anymore.

They say the maternal bond is one that can’t be broken. Perhaps that explains why Chatty Cathy dolls still hold a special place in the hearts of women who grew up in the 1960s and ’70s, who still fondly remember Cathy as their first best friend.

Liddle Kiddles 1966

The 1960s were an era of huge innovation and change in the doll business. Today, so-called minidolls are common toys, but in 1966, when Mattel introduced the diminutive Liddle Kiddles, there was nothing like them around.

Liddle Kiddles were dolls that were supposed to be real little kids, just like the kids who played with them. But rather than being role models, like Barbie, or babies to nurture and mother, these dolls were intended to be a kid’s peers. And unlike Chatty Cathy, who was one best friend, the Liddle Kiddles were a gang of buddies—just like kids had in their neighborhoods.

There were twenty-four dolls in the original collection, and they stood on average only about three inches tall. The soft, plastic bodies could be shaped into different poses, thanks to a wire armature inside. The dolls all had names that rhymed—however forced the rhyme was—with “Kiddle.” The winter doll, for example, was “Freezy Sliddle.” The bedtime doll was “Beddy Bye Biddle.” And so forth. There was even a boy doll, “Howard ‘Biff’ Boodle.”

Why We Loved Them

The dolls were inexpensive and had lots of different accessories, and their hair could be combed and styled—fixing hair always being an important component of doll play. The dolls also came with storybooks that chronicled the fictional adventures of the various Kiddles, while promoting collectibility at the same time.

Based on the success of the originals, Mattel soon extended the line to include Storybook Kiddles, animal Kiddles, and different special dolls for the holidays, including Easter, which was becoming a toy-purchasing period of the year, and, of course, Christmas.

Where Are They Now?

One of the problems with the Liddle Kiddles was always with the wire armature. Too much play would wear out the plastic exterior, and the wires would poke through. So when Polly Pocket, who was not only made entirely of plastic but came with her own protective shell, came along in 1989, she quickly became the miniature doll of choice.

Today the original Liddle Kiddles can still be found in online auctions, and there are rumors that a small company is trying to bring the originals back.

Beautiful Crissy 1968

Thanks to the success of Barbie, by the end of the 1960s, there was a huge and growing market for teenage dolls.

What was unique about Crissy, however, was her hair—which could actually “grow,” allowing little girls to style her tresses over and over in many different ways. Her flowing red locks, which could reach her feet when fully extended, were operated by a dial on the back of the doll, and would spool or unspool depending on which direction the dial was turned.

Why We Loved Her

While she wasn’t the first doll with growing hair, Crissy was the first to be broadly advertised on television, and many kids remember singing along with the commercial: Beautiful Crissy has beautiful hair that grows.

She was such a hit that over the next several years, her parent company, Ideal, introduced new styles and even a friend for Crissy named Velvet. Ideal also introduced versions of Crissy who could move and pose in different ways, such as the 1972 Look Around Crissy with a swiveling waist and a pull-string-activated turning head, allowing girls to imagine that she was just like the real women on the famous Breck shampoo commercials.