Throwback Thursday review: where's Walda?

"Walda, Walda everywhere,
East and west and north.
Walda, Walda everywhere,
And not a dime she's worth!"
--semi-original poem, penned by Samuel Taylor Coldridge and me

Okay, saying she's not worth a dime is pretty harsh since this doll does have her fans, of which I am one.  Hi there, all you lucky so-and-sos, it's RagingMoon1987 again with another post that was inspired by a group I've joined on Facebook...when I'm actually able to USE Facebook, that is.  I've not had any problems with easily butt-hurt people lately, so that's some good news.  Anyway, I never dreamed I'd see a group devoted to Walda dolls, but to my delight I found a group entitled "Walda's Friends and Family" and I joined.  Today y'all will be seeing my Walda, all-original except for her hat; Walda dolls usually came with hats, and they usually fell apart or got lost with time, so my Walda is missing hers.  Oh, and I probably should warn y'all:  CREEPY DOLL ALERT.  This one might give some of y'all the heebie-jeebies.  That said, here she is.

 

If you go to Google and browse pictures of Walda dolls, you might stumble across my long abandoned Flickr page, complete with the image seen above.  Yeah, that's how old this picture is!  Once upon a time I called her "Harmony," but "Walda" has more of a ring to it.  "Harmony" can be her middle name.  I picked my girl up at a now-defunct junk shop in downtown Malden, on an inexplicably cold, raw, foggy day in April of 2013.  I knew she wasn't an antique, but I had a touch of the sniffles and needed a pick-me-up, and she had a certain je ne sais quoi that I found irresistible.  Upon learning from the store's proprietor that I was the only one who paid the doll any attention, I coughed up the thirty bucks that the tag on the doll's wrist demanded...yeah, thirty bucks American.  Later that day I learned that I paid way more than I should have for a Walda doll.  Oh well, she's mine now, and that first day together was a grand one indeed.  She sat nestled on my lap while Mama and I searched southern New Madrid County for Burlington Northern Railroad boxcars to photograph.  Yes, boxcars.  In addition to being a doll collector, a classic rock fan, a crazy cat lady, a small-time soda enthusiast, and a tornado buff I'm a railfan.  That's a motley assortment of hobbies, innut!  When I was a little girl Marston and Portageville, Missouri both had a lot of Burlington Northern boxcars idling on sidings.  This was significant to me because I didn't often get to see Burlington Northern rolling stock on Malden's Union Pacific-owned rail line.  Alas, the trip proved fruitless from a railfan's perspective, as the boxcars were long gone (probably due for a repainting after Burlington Northern merged with Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe).  But I had a great time with my mother, and Walda was a cooperative little companion, quietly sitting on my lap while Mama and I chattered the miles away.  More than once she found herself at the center of our conversation.

I believe I heard someone say "Wait a minute, just who is Walda, anyway?"  Walda is a doll that most serious collectors eschew.  I personally like these dolls because of how different they are from your typical porcelain doll (and also because I'm weird), but most collectors don't bother with these because they're cheaply made, and also because they can be a bit Annabelle-ish, even for seasoned doll collectors who are usually immune to a doll's creepy factor.  Some people mistake Walda for an antique, but...no.  In the words of this blogger, she is "the antique doll that wasn't."  Steven Dyal concurs, saying that she's at the very most a retro doll, not antique or even vintage.  She was mass-produced in the seventies and eighties and sold through T.V. Guide and other periodicals of that stripe.  Every so often I see these ads myself, usually in old magazines that our patrons donate to the library.  This issue of The Workbasket dates back to December of 1982, for example.  Notice that she's marked down from around seventeen dollars to just under six.  This is the Walda doll most often found, by the way, in a nondescript brown-on-brown floral print dress.

I have some old issues of The Workbasket myself, mixed in somewhere with the rest of my knitting paraphernalia, and that likely means that I may have some of these old ads.  Doll Reference and this YouTube video also use an old issue of The Workbasket as a source, and for both of those sources the doll is marked down even further, to just under four dollars.  Nowadays these dolls turn up in attics, yard sales, estate sales, discount stores, junk shops, antique marts, doll shows, eBay and Etsy, pretty much anywhere that one might expect to find an old porcelain doll.  The ubiquitous nature of these dolls has collectively earned them all the name "Walda," which in turn is a play on those goofy Where's Waldo/Wally search books that were so popular once.  Since Walda dolls were intended to look like turn-of-the-century porcelain dolls they sometimes fool some folks into thinking they've found a rare and special doll, but if one studies porcelain dolls enough one can easily tell the difference between a Walda doll and the real deal like Mabel.

