Carrot red hair Tammy by Ideal

Naomi’s red head Tammy

Today’s Friday Girl is Naomi’s red-headed Tammy doll. This Tammy has been featured before in our Vintage Visitors series but I don’t think she has been a Friday girl. She is interesting because although I’ve seen photos of Pepper with this hair colour I had not seen any of Tammy and nor had Naomi. She bought her thinking she was a Sindy/Tammy clone. However, it is definitely an Ideal Tammy head as she has the correct markings. Her body we can’t be quite so sure of. It is a different material, a lighter coloured plastic such as was often used on the clone dolls of the time. The only marking on her back is “Made in Hong Kong”. It raises a few questions. It is possible that this is a genuine Tammy head on a clone doll body but that may not necessarily be the case. Although Tammy dolls for the US market were made in Japan some, probably for the foreign market, were made in Hong Kong. My own childhood Tammy was made in Hong Kong as well and given to me when we still lived in the UK. She was a different type of material to my US and Canadian Tammy’s but also different from this doll.  The Hong Kong made Pepper’s shown in my book have their doll mark on their bottoms not their back though.

I still think that she may be 100% genuine Tammy though. The doll factories in Hong Kong were also manufacturing clone dolls at the time and if this Tammy was made near the end of their contract to make Tammy for Ideal they may have used whatever parts they had on hand to fulfill their orders which would explain the unusual red hair and that possibly they used some of their stock standard bodies with the Tammy heads. If we ever come across any more like her we may be able to make a better  guess.

In any case she is an interesting doll and adds to the variety of our Tammy Family collection.