Interesting piece about doll repair shops in Sydney even though the author does not like dolls. It is another sad sign that young people don’t seem to like dolls let alone getting them fixed.
Suspensions of disbelief get a thorough workout these days. Whether you can’t believe there are Superman movies that don’t star Christopher Reeve, or you refuse to believe it when NRL stars run afoul of the law, you’re likely having a tough time of it in this, the dawn of the information age.
For a long time, I refused to believe that one area, nay, onestretch of road could support not one but two doll hospitals. So when the Doll Repair Centre at 444 Stoney Creek Road, Kingsgrove ceased to exist a few months ago, that suspension vanished, the disbelief came crashing down, and here you are reading my attempt to process a lifetime of astonishment and uncertainty.
In simpler times, kids played with toys. ‘member toys? Action figures, Matchbox cars, those lame wooden ones that barely moved…and dolls. Back then, dolls were seen as a “girls toy”, and the…
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Dolls, Dolls, Dolls 
Wow, I would love to go there. I think you might be right about dolls not being so popular, but they are so massed produced and everywhere, I didn’t see lots of dolls as a child, I had a ‘hand me down’ baby doll missing an arm, when I was desperate enough, I was given one Sindy, no extra clothes, accessories. However, when I saw Punch and Judy puppets and ventriloquist dummies, I was a bit scared. My grandparents wouldn’t have understood that. Kids have virtual figures, like manga animation. My 28 year old has all her Barbies, in great condition.
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Puppets like Punch and Judy and ventriloquist dummies could seem frightening to a child, maybe because they speak. Although now I think children expect dolls to “do” something.
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We still have a doll doctor in the next village, in an old hairdressers shop the owner does doll repairs.
I don’t think kids really expect the dolls to do something. All of the gimmick Barbie dolls, as I call them, were played by my youngest for about 15 Minutes, before the complaint arose, that she is boring, because she can just do her gimmick and was hard to redress or her wings or light-up dress could not be removed to put her into another dress. Then they were just lying around. The non gimmicky ones were played with for hours.
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That’s it, gimmicky toys can only be used for one purpose. The new mermaid Barbies have plastic tails, fairies have plastic wings. With the old ones i was all fabric and paper so you could take them off and do something else with the dolls afterwards.
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You just put her head on a different body. There are so many you tube videos on doll repairing, mums can do it now.
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