Introduction
Vinyl is a material that is still in use for the making of dolls. Vinyl dolls made their first appearance more or less in the same period as fashion dolls, in the late fifties and throughout the nineteen-sixties. The greatest advantage of vinyl dolls is that they are resistant to breakage and cracking. Vinyl dolls also opened the possibility of rooted hair on dolls.
Vinyl and Before
Before the advent of plastic and vinyl in the twentieth century, dolls and other children’s toys were made of material like porcelain, bisque and composition. Of these, porcelain and bisque dolls were easy to break and composition dolls were prone to chipping with time.
Hard plastic came to use later with the early fifties, but again hard plastic dolls split and cracked easily. Vinyl solved all of these problems and also made rooted hair possible instead of wigs and painted hair.
However vinyl was not free of all problems when it first started being used. Hard vinyl faded over time. This fact is evident in many vintage vinyl dolls, which have different colors for the limbs and the torso. Soft vinyl changed color as well, turning into orange or yellow with time.
Fashion Dolls and Vinyl
Coincidentally, the advent of vinyl and fashion dolls happened more or less at the same time. Thus vinyl became the common material for making fashion dolls. Fashion dolls were fast replacing baby dolls at the time. However the companies that still manufactured baby dolls started using vinyl too. The reason was obvious- vinyl being flexible and durable excellent material for making children’s toys.
Vinyl dolls also offered another advantage. It was possible to have rooted hair with a vinyl head. The saran wigs that were in use at that time were quite easy to wash, comb and curl, but the hair on these wigs tended to ‘fall’ with repeated combing. Rooted hair was more durable. Consequently, it was the head of the dolls that first got made in vinyl. Such dolls with vinyl head and hard plastic bodies were launched in the market by mid-fifties.
Vinyl in Baby Dolls
When vinyl made it appearance in the fifties, the companies that manufactured baby dolls also converted into vinyl. Baby dolls of this period were made with hard plastic head and vinyl body. Vinyl made the body soft and huggable, suiting young children. Entire baby dolls with rooted hair were made of vinyl later. These early models had features like ability to feed water that leaked out through the rear end into the doll’s diapers. Some dolls also had simple voice devices that made cry-like sounds.
Vinyl dolls have evolved a lot since. However vinyl is a material that is still very much in use. Vinyl has proved its ability to withstand not just rough handling by children, but also the changing demands of the toy market.
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