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

Standard Insight T&Cs Apply

I had a baby Annabel, as did one of my friends. We used to play with them together, once I encouraged her to give her doll tattoos in marker pen, mine remained unscathed

I had twin baby dolls and a twin pram.... it I used to dress up my pore, long suffering cat as the second twin and push cat and doll around in the pram! That poor cat.....

As a child in the fifties I would get a bride doll each Christmas. They always had a head made of papier - mache and within a few months the doll had been dropped and the head smashed.
Imagine my delight when Christmas 1958 I got a 'rubber dolly' , very similar to Tiny Tears. She was unbreakable ! This was my very last doll but the only one I ever needed.
Barbie dolls came out around the same time but I never asked for one because I didn't know they existed. Advertising was definitely not as prominent in those days.

I had a rag doll. I didn't play with her that much but I always had her with me at bedtime and the way her hair ribbon smelt was comforting as I was falling asleep. I find plastic dolls that 'do' things, like crying or saying words pretty creepy tbh.

My first doll was my favourite thing in the world I used to try and feed it, take it to nursery with me or sneak it out the house to take to the park or shops when we had to go out, I had it for years until one summer I left it in the garden overnight by accident and my neighbour next doors DD drew on it with green pen and said it was hers as it's got pen on and mine didn't. But she drew it! I was so upset and didn't really want another after that

I loved my dolls when I was little! I had quite a range of different sizes & I named them all! My favourite was 'Emma' who wee'd & cried.

My DD loves dolls too. One thing she does with hers is 'breastfeed' them which I find adorable.

I had beautiful china dolls which didn't lend themselves too well to being played with! But then I got a Timmy Tiny Tears... game changer! I loved his little outfit, and that he could drink and wee! He's just come back out (looking nearly as good as new!) for my toddler.

My childhood doll was called James after my Dad. James didn't cry tears, my Dad picked me up a packet of nappies for James along with the weekly shop and I would buy him little outfits from bring and buy sales at primary school. My daughters dolls are called Indigo and Milo, both cry real tears, pee and cost me a fortune in clothes the girls like to get them a new outfit at baby aisles in supermarkets lol .

I loved baby dolls but never had any strong attachment to any particular one (unlike my DD). In the early 90's I remember getting a Newborn Baby Shivers, that shifted when it got cold. When it was your birthday in school you were allowed to take in a toy to show. I remember taking it in proudly and the thing would not stop shivering all day, much to the teachers annoyance. I remember carrying it out at the end of the day in a vibrating carrier bag to lots of confused looks. I also remember the excitement of getting a Baby Born doll when I was about 10. I knew I felt I was probably too old to spend my birthday money on one but I braved it out.

My DD is completely besotted with her baby dolls. We've found the less features the more she plays with it, preferring Baby Born to Baby Annabell. We have twin Baby Borns and she won't leave the house with at least one. She changes their names on a daily basis. Her favourite thing to do is feed them coloured water that she makes from colouring pieces of paper with felt pen and putting them in cups and bottles and various containers of water. Drives us a bit mad. If you could being back the coloured dolls food I remember that would be a big seller.

I love that Baby Born has barely changed. DD loves me to look up and show her pictures of the one I used to have.

I didn't really play with dolls, but I remember having a couple. My main memory of dolls from childhood is being envious of friends with Tiny Tears!

I remember having a baby doll called Rosie who I used to take in the bath. I do still like the name. My daughter age 2 has various baby dolls and absolutely loves them. She likes to put them to sleep with their blankets, bath them, take for a walk etc. It's good role play for her and very sweet.

I thought my doll was a real baby..and treated her as such. Woe betide the child who dared touch her if she was sleeping DS and DD haste displayed similar with their teddies and dolls.

I grew up with a doll named Rosebud, a hard-bodied hard-limbed baby doll whose eyes slowly opened and shut and who said Mamaaa if you tipped her forward, then back (at one point in this motion you could feel some large piece of engineering inside shift from side to side.)

She was usually naked, definitely not anatomically correct with a pink plane of blandness between her legs, which you could pull out an inch or so to see the thick rubber bands hooking her moveable limbs to an anchor inside.

The baby fingernails on her hard, curved little hands and the solid curls of hair moulded to her head were beautiful. I didn't really want to love Rosebud, who was not cuddly like the teddy bear I wanted but never got, but somehow I did love her, and my Nan used to crochet her coats and bonnets in a pretty shell-like stitch. I had a miniature genuine Silver Cross pram to push her about in, with a rose motif on its side.

I don't know how I first learned that Rosebud had first been the beloved doll of my sister, who died at three from leukaemia, but she would surely have been pleased to see me pass her on to my own first child, who loved her till the rubber inside perished and our makeshift fixes failed to satisfactorily secure her detached limbs. I think she must have been over 30 years old by then.

I had paper dolls, I liked changing their clothes.

