Cracking the Old Red Case: Investigating a Vintage Doll Trunk!

I guess I know where I got it from, because my mom kept her old toys, too. 

In storage, there's been this red trunk which contained the two largest dolls my mom seems to have held onto from her childhood, and I've always left them alone out of respect. But now, I thought I'd take a look at them and try to do some non-invasive tidying with the lightest touch I could. It's interesting seeing older toys and trying to give some life back to something that's been out of service. These are now the oldest dolls I've spotlighted on this blog, with my mom being a child of the 1960s.

The trunk itself is made of thin metal paneling in red, with white trim that has warped and bent over time. It's a bit beat-up.

There is a folding carry handle on the top end, and the outline of some floral design that must have been there originally on one of the wide faces. If the trunk is viewed like a book when opened vertically, this panel with the flower would be the "back" side. That only applies to the standard of books being read left-to-right, but these dolls are surely from a place where that is the standard.

The side has two latches and a little clasp in the middle. The trunk latches fold downward and then you pull down on the "button" on the clasp to open the trunk. It looks like there's a keyhole, but I don't think it would have come with keys, nor would they have been practical for something that opens the way it does.

The interior is papered in pale pink with a twinkling gold sparkle print, and has a small cardboard compartment on the bottom. It's supposed to function like a drawer:

But the top panel is now partially detached and can be used like a side-hinged lid:

The other half of the trunk has a cord across it-- a string on each half, tied together across the middle. Because the string is long and not taut, it doesn't seem to serve as a rail to hang clothes on, so maybe it's a restraint to hold a doll in that half of the trunk, letting you tie it tight as you need around her waist?

There is an identifiable hanging rail back on the other side, in the top face above the drawer. There's a little swinging metal handle that clothes hangers can hang from. I don't think it exists for any other purpose.

There are no pegs on the walls.

This is how the trunk was packed--two dolls, various clothing, and a small box of toy soldiers that possibly could have involved unsafe lead content. The trunk smells old.

I like doll trunks as a concept. Storage for a doll and her clothes closet in a nice box is a wonderful idea. The idea persists today, of course, in things like the Ever After High Spring Unsprung storybook playset:

And in Monster High Skulltimate Secrets cases:

The second case design introduced in Series 4 even has a closet design with a hanger rod:

I've also made one of these cases over for my Monster High custom body model Maudie's sake, custom lining and all.

Even with custom paint and fabric lining, this isn't quite the same as a good old classic doll trunk. Those have so much more care and quality.

One of the dolls inside the red trunk is larger and blonde and the other smaller and brunette. 

When I asked my mom about the stories of the dolls, she said that the tall blonde doll came with the trunk and an assortment of clothes, some of which must still be with her in the trunk. She couldn't remember what name she gave the doll at the time, but she noted that it was a substitute gift for a Barbie, which she had asked for but was not allowed to have. I feel terrible for my mom at that moment for two reasons. For one, I think it can be a great betrayal as a child to not get what you asked for on a gift occasion and instead get something else you had not asked for. For two, my mom was a kid right at the very emergence of Barbie, so just think how special it would have been if she'd gotten an original! The adults in her life clearly didn't have any cultural foresight. My mom lived in Los Angeles and then London during her childhood, and the doll and trunk were a Christmas gift before the move to London. 

The short doll was a later gift from my mother's grandmother, who died before my time. The grandmother had named the doll after my mother, which embarrassed her, and had given the same doll to her cousin who was four years older. My mom was coming to the point of outgrowing her dolls and the cousin had already passed it, so the gift was evidently out of touch on all counts. 

Since the one doll has no known name and the other's name was unsuited, I'll be giving them new names in my discussion. We'll start with the larger doll in the ballet dress. I think she can be Sabrina. I realized belatedly that I had inadvertently saddled her with the title "Sabrina Ballerina" and it started to look corny, but I stand by it. Taken alone, it's a pretty name that suits her.

Sabrina is about 16.5 or 17 inches tall. The last outfit she wore, which she has been wearing untouched for some forty-odd years, is a ballerina costume with a full-length skirt.

It's a bit hard to tell how old Sabrina is meant to be. Her face looks quite childlike and young, but her body and costume and earrings make her look more mature, and she certainly looks older than her companion. She's a real "little lady" of a doll in this outfit.

