Throwback Thursday review: Rock Flowers Heather

Hey-hey-hey, all you lucky people!  Today's doll is another tiny one, but not a recently made doll that was here and gone in a flash.  Her name is Heather, and she's part of Mattel's Rock Flowers line.

A couple'a years ago I showed y'all my Glori and Longlocks dolls, both of whom were friends of Topper's Dawn.  Tiny, inexpensive, well-dressed Dawn was wildly popular during the early third of the Me Decade, to the point that she outsold Barbie for awhile.  Of course popularity meant clones, and Mattel jumped on the small doll bandwagon with the Rock Flowers.  As y'all can see, Heather is the same height as Glori and Longlocks are, but her measurements are a smidge different.  More on that later.

The Rock Flowers were Mattel's first attempt to challenge Dawn but not the last, with their second attempt being the Fashion Teeners, who were smaller than Dawn and the Rock Flowers and went over like a lead balloon.  Imagine a doll two inches smaller than Heather with a similar facial shape, and you've got a Fashion Teener!  Since the Fashion Teeners WERE two inches smaller than the standard small dolls of the era they were a devil to dress, and they also had some other unfortunate shortcomings that led to a brief run.  Fashion Teeners are thus very hard to find and VERY expensive nowadays, especially when they're NRFB.  The Rock Flowers were produced from 1971 to 1974 and were a bit more well-planned, with a music theme and clothes to match.  I wonder if Julie and Ivy ever played with them???  Julie's Christmas present was a Quick Curl Barbie styling head, so I know she liked dolls.  Just a thought.  Anyway, the "group" consisted of three to five members:  blonde Heather, red-haired Lilac, African-American Rosemary, raven-tressed Iris, and a miniature Live Action Ken look-alike named Doug.  Iris and Doug took a page out of Donny and Marie Osmond's book by being a brother-and-sister act, while Heather, Lilac, and Rosemary were apparently based on a real girl group of the same name, right down to appearances (kudos to Sagittarius Dolly for this info).  Each doll was a bit over six inches tall and was brightly dressed as the era dictated, and each came with a little record that had two Rock Flowers "hits" on it.  Even better, each doll came with a stand that would fit on a short-spindled record player and thus allow the doll to "dance." My Heather didn't come with her stand, which is a bummer as I would've liked to have tried Glori and Longlocks on it.  I don't have a record player for them to dance on, but I still would've liked to try the fit.  Vinyl records appear to be making a comeback, as a quick perusal of the local Wal-Mart's electronic section proved, but since it was all easily obtainable stuff I saw no reason to run out and buy a record player.  Seriously, The Dark Side of the Moon can be found in almost ANY format nowadays.  Now I like Pink Floyd...but show me Quadrophenia or Octave in vinyl and THEN we'll talk. 

Right then, let's get down to business!  As I noted above Heather and her bandmates were/are close in size to Dawn and her cronies, at a little over six inches.  For grins, here's how she compares to Calypso, Jessa Jellyfish, and Betsy Bubblegum.

I was expecting Heather to be about the same height as Claudie and Gigi, but to my surprise she's a teensy bit taller.

The Fashion Teeners were interesting in that they had wigs instead of rooted hair, but the wigs were rather flimsy and would lose hair like mad, either all at once, or strand by strand, or in small clumps.  By contrast, all of the Rock Flowers had rooted hair except for Doug, who sported painted locks like most boy dolls did and still do.  And wouldn't y'all know, by sheer dumb luck I ended up with the blonde.

I solemnly swear that I DO NOT HATE BLONDE HAIR!!!  I just wish it weren't so popular on dolls.  Heather's hair IS blonde though, with the center part and no bangs like many dolls from her era had.  Unfortunately her hair has a mind of its own, complete with stray fibers that refuse to lie flat, just like Glori's hair and Longlocks's hair.

