Baby Heather

I don't want to add yet another large doll to my collection when I have a move coming up, so this post will contain a lot of grainy screenshots.  That said, I've only learned about Baby Heather in the past couple'a weeks.  I found this cute video shot in the 1980s of a little kid receiving a Baby Heather doll for Christmas, and that piqued my interest (note that the child says "thank you" for the gift, by the way).  The caption of the video states simply that "Baby Heather was all the rage in the Christmas season '87."  Meaning that examples of this doll are roughly my age, LOL.  Forty's just a few years away!

Needless to say I was intrigued by this Baby Heather, a more traditional-looking baby doll who was able to capture hearts during the Cabbage Patch days.  I think Coleco was on life support by 1987, but kids still loved Cabbies!  Anyway, THIS is Baby Heather.  She could be either a blue-eyed blonde, or a doll of color.  Both were and still are quite cute.

Heather was a large baby, at a little over twenty-one inches.  That would put her at a comparable size to my Real Baby, the one and only Geneva.

See, I don't hate blue-eyed blondes!  I need to do a post about that, since not all of my dolls are blonde and blue-eyed like I thought.  LOL, as I said last summer Geneva's eyes are more storm cloud blue than ice blue, but oh well.  Anywho, Baby Heather could talk, turn her head, and respond to some verbal stimuli, meaning that she would've fit in nicely with my post on talking dolls.  She ran on TWO sizes of batteries and thankfully could be turned on and off (take THAT, Furby!).  Miss Deb also notes that the doll could respond as a newborn or as a one-year-old, which I think is pretty darn cool.  She did NOT load her pants, to the relief of the dad in the YouTube video.  Unfortunately since Heather has some moving parts she also was a bit fragile.  Miss Deb reported that her doll had a bum leg, and several comments (on YouTube and elsewhere) discussed broken necks and technical glitches.  This discussion board even notes that the doll would indeed go psycho and you couldn't shut her off (my apologies, Furby).  You had to let her do her own thing until she shut off on her own!  Maybe Mattel was having quality control issues around then, just as they did in 1975.  Either way Baby Heather was popular, but she was only around for the 1987 Christmas season, possibly because she was fragile and glitchy.  That's too bad, because the concept is pretty wicked.

I know some of my viewers are old enuff to remember Baby Heather, so do any of you have your own memories of her, good or bad?  Kindly share your stories if you have any.  I must say that this baby is a tantalizing one, even thirty-six years after the fact...no, Moon Girl.  You have Adam and Mei and Sandra and Geneva to handle.  And Tommy, Sally, and Lili Marlene too; they're staying with me.  They're ALL big babies, and Tommy and Sally need repairs of their own.  Anywho, y'all share your thoughts if you have them.

Cheers,

RagingMoon1987