Her hair is blonde and wavy and rooted into her head. The style has the sides pulled up into a top half-ponytail that cascades down the rest, which is loose and curled in large wavy ringlets that fall above her shoulder. Sabrina has a shorter curl on each side of her face. She has rounded bangs that fan out wide and very low on her face. The hair is a darker golden blonde color, and is absolutely dry and looks very messy. 

My best guess for the material is mohair that's gotten tangled by the entropy that disturbs all fibers and cords, but I suppose I wouldn't say it's impossible for this to have been human hair too. I'm not aware of real hair having been used for doll rooting, though; only wigs, so mohair seems most likely. Mohair has never been especially lauded for its texture, so I'll temper my expectations for tidying it.

Sabrina's head is compressible vinyl, and her face looks to be hand-painted.

She has simple brushstroke thin brows in black, and painted thin lashes around her eyes. Her lips are a pretty opaque pink color that don't fully align with the sculpt. She has blushing on her cheeks. 

Sabrina's eyes are inset, and use the classic "sleepy eye" mechanic of many old dolls. When the doll is tipped backward, the eyes close so they can look like they're properly sleeping when tucked into bed. I gather this design idea contributed to the reaction of dolls being creepy, but I easily see the charm. After all, isn't it creepier for your doll to lie in bed with wide staring eyes?

Granted, you can absolutely abuse this mechanism for horror purposes and unsettling Nosferatu cinematography.

The eyes work with special weighting that turns them downward when the doll is tipped back. The lid is not a separate piece from the eye, and is just the top of the eye piece that is shown when the eye turns downward. When the doll is upright, the eyes can be flipped down closed individually with your finger, but they pop open again. Sabrina's eyes move smoothly and simultaneously. Sometimes these eyes can get stuck or desynced, creating a wonky disheveled look with one eye half-lidded.

Sabrina's left eye seems a little misaligned and is turned more to the left, but this does not affect her mechanism. It still looks pretty good. These sleepy eyes also pretty much always have a blunt squarish strip of fiber lashes at the edge of the lid, which is true for Sabrina. The eyes themselves are a pretty green color that can photographs less vibrant than it looks to the eye. They aren't fully pristine despite looking it--when the eyes catch bright light, you can see her right pupil has been damaged and looks reflective and cloudy.

As such, neither eye is perfect, and the cloudy pupil showed up in later photography.

Sabrina's vinyl needs some cleaning if not disinfecting. Her hair rooting doesn't look super dense, but the coverage on her head is good and it feels thick.

Sabrina has earrings of metal loop studs with small pearls that dangle from them.

Not the most childlike touch. I didn't try to remove them.

Out of anything, the costume is the part of Sabrina that makes the toy's age of over fifty years the most obvious. It's the color of time and musty dust and frankly looks a little dismal with its yellowy greyish state. I bet it wants a wash.

I have a healthy appreciation for femininity and women's fashion, but ballet has never entered that range of appreciation for me personally. My mom did ballet for several years as a kid, though, so this made the doll a good choice for her. Sabrina's dress covers her entire torso with a tight neck, and the upper portion is a cream/peach color (today) with a few sparkly rhinestones and shoulders that have fabric flower accents and more rhinestones.

The skirt is all tulle, and it looks absolutely grey. Not very pretty or fun. Around the waist is a very long-tailed pink ribbon.

The back of the outfit closes with snaps, and the big tulle skirt is attached. The skirt is not attached together in the back, meaning you don't have to slide the piece down her legs. Under the skirt is a separate two-layered petticoat with more tulle, which was held closed with a safety pin (I doubt it was initially).

Under this, Sabrina has a pair of satin bloomers that are too large around the waist for her (maybe they weren't hers?), individual sheer net stocking that rise to the hips, and ballet slippers. Sabrina's feet are in a heeled shape, so while she can almost tippy-toe en pointe, she's unable to stand without something against her back.

 

Taking off Sabrina's costume revealed that her torso is an entirely different color from the rest of her, being distinctly more pink. 

Was this her original skintone and all the other pieces of her body yellowed? Was the manufacturer inconsistent? I suppose it's possible a little of both is true, but I easily believe the former and that the doll's color has changed a lot with age. Granted, it's very consistent and I think she looks fine, but the contrast when her torso is visible is stark. The legs do seem different in color from the tone of the arms and head, which match. When new, I don't know what this doll would have looked like.