One of my blogging friends...Tam, wasn't it you?  I can't remember exactly which one, but one of my fellow bloggers calls this phenomenon That One Hair, as a great many dolls do indeed have one single hair that refuses to lie flat, hangs in the doll's face, or is just plain annoying in some way.  In Heather's case she's got more than That One Hair, but it's probably nothing that can't be fixed with some hot water and Downy.  I need to do that for Glori and Longlocks too, so I may just do that some afternoon when I have cold hands and nothing better to do.  But for now I just keep it contained in one of the scarves that came packaged with Heather.

Disobedient or no, this hair is...pretty nice.  I've felt better hair, but at least Heather's hair doesn't feel like straw (one of my Malibu Barbies has straw hair), and it's not falling out in clumps like Mirari's hair was and still is.

Rooting is good enough for a doll this size.  If she were a bigger doll I wouldn't be pleased at the amount of visible scalp, but since she's a little doll I'll let it slide.

Speaking of Malibu Barbie, Heather's face bears a passing resemblance to hers.

Key word is "passing."  The two faces aren't carbon copies since Malibu Barbie has teeth showing and Heather does not, but the appearance is there.  Fashion Teeners, now...now they WERE carbon copies of Malibu Barbie!  If the Teeners were made by some company other than Mattel this similarity probably would've been an issue, but since the Teeners ARE Mattel products it makes sense that they'd essentially be mini-Barbies.  Still, I'm glad Mattel didn't make the Rock Flowers look too much like Barbie, as that would've gotten boring in a hurry.

Right then, I believe it's time to discuss Heather's paint.

I washed her face before the review, but she's still a little grubby.  Nothing a light scrub with some baking soda won't fix, most likely.  I can do that while I'm doing her hair and thus kill two birds with one stone.  Anywho, Heather has the blue eyes that waaaaaay too many blonde dolls have, but they're at least looking in the same direction and aren't smudged like poor Glori's eyes are.  Her eyelashes and eyebrows are painted, and thank God, the eyebrows aren't BLACK like the Fashion Teeners' eyebrows were.

Seriously, what human OR doll has blonde hair and black eyebrows???  No, don't answer that, LOL!  The dark eyebrows looked good on Loreen (the brunette Fashion Teener), but her three friends could've done with a different paint scheme.  Strangely, there are a few Barbie dolls that also had dark eyebrows (though not as dark as those of the Teeners), so...go figure, I guess!  That may just have been one of Mattel's quirks back then.

Boy, I sure do like picking on the Fashion Teeners, don't I???  I just think they make an interesting contrast to the Rock Flowers, in that they were made by the same company to fill the same niche but had such different outcomes.  Anyway, Heather's lips are painted in a natural, peachy shade that looks a little bland but jives well with the fresh-faced makeup that was trendy in the early part of the seventies.  Again, even Barbie went that route!

No other makeup for Heather, just what y'all saw.  I think Mattel was wise in doing this, as less is more with makeup, be it on a doll or on a human.  I do sort of wish that Heather's lips were a little brighter, but I often say that about my dolls so no serious complaints here.  It can't have been easy to paint such a tiny face like this.

Just for grins, here's how Heather's face compares to the visages of Glori and Longlocks.

Even though Dawn and the Rock Flowers are quite similar, they do have a lot of facial differences.  Heather's paint job is a smidge better than that of the Topper girls (Glori has that aforementioned smudged eye) and she also doesn't have the rooted eyelashes that give Dawn and her friends a slightly creepy look.  On the other hand, Glori and Longlocks have more personality than Heather, who has a bit of that generic cuteness going on.  There's a good reason for the variation in eye quality among Dawn dolls, by the way, as Dawn and her friends were apparently all hand-painted (Heather was definitely not).  Glori's roving left eye makes a little more sense now, because as I noted above it can't have been easy to paint tiny heads.  It's also easy to see how pale Glori and Longlocks are...or how tan Heather is, take your pick.

Random observation before I move on to the body: for some weird reason all the Rock Flower dolls I've seen have these dents right between their eyes.

They're not unsightly or even all that noticeable, but Heather does have them, as does this example of Iris.  I wonder why that is?  Probably some hiccup with the head mold?  No huge deal since the dents are small, but they do make me curious.

