Mumsnet users share their memories of playing with dolls with Baby Annabell

[LucyBMumsnet]

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Most people have some fond memories of playing with dolls in their childhood, from sweetly changing their nappy and rocking them to sleep, to taking them everywhere or ‘customising’ what they look like. Baby Annabell would like to find out more about your memories of playing with dolls, as well as how your children play with their dolls.

What was your doll’s name, and do you still like it now? Did your doll cry real tears, drink real water, burp after feeding, or need its nappy changing? Or did you have to make pretend because the technology wasn’t available yet? What were your favourite games to play with your doll? How does your child play with dolls now? How does it differ from how you played with dolls?

Share your memories on this thread and you will be entered into a prize draw where one lucky MNer will win a £300 voucher for a store of their choice (from a list).

Thanks and good luck!
MNHQ

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I had a walking, talking doll that turned her head from side to side as she walked one Christmas but, she broke within a few days (didn't walk) and my Dad sent it back and got a different doll as a replacement for me. I was about 6 years old so, she is nearly 50 years old now as I still have her. She was a Pretty Miss Kiss and you could squeeze her arms, put her pursed lips to your cheek and let the arms go and she would give you a kiss along with a kind of squeak! My Dad told me to be careful as the kisses were only guaranteed for 3 months :) I used the kisses sparingly as a child and she still has her kisses! I left her on the balcony at the flats where we lived one time and she disappeared; I was heartbroken. Months later, I was nosing around my parent's wardrobe and I found her. I was overjoyed but, I could not tell my Mum I'd found her as I would have been punished. She gave my doll back to me a while after that telling me I should take more care of my things. I used to wrap her up like a baby and take her out in her pram. I used to also put a crown on her head which was the lid of a hand cream pot, and she became a princess.

Another doll that I saw in the shop window, and begged my Dad for was a Donna Doll - a tiny doll of about 5 inches high. He gave her to me for my 9th or 10th birthday and I was over the moon. I still have her too. I've never let my Dd play with my dolls; she doesn't value things the way I did as a child and isn't really a dolly kind of girl although, she did love her Barbies. She's told me to give them away now (she's nearly 13), so there seems to be no sentiment :(

I had a Tiny Tears from Father Christmas when I was 5. It was The Toy, lots of children had them.
My mum also sewed my sister and I rag dolls from a pattern in Woman's Weekly; they had sets of clothes including track suits and Brownie uniforms. They are in my attic as sadly my daughter was never really interested in dolls.

I had a cabbage patch doll called Jack. He was a handed down to me, one with a beanbag body!! I also received a cabbage patch doll called Camilla one Christmas. I adored them. When I was 10 I took Camilla to school on toy day. My peers laughed, called me childish.

I just loved them though. I had a cot given to me from a friend, I played and played for hours. My mum kept Jack and Camilla for her mindees and still has them now. Jack will be around 30 and Camilla is 25 years old.

My 1 year old has his own doll now, she's just called 'baby' and we cuddle her, show her things, stroke her head to sleep. Sometimes the dog takes her for a snuggle in his bed haha.
Doll power

I LOVED playing with dolls as a child & distinctly remember opening a Tiny Tears doll one Christmas & being absolutely over the moon! There's something about dolls that doesn't seem to get old - generations of kids dressing them up, comforting them, changing their nappy, charging round the house with them in a pushchair!
I have a little boy now & sadly he doesn't share my love of dolls - so I am left to gaze longingly down the doll aisle as we charge straight to the Nerf guns!!

There are lots of black and white photographs of me as a small child pushing a dolly pram around, I assume that there was a dolly in there. One of my memories of a dolly, is when I was about five years old I wanted a Tiny Tears dolly for Christmas. That year I was Mary in the school Nativity play, the part of baby Jesus was played by somebody else's Tiny Tears dolly. When it came to performing it in front of parents, I picked up baby Jesus from the stage floor and cuddled him. The dolly wet me, as somebody had fed him a bottle of water and I was so shocked I flung baby Jesus in his manger and refused to hold him again in spite of being hissed at by my teacher. I did get a Tiny Tears for Christmas but didn't ever feed it with water!

My other memories involving dolls were having Sindy dolls. Loved changing her clothes and had a wardrobe to put them in. Then when I was about nine Sindy had elastic tied around her ankles and she would bungee jump from the side of the bridge into the stream below. Such fun and I'm sure she enjoyed it!

I never really hit it off with dolls - more of a tomboy - I did have a bendable foam character that was dressed as a soldier - dog got it in the end but for years I wouldn't let my Mum throw out the remains. Daft, isn't it!

My first doll was a tiny tears that cried real tears, I called her chloe! She went every where with me. i used to use my baby brothers pram to push her around in (when he wasn't using it of course). I cried for weeks when the mean older girl from the end of our street pinched her and threw her in to the middle of a busy road. I wasnt allowed to cross the road and by the time i had run home and got my mum, poor chloe had been flattened!