In fact, I have another little doll who does the reproduction thing better than Walda does, and even she is an obvious newbie.  I don't know this little gal's name (indeed, she probably never had one), so I just call her "Amoreena." 

I remember now where the name "Harmony" came from; my Walda doll and Amoreena have a lot in common so I named them both after Elton John songs!  I'd always wondered if the name "Amoreena" was a name someone made up, but it turns out that she's a real person; Sir Elt has more godchildren than I can count, and Amoreena is apparently one of them.  Classic rock trivia aside, when I seat Amoreena with Walda and Mabel it's easy to see the vintage influence in Amoreena's paint job.

The whole reason why I picked Amoreena up was because she reminded me of the Jumeau dolls I'd seen in Doll Reader as a teen.  I knew darn good and well that she wasn't the real deal, but she had/has the aesthetic and I loved/still love that.  The folks on the FB group have dubbed Amoreena a "Walda cousin," for reasons that I'll later discuss, but for now I'm going to set Amoreena and Mabel aside and give y'all a closer look at Walda.  My doll is wearing a dress that is a bit harder to find; most of the dolls I've seen have earth-toned dresses, but let's start where I usually start reviews:  the hair.  The fact that I've pulled the wig off should clue y'all in on what I think of it.

The caption that I left on Flickr back in 2013 included the sentiment "her hair sucks," and seven years later my feelings have not changed.  Look at these ends!

Eeeee-yucko, looks like someone held a doll wig up to a space heater and left it awhile!  Now y'all know why I wanted to make her that bonnet!  My particular doll's hair is BAD, about even with the hair of Meygana Broomstix and my Stilettos doll Kikki...no...no, it's WORSE than Meygana's and Kikki's, because theirs looks good from a distance!  Walda's so-called wig is blonde and shoulder-length with a center part, and as y'all saw above it's very, VERY matted.  The hair looks like it's been rooted into a rubber cap, but the cap actually is cheap-feeling plastic rather than rubber.  There's more glue underneath than there is hair.

As y'all could probably expect, the rows are VERY widely spaced.

Since these rows are so widely spaced a restyle is out of the question (I was thinking pigtails).  To keep Walda looking presentable I usually cover her head with that somewhat-ill-fitting blue bonnet that I crocheted.

Walda's head is about the same size as Katsumi's and Jaylin's, so Blythe hats are an option if I get tired of that bonnet.  Hat or no, that wig's days are numbered; I already have a new one that y'all will see at the end of the post.

Here's the mess that that poor excuse for a wig left on Walda's head. 

Yucko.  I was able to pick the worst of that gom off, but there's still plenty of it left behind.  I wonder if Goo Gone will take it off?  I may have to try that in the future, but for now I'm gonna leave that alone and move down to the head that this wig is resting on.  There are a number of items that make Walda dolls easy to pick out, with one of the top things being the face.  That face, that face, that Covergirl face, LOL.

Gosh, where do I start?  Oh...I think I'll start by bragging on my doll a bit; while she's no Covergirl, one of the folks on the FB group did say that my particular doll was a pretty one, at least in comparison to other Walda dolls.  That's significant because these dolls are hand-painted and thus can vary a lot in expression and in paint quality.  Some of them have teensy little pinched mouths that I can't stand, and some of them look like they're scowling or sulking or like they're about to cry.  My doll merely looks relaxed and unpretentious, like she knows she's just a regular doll and she's okay with that.  But before I discuss paint I'm going to address the most obvious thing about Walda's face and head:  the color.

All of these Walda dolls have stark white heads, very common for a china doll, but most unusual for an unglazed bisque doll.  Unusual, but not unheard of, as unglazed porcelain that lacks any sort of coloring is referred to as "parian" for reasons I don't know.  Be careful about applying that term to Walda though, as parian dolls are usually more likely to be nice old antiques that bear a slight resemblance to my old china doll Eva.  I love parian dolls, by the way; they're so beautiful in their old-fashioned way.  Anywho, Walda is thus this bizarre intermediate between a bisque doll and a parian doll...appearance-wise, anyway.  Bizarre or no, Walda's white visage does have one huge benefit:  she can wear any color she wants.  No joke, though earth tones tend to dominate in Walda's wardrobe, she also can wear pink or green or red or purple or blue and not have any problems.

