Pete and Polly

Name: Pete and Polly

Made by and When: Horsman, 1957

Material: Stuffed vinyl with jointed heads and one-piece vinyl bodies. Polly’s legs are wired for posing; Pete’s are not.

Marks: No visible marks

Height: 13 and 12 inches

Hair, Eyes, Mouth: Pete has texturized sculpted and painted black hair. Polly’s texturized, sculpted black hair is styled in two plaits with rolled-under bangs. They both have painted black squinty eyes and smiling, open mouths with molded tongues and four painted upper teeth.

Clothes: Redressed as illustrated in period-appropriate clothes. Pete and Polly originally wore matching red and white clothes as illustrated here.  

Other: Pete and Polly are two of Horsman’s earliest Black dolls with dedicated head sculpts designed to represent African American children.

Gallery

Pete and Polly by Horsman, 1957
Pete and Polly did not share head sculpts with dolls of other ethnicities.
Both dolls have texturized sculpted hair.

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Published by DeeBeeGee

Doll collector, historian, co-founder of the first e-zine devoted to collecting black dolls; author of black-doll reference books, doll blogs, and doll magazine articles.

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