On to the body now.  Rock Flowers have bendy one-piece bodies.

This surprises me since they were released in 1971, the same year that Tutti, Todd, Chris, and the Liddle Kiddles were discontinued.  I make note of this because all of those dolls are/were constructed similarly to the Rock Flowers.  Most of the concern surrounded the safety of the dolls' internal wires, which could break and poke through the vinyl bodies during play and subsequently make the dolls dangerous.  I also read that the vinyl used in the dolls' bodies was expensive, but my source for that information is Wikipedia so I don't know how true it is.  BUT...if dolls with internal wires could potentially be a safety hazard, and if vinyl was expensive, then why were the Rock Flowers so similar to Liddle Kiddles, right down to the wire jointing and vinyl bodies???  Look at this!

There has to be some other factor that I'm missing about Tutti and the Kiddles.  I know that the largest Kiddles (Skediddle Kiddles) had legs that could detach and become a choking hazard, so maybe that was the final straw for the Kiddles as a whole?  I dunno, but Heather's body is very similar in style to a classic Kiddle's.  It's made of soft vinyl and is all one piece, and unsurprisingly some of her internal wires are broken.  Heather can bend her arms at the mid-humerus, for example.

Yucko, that reminds me of a poor chap I saw in a video on the deep web one time.  He'd been hit by a large truck and his upper arm was broken (among other injuries).  Every time he'd try to move his arm would bend...right where Heather's arm is bending now.  Scary stuff.  And why did I watch such a video, you ask?  To try and desensitize myself to such gore and pain so that I could pick up corpses without becoming a sobbing mess.  I've since given up on the mortician/coroner gig, but I never forgot that video.  The caption of the video did not say whether he lived or died, but based on some...other symptoms he was showing, I doubt he survived.

I truly am a sicko, aren't I???  Let's look at the rest of Heather's body and try to forget her broken arms.  Strangely, Heather can bend both of her knees and both of her hips with little fuss, though she can't sit without support (her hips don't bend sharply enough for that).

To my relief Heather shows no sign of melting or discoloring, both of which were problems for both Tutti and the Kiddles.  Her body is merely slightly grubby in a few places, which is to be expected for a vinyl toy of her age.  Regarding molding, Heather has boobs and a butt crack and a belly button molded in, but her measurements aren't quite as outrageous as Barbie's were at the time.  Her hands have five little fingers...

...but her high-heeled feet have only rudimentary toes.

Not a terrible body overall, though I do wish the wires weren't worn out.  Oh well, can't be helped with a doll of this age.  At least Heather's body doesn't have any holes or stains like Greta Griddle's body does.

No doll is much good without clothes of course, and here is where Heather's quality falters a little bit.  From what I've read, none of the Fashion Teeners' tiny little ensembles had finished hems, and thus dressing them was a pain in the posterior for children and adults alike (this was another nail in their coffin).  Heather's colorful little jumpsuit and scarves appear to be of better quality, but they're still missing hems in some crucial places, as we'll soon see.  Here's the ensemble, first and foremost.

Very sixties/seventies/Woodstock!  I love the colors and I love the print, which has some white flowers and green leaves mixed in with an orange, pink, and yellow geometric pattern.  Take a look at the neckline and the armholes.

I know that hemming such tiny little garments wouldn't be easy, but Topper did it and Topper did it well.  Mattel, being the juggernaut company that they were, could've done the same, but things weren't too hunky-dory for Mattel during the seventies (just like they aren't right now), and thus a lot of their products took hits in quality.  Don't believe me?  Research Free-Moving Barbie and her buddies and you'll see what I mean; those dolls were cute and wonderfully diverse for the seventies, but their free-moving mech breaks a little (a lot?) too easily.  I make note of this because Mattel was the same company who produced the robustly constructed Live Action and Living Barbie lines a few years before the Free-Moving lot came out!  I own one of the Living dolls (Fluff), and while she does have a broken elbow she shows no sign of falling apart.

