A Doll for Christmas

Some little girls are doll lovers and some aren't. I was definitely one. As a child, I always received at least one doll every Christmas. I guess that's where my tendency to collect things (dolls among them) got started. Several eons ago (well, sometime in the 1950s), I received my first Ginny Doll for Christmas one year. Designed by dollmaker Jennie Graves, the Ginnys were made by the Vogue Doll Corporation, and were 8-inches of very sturdy hard plastic. They were also adorable.

Ginnys were all the rage just before Barbie hit, and just like the Pink Princess, they had tons of outfits and accessories - all sold separately, of course. They were very addictive - so much so that I had to have another one the next Christmas. Well, I didn't want Ginny No. 1 to be lonely.

Not long after I received that first Ginny, I took her out into the backyard and took some photos of her and my other dolls, with my mother's old Kodak Brownie camera. The blurriness of the pictures probably reflects my photographic ability at about age seven, more than the quality of the equipment. Here are a couple of those original shots (click on photos to enlarge):



And as a testament to the longevity of those Golden Age toys, here's that same doll in the same outfit, some fifty years later, enjoying yet another Christmas. All I can say is I'm just a bit older than she is, and I wish I'd held up that well! Merry Christmas from Ginny and me!

Dreaming of a Pink Christmas

It's been a few years since I got a doll for Christmas. I've collected dolls for many years now, but lately I really haven't been actively collecting. Even so, I do like to add a new girl occasionally. And this year, one of the new Silkstone Barbies caught my eye. Called "Preferably Pink," and designed by Robert Best, she actually arrived a little early for Christmas, back in November.

Pretty, isn't she?

And very pink, too. Now I don’t dislike the color pink, but I'm not really a huge fan, either. Probably the result of all those pink party dresses my mother made me wear, before I got old enough to fight back. However, when I was color typed back in the '80s (remember that?), pink and yellow turned out to be my "best colors." So maybe mother knew best, after all.


But in spite of all that pink, I was attracted to this particular doll mainly because of the outfit she's wearing. Her Chanel design suit reminds me so much of a similar suit I had as a teen. It was my Christmas outfit in 196--. Well, let's just say one year when I was a very young Boomer and the world was a younger and pinker place. Here's a shot of me in the outfit. You'll just have to trust me when I say it was pink, too – although a much lighter pink than Barbie's. Don't look like I'm very happy about having my picture taken, do I?

The ornaments on the tree were pink, too, as I recall. And the tree was white ("flocked"), and I think it belonged to my aunt. One of my other aunts had a silver aluminum tree that year. Well, as a family, we were nothing if not thoroughly modern.

(Cross-posted at Joysweb.)