Throwback Thursday review: Bless You Baby Tender Love

We're going back to 1974 again.  The year of the first Super Outbreak (there've been two), Caribou and Chicago VII, Julie Albright and Ivy Ling, Barbie's Sweet 16, Ten Cent Beer Night, the Fort Worth Trio, and...which Doctor???  <pauses to look>  '74 was a regeneration year; John Pertwee bowed out and Tom Baker took the reins, goofy scarf and all.  Daddy was probably out in Texas working on the oil rigs by 1974 (he did that for a spell between college and his biker days), and Mama was graduating college and starting her first year as a teacher.  Since Mama WAS a young woman by then she doesn't remember today's doll, but undoubtedly some of her students knew of her and even owned her.  This is Bless You Baby Tender Love.

Both Elton John and Chicago released songs on ther respective albums that I love (links here for Sir Elt and here for Chicago), but neither of them provided a well-known song with a girl's name that year.  That same year Barry Manilow's "Mandy" was a hit, so I'll be calling this doll "Mandy," though Mama suggested "Asthma Annie" for reasons that will soon be revealed.  Tam, if you're reading, you probably already know the reason, LOL.  Mandy is part of a line of dolls that all shared the Baby Tender Love name, but most of them had gimmicks that kids were familiar with, like walking, talking, drinking, and wetting their diapers.  Bless You Baby Tender Love...sneezes.  Or she's supposed to; more on that at eleven.

The gimmick left me scratching my head a little, and I'm not the only blogger who thinks so.  That said, I said this during Rose's review and I'll say it again, but I love the art on these seventies boxes!

The box doesn't explicitly say why this doll is sneezing, but the commercial, with copious snow in the background, suggests that the poor poppet has a cold.  With temperatures dropping in the Bootheel and cold and flu season being just around the corner here in the U.S. I find the gimmick fitting.  Indeed, some of my friends at the library are already sick and sneezing.

Now, 'nuff chatter!  Mandy/Baby Tender Love is thirteen inches from head to toe, close in size to Imani and smaller than Rose/Baby Won't Let Go.

Carrie/Baby Love 'n' Touch has a faded "T & L" on her onesie, which I conjectured may have been a mistaken reference to Baby Tender Love.  Here's how Carrie compares to Mandy; I threw Elsie/Tender Baby Love 'n' Touch in too.  Mandy is significantly bigger than the Love 'n' Touch pair, and indeed there appears to be no connection between the two lines.  They're both just lines of Mattel baby dolls.  Mandy is bigger than both Elsie and Carrie, and she's constructed differently as well. 

I'm just now realizing that I could've saved a lot of trouble by comparing Mandy to Pineberry/Baby Needs-A-Name.  Mandy and Pineberry are close in size, and their posing is about the same (spoilers, it's nonexistent).

Notice that Mandy has the classic Mattel look, blonde hair and blue eyes.  That kinda bums me since the original Baby Tender Love had brown eyes.  Mama has made me a fan of brown-eyed blondes.  But first here's the hair.  It's pale blonde like many of my other baby dolls.

The fibers are smooth, but they're also pretty coarse and take to a shape better than modeling clay.  If I tousle Mandy's hair there's a good chance that it'll stay this way.

I'm not terribly impressed with the root job.  I didn't play with the hair at all to get this patch exposed.

Also note the part.  I actually have several dolls with parts like this, where the part runs from side to side rather than front to back.  I've got other dolls like this and it's no big deal, but I thought I'd point it out.

Get a load of this hairline!

It's easier to to see from the side.  That is one high hairline!

This is on the same level as Sweet e.Baby and some Paola Reina dolls.  In Mandy's case it doesn't show too much, but again I thought it was worth noting.  

NOW here's the face!

Yes, Mandy IS that orange IRL.  She's even more orange than my Outstanding Orange Blossom, Justin Latowski.  Ernest John (a brown-eyed blonde) is also a little orange, so he's here too.

On second thought, Mandy makes both Justin and Ernest look...well, normal!  When paired with fairer dolls of their own kind both boys have a pronounced orange tone, but Mandy puts them to shame.

On the subject of skin tones...GAWK, GAWK, GAWWWWWK, A TANGENT WARNING IS IN EFFECT FOR THIS BLOG!!!  I have several Mattel dolls from the sixties and seventies crammed into the room I share with Mama, and the Caucasian tones vary about as wildly as hair types on us humans.  The oldest, Elmyra/Baby See 'n' Say, has a very pink face and brownish limbs, presumably because her head is a different vinyl and has aged differently.  Elmyra dates roughly to 1965.