NOW let's look at this paint.  Most (but not all) of the Walda dolls I've seen have blue-gray eyes with light brown brows and lashes.

My Walda has BIG pupils with little white dots painted in.  Thank goodness for those dots, as they prevent her from looking spacey.  The paint lines around her eyes are big and a little clunky, but the light brown color keeps them from looking too harsh against her white "skin".  The remainder of Walda's rather sparse paint consists of these bright red lips, painted in a slightly pursed shape.

Red lips stand out any time, but on this Casper the Friendly Ghost-colored porcelain it's particularly garish!  The paint is smooth though, with no chips, rubs, flakes, cracks or errant paint splotches, and that's an especially good thing because this paint is not fired on.  I do wonder why the companies chose to make these dolls such a shocking shade of white though, as the bisque dolls they're supposed to emulate are usually peachy colored like Hattie and Mabel and Katsumi are.  Once in a great while those antique dolls also come in a dark tone, like this very rare Jumeau doll did, but for the most part they were peachy.  It should be noted that china and parian dolls were chalky white like Walda is, but Walda doesn't look much like them either.  So I don't know what these companies were thinking with this porcelain color, but it sure made for one unique doll!  The molding is rough in places, particularly on Walda's left cheek.  See the "pimple"?

My particular doll also has a lopsided jaw, and this time I'll attribute it to sloppy molding.  Remember how Blossom's jaw was lopsided too???  It turns out that that was deliberate...but Walda is just poorly molded.  What should I expect for a porcelain doll that eventually cost under four bucks?

Now let's address these clothes.  As I said above most Walda dolls are wearing earth tones, though it is possible to find other colors.  My girl is wearing pale blue, which apparently is not an easy color to find on these girls.  Indeed, I've seen exactly one other doll that is wearing this shade.  No, take that back; here's another one.  But I haven't found too many blue dresses, and I don't see pinafores too often on these dolls either.  I do think all these dresses come with pantaloons though, so that's not unique to my Walda.  Enough chatter, here's the ensemble.

I'm just going to come out and say it:  Walda is a cheap doll, but at first glance this dress is very well made.  The head of the Walda group on Facebook suggests that maybe my Walda was redressed somewhere along the way, and I have to agree that that's a possibility.  Her pinafore is a bit too big for her, suggesting that it may have once belonged to a chunkier doll.  But at the same time, the skirt and sleeves are the right length.  Maybe this is a mommy-made dress and the sizes are just a bit off?  Maybe the dress is original and the pinafore was a later addition?  I'm not sure, but it doesn't matter much; it covers Walda's nudity and that's what matters.  The dress itself is made of sky blue calico...or a print that looks like calico.  The print is floral and dominantly blue and green, but there are touches of pink in there as well.

The hems of Walda's sleeves are trimmed with a double layer of...I guess that's raschel lace.  Thank goodness Walda is a doll, or this stuff would itch her like mad.

The back of the dress is held closed with two snaps, which surprised me.  Most of the porcelain dolls I own have dresses that close with Velcro, if they open and close at all.

The exterior of Walda's dress looks fine, but y'all might have seen a raw edge peeping out of the closure in the picture above.  Inside the hems and seams are a mess of loose threads, which I hate.

None of those loose threads show, but I still don't like knowing that they're there.  The pinafore doesn't have that problem surprisingly enough, even though it feels a little flimsier than the dress.  The main fabric used in the pinafore is white eyelet (I love eyelet), and a few blue satin ribbons tie the whole look together.

The ribbon trimming the waistline doesn't match up in the back, but that's minor compared to what's holding the back closed.  That's VELCRO!!!  Furthermore, it's the snaggy kind that will catch in the eyelet...but it also stays closed.  The snaggy kind usually does.

Under their dresses Walda dolls wear pantaloons, and these are nothing super-special.  They're just plain white pantaloons just like most of my other porcelain dolls wear.

The legs are trimmed with lace, which has yellowed quite a bit with time.  I guess it's time to bust out the ol' Oxy-Clean.

Walda also sports a rudimentary necklace.  It's a strand of pearls that does not come off, and from the front it looks great.

