Posts Tagged ‘barbie’
Takara Jenny
Wednesday, October 8th, 2008
This popular Japanese fashion doll was originally a Barbie. In 1981 Mattel licensed Takara to sell a fashion doll under the Barbie brand. However, she was redesigned for the Asian market - slightly younger looking than Barbie - Jenny is a schoolgirl, slightly smaller, and with a big eyes ‘manga’ style face-paint.
The deal with Mattel only lasted for 5 years. When the arrangement broke down, Takara relaunched the doll as Jenny.
Jenny also has lots of friends that appear in the series with different hair colours and skin tones and back stories depicting them as coming from different countries.
Clothes and accesories are also available, of course, including typically Japanese costumes such as sailor-blouse school uniforms and kimonos.
Like Barbie, Jenny comes in a wide variety of price ranges, from simple play dolls for little girls, to much more expensive collectors items in more lavish costumes. 
Tags: barbie, Dolls, fashion dolls, jenny, takara
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Fashion Dolls
Thursday, August 14th, 2008
The very first fashion dolls weren’t made for children.
They were produced by French fashion houses to show off their designs and skills to clients and they were eagerly passed around dressmakers over the course of years, as the styles worn by royalty and grand ladies became copied in cheaper versions for those lower down the social scale.
The fashion doll as we know her today was born in Germany – but she still wasn’t intended for children. In 1955 Bild Lilli was based on a popular cartoon strip and was a pin-up girl- hence her buxom, long-legged figure.
But Elliott Handler (the ‘El’ half of American toy manufacturer Mattel) and his wife Ruth saw her while on a trip to Switzerland, bought several, and made copies of the doll and costumes for her for their children, putting Barbie – the name of their daughter – into production in 1958. Ruth Handler was convinced that little girls wanted a doll that looked like an adult woman, to dress in adult fashions and not just the little girl and baby dolls that had been produced up to then.
In 1964 Mattel bought the rights to Bild Lilli, and production of that original doll stopped.
Tags: barbie, bild lilli, Dolls, fashion dolls, mattel
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