When I went to get my Lovely Lively Sindy out to be photographed she was suffering from a bit of a bad hair day and I ended up giving her a clean before she posed for me. All the Sindy Set have been stored for a year now. A few of them made it out of their boxes for the Sindy Scooter Photo Shoot but most have not seen the light of day since last November when I packed them up. Quite a few have untidy or flattened hair.

To cut a long story short I decided that I might as well give all of them a tidy up. A lot of the older ones needed their hair restyled anyway while others, especially the Patch’s could use a light cleaning. So I brought the box containing the Sindy’s and Patch’s upstairs to work on. The Paul’s are in another box but they will get a turn later although as only one of them has rooted hair they won’t take long.

I decided to start with the dolls I consider “new” Sindy’s. In other words the ones made after 1970. As I’m sure I have mentioned in the past my original idea was to collect Sindy dolls from 1963-66 and the outfits shown in my Sindy Set booklet from 1965-66. This was in the mid-late 1990s and eBay was just getting going. There were few sellers in Australia so most of my dolls were still being found in shops and at markets. I soon found that I had more outfits than dolls to wear them so I started to buy Sindy’s from the 70s and 80s to display the outfits on. I didn’t know anything about them other than that they were Sindy’s. Some outfits didn’t fit them as well, the later Sindy’s have a different type of body but I thought they would do until I had more “real” Sindy’s. Years went by and I grew attached to the dolls and never ended up culling them even when I bought more older Sindy’s. I started to want to know which Sindy’s I had and found websites that were helpful. I may eventually buy them some clothes from their own eras.

I am still trying to accurately identify all the dolls but I think the eldest of this group is my auburn haired Lovely Lively Sindy who I’m pretty sure is the 1974 doll. She was easy to ID because of the rivets in her shoulders. I gave her a light clean and washed and conditioned her hair for her Fashion Doll Friday appearance. She has lovely saran hair that I can curl around my finger. I think that she is my favourite of the later Sindy’s and possibly one of my favourite Sindy’s of the whole collection. She’s so pretty.

Here are four Sindy’s after their spa treatment. I’ll leave out the one on the far left because she is a bit different to the others and in a sad state too. We’ll come back to her later. Of the other three you can see that the legs on the one on the left are joined a bit differently to the other two. You will notice that they all have the same large neck knob. Pedigree started using these in 1971, they make removing Sindy’s head much easier.

The next thing that I started looking for was doll marks. She has 2GEN1077 and 033055X marked on the back of her head but nothing on the body. Pedigree started marking dolls with the 2GEN1077 mark in 1979 although one reference site says this started in 1977. She has a very hard head and what I think is saran hair. I am not sure about the length though as it looks as if she’s had a trim at the front. Her legs have wire inside, both knees still click, but not her arms. The Sindy’s made after 1980 tend to have a wider jaw giving her face a more round appearance and paler pink make up. My best guess is that she is a 1980-81 doll. She has tiny metal earrings, although it is possible someone stuck pins in her ears, that’s what it looks like inside her head. (They were pins. I pulled them out.) She also has the remnants of rooted eyelashes.

I had this girl dressed in Winter Holiday as the hood disguises her missing front hair a bit. The skis and boots are packed at present.

Our next girl has the wider hips that stick out which first appeared in 1979. She is marked 033055X on the back of her head but it is hard to see as it is hidden by her hair. Her body is marked “Hong Kong” on her lower back.

Her hair is nice and shiny, saran again I think. It’s always been easy to restyle. I had previously ID’d her as Party Time Sindy 1981 and this is still my best guess.

The last doll we’ll look at today needed the most TLC as she had rather frizzy hair. After I had washed her hair I decided to be brave and give her a boil wash. I’ve always been reluctant to do that to the Sindy’s. I was careful and dipped the ends in for about 30 seconds and when nothing terrible happened I put her whole head in for about a minute. Her hair is now much softer and more shiny though still a bit frizzy at the ends. I probably could have left her a bit longer so I decided to give her a second one for another 90 seconds.

Her head is marked 033055X and whilst washing her hair I discovered that she had the Sindy logo hidden under her hair. Pedigree started using the Sindy mark on doll heads from 1982 so we know she is an 80s girl. She has the wider jaw and pale face paint of that era too. Like most of my 70’s-80s Sindy’s she has rooted eyelashes.

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I am not so good at identifying the exact Sindy I have although I can narrow it down to a year or couple of years usually. Even using the information on the websites I consulted I know that there were many variations, new heads on older bodies or vice versa, different markings and so on so I’m rarely 100% sure. Below are the main websites I used for this post. It looks as if I may have to look for some Sindy’s to fill in the gap in the collection. I have none between 1967-73. Food for thought.

Next time we’ll look at two more post 1970 Sindy’s.

Resources:

• http://www.aluluei.com/sindy/date/date.html
• https://www.oursindymuseum.com/
• http://www.petradolls.co.uk/