Unfortunately, from the side it's easy to see that Walda's necklace is not complete.  All the pearls are clustered toward the front and they slide around a lot.  The back of her neck has no pearls.

I also don't trust the thread that's holding this necklace on, so I'm probably going to cut it and make Walda a more substantial necklace.  She deserves to have something nice anyway.

"But wait, Walda has shoes too," you say.  Well...yeah, she does and no, she doesn't.  Her shoes and stockings are molded on, and her shoes are further painted (her socks remain white).  I'll discuss that further as I dig into this body.  Walda has a white cloth body with porcelain arms and legs sewn in.

Dig the measurements!  Those are some short arms and long legs!  Interestingly, her legs are sewn on sideways, making me wonder if this particular doll wasn't assembled from a kit.  There were such kits available if one didn't want to order the doll from the mail.

Walda's head is also sewn on, and that's where I discovered a frightening problem.

Unsurprisingly Walda's head is crudely stitched to her body, and one of those stitches has torn loose!  I'd wondered why Walda's head was so floppy, and...le sigh, now I know.  I don't know how I'm going to patch that, but when there's a will there's a way.  I'll jerry-rig something.

As I stated above, Walda's shoes and socks are molded, and her shoes are painted.  Notice that the paint job is pretty crude, and the paint is worn thin in places.  Also note the crack, visible just above the shoe.

Legs that go click-clack-clickity-clack are par for the course with Walda dolls, but obviously if one lets these legs smack together too hard one or both of them will break.  This is what happened to my Walda; I carelessly allowed her left foot to crash against her right one, and her left foot broke completely off.  Boy howdy, was I mad at myself for that!!!  Super Glue saved the day, but don't let those legs smash into each other with any sort of force.  Sounds dumb for me to say since we all should know how porcelain breaks if not treated carefully, but I had to learn this the hard way and I'm passing it along.  Letting the legs clink a little is alright, but don't overdo it!

I forgot Walda's hands, so let's look at those for a second.  The porcelain bits end right before the elbow, and they're done up in the same ghostly white porcelain that makes up the head.  The fingers are pretty crude for porcelain doll fingers, but at least she has them.

One really got what one paid for with Walda!  I can repair her body and replace her wig, but with a better made doll I wouldn't have had to in the first place!
 
With Walda out of the way, let's focus now on Amoreena, who, as I mentioned above, is considered a "Walda cousin" by Walda's FB fans.

She has a lot of things in common with Walda, starting with the face.  It's not as pale as Walda's is, but it's sparsely painted with old-timey eyelashes and eyebrows, and it's made out of porcelain that's rough to the touch.

She also has a lanky body made of very pretty flowered cloth (look how long her arms are!)...

...and legs that would go click-clack-clickity-clack were she not wearing real honest-to-God shoes and socks.  One leg is a little longer than the other.

Yep, Amoreena has real honest-to-God shoes and socks instead of molded ones.  I love those soft leather shoes, in fact.

Further tying Amoreena to Walda is her attire; she's dressed in an earth-toned rustic-style dress similar to those that other Walda dolls wear.

However, Amoreena has several crucial differences.  Her wig is in an honest-to-God style, and it's DARK (most Waldas are blonde)...

...and she has lovely brown inset eyes...

...and interestingly, she has a music box insider her torso.  See the key?

I don't know what tune she plays (it's certainly not "Amoreena"), but this music box works quite well.  I have a few other music box dolls like this and I've always liked them, so I'm glad Amoreena has this feature.  Amoreena is NOT a Walda doll, though.  She has a lot of similarities and was created with a similar intention, but she's not the same as my Walda.  As I noted above, the similarities led her to be dubbed a "Walda cousin" by my friends on Walda's Facebook group.  The two make a cute pair, by the way.

I wish I had a chair for them to sit in, especially since they're soft enough to sit on her own.  Most of my porcelain dolls are meant to be placed on stands, but Walda and Amoreena can sit or stand.  Yeah, I need to grub up a chair...a wicker one, maybe?  Those turn up at Goodwill sometimes.  Now...I reckon this is a good place to end this.