Sabrina's torso has a very pinched waist and the contours suggest she is a preteen girl just beginning to physically develop. It's a very unusual age to depict on a doll. If that is the design intention, I think her face is too young for her.

Sabrina's articulation is the basic five swivels. Strangely, her arms seem connected across through the middle of the torso so they turn in tandem. It's possible to hold one arm and twist the other to a different pose, but it doesn't feel like you're meant to do so. I don't see much appeal in shoulder joints that aren't independent.

The body has no manufacturer stamp, so I checked the back of the head and found what I needed to solve the mystery.

The name "ALEXANDER" obviously brought the Madame Alexander doll company to mind right away, but I looked to see if there was somehow another brand just called Alexander. Turns out, there wasn't. Sabrina is a Madame Alexander doll, and looking up dolls with trunks in her height range narrowed her down--her factory name is actually Elise, as in the Elise range of dolls by Madame Alexander.

Photo of an Elise and her assortment. I love that Chanel-style jacket and skirt!

This photo shows I was correct about the handle inside being for hangers, but it looks like this trunk also has a peg on the wall with the attached cord. Sabrina's doesn't, nor is there evidence of one having been attached at one point.

I wasn't able to find pictures of my mom's particular Elise with her original trunk in more complete condition to see what she would have looked like new and fully-stocked, but I was able to find another picture of the same edition loose just to prove other copies existed!

This picture indicates Sabrina would have initially had a necklace and hair decoration.

I could have also solved the mystery by just finding the fabric label sewn into her dress, which names Madame Alexander in full. Oh, well. I got there regardless.

The Madame Alexander brand name also explains the face design. Mature faces are not at all something the brand is stylistically known for.

Before I took Sabrina down to sort her out, I decided to look at the other doll first. I'll call her Chrissy.

Chrissy is about 13 inches tall and her sculpting unambiguously models a young child who would be five years old, maximum--and she's probably closer to four. She's rather sweet. 

Her hair is dark brown in multiple tones and is straight, with bangs across the forehead. It's also in disarray, but it feels nicer than Sabrina's after all this time, and should be easier to tame.

Her head is compressible vinyl with sleepy closing eyes like Sabrina's. Her face sculpt is toddler-like and her paint is similar.

She can give some of that classic sixties glamor side-eye!

Her eyes are a similar color to Sabrina's, and look in better condition. Her pupils are a bit reflective, but they're even and don't feel as cloudy as Sabrina's right eye.

Chrissy's dress is two layers--a crochet wide-neck sleeveless pinafore layer over a high-necked sleeveless pink gingham dress.

I personally find hand-knitted or crochet clothing to look terrible on realistic dolls unless it's depicting a sweater where that texture is inherent. Crochet clothing is otherwise too grandma-crafts to suit anything but a stuffed animal. The two layers of the dress are obviously paired, though, because the crochet trims the gingham piece too. It's not a good visual substitute for lace if that's the intent. I love a pinafore done right, but this is a pinafore done entirely wrong.

Fortunately, the pinafore layer can come off (it's not held closed at the back with anything but the waist ribbon), and the dress looks much better without it. The waist ribbon was part of the crochet layer, not the pink dress, and the pink dress has its own fabric trim there.

The gingham pattern is pretty large-scale for dress fabric, but it's cute.

The dress closes in the back of the neck with a buttonhole closure.

Under the dress, Chrissy is wearing a one-piece set of stockings and suede-esque shoes. The buttons are actual snaps that open the flap and let the shoes come off!

I love the way these shoes work, but the color doesn't flatter the dress. Black or white would be nicer.

Chrissy's body sculpt is stocky and toddlerish, and her torso and legs are both pinker than her head and arms. As with Sabrina, I'm guessing she would have started out the color of her torso, but the legs were spared yellowing on her, likely due to their material. Some hard plastics can absolutely yellow, but it's common for dolls to have some materials that don't discolor and others that do, leaving a disjointed visual.

Chrissy's arms swivel fully independent of each other, but they're fairly loose and her right arm cannot hold a pose. Their bent shape also made pulling the costume down off her body more difficult. 

