I don’t recall if I have ever written about Brenda before. Brenda was given to me by our mum when I was fourteen. That was significant to mum because she was given her last doll when she was fourteen. She was told it would be the last one as she was getting too old for dolls. So, she wanted me to have one more doll before I “grew out of them”. Mum was good though. She never told me that I was too old for dolls. I kind of stopped playing with them in my mid-teens because you are not supposed to be playing with dolls at that age. People don’t understand. Now of course I am lots older and I play with dolls all the time. Who is going to tell me not to?

Anyway, here is Brenda wearing her original outfit. She was not played with much so she is still in very nice condition. She is unmarked but she might be an Australian Pedigree. But why am I showing her to you today I hear you ask.

Well, last week I decided to open up all the boxes of porcelain dolls that we are tidying up to sell. Amongst the porcelain dolls I found several vinyl dolls. Some of them were modern and some were obviously older, there is a Kenner Baby Alive but she is newer than the two that I had. There were three other older dolls, one is missing a leg. I don’t know what we’re going to do about that. The other two were fine, both unmarked but as I looked at one of them, she seemed familiar. She looked like Brenda. Of course, I immediately separated her from the others to photograph and clean up.

As well as being a bit dusty this doll has some glue or something on her face. I could not get her eyes to shut so I’m wondering if they fell in at some point and were repaired by gluing them back into place. I’m not sure I want to take her head off to find out.

Nothing that I had at home worked to remove the glue. I discovered that her head won’t move. I think that what happened was that either her eyes fell in or her eyelashes came off and someone tried to repair her but used too much glue and it ran down her face and even onto her torso.

I sent away for some Glue Gone hoping that I might be able to get the glue off with that. When it came, I tried it on her torso first as if it didn’t work or stained the vinyl it would not be noticeable under her clothing. It didn’t work. So, I decided to try it on her face anyway. It didn’t work. I did get the largest chunk of glue off her nose but I did that with a blade. Obviously, I’m not prepared to risk damaging the vinyl by doing that again.

I finished cleaning her up and tided her hair. In the meantime, one shoe that fits her turned up in another box. If I don’t find the other shoe, I’ll get her another pair.

I am sad that I wasn’t able to fix this doll. I think she is very pretty anyway and I’m glad for my Brenda to have a twin sister.