Carol/Baby Small Walk has a more natural tone that looks a little less like ham salad.  She's from 1967.

The Beans brothers, Bedsie and Booful, are peachy.  These two date roughly to 1970.

Goofy little Alana/Saucy hails from 1972, and she's quite fair all over.  Her face has stayed pale, and her body is made of plastic rather than vinyl, so her head and body match pretty well.

To deliver one last sound blow to the point, Carrie/Baby Love 'n' Touch looks like she's got a suntan.  Dolls did get suntans by 1979, but Carrie is a smidge young for that!

I'm not sure what kind of point I'm trying to make, other than that Mattel used a lot of different vinyl types over the years, and interestingly, a lot of it has stayed pliant, unlike some of my dolls from other companies who have stiffened over the years.  This is a good thing in Mandy's case, because her gimmick is activated by squeezing her tummy.  

<draws deep breath>...where was I???  Oh yeah, Mandy's face.  Here it is again.

Blonde and blue-eyed, as I said before.  Despite having a cold Mandy is smiling a little, so she looks like she's in a pretty good mood.  She's got a BIIIIIIIG forehead, squinty blue eyes, and short, brown eyebrows that angle down a bit.

Normally angled eyebrows give a doll something of an attitude, but Mandy's eyebrows are so small they don't affect her expression much.  Mandy's irises are very big, enuff that there's not much sclera showing, and her pupils in turn are also huge (normally this makes a doll look a little stoned, LOL).  She's got a tiny bit of shadowing, and three little eyelashes.  The molding is nice in the eye area too, though as is typical with my dolls, it's caught some dust.

As to the lower part of the face, it's wider than the upper part. The mouth is a soft, nicely blended shade of pink and is ever so slightly puckered.

Now that I think of it, that lower lip looks a little like a butt crack.  LOL, here's a better look at the nose and mouth, both of which are open.  At one time Mandy came with a functioning bottle, and I presume that her nostrils are open so that she can sneeze the water out...ewww.  Reminds me of the Take Care of Me Twins; one burped and drooled, and the other developed a runny nose after sneezing.

If one can ignore that aspect then Mandy has a cute little nose, and a cute little mouth too.  She's not terribly made up, not like my Magic Nursery triplets.

Mandy's body is one piece and vinyl like Softina's and like Hedda Get Bedda's, and she's also got terrible posture like Hedda does.

Tam says that this doll's body is made of stuff called plastisol-foam, and I really, REALLY love the way it feels.  It's soft and smooth, though not squishy like Carrie's vinyl.  Unfortunately there are no joints.

See?  No shoulder joints, no hip joints.  That's kinda a pain in the posterior because Mandy can't sit or wave or flop like my other baby dolls can.  She can only lie flat on her back.

I love how enthusiastic Mandy looks in this position, though.  Indeed, from the side she looks a lot like one of my favorite porcelain dolls, Baby Makayla.  From the side, that is; from the front their expressions are pretty different.

Regarding the body, Mandy has a round little torso, and in these pictures it's possible to verify that she has no joints.  The front of her has a little bellybutton and some fat pads on her chest that look a little like baby boobs.  Let's be real, all babies have 'em if they're healthy, LOL.

Her back has more detail, with some back muscles and butt dimples visible.  She's got a cute little tushie, though not a squishy soft one like Baby Tender Love does.

Mandy's torso and upper limbs are soft, and squeezing it normally would activate her gimmick.  More on that in a bit.

I don't know what Mandy's body is stuffed with, but it's more robust than the stuff that Little Honeymoon is stuffed with.  Mandy's tummy springs back when I release it instead of staying collapsed like Honeymoon would do.  Her posing may be nonexistent, but she's very cuddly.  I could even give her a bath if I wanted to!  When I was little I loved being able to give my toys a bubble bath.

Mandy's hands are all one piece too (duh, her whole body is), but their position varies.  I always like it when the hands aren't carbon copies of each other.

As vinyl usually does, the hands took to the mold fairly well.  Mandy's got little dimples and creases on her knuckles, and indentations for nails.

Mandy's legs and feet are pretty much the same as her arms and hands:  all one piece, molded in a slightly different position.

I think her knees are so cute!  They're rounded and have shallow little dimples around the caps.

Mandy has cute feet.  The toes on her left foot are extended a little like a baby's toes sometimes are.  The molding is about the same as on the fingers, not super-defined, but definitely there.

Since Mandy isn't meant to stand her soles have a little detail.  Not much, but again, noticeable.

