Adorable Vintage Dress Me, Souvenir or Tourist Dolls 1944+

Most Dress Me type dolls are under 12″ tall, have painted or sleep eyes, jointed only at the neck and shoulders with stationary straight legs and molded painted shoes. Early dolls were made of composition, around the middle of the 1950s dolls were made of plastic. Initially, dolls were sold dressed, boys usually as a groom or cowboy, girl dolls in a variety of fancy long gowns with complimentary hats, all packaged in a cardboard box with a partial clear cellophane front cover to showcase the contents of the box. 

Hollywood style fantasy displayed in a box, a delight for every little girl! Her own doll dressed as a princess, bride, flower girl, ballgowns and more, as long as it was floor length and frilly. Little ladies dressed in full color, just like what they saw in television programs in the 1940s, 1950s into the 1960s.

Advertisers in magazines used dressed, dress me dolls as mail in premiums to sell products. Dress me dolls dressed in traditional costumes of the region where they were bought by tourists as souvenirs to commemorate their travel.  Later plastic dolls were sold undressed in plastic baggies with a card board hang tag stating Dress Me Doll to be dressed by the new owner or used by charities, church groups and girl scouts to dress and sell.  The dress-me dolls were made by the thousands, maybe even millions, by many different doll makers.