More Sindy and the Power of Words (Collect)

Late 1970s. I'm a teenaged doll collector. Everybody knew that I was "too old" to play dolls. Everybody meant my family and friends. Mercifully, Sibyl DeWein and Joan Ashabraner published Collectors Encyclopedia of Barbie Dolls & Collectibles in 1976 - yippee! I could continue my fun under another verb. Collect. A more mature verb. Collect. A socially more acceptable verb. Collect. And with this maturity and social acceptance came a new responsibility. As a collector, I was archivist of a plastic and vinyl world. Dolls I had once disdained, now I looked at in a new light. I might even have bought an Ideal Tammy doll were those dolls still available. They were not. Instead, a Pedigree Sindy - yes, British Sindy - in spite of her larger head - entered my collection.

Note, I said a Pedigree Sindy. The blond Marx Sindy and her Black Friend, Gayle, were not going to work. I doubt I ever saw Gayle to buy her. I might have, but I think I didn't. The Marx dolls reminded me of the early Tammys with their large, rounded heads. But when I saw the Funtime Sindy, well, she was brunette at a time when blond Barbies and blond Barbie-clones dominated the fashion doll world. Maybe the darker hair made this Sindy's head seem smaller. And this Sindy by Pedigree was a British doll; the Marx Sindy was American. Score two for diversification.

Now the Marx Sindy furniture was another matter altogether. I preferred the Marx Sindy furniture than the cold modular furniture available for Barbie. The Marx Sindy furniture had realistic colors like mustard yellow kitchen appliances and off white dining room and bedroom and wine armchairs. So the Sindy furniture went to my Barbies. (Made sense at the time; the best dolls with the best furniture.)

Moreover, Marx was so cool that they issued special giftsets for Sindy. Here's a link to a Sindy website, showing the furniture and giftsets. The giftsets were special order only. If you bought Sindy doll items, you could get doll accessory awards. Example for each Marx Sindy furniture piece, there would be some Sindy tokens on the outer box. The number of tokens was based on the price of the item bought; larger items provided more tokens. A correct amount of tokens, the order form on the booklet packed with the items, and fifty cents for shipping costs, would win you one of four giftsets. I clipped and hoarded those Sindy tokens until I had enough to get the three sets that I wanted:

Let's Style My Hair - 1286 included a "heated" hair curler unit, comb, brush, mirror

Let's Go To The Beach - 1291 included a bath towel, beach umbrella, plastic cooler

Let's Bar-B-Que - 1285 included a barbeque grill, meat, utensils, aprons

Here's a photo of my Pedigree Sindy using the beach set minus the original swimsuit - Sindy borrowed the swimsuit from 1726 Twiggy Turnouts. I am including a link to some of my other figures using the Sindy Bar-B-Que grill here.




Additional Sindy sites are Sindy.org and previous post.