I can't resist letting Fluff show off a little!  She's just too cute!

Fluff's waist is a little floppy, but it's in no danger of breaking yet.  The Free-Moving bunch were not as fortunate and broke apart easily at the waist, "not endearing these cheaply made dolls to collectors anywhere," as Barbie Bazaar put it.  But anyway, Mattel was having a lot of trouble in the seventies and it shows...well, it shows a little with Heather, mostly in her unhemmed bodice.  I wouldn't make such a big deal out of this, except that this orange fabric is the type that will ravel if the hems aren't finished somehow.  This is particularly obvious on Heather's left "sleeve," which has some fuzzy thread ends sticking out.

The lack of hems is even more glaring when one looks at these darts in the front of the bodice.

In the 1960's those darts would've been flawless, but they're not this time.  One is longer than the other, and one looks like it wasn't completely finished.  This is more easily seen when Heather is wearing the jumpsuit.

At waist level Heather's jumpsuit segues from thin orange stuff to pink...polyester or whatever, in the form of this faux belt.

The belt is really just a permanently attached strip of fabric, but it goes all the way around.  No trickery or illusions here, not like on modern Mattel clothes!  The ends of this "belt" culminate in a metal hook and plastic button that holds the outfit shut.

Well, in theory it holds the outfit shut.  In truth it works about as well as the stretched out fasteners on my old Dawn clothes.

Below the pink "belt" is wear the bell-bottoms begin.  As I noted above this part utilizes five...no, SIX colors:  orange, yellow, pink, white, green, and a little bit of black.  It's a very busy pattern, again par for the course with doll clothes and people clothes from the sixties and seventies.

Keep in mind that the Mod era was still alive during the early part of the Rock Flowers' run, and for some designers like Pucci the era never ended!  Speaking of Pucci and their unobtainable scarves, dig these!

Heather originally only came with one scarf, but my doll has two.  I use one for her hair and knot the other one around her neck.  Interestingly, the fabric used for these scarves has the same print on it as Heather's pants do, but the fabric type is different.  The ends are fringed, but the fringe is uneven.

I'll have to bust out the nail scissors and even that out, I guess.  Not a bad little outfit overall, though the hiccups in quality are frustrating.  I can understand why no one wanted to hem those tiny sleeves, but I still wish someone had at least attempted it!

Heather can wear Dawn clothes, but I didn't show that since all of my Dawn clothes are impossible to fasten.  So let's move on to this next ensemble, which is an assortment of pieces from separate sets...I think.  I don't know who the blouse and the slacks belong to, but I know for a fact that the poncho is a Rock Flowers item.

The poncho came from an ensemble called "Indian Poncho" (the leftmost ensemble in the linked picture).  The remainder of the ensemble consisted of a pair of gaily-striped pants (vertical stripes, thank God), a feather headdress, and white boots with fringe.  No blouse???  I guess Mattel thought the poncho was enough.  Anyway, I'm a little saddened that my poncho is all by its lonesome since the whole outfit was cute, but I also feel very lucky to have the poncho at all.  The "Indian" series of fashions is a second-year set of fashions, and CraftyDollGal notes that the second-year fashion waves ("Indian," "Frontier," and "Fringe") are all tricky to find.  The first-year themes appear to have been "Tie-Dye," "Lace," and "Overalls," and indeed I see more examples of those running around on eBay.  I especially like the overalls sets, as they're bright, splashy colors with cute sleeves that modern overalls sets rarely have.  I also like the tie-dyed line because RAINBOW, that's why.  As with safety pins and UglyDolls, I liked rainbows BEFORE they were cool...maybe.  Rainbows are always cool.  Anywho, I only have the poncho itself, but the whole outfit looks adorable.  Indeed, the blouse looks good with or without the poncho.  Notice that the fringe on the poncho is even, showing that Mattel was capable of doing such a thing at the time.