Mum bought me a replacement but it wasn't a tiny tears, i cant remember the brand but she ate 'real' food, which was a powder you mixed with water, you then squeezed her and she went to the toilet!she kind of disgusted me a.little bit as she was abit too realistic in the mess she made in her nappy. One day i forgot to "make" her go to the toilet and she ended up all.mouldy inside and stank my bed room out! My dad promptly threw her in the bin when he realized where the smell was coming from.
Still a bit bitter about all of it now, nearly 30 years later!

I really loved my dolls when I was young. They were just soft body dolls with moulded heads. I played the normal I'm the mummy and that's my baby type games. Sometimes with my sister. My children have had dolls but they don't play like I did. They don't seem all that bothered about them and seem to prefer using their cuddlies for those types of games.

I had a teeny tiny tears and remember I used to bite her nails, why I dont know

When my brother was born in 1983, my dad came home from hospital with my very own baby boy doll in a Moses basket. I called him Bertie. Unfortunately, I thought he WAS my brother so when my dad sat me down to call my grandparents and tell them the news I confidently announced that the baby was here and he was called Bertie.

Bertie was quite a big baby doll and he wore hand me downs from my actual brother. I used to prop Bertie in my dad’s favourite spot on the sofa and he would grab him by the dungarees and fling him across the room, making me shriek with laughter and faux rage. This was all very well and good until mum left my actual brother, wearing the same clothes, in the same spot. Thankfully the weight difference meant dad realised BEFORE he launched my brother into a wall....

I played with Bertie for years and loved him dearly.

Both of my own children had a doll and a pushchair for their second Christmas, aged 21 months. I got a bit of stick from some older family members for buying my son a pram, but he absolutely loved it. They both played babies together for years.... My daughter is now 13 and still has her most special doll and it’s wardrobe tucked away. I love dolls and babies!

I had a pair of dolls, one black, one white, called Alice and Belinda. Looking back I think I was probably pretty unusual to have an ethnic diversity in my dolls at that time.

Oh fond memories! Never had a barbie, was always a Cindy kinda girl! Oh and I loved my tiny tears doll! My nan used to jand make clothes for ally dolls! And when my dolls got sick, i used to use up all the plasters and bandages in the house to male them better again!

I had a teeny tiny t esa Ed called Lisa which I adored never had an actual tiny tears 🙄I had a walkiee talkie doll called Jane boy doll called peter and a Sunday but my favourite had auburn hair like myself and was called Jackie xx I really loved my dolls xx

My dd loves dolls and has lots of baby annabel dolls and accessories. She still plays with her now aged 7

Me on the other hand, dragged my one doll around by its leg and didn't want much to do with it! 🙄

I had a doll that you had to screw the head off to replace the batteries. My mother used to tel me when I was naughty that she was going to screw my head off to take mine out and it scared me senseless!

Found memories of Tiny Tears, and Teeny Tiny Tears.

I used to love my dolls. I used to make my own little outfits for them. As I got older I put make up on them, although I stopped when I did it with nail varnish and ruined one of them haha! I think dollies will always have a place in children’s childhoods!

I was obsessed with dolls and remember having baby Anabelle myself as a little girl - I took her everywhere with me!

I was happy to have a baby doll. I gave her a bath in a washbasin and was horrified when her arms and legs came off, the rubber bands holding them on must have perished.
DD 4 was delighted to get for Christmas a doll heavily advertised as weeing. Lots of excitement when she unwrapped it. She then checked it worked satisfactorily. An hour later it was found abandoned on the landing ‘I don’t want that wet dolly in my bedroom!’

I have a very clear memory from when I was young (based on when we were living I must have been 4/5) of having a couple of dolls.

I knew how you were meant to play with them, but I couldn't understand why carrying them about and feeding them etc was meant to be interesting or fun. I was quite happy playing with my stuffed animals - they were much more fun!

Quarter of a century later and not much has changed - I have pets, but no desire for, or real interest in, babies!

This thread is bringing back memories! I wasn't a huge doll fan but I did love my tiny tears doll (I had the boy dolly). I also had a cabbage patch doll at one point too

I had a tiny tears called Rosie. I took her for walks in the dolls pram which she slept in too.
Some days would play dolls all day. Doing the nappy and dressing and feeding routine in time with the actual time of day. Sometimes it was a pretend day where a 'day' ended up lasting a real hour.

Sometimes I would take her in the garden and set up 'home' in the shed.

A a child I never really liked dolls, my mum had a massive one that she'd had since child hood. I was named after it. She still has it. It terrifies me, it has rolly eyes and really wobbly arm and legs. It's hideous!

I didn't really have dolls, I had a sindy for a while I think, but don't remember playing at home much, I was always out playing or at my friends houses.

I've always had dolls - all sorts of dolls - but my favourite was the Cheerful-Tearful. DD was given a Baby Born (same manufacturer as Baby Annabel, Zapf) when she was three and that doll is so loved! Sixteen years later, she's grubby and her eyes have faded from blue to pink (chlorine from swimming pools), her head fell off, as did one of her arms (but I superglued her together) and 19 year old DD still tucks her into bed.