Adorable Vintage Dress Me, Souvenir or Tourist Dolls 1944+

Dress me, souvenir, tourist doll face
1960s vintage dress me, souvenir, tourist blonde plastic doll face

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.

Montgomery Wards 1944 miniature dress me doll ad
Montgomery Wards 1944 miniature dress me doll ad

Montgomery Wards 6 1/2″ miniature dolls in colorful costumes Princess, Colonial, Bride, Bridesmaid, Flower girl composition dolls with painted on eyes and mouth, mohair ringlet curls catalog ad 1944 . . . . . $2.39 each

1955 Spiegel catalog dress me dolls ad
1955 Spiegel catalog dress me dolls ad

Spiegel Miniatures for favored little “collectors” dolls Little Bo Peep, Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Authentic Nun doll, Snow White dressed dolls catalog 1955 . . . $1.69

A & H Around the World dolls and Marcie dolls, A Rosalie Doll, Active Beau Arts dressed 5 1/2″ dolls, Admiration; Dolls of All Countries or Dolls of all Nations, Allison Corporation, Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO); Dolls of the World, Blue Bonnet Margarine; Dolls of All Lands & mail in  premium Sue Storybook dolls, Carlson; Eskimo, native American Indian, soldiers, plus other uniforms dressed dolls, Commonwealth Plastics Corp., Composition Novelty Company, Confetti Doll Company, Doll Bodies, Inc., Doll Craftin’, Duchess dolls, Elite Creations Doll Company, ENSCO dolls, Eugenia Doll Company, Fairyland Doll Company slogan; Famous Figures of Fact and Fancy . . . Costumed, Grant Plastics, Hollywood Dolls, House of Dolls, Chicago, IL; Melody dolls, Kraft cheese dolls, LeeWards Dexter craft dolls, Linda Dolls of Britain, Made in Hong Kong dolls, Midwestern Manufacturing Company dolls, Nancy Ann Storybook Doll Company, Norma Originals “The Doll with an Educational Story”, PMA Plastic Molded Arts Company, Princess Anna Doll Company, Reddi-Wip dolls, Reliable Toy Company, Royal (called Tiny Teen dolls), Sears, Souvenir or tourist dolls from around the world, Spiegel, Standard Doll Company, Virga dolls, Montgomery Wards, Woolco / Woolworths and many others.

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