The Nancy Ann Storybook dolls by Nancy Ann Storybook Dolls, Inc. of San Francisco, California had their own Miss Nancy Ann (naturally!), along with a nameless Kellogg’s lass and Sally Starr (also an anonymous advertising fashion doll) all have outfits with the same qualities as Ginger's wardrobe, reflecting its black and white TV fashion. Mary Hoyer’s Vicky doll, who was available with surprisingly tasteful wardrobe pieces (including a mink stole for a whopping sum of $2.95) was made to be dressed via equally tasteful patterns. Her contribution to the “Tasteful...” runs the full gamut within the category, from direct Parisian silhouettes, American adaptations, and television middle-class variants to home “couturier” creations. Vicky’s clothes, by pattern proxy, fill this slot.

On the “Queen from Outer Space” front which runs from cold to hot, from “just about” Queen to “very extremely” Queen, there are a number of examples. Deluxe Reading Corp., makers of popular Penny Brite, the pre-teen fashion doll, came up with another creation named "Candy Fashions-- the dream of every girl." Her glitzy box brags she is “the doll with the world’s most exquisite clothing” and that the set comes with four “completely matched ensembles.” Looking like a very “new at the game” starlet, Candy in dark tinted “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” oval glasses, has a dress form for each outfit. The fact that she sports open toe pumps with a winter suit should be the dead giveaway. Her “pocketbook” comes with tiny play money. Hard, cold cash to be precise. The packaging also, I might add, has Candy, darling, in an extremely low-cut bouffant cocktail dress and skintight bodice with a Marilyn Monroe halter neckline which is, of course, sleeveless.

The disturbingly short dress is further emphasized by the angle of the illustration which is from the curb up! A cinch belt, wide and in nasty-looking black patent, is gleaming from the tiny waist while hastily draped over the shoulders is a skimpy stole with tassle edges. Her gesture, while holding up her purse in one hand and waving with the other, seems to say, “Let’s get the hell out of this joint...Taaaaaxi!." The shoes and calves are at a fetishist’s angle and there is no trace of hosiery. A genuine floozy...to say the least.

Another, Beehler Arts cheaply made “High heel doll” (she doesn’t even have a name!) comes for all intents and purposes, in a plain brown wrapper, like smutty "girly magazines" and she wears a blue felt swimsuit that reeks of Frederick’s of Hollywood. She has that Shirley MacLaine tossled "Can Can" or “Sweet Charity” hairdo in the Roux hair dye shade of nothing less than “Ultra White Minx” and, I kid you not, what appears to be a snarling expression. Maybe it is my imagination run amok, but at least it looks like she was heavily influenced by the film “Juvenile Jungle” (“A girl delinquent...a jet propelled gang...out for fast kicks!”) and Dorothy Provine in “Live Fast, Die Young” (They called her ‘teenage tramp’...the road she travels tonight is a one way highway to hell!”). It is not surprising that the doll and the films came out the same year, 1958.

Prior to the popular Barbie doll's debut in 1959 with her perky breasts and slim figure, arched eyebrows, blue eyeliner, and the ubiquitous ponytail, there existed a German doll, sexy and coquettish which, prior to (by at least the first five years) the Barbie doll, influenced decades of dolls. After Lilli doll’s physical shape was “acquired” by Mattel (so they claim!) and adapted and transformed into the best selling Barbie doll, at least three sizes of the Lilli doll’s moulds continued to be used to create a number of various, lesser known, and at the time, much less expensive lines of fashion dolls. While Barbie doll led the way for quality and usurpted concept, what is referred to as “Hong Kong” Lilli (because it was manufactured in Hong Kong by Fab-Lu Ltd. and other makers and not in Germany like the original doll), Babs, and Miss Seventeen managed to bring sharp high fashion and sophisticated elegance to the doll world as an alternative to the Mattel-created blond bombshell.