I reiterate:  Mandy has cute feet.  What can I say, I like doll feet.

Now...when I say that Mandy doesn't have any joints, I...well, I'm sorta tellin' the truth.  Her neck IS jointed, but as far as I know it doesn't move from side to side or anything like that.

This head is supposed to move back and forth a little when Mandy's tummy is squeezed, the way one's own head moves when one sneezes, but my doll's head doesn't move.  Nor does she sneeze, not in a way that humans do, anyway.  When I squeeze her tummy or upper leg Mandy lets out a low wheezing sound, like someone does when they're trying to catch their breath.  Mama and Tam both think that these dolls sound like they've got asthma, and Mama had asthma growing up so she'd know what it sounds like.  I tried to get a video of this, but my videos never pick up the sound of her wheezing.

So Mandy's gimmick appears to be broken!  That's a drag, but then I've got several dolls with gimmicks that don't work, and I'll admit that I was the one who broke both Crissy and Jan.  Regarding clothes, I don't think these are her original clothes since they don't match what's on the box.

On the box Mandy is wearing a long gown, but these pajamas are shorty pajamas.  Shorty pajamas this time of year...as cold as it was last January and as cold as it is now no wonder Mandy's sick.  Being chilled isn't the only thing that makes one sick, but it doesn't help!  Oh, and to top it all off, Mandy isn't wearing a diaper!  She's just got panties.

Both the nightie and the panties are sprigged with roses, and for some reason this makes me think of Baby Peep's "ro-berry" nightie!  These are definitely roses though, not little buds that look like a combination of a strawberry and a rose.

Both the collar and the hem of the blouse are nicely finished, so imagine my surprise that the sleeves are finished with a simple running stitch.  It gets the job done, but it's not the prettiest sight to behold.

See?  The bottom hem is trimmed with lace.  Scratchy lace, but lace.

Mandy's collar is smooth and would thus be more comfortable.  She's even got a little pink bow...which appears to be upside down!

I wasn't expecting Nirvana in terms of seams, but the seams on this blouse are surprisingly well done.  There's a few raggy ends hanging out, but not a lot.

The panties are pretty much the same as the blouse.  Same fabric, same lace, same finishing, same everything.  Mandy would need a diaper to keep these nice, being a baby doll and all.

Both diaper and blouse are held shut with snaps.  I'm always happy to see those on doll clothes, particularly since very few commercially made outfits have them.

I'm impressed!  This may not be the doll's original clothes, but then again they fit her awfully well.  Did Mattel make extra outfits for their Baby Tender Love line?  <pauses to do some research>  Not that I know of, but I did find a couple of other Baby Tender Love dolls that wore an outfit like this.  It's entirely possible that Mandy wasn't the only Baby Tender Love doll in the house, and she just ended up with someone else's outfit.  It doesn't matter to me; she's at least clothed, and if she gets chilly I can wrap her up in one of the blankets Treesa sent.  Leslie Emily won't mind sharing that knitted blankie.

That's plenty to think about!

BAD
*Gimmick is kinda weird, particularly for a doll that is not specifically marketed as being sick.
*I have a hard time getting this doll's hair to lie down.  The fibers are stiff.
*No joints either.  That's okay for a toy, but I like joints.

GOOD
*Soft!  This doll is lovely for cuddling.
*Sturdy, as far as I can tell.  If not for her neck I'd subject her to my "throw her across the yard and see what happens test."
*Clothes are cute and well-made, and they fit Mandy well despite not being original.
*Gimmick is simple.  Weird, but simple.

I rated Mandy a 7 out of 10 on the weird scale back in July, and if I focus on the gimmick alone that rating stands.  I get dolls that sneeze if they're sick, but all the sickies that I own had it specifically listed on their box that they were sick.  Mandy's box...just says that she sneezes.  Sure, kids and all of us sneeze when we're NOT sick, but it seems like a weird gimmick for a doll to have.  Furthermore, when this doll's gimmick malfunctions, like mine has, it just sounds like they're breathing funny.  That to me is even freakier than a doll that sneezes!  BUT...butbutbut, if the gimmick is overlooked then the worst insult I can throw at Bless You Baby Tender Love is that her posing sucks.  She's cuddly and cute, just a very simple little baby doll.  If the other Baby Tender Love dolls are like her then I can see why this line was popular.

Tam, I got your package (and thanks a bunch!).  Treesa, your package is still in transit.  When it gets here I'll discuss both.

Stay warm,
RagingMoon1987