Chrissy's head stamp is almost illegible due to having almost no indentation relief, but I believe it also marks her as ALEXANDER and the clearest part is the date--1965. There are enough stylistic and aging similarities between the dolls that I'm confident calling both Madame Alexander pieces. 

Chrissy's sculpt and size make a Living Dead Doll look very small and skinny of torso--almost like LDD is the Monster High to Madame Alexander's Barbie.

I do hold that Madame Alexander has to have been at least a peripheral influence on the aesthetic identity and parody within LDD. 

I had far less to go on as far as ID'ing Chrissy's origin. Looking up 13-inch dolls or dolls in gingham or 1965 dolls didn't pull up any conclusive matches. I found one listing of a nude 13-inch doll with this body and who looked similar enough in face and hair to be another Chrissy, but even if it was, a nude doll with no info gets me no closer to knowing where she came from. I saw no other evidence of her costume, either. Was it homemade after all? I don't know if the outfit was hers, initially.

My breakthrough came when I shifted gears and remembered the 1965 marking only signified the mold's creation for certain, and not necessarily the doll's release year. And for Chrissy to have arrived at just the wrong moment when my mom was about to phase out of dolls, she'd have to have been from a later year than '65. I looked up later years until I got to 1974 where allegedly, the [inspired by artist Edgar] Degas Girl was released. I couldn't confirm this is true, but I'd seen the Degas Girl on earlier searches and found her hair and shoes similar. The 1974 query made me look again at her once it pulled up a specific listing where the face and shoes looked even more familiar:

These shoes look lighter in other pictures of the Degas Girl, but presumably age darkened this copy and Chrissy's. This feels like the smoking gun. Even if '74 wasn't actually the year she released, the alleged timeframe of '74 does line up with my mom's experience, and the visual matches.

And we have confirmation--my mom chimed in to confirm that the Degas dress was indeed part of the doll initially--Chrissy is the Degas Girl, and as such, never had a factory name to overstep with my choice. I didn't recognize the Degas pieces in the stock that survived in the storage of the trunk, but I could check again to see. Even a petticoat matching up would seal the deal. I don't know where the pink dress came from, but maybe I wasn't far off with calling the crotchet grandmacore. It could have been homemade, and the buttonhole clasp might be proof. All of the other Madame Alexander pieces I found in the trunk had metal snaps.

Chrissy already looked like a younger sister to Sabrina to start with, but her being a younger-child doll from the same company in a later year makes such a reading even stronger. I think they can be siblings--Sabrina and Chrissy Alexander!

I took the girls down to be cleaned up. I also worked on detangling Sabrina's hair. I ultimately had to break the original hair tie (it had a nail in it keeping it in place!) to get the hair as orderly as possible, and I retied it with a homemade fiber-elastic hair loop. It still has a lot of flyaways and unevenly short hairs, but it combs out now. Chrissy's hair didn't comb nearly as smoothly as I expected despite it not being all that tangled. I think I got it tidy, but it wasn't a glide through when the hair was wet. I don't know what the fiber is. 

It'd be great to be able to de-yellow the dolls' skin, but to do so would require a huge volume of peroxide and I'd be extremely worried about damaging their eyes or filling up their bodies with liquid immersion. I think I'll have to leave their color as it is lest I do further harm in the fixing. The starkest contrast is in the meeting of head/arms and torso, which their clothes cover up anyway.

I then took the clothes to wash in a lukewarm detergent bath in the sink. I was impressed with the ballet dress, as its dreary grey turned definitely pink after washing. It's still not that saturated and vibrant, but it's less grim for sure. Not every piece in the trunk looked in need of washing.

Here's the dolls fixed up. At this point, it was dark out and the room lighting wasn't perfect, so I did flash takes for photos when the basic lighting wasn't quite helping.

Sabrina's dress looks far less dark and sad now, though it's still a bit muted and dull and not to my taste. Chrissy's changes are minimal. She's just a little cleaner and neater.

I knew Sabrina's hair was always likely to have limited improvement, and the hair looks very unruly with all its uneven strands and flyaways, but you can run a comb through it now and she looks more alive with this than she did when it was matted and snarled.

Now to explore those other clothing pieces.