BAD
*Walda's hair sucks.  Amoreena's is okay, but Walda's is the absolute WORST doll hair I've ever seen.  She trumps Meygana AND Kikki, which is saying a lot since Meygana and Kikki both have terrible hair.
*That porcelain...well, this isn't really a bad thing, but that porcelain is a trippy color and it's rough to the touch.
*Walda's necklace needs a do-over.  Easy fix.
*Body measurements are weird, though this is more of a problem for Amoreena.  Her arms are obviously out of proportion.
*Paint job is crude, especially on the shoes.
*Head is coming loose.
*Fragile if treated roughly (duh, I should've known).

GOOD
*Clothes are average-good.  Not great, but good.
*Bodies are well made too, for the most part.  One of the stitches holding Walda's head on has torn loose, but I can mend that.  Amoreena's body is more robust.
*Amoreena has lovely hair.
*The paint is not great on either doll, but it's not terrible either, AND it's all there.  Their faces are quite attractive, at least for their kind.
*Amoreena has a music box inside!!!  I love that.
*Strictly my opinion, but I think these two look quite good with a group of real antiques.

Seriously, I think Walda and Amoreena fit in pretty well with Hattie and Mabel and Katsumi.  I can definitely see the antique influence in Walda, but she is NOT antique quality like her old ads claim she is.  Her clothes are good enough to steal for another doll if I was feeling especially heartless, but her porcelain is rough and cheaply molded and just plain bizarre to look at sometimes.  Her hair is ungodly.  Her face is attractive when painted well, but when it ISN'T painted well this little gal can look BAD!!!  Some of these dolls even have their limbs sewn on sideways, like my doll's legs are.  So while I'm not sorry I paid thirty bucks for my Walda, I can see why other collectors don't like these.  They've got their quality issues, issues that a Jumeau or a Simon and Halbig wouldn't have, and thus I urge y'all NOT to follow my example unless you absolutely have to have one of these dolls.  But I still love mine, and I'm glad I found a group of folks who love their Walda dolls too.  In general Walda has a lot of character, she has an interesting story, and she's fun to look for!  As I said in the beginning she has that certain je ne sais quoi, but now that I stop to think about it Walda's je ne sais quoi may actually be a je connais, because I suddenly remember why I was so drawn to her.  I like my dolls a little on the weird side, and Walda is definitely there!  She's not as freaky as Mirari or Spring-Heeled Jack, but she could fit in with them if I wanted her to.

 "One of us, one of us!!!"

"If I ignore them will they go away?"

I don't think Walda is too keen on the idea of being lumped in with my resident freaks.  She can just as easily be Rael's friend.

 "I'll protect you, pale dolly!"

So yeah, Walda's not for everyone, but I've developed a deep respect for this slightly bizarre mass-produced poppet, and while I paid too much for my example I don't regret it in the slightest.  Now that I know who she is I'm always keeping an eye out for her sisters and cousins, at Goodwill, at antique marts, at yard sales, wherever!  Surprisingly I've yet to see another one (the Facebook group's admin concedes that they're growing harder to find), but I always keep my eyes peeled anyway.

Now to that wig that I promised.  I tried Mabel's old wig on Walda and it fit pretty well, but that black hair just washes her out all the more.

It's already too easy to make Walda look washed out, and I don't desire further help from a wig!  So I snagged this one off eBay instead.

Blonde is really the only color that looks right on Walda, and blonde is what she got.  This wig is a Joni wig from Global Doll, and the size is 9-10.

It's a rather grown-up style for a doll that I suspect is supposed to be a little girl, but it's a low-maintenance style.  I HOPE IT FITS!!!

And it does!  Not perfectly, mind y'all, as it's a little big around the crown, but it does fit.  Mama and my friends on the Facebook group agree that the new wig is a vast improvement over the old one.  Now I just need to glue it in place.

And that, folks, is Walda in a nutshell.  I know she looks a little freaky, but I promise she doesn't bite!  She's a good girl who gets along with everyone she meets (even Spring-Heeled Jack has become her friend), and I just love her.  I highly recommend that anyone who likes Walda join Walda's Friends and Family (if you bother with Facebook, that is), as the people in the group are an easygoing, friendly lot, just like the doll they love.  And if you have taken a liking to this admittedly bizarre young lady, prices are usually pretty reasonable online.  I definitely DON'T recommend paying thirty bucks for one like I did (LOL), but luckily most of the Walda dolls I've seen online aren't going for thirty.  They mostly go for five to ten bucks, which is about what they're worth.

Joy to you and me,
RagingMoon1987