Vintage Dress-Me Type, Display, 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.
1950s Elite Creation Little Charmer Scotch Lassie a dressed display doll 8″ tall in a red and white box.
1951 Ar-Doll Creations Dress Me doll, Talking Miniature dolls with human voice, “Hello Sweetheart” $1.98, 8″ tall, sleep eyes with real lashes, straight non jointed legs with molded painted shoes. Doll Series: Bride, Bridesmaid, Dolls of all Nations and famous characters of Facts 1951 Standard Doll Company catalogue. Standard Doll Company doll mark SD.
Doll Companies that made Dress-Me Type dolls
A & H Around the World dolls, Dolls of All Lands and Marcie dolls in the 1950s, Admiration made the Dolls of All Countries or Dolls of all Nations; Princess Carol doll, Allison Corporation dolls, Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) Dolls of the World, Blue Bonnet Margarine Dolls of All Lands plastic dolls by mail order in the 1970s, Carlson Doll Company dress-me type dolls; Eskimo, native American Indian, soldiers uniform, Commonwealth Plastics Corporation dolls, Composition Novelty Company dolls, Confetti Doll Company dolls, Corrine’s Brides of All Nations dolls, Doll Bodies Lingerie Lou dolls, Doll Craftin’ dlls, Duchess dolls, Elite Creations Doll Company dolls, ENSCO dolls, Eugenia Doll Company dolls, Fairyland Doll Company composition doll slogan; Famous Figures of Fact and Fancy . . . Costumed, Grant Plastics dolls, Hollywood Dolls, House of Dolls in Chicago, IL made Melody dolls, Kraft Natural Sliced Cheeses Beautiful Dolls of many Lands (12) dolls by mail order, Lee Wards Dexter craft dolls, Linda Dolls of Britain made in Hong Kong, Midwestern Manufacturing Company dolls, Nancy Ann Storybook Doll Company dolls, Norma Originals “The Doll with an Educational Story”, PMA Plastic Molded Arts Company dolls, Princess Anna Doll Company dolls, Reddi-Whip mail order dolls, Reliable Toy Company, A Rosalie Doll Company, Royal (called Tiny Teen dolls), Sears, Souvenir or tourist dolls from around the world, Spiegel Catalog Company, Virga dolls, Montgomery Wards, Woolco or Woolworths and others.
