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.

everGirl Dolls by Playmates

"Every Girl's an everGirl ... " the everGirl doll's slogan, 2005

The everGirl dolls by Playmates are part of a Nickelodeon brand for tweens. The everGirl dolls are sold individually; none of the dolls that I own have specific names. (There seems to be four recurring characters in a handheld game associated with this brand - Joy, Hope, Skye, and Starr - but that information does not seem available online now.) Each 10" tall doll wears a corduroy jacket, an everGirl logo tee shirt, unhemmed denim jeans, loafers, and a white over-sized carryall bag. Beneath that outfit, the dolls have painted on white bra and white panties. Their arms bend at the elbows (jointed), and they have click-bend knees like standard modern Barbies.

If you want a blonde, brunette, or red-haired doll, you can choose a doll with any of those hair colors AND a choice of blue, brown, or green eyes.

If you want an ethnic doll, you may choose from an olive complexioned, brown-eyed Asian doll; a caramel complexioned, brown-eyed Hispanic doll; OR a medium brown complexioned, brown-eyed Black doll.

Here's a photo of my four - Asian American, Hispanic American, African American, and European American - everGirls.



The intended child owner could take the everStyle Quiz to determine her everStyle:

Preppy (Green butterfly icon)
Trendy (Hot pink flower icon)
Funky (Purple star icon)
Sporty (Pink lightening bolt icon)

You can see some of those fashions in the photo below:




For additional information on this doll brand, please see

Some of the everGirls on sale

everGirl at 2005 ToyFair for preproduction photos

everGirl Brand information

Wikipedia stub on the everGirl brand

Please note the official everGirl web page is "getting a makeover" according to the message on that page.


Note: some of the everGirls shoes can fit Ideal's Tuesday Taylor and Taylor Jones, the "big feet" swimsuit Barbies, Pedigree Sindy, and YNU Group's Mixis dolls. Some of the everGirls clothes can fit Volks' Who's That Girl dolls and Super Action Jenny dolls.

Sindy, the Doll You Love to Dress

Sindy AKA Barbie's competition in the United Kingdom, was produced in 1963. Sindy resembled another American fashion doll, Tammy, and even shared the same byline, the Doll You Love to Dress. When I was young, Tammy held no appeal for me. Tammy's head was GINORMOUS; she had no sophistication, no mystery. So I would not have thought that Sindy would hold any appeal to me as I grew into my teens because Sindy also had a bulbous big head. BUT Sindy had an exotic appeal that Tammy lacked: Sindy had the British edge.

Think Hammer House of Horror, Dark Shadows, and later Masterpiece Theatre. Goth Glamour. The similarities and the differences between British English and American English intrigued me. So when I saw the Pedigree-by-way-of-Marx brunette Funtime Sindy sometime in 1978 or 1979, well, I was more receptive. Sindy would be my third British-themed doll - Mattel's Twist'n turn Stacey and Mary Quant's Daisy were my first and second.

Sindy's realistic furniture and accessories were added to my collection. Then sometime in the early-mid 2000s, I discovered the Vivid Imaginations Sindy and Mel. Added them to my collection. The Vivid Imaginations Sindy doll had better head proportions although her build remained more youthful, more early teen build than MOST Barbies produced at the same time.

I started a Webshots folder with a Pedigree Sindy outfit. My other Sindy items will be added in the future.

For information about Sindy in her various forms, please read Sindy on Wikipedia AND for more recent information, see the current Pedigree Sindy 2000+.

10 Series of Barbie Doll Alternatives, Past and Present

Barbie, Barbie, Barbie.

Sigh.

The playscale fashion doll scene seems to revolve around Barbie. Shorthand: fashion doll = Barbie. Non-collectors describe dolls not produced by Mattel or under the Barbie brand as "Barbie." Collectors compare other fashion dolls to Barbie: cheap playscale dolls are called "Barbie clones." Clone in this case is a negative. But is every playscale figure a Barbie clone? Usually, clones are cheaply made, poor quality dolls like some of the dollar store offerings. What about decent quality or even better quality playscale fashion dolls? Do they exist?

Yes, they do. Here are ten playscale doll series that "correct" or "improve" on some aspect of Barbie. They are less sophisticated, more ethnically "correct" or physically realistic, more brazen in three cases, more "intelligent," or otherwise ANTI-Barbie.

1. Ideal - Tammy the Doll You Love to Dress

2. Various companies - Sindy the Doll You Love to Dress

3. Hasbro - JEM

4. Hamilton Designs - Candi Girl / Candi (later designed by Jason Wu and Integrity Toys)

5. Get Real Girls

6. Get Set Club

7. Lanard - I-Girls

8. Smartees

9. Mattel - Flavas

10. MGA Entertainment - Bratz