I used to like making clothes for my dolls - I would find a picture of a costume I liked, and try to copy it using scraps, with varying success. I only really liked dolls that looked like mini-adults. I didn't have any baby or child dolls. I liked old-fashioned porcelain or rag dolls better than plastic dolls, though I did have a Sindy which I dressed in an Edwardian style costume. I also used to make lots of peg-dolls with old style clothes pegs, which was great because they were tiny and so not much material was needed to dress them. I still have some of my childhood dolls.

The doll I remember the most is baby wanna walk. I couldn't wait to get it and loved playing with it. My 2 year old is really getting in to playing dolls now

I loved going to my Nan & Grandad's house to play with the baby dolls. In reality, they were second hand and old but as a child, I took that to mean they really needed looking after. I loved swaddling them over and over then changing them into different outfits that my Nan had knitted herself. They even had the most amazing pram I'd push them around the house in. It was in a bright red silky material, it felt so special.

I can't recall ever naming them.
Something odd I do remember is that I preferred the bald ones with no hair 🤷‍♀️

I had a precious doll called Mandy. When I was about nine, I didn't really play with her any more, and my gran told me a sob sorry about a little girl she'd heard of, who had no dolls, and played with an old towel wrapped up to look like a doll! Of course I handed over Mandy to Gran for the poor girl. Next time I saw her, I asked excitedly "Did that little girl like Mandy?" To which she replied "No, love, I've given it my friend 's little granddaughter - she came round, and loved it so much, I had to give it to her." Took me quite a while to forgive that!

I used to give mine haircuts

I used to sleep with tiny tears under the covers in case a burglar came in and then they wouldn't find her.

I had a Teeny Weeny Tiny Tears, you could give her water and she would cry and wet her nappy. I tried to give her food, blocked her mouth, and that was that. I wasn’t into dolls much as a little child and got more into them aged 10/11 - then I used to make up stories about my Sindies and Barbies, dress them up etc. Masquerade Sindy was my favourite, with her ball dress and mask, I used to make her act out the ball scene in Labyrinth. I also had a Cabbage Patch Kid called Laura Peggi but to be honest she freaked me out a bit.
DS had a baby doll, she was called Chilli con Carne.

I had several Sindy dolls and Pippa dolls the Sindys were the big sisters and the Pippas were the little sisters. There was a toy shop in town were you could buy Sindy doll heads if you wanted a change of look, or had a hair cutting disaster!

My DD had lots of Barbies but didn't play with them much, probably due to having many more other toys aswell, a lot more than I had at the same age.

Why did their hair always go matty? I loved playing with dolls, particularly dressing and undressing them.
In fact, I think my favourite 'dolls' were the paper ones on the back of Bunty comic which had loads of different outfits that you could put on them. They had tabs that you folded over so they hung on the body.

My doll's name was Gemma, I have no idea why I chose it but hey I was a true 90s kid. My dad worked in a famous toy store growing up so I was so lucky to have a baby born for one of my birthdays and I've actually kept it and all it's little bits and bobs for when my own DD is old enough as it seemed to be in really good condition and I didn't really want to waste it all.

I have so many happy memories of putting her in the car in a little car seat and I think there was some strange powder that she ate and then sort of pooped out...I'll have to have a look for her to see what actually happened. I'm sure she cried and drank water too.

My favourite memory was when my friends would bring a doll round and we'd all have tea together with sandwiches made by my mum but with a load of babies sat at the table with us

My own DD is a bit young yet to play like I remember playing with a doll but I'm so excited for her to reach that age as mine provided endless hours of fun

The lady in the flat below us bought me my first proper doll.

We were really poor, really really poor, and my mum just couldn't afford to buy me a fancy doll, I had a few of those plasticly fake Barbies you get off market stalls but that was it. You forget how toys weren't as prevalent in shops and easy to buy as they are now, don't you? I suppose mum could have borrowed the money, but rightly she didn't.

Anyway, the lady in the flat below was very elderly and had lost her only daughter of breast cancer when the daughter was very young - early 30s and just married I believe. She had a son in Australia but no grandchildren. She was quiet and kept to herself, but was just so ladylike and pleasant. I think she had come from a wealthy family but had a hard life and was now in a council flat. My mum would do little bits to help her out, shopping for her and the like.

One Christmas Eve, she trotted up our stairs and left a beautiful doll in our hallway, plus a gorgeous cashmere set and chocolate for Mum, with a note to Mum saying she wasn't to return the gifts unless she wanted to offend this lady, as it would mean a lot to her to be able to treat us at Christmas,we had been good neighbours etc.

I was delighted, it was like something out of a Christmas movie. I called the doll Powder Blue, and I loved her. I would have tea parties for her, and I sewed blankets out of old tea towels and made her a bed in a shoebox. I told her stories and took her out for walks,because she was always recovering from chicken pox! She came to university with me, and Polaroids of her featured in a friend's art project.

She is currently living on a shelf in my mum's spare room, along with some of my other old toys, ready for my daughter when she is old enough to sleep over at Granny's. My daughter is a very young toddler who is only starting to become interested in dolls-we were thinking of getting her one for Christmas. She will hug my friends daughter's doll and say "aww"

I hadn't thought of this all in years until now! Dolls are so special.