Dolly'll never go away again

As previously mentioned, Momma has never cared for blond, blue-eyed dolls.

Maybe it was because she was a brunette, brown-eyed girl.

Or maybe it was because of all of the blond, blue-eyed dolls on the market in the late '60s and early '70s when she was in her formative doll years.

Almost all the dolls she saw of that era were blue-eyed blondes - at least in the town she grew up in. Momma had Ideal's Velvet and Mia (she preferred the brunette Mia) and didn't even know there was an African American Chrissy until she was an adult.

She and her brother both collected Marx's "Best of the West" and her brother collected their "Noble Knights and Vikings" action figures. Momma had Jane, Janice, and Josie West, as well as Princess Wildflower, while her brother collected the males in both lines. (Momma would have liked to collect girls from the "Noble Knights and Vikings" but there was none.)

At the end of her doll-playing days (but not collecting!) she had Mattel's entire Sunshine Family and Happy Family lines - mostly because she liked the multicultural and multi-generational aspect of the dolls. (Mattel did not make a "Black" Barbie until 1980!)

But her biggest regret? Not keeping the two Barbies given to her by her older cousins.

Why? Her cousins are 6 to 12 years older than Momma and gave her two of the earliest Barbies when they outgrew them!

Sadly, Momma did not like what she now thinks was a 1961 Mattel Barbie Titian-Hair Bubble-Cut Barbie, and what was possibly the first 1959 Teenage Fashion Model Blonde Barbie.

Momma disliked them so much she dressed them in white slips (yes, they made dolls wear slips back then) and forced them into domestic servitude for her Mod and Malibu Barbies.

Snigger.