Baby Babbles Doll by American Character
Baby Babbles 1963 by American Character - Butterball Face, large 25" Babydoll
This full size baby doll is beautiful and adorable! She has the endearing Butterball face with the shy watermelon smile. Her body style is similar to the Madame Alexander bodies for Kitten and Pussycat. Horsman, Uneeda and other doll companies also used these vinyl arms and legs, but each company put the vinyl parts on their own unique cloth doll body.
Baby Babbles was a talker. I've had two of these dolls, both of which were missing the talker mechanism so I don't know what the "babbling" was like. To me, it doesn't matter because the doll herself is so extraordinary.
Baby Babbles has beautiful auburn hair, saran, which still has original curl. The hair is like new. She has original face paint. Her cloth body is stuffed with molded foam rubber insert. The zipper allows access to the talking mechanism: did the child have to unzip the doll to turn the mechanism on and off?
The cloth body has been repaired a little on each arm. The body shows light soiling, which I think might actually be from starch that has yellowed (rather than dirt) because the doll hardly seems to have been played with. The fabric is still sturdy but there are places where it it is somewhat fragile. The doll is over 50 years old so it might not be a good idea to give her to a child to play with.
She has huge, sparkling blue eyes with full lashes. She is marked on the back of her neck: Amer. Doll & Toy Corp. There is no date.
The vinyl has somewhat uneven color. It seems like the peachy color has faded a bit over the years, which is actually typical of the Butterball dolls also. The doll has no odors (no musty nasty smells), she is sweet and pretty. I did wash her face, hands and feet and combed her hair, but she was in good condition as is.
This Butterball face style was unique to the American Character doll company. They used this face style on quite a few of their dolls:
Butterball (an all vinyl, chubby sitting babydoll)
Baby Babbles (a large cloth body babydoll with battery powered talker)
Pitty Pat (an attractive tall vinyl doll, slightly bent legs, with a heartbeat)
Suzie Steps (a battery powered walking toddler doll)
Sally Says (a battery powered talker, with stocky toddler body)
The doll measures 23 inches long if you measure head to toe. However, the traditional way of measuring these bent-knee babydolls is to measure from head to knee, then measure from knee to bottom of heel (which is actually more accurate.) The doll is 25 inches long if you measure the old-fashioned way. Either way you measure, this is a big doll. She can wear real baby clothes.
Vintage American Character Doll.