I'll have to admit that I prefer the outfit with the poncho.  I also wish I could identify the blouse and the slacks, as they fit Heather and her friends too perfectly not to have belonged to...to SOMEONE around that time period.  Dawn or Pippa or God-knows-who, or maybe they were aftermarket clothing, which was pretty common back then.  Either way they're well-made little pieces.  The slacks are...are...THEY'RE BELL-BOTTOMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love bell-bottoms!!!  No, I didn't like those before they were cool (indeed, I wasn't even alive at the time that these were cool), but I've always been fond of these pants that fit at the top and flare at the bottom.  Alas, I've never owned a pair...not one that fit properly, anyway.  Unlike the top of Heather's pantsuit, these are hemmed.

The waist is elasticized, meaning that these could potentially fit a doll slightly chunkier than Dawn and Heather...though at the moment I can name no doll like that.

The blouse is also a style that I adore, and a style that I did get to wear during high school:  the peasant top.

Ah yes, flared sleeves that always fluttered and looked so pretty, though I had to be very careful with them during dissections in biology class!  My blouse was made of a lightweight type of fabric in a stormy shade of blue, perfect for spring and the warm days at the beginning and end of summer.  Heather's top is definitely for late fall and winter, being made of a lovely red floral corduroy.

This snaps shut in the back...

...and as with the slacks, the hems look nice.

Dang, I wish I knew what company made these pieces!  Maybe two different companies made them???  I dunno, but I'm glad that I've got these in my slowly growing Dawn collection.  Oh, and shoes?  At the last minute I shoved some pink Dawn boots on Heather's feet.

I only have four pairs of Dawn shoes at the moment, and the other three pairs proved too small for Heather's feet.  These boots don't really match Heather's new outfit, but her slacks cover them pretty well.  Unfortunately the vinyl in these boots cause a lot of friction, so pulling them off Heather's legs was not much fun.  I doubt she'll wear these again.

And with that, time to sum it up!

BAD
*Bendy body.  These never hold up.  Heather's body is doing better than my Kiddles' bodies are, but it's got some problems.
*The bodice of the pantsuit is not hemmed, which has proven problematic.
*Generically cute.  Heather and her friends lack the the character that Dawn faces tend to have.
*Can't wear all of Dawn's shoes.  I tried and ended up splitting one of Glori's green heels.
*Not for kids, not anymore.  These are a choking hazard, among other things.

GOOD
*Hair is alright.  It's a little unruly, but it can be controlled.
*Body, while showing signs of age, can still hold a few poses.  Always a plus with dolls like this.
*Can share clothes with Dawn and Pippa (but not all shoes).
*Face is generically cute, but lacks the creepy factor that Dawn faces sometimes have.  I find Dawn's heavy lashes somewhat unsettling, and I know I'm not the only one.
*Great for dollhouse settings.

 I included the phrase "clone doll" in the tags since I've always seen the Rock Flowers listed as Dawn clones, but having looked closely at a Rock Flower I'm hesitant to use that term.  Oh sure, Heather and her pint-sized compadres were undoubtedly inspired by Dawn, but they have enough differences to set them apart.  Having picked over Heather it's obvious that Mattel tried to make her and the other Rock Flowers different from Dawn, and they did a pretty good job with that bendy body that doesn't turn green at the knees (both my Glori and Longlocks dolls have green knees).  Unfortunately, Heather's bendy body has fallen victim to the ravages of time and no longer poses in the arms.  It does not have holes or discolorations like my Kiddles' bodies do, though.  My other main beef with Heather is her face.  While it doesn't have the creepy rooted eyelashes that Glori and Longlocks have, it's also...pretty bland.  It doesn't convey much personality, no sublime happiness or sauciness, but then again a face with a lot of personality can be off-putting for some consumers.  Overall I like Heather and think she's cute, but...despite her creepy eyelashes I like Dawn and her friends better.  Their faces are handpainted and have more personality, though their little bodies feel fragile.  Despite my preference, Heather and the Rock Flowers are a worthwhile addition to any collector of Dawn dolls or dollhouse dolls.  Just beware of loose hems.

Cheers,
RagingMoon1987