All of the pieces in the trunk which were initially for big dolls belonged to Sabrina. None of the extra options were for Chrissy, and her original Edgar Degas dress has gone. Sabrina also, unfortunately has only one of two high heels remaining as any other shoe option. She's out of luck for a different pair of footwear unless I go out to find an Elise shoe set.

One of the dresses is another ballet costume, with a blue tone and a very short tutu. This is very similar to the tutu in the photo of the Elise doll with the pink trunk, but hers had a ruffle across the neck, while this one has separate ruffles around the shoulders. Sabrina is plainly a different doll from the Elise in the pink trunk, anyway.

I like the color more for her than the big dress, but I don't like the ballerina look itself any more than I did for the big dress. The tulle on this piece is also in worse condition than the big dress, with part of it being torn away from the sleeve and strange loops of tulle connecting across the back that don't look intended.

There's also a pink satin nightdress. 

The satin is thin and flexible and smooth, but looks stained by some kind of spill on the front. The piece fastens in an atypical way--there's one snap holding a flap closed in front. This is a cute piece, but I still don't think pink is Sabrina's color--at least not in such faint hues.

This strapped long dress is very colorful and made of a stretch material. I hesitated to believe it was Madame Alexander, but the tag inside and metal snaps say it is. Could have fooled me. This looks like a piece which could be from the 1970s all the way up to a modern 2024 colorful doll dress. It's...not tasteful, and it really doesn't look like it belongs on this doll.

I could 100% believe this costume would be worn by a 2024 Millie-faced Barbie doll. 

The dress fits loosely on Sabrina, not helped by the fact that the upper of the two snap closures has lost its other half.

My instant favorite of her dresses was this untailored sleeveless white dress with red trim. I really hoped she would have something iconically 1960s and contemporary to her era, and this is absolutely it.

I don't think her earrings and hair quite match this costume, but they pass well enough,  and the dress totally has that vibe I love in 1960s fashion.

It works well with a thin vinyl purse that was in the trunk, too.

The costume matches the trunk and the room I photographed in perfectly, and this dress gave me my best pictures of Sabrina, emulating 1960s photography.

Unpolished lighting.

The "professional" sixties shot--the best one I took.

The "home photo" shot, with its own retro charm.

Sabrina also has a solid blue overcoat which matches the dress's vibe perfectly and is a great outer layer for metropolitan outings or colder weather. 

The coat has a metal snap at the collar (sewn by conspicuous fraying green thread) and the two buttons on the right side go through buttonholes to close the rest. I like how this coat can completely cover the dress underneath for that perfect sixties city-girl look. It's just the kind of coat that ought to cover the dress below.

Maybe I should look into Sindy dolls, because those were born from peak sixties doll aesthetics. I would accept a modern incarnation if it has enough classic "Sindy face" and an outfit that matches the vibe.

While this is the most delightful outfit to me, there was one piece that might suit Sabrina better as she's designed--this lovely blue dress.

The piece is clearly more cyan in person, but photographs powder blue. This was the best picture I could get of its color:

I think it's a little hard to tell what this dress is meant to be. It could be another nightie, but it seems a bit fancy for that purpose. At the same time, it doesn't feel like something to wear out on the town. I would call this a housedress of some kind. For some reason (maybe it's the very high torso seam) I can see this as some vague idea of a "breakfast dress"-- the outfit a 1950s/sixties TV housewife would wear to breakfast in her own home, though I can't also see her sleeping in it the night before? So maybe this is a dress for a really extra lady who dresses up for breakfast...and then dresses up once more in another outfit for her day clothes. That would fall in that idealized domestic fantasy that has no relatable grounding in a real woman's realistic morning routine. Regardless of its purpose or connotations, wherein I may be entirely off-base anyway, I think the dress is very pretty on Sabrina and flatters her coloring very well and matches her elegant hair and earrings in tone. The material is stiffer than the pink nightie.

With Chrissy and Sabrina dressed up and tidy, they were delighted to find another pair of dolls dressed like them!

Oh no.

The dolls happily greeted each other and admired each others' dresses, and paired up with the girls who matched them best.

Uh...they--the Alexanders---they don't know-

Then, Chrissy invited her new friend to come follow her, but Sabrina had just noticed something concerning when her hand brushed up and went under the hair of her new friend.

Get outta there, girls.

Sabrina didn't waste time asking questions about what was going on. She just bolted Chrissy away with her--and not a moment too soon!

