Time for another post about vintage paper dolls. Today the theme is youth and these are all paper doll sets featuring teenagers of high school age. Most of these sets can be found on the free paper doll website I have mentioned previously. You can find vintage paper doll sets on such sites as eBay and Etsy. Various publishing companies such as Paper Studio Press make reproductions too. I’ve seen them sold on Amazon and through various eBay sellers. Be aware, if you are starting to collect them, that some of the reproduction sets may not be the original size and that some sellers also use the images to make compilation books where you may find dolls from different sets together. They are usually quite upfront about what they do and I don’t think there is anything wrong with it at all. I am mentioning it because some people may prefer to have exact replica’s of the original books while others just want the books for the lovely graphics to use in projects or just to admire and play with. Size and accuracy may not be as important to them.

Naomi and I have been looking through the reproduction sets to identify dolls and clothing from our originals. This is how Naomi came to discover that some of th reproduction sets are different to the originals. We spent a large part of Good Friday sorting dolls and clothing and by the end of the day some pieces of clothing had become so familiar that we now spot them when we look online. As I looked for pictures to post today I spotted a red and white knitted sweater which we had seen umpteen times that afternoon. Naomi had said that she felt like she had seen it somewhere but could not remember where it was from. It is from  “Double Date” by Saalfield. Won’t forget that one in a hurry. 🙂

Summer Date

The oldest set in this group is by Saalfield and dated 1948. I don’t think the term teenager was in common usage at this time but this group of young people were certainly enjoying the teenage lifestyle of parties and other leisure activities. The graphics are very nice. I like the illustrations on each page. Here are the dolls and some of their outfits.

Double Date

This is another dating themed set by Saalfield, this time from the 1950s. Here are three of the dolls, the other girl is on the cover, and a couple of their outfits including the infamous red and white sweater.

The Pink Prom Twins

Still with the dating theme here is “The Pink Prom Twins” from 1956 by Merrill. This set is amongst our vintage lot and I intend to photograph the originals for another post. We don’t have all the dolls or clothing so we’re working on identifying what is missing at present. It is a big set with eight dolls so we will have our work cut out if you will pardon the pun.

I am curious to know which are the twins, or are they all twins? Debbie and Linda look like twins and so do Tom and Bill. Maybe Jack and Sue are twins and Dick and Jean.  Here are the dolls and some of their clothes. I’ll save the rest for a full post.

 

Cheerleader Teenage Doll Cut-Outs

This is another set from the 1950s this time by Stephens Publishing. It has two dolls Mary, on the front cover and Elaine on the back. I was surprised to find that there were not really a lot of  actual cheerleader costumes in this set.

Susan

Susan is a 1960s teenager, the set was published by Lowe. Susan has some wigs so that she can change her hair style. Her outfits are pretty typical 1960s styles.

Terri and Tonya – The Duo-Tones

Terri and Tonya are two teenaged girl singers. This is what it says about them on the free paper doll website.

The Terri and Tonya paper dolls are titled Terri and Tonya, The Duo-Tones, A Paper Doll Book.  I came up with three different dates when doing my research:  They are either from 1961, 1966 or 1970.  The clothing looks very 1960s, so I am putting them on this website as 1960s paper dolls.

I am inclined to agree with this. These outfits are very similar in style to those of the dolls I was playing with in the middle to late 1960s so I’d be inclined to go with 1966 or 1970 but not 1961 so much. The artwork in this set is nice and colourful. Here are the dolls and their outfits. I am not sure which is Terri and which is Tonya.

Conclusion

I hope you have enjoyed revisiting the 1950s and 1960s with these swinging teens. Maybe for some of you it’s brought back memories of what you used to wear or for younger readers what your mothers wore. There are still a lot of other paper dolls featuring teenagers so there will be another post about them sometime in the future. Look out too, for photos of the original vintage dolls. Naomi and I hope to have another afternoon of sorting in a week or so and if I haven’t already done so I will certainly photograph them after that.

• Note: If you were thinking that Summer Date looks familiar you are right. I featured it in the post about paper dolls from the 1940’s. No excuse. I forgot. I thought about deleting them from this post but in the end decided to leave them in.