Synthetic materials now also provided doll wigs, as they do to this day. Plastic also replaced glass as the preferred material for dolls’ eyes. Likewise, leather shoes were replaced by plastic ones as the doll became even more of an industrial object. The norm for the doll product at mid-century was set by Ideal, Horsman, and Effanbee of the United States; Pedigree, Roddy, and Rosebud of the UK; and Regal of Canada. Despite the different geographical locations, the product was often remarkably similar in format and style. For many people these dolls are the quintessential form-plain and childlike, with a sweet, generalized expression and wearing girls’ fashions, often in the form of printed cottons.

This postwar concept of the doll obscures the many different and alternative doll formats that were produced. These solid, plain little-girl dolls have generally disappeared from production a half century later; an exception is the UK Amanda Jane Company, which has moved from a bourgeois to an elite style due to its old-fashioned aura. A similar development has occurred with U.S-based Vogue’s Ginny, who was a star of the postwar doll world, as well as the products of the Terri Lee Company, also were widely popular. Both companies’ dolls remain in production six decades later. Madame Alexander of New York catered to a more upscale market, as did the UK’s Chiltern and, later, Sasha dolls.

Sasha dolls are renowned for possessing a solid intellectuality, despite their bizarre origins as representations of Holocaust victims. The development of adult fashion dolls with high-heeled shoes and molded breasts in the mid-1950s led to an explosion in dolls of this format, though slightly larger than the 11.5-inch norm of today. The earliest was undoubtedly Madame Alexander’s Cissy in 1955. Cissy was presented as an upper-class debutante or glamorous model/magazine icon, a depiction of those women who in the interwar period and up to the late 1940s/early1950s in the top end of the market were as often society women as paid professionals; the latter finally took over as models for fashion photography in the middle to late 1950s. When Madame Alexander’s New York childhood as a poor east-end immigrant is factored into the equation, Cissy becomes even more complex. An enterprising, highly gifted woman, Bertha Alexander as a child had watched, from the pavement in 1890s New York, white upper-class beauties wearing feathered hats drive by in carriages, and she declared-to the surprise of her family-that she wanted to be one of those ladies.

Fashions and lifestyles changed, and the adult Bertha acquired neither her carriage nor her feathered hat, but she became a wealthy woman by marketing and retailing, under the more aristocratic name and persona of Madame Beatrice Alexander, a hybrid of upper-class (white) beauty with an Old Testament vision of the strong Jewish heroine, such as Esther or Judith, in the form of a doll product. Her dolls were stylish and yet encoded with a feminist intent, paying tribute to women of virtu and self-reliance-Queen Elizabeth II, Margot Fonteyn, Louisa May Alcott, and the tempestuous yet resourceful Scarlett O’Hara, the survivor of male-instigated war and disorder. Barbie was a late entrant into this market, appearing in 1959 and drawing her form from a popular European doll, Bild Lilli, which was originally marketed as an adult novelty but was rapidly commandeered by children.

Barbie was a runaway success, going through three editions in the first year, with the third edition produced in extremely large quantities, firmly establishing the singular popularity that she would enjoy for the next four years and beyond. This success was undoubtedly supported by the glamorous and chic television campaigns launched by Mattel in the 1950s, indicating how closely the company was attuned to new formats and processes of marketing. These stylish television advertisements ratified the position of dolls within the postwar dream and used the familiar imagery of the perfectly groomed and poised woman that appeared in many commercials of the 1950s.

Toys and dolls were a sign of U.S. postwar prosperity and the spending power of families, as baby boomer children amassed more toys than even the elites of previous generations. In the 1950s Italian papier-mâché dolls were extremely expensive and beautifully designed, and were among the few alternatives to plastic dolls and dolls of U.S. origin. They were often taller than the usual doll, between 3 and 4 feet high and usually dressed in Victorian crinolines and picture hats. Because they were physically impressive, they were used as parlor and living room decorations as well as being girls’ toys.