Last Sunday Naomi and I went to visit the Penguin undercover market. Penguin is a small town on the coast between Burnie and Devonport, about an hour’s drive from Sisters Beach. Neither of us had ever visited the market before so we were keen to see what it had to offer.
It turned out to be a very large market, at least by Tasmanian standards and we found several stalls selling dolls. The vast majority were modern dolls; when I say modern I mean from the nineties onwards by the way. There were a lot of Baby Born, Lots to Love and Disney dolls plus the usual assortment of messy Barbies I was pleased to find one stall where the stallholders had a lot of fashion dolls and had gone to the trouble to wash and tidy their hair, dress them and put them in bags. They didn’t have anything I wanted but it is a stall I will check out whenever I visit that market in future. On another stall Naomi found a great vintage doll which she is going to tell you about later, this stallholder said that she would be bringing more Barbie stuff in the next week or two so we will certainly be checking her out again next time we visit as well.
We also found another stall where I bought three vintage costume dolls for $3 each. I asked the lady at this stall if she often had dolls and she said sometimes but as she was a doll collector herself the dolls did not always make it to the stall. I understood perfectly.
These three girls are about six inches tall and dressed in national costumes. I assumed that they were either Faun or Rexard dolls like the ones I have at home and as I knew that I didn’t have these costumes I decided to buy all three.
Today I examined them a bit more closely and to my surprise, I found that two of them were marked “Genius” and “Made in Hong Kong”. Well, I wasn’t surprised about the “Made in Hong Kong” part but I had not come across the brand before. The logo on the back of two of them was what looks like a palm tree on a small island.
The unmarked doll is a Rexard doll designed by Odette Arden. I found an identical one on eBay with the wrist tag which mine doesn’t have. I am sure that the other two are also Odette Arden designed dolls or possibly they are very good Hong Kong made knock offs. Rexard dolls were sold under the Faun brand name in Australia so perhaps these ones were made for another market. So far that is all I have been able to find out but I will be continuing to look for the Genius name and the palm tree logo.
Dolls, Dolls, Dolls 
Sweet little dolls and lovely colourful costumes, imagine the work which has gone into making them. You definitely got a bargain there. When my sons were young, I used to have stalls at their school fetes selling dolls I’d rescued from charity shops which I tidied, dressed and sold. I also sold separate outfits homemade and knitted by me. Of course, some of the dolls didn’t make it to the stall as I had just started collecting then.
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The Rexard dolls were made as affordable dolls for children starting to collect dolls. They are similar size to the Peggy Nisbet dolls but not such high quality Still they have colourful costumes and they used to be quite cheap to buy. I think the one I saw on eBay yesterday was at rather an inflated price.
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What lovely dolls. I would be tempted to buy them their own little house. What a great size as well!
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[…] I have written about these small dolls before. They were all made in Hong Kong and were sold as Rexard dolls in the UK, Faun in Australia and more recently I bought three who were marked Genius. […]
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