Phew.

Sabrina never knew just what she and her sister had met that day, and she was fine not knowing after all. 

(Doesn't mean Sabrina herself can't play into horror even more!)

This was fun to make--it's all done with strings pulling things, of course.

With that all finished, I tried out the cord on the side of the trunk to see if it could hold the dolls. This seemed to work.

This may not have been intentional, and it works a lot better with two of them side-by-side, but it works. I don't really know what else the cord would be for. 

It was fun taking a look at these old dolls from my mom's collection and figuring out who they were and giving them a little love and care they needed. 

I don't know if they qualify as hidden treasures, though.

For one, their condition is incomplete and they are quite affected by age and disuse. The dolls were dirty, look significantly yellowed, their clothes needed washing, and the Elise trunk is beat-up and the set is missing untold pieces. There was also limited improvement I could achieve with these dolls, since yellowing treatment on their faces, what with their inset sleepy eyes, was a task beyond me to attempt, and their hair probably can't be restored to full glory--especially not Sabrina's. Sabrina's right eye also has some damage that's likely beyond my calling. She photographs okay, but in person, her condition is harder to see past.

For two, I'm not confident these dolls would have been all that when new. While the brand has and had a prestige reputation, their body design isn't particularly spectacular and their torsos in particular feel like they wouldn't have been the finest around when they were released in the sixties. Their colors probably matched when new, but I still wonder if the material inconsistency of their body parts would have felt so cheap. It kind of does today. The faces and hair and eyes and clothes of the dolls still have elements of refinement you don't see in typical dolls nowadays, and the visual aesthetic is more elegant or charming to me personally than dolls like American Girl or Our Generation, so there is some craft and style that is impressive--it just doesn't feel thoroughly refined and I don't know if, in the standards of the 1960s doll market, these would have been as top-tier as Madame Alexander wanted them to feel. I think Sabrina in new form with her complete Elise trunk set could fetch a pretty penny on the aftermarket of today, but I don't think you can find a single complete pristine Elise trunk set anymore, and these two dolls have aged too much and lost too many pieces to garner a lot of aftermarket value. The dolls are also out of my range of typical interest, which is fantasy and horror characters, so they don't have much to gain in my care. 

Sabrina and Chrissy are sweet, but I can't expect to do very much with them after this post is published, unless they come up for comparison purposes in some future topic. It brings me to the sad conclusion that some toys simply aren't timeless or forever, and these dolls have kind of fallen through the cracks due to the fact that they were once played with by a child like they deserved, but then stopped being played with and lost some of their quality to time and inattention. I guess they're something of a cautionary tale to look out for with my own dolls, as I want to keep them in good quality for as long as I can. You can't stop time and degradation, but you can certainly help, and if you are going to keep something, then you can work to keep it good. Or do as Toy Story 3 and rehome a toy if you don't need it anymore so it can continue to be loved and cared for. Despite Toy Story 4 discussing antiques, there never was that story of a toy that was simply too far gone to find a new life. I fear that's where Sabrina and Chrissy are. I still appreciate them, but at this moment, I can't be their happily ever after. 

But there is one option. I think the best possible prospect for dolls in this condition would be a more aggressive customization and makeover--open the head and take out the eyes and de-yellow the bodies, put back or replace the eyes, maybe replace the hair (it might be necessary regardless), give new clothes--essentially, create whole new dolls built with these base bodies. Toy Story has never delved into the existentialism of a toy being completely reinvented, but in the real world, it's a fair way to keep something around after its original form has become unviable. My mother has said I could try selling Chrissy if that would be worthwhile (I fear not), but I could attempt to look into remaking Chrissy instead to fix her up and improve her. I'd keep her within a sweet sixties tone and leave her face as unmodified as I could. I respect her history enough not to push a horror makeover on her. But that idea is not an urgent interest and I am daunted by the prospects of hair and clothing replacements, while the eyes and their handling also spooks me. Still, the idea is there, so maybe there is a brighter possible future after all. And for dolls in this condition, what would I have to lose? I make no promises toward doing so, and if I try it, it probably won't be soon. If I don't try it, it's still a worthy overall sentiment to come away with--a toy may be too far gone to be what they are...but there's no telling what they could be remade to be.

Thanks for reading.