My Tammy Family

SindyTammy
My childhood Sindy and Tammy together.

This is a picture taken some years ago of my original childhood Sindy and Tammy dolls. As I mentioned in my Sindy page Pedigree took Ideal’s Tammy as their model for Sindy and you can certainly see the resemblance between the two of them. By the way the dresses they are wearing are the dresses that I liked them in best when I was a child. They are not Sindy or Tammy fashions but generic ones made to fit twelve-inch dolls.

Background

There are books and websites devoted to Tammy and her large family so I won’t go into a lot of detail here. Most of what I know about Tammy comes from the Collector’s Guide to Tammy: The Ideal Teen: Identification & Values by Cindy Sabulis and Susan Weglewski (Jun 1997).

Tammy was first produced in 1962, a year before Sindy appeared and ceased production in 1966. The reason given was that she could not compete with the popularity of Barbie and that she was not able to change her style when the “Mod” era arrived. As Sindy continued to be successful for some years after Tammy was taken out of production perhaps it says something about the differences between British and American culture.

Ideal Tammy and her friends and family were manufactured in Japan and Hong Kong but there were also Canadian Tammy’s as Reliable were licensed to manufacture her there.

 Tammy’s Look

There are noticeable differences between the Tammy’s made in Japan, Hong Kong and Canada. The Hong Kong ones that I have seen have a lighter skin tone. My childhood doll has the same body shape as her TransAtlantic sisters but her complexion is paler and her body has a golden skin tone. Naomi’s Hong Kong made Tammy has a body that looks more like a clone doll. My Japanese made dolls and Reliable Tammy has a pinker skin tone and high colour face.  In the photos below you can see our two Hong Kong made dolls. Naomi’s appears to have a clone type body but her head has the correct Ideal markings. We don’t know if she was made like this. Mine has a different skin tone to most of the others but I can vouch for the fact that she has not faded. The two Hong Kong made Tammy’s also have much silkier hair than the others.

Two HK Tammy’s Naomi’s on the left, mine on the right.
Here various Tammy’s are shown with Sindy, second from left.

 

My childhood Tammy and  Pepper are the original straight legged versions but there were different versions of them too. “Posin'” Tammy and Pepper had bendable limbs. “New Pepper” had a slimmer body and longer arms and “Grown Up Tammy ” and her friend Misty are older looking dolls.

Why did we send her to college in Colorado?
Pepper in standard Pepper Playsuit.
Ideal Pepper straight leg version.
New Pepper in Schooldays

Friends and Family

Here are a few other Tammy Family members and their friends. I have Tammy’s Mom and Dad and Posin’ Pete but so far I don’t have her brother Ted, or boyfriend Bud. I do have Misty and Pepper’s little friend Dodi but not Posin’ Salty. Ideal may have been running out of ideas by this time as Bud who is quite hard to find apparently looks very like Ted but with darker hair and eyebrows while Posin’ Salty is more or less a rerun of Posin’ Pete. All these dolls were only available for a short time. Misty is easier to find and came in standard and “Posin'” bodies.

My Tammy Family Dolls

Before I had to move them to a shelf I did a series of posts on the adventures of the Tammy family and their friends called “What’s New At The Tammy House” here are a few recent posts.

My Tammy collection is still far from complete as she is not as common as Sindy here in Australia. I have Tammy (4), Pepper(3), Mom, Dad and friends Dodi and Misty plus a few Tammy fashions. I’m not sure yet how far I want to go with the collection. With eleven dolls and all the variations, it could wind up taking a lifetime to get them all!

Here are a few photos of my Tammy family members including Naomi’s two Tammy’s.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

Tammy References:

http://dollreference.com/ideal_tammy_doll.html

http://collectdolls.about.com/od/dolls1960s1970s/p/tammydolls.htm

Tammy
Tammy (Photo credit: rikusiren)
Tammy (doll)
Tammy (doll) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

18 comments

  1. Very great post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted
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  2. HI, I have my own Australian childhood Tammy/Sindy doll with a vinyl head, long brunette hair and clone body marked c ideal corp on her head, and Hong Kong on the light plastic clone type body.. I want to identify WHO she is. Do any of your references know? thank you M

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    • Hi Mary, there are a lot of Sindy/Tammy clones and some of them are fairly well known. I’m not at my main computer right now but if you have a photo you can post a link to we can see if we can work it out.

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      • Hi Mary, I’m still waiting for approval to join the group so I can see your doll. One thing that occurred to me is that she might have a genuine Tammy or Tammy family doll head on a clone body. The c Ideal Corp marking sounds correct for a genuine doll. As far as I’m aware they were never made in Hong Kong. I think most were made in Japan except for the “Reliable” Tammy’s which were made in Canada. As there were so many similar sized clone dolls coming out of Hong Kong it seems a likely explanation that she was “Frankendollied”. I’m looking forward to seeing her face to see if we can work out which Tammy head you have.

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      • HI there, its hard for me to know but I was given her from a girl next door in Kapunda, SA, when I lived there 8 years old. By frankendollied, I guess you mean her body and head came from diff dolls. Would this mean that Ideal did this? I don’t think there are enuf Sindy/Tamy type dolls in Australia to put a doll head on a fake body here, but I assume the company had some hong kong bodies and put Tammy heads on them. she looks like the MIE, first pedigree Sindy too, with small differences tho. Thank you for replying regards M   From: “Dolls, Dolls, Dolls” To: yoboist1@yahoo.com.au Sent: Saturday, 23 May 2015, 17:50 Subject: [New comment] My Tammy Family #yiv6802229577 a:hover {color:red;}#yiv6802229577 a {text-decoration:none;color:#0088cc;}#yiv6802229577 a.yiv6802229577primaryactionlink:link, #yiv6802229577 a.yiv6802229577primaryactionlink:visited {background-color:#2585B2;color:#fff;}#yiv6802229577 a.yiv6802229577primaryactionlink:hover, #yiv6802229577 a.yiv6802229577primaryactionlink:active {background-color:#11729E;color:#fff;}#yiv6802229577 WordPress.com Taswegian1957 commented: “Hi Mary, I’m still waiting for approval to join the group so I can see your doll. One thing that occurred to me is that she might have a genuine Tammy or Tammy family doll head on a clone body. The c Ideal Corp marking sounds correct for a genuine doll. A” | |

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      • No, Ideal would not have done this. My mother would have killed me if I had messed with my dolls in this way so I did not learn until I started collecting dolls that some kids actually did this to their own dolls. One reason could be if the original body had been damaged in some way, the heads usually went on in a similar way so it wouldn’t have been hard to swap them. I’ve read of people who said they did it just to see how it would look too. That’s why I called it Frankendolly although that is not my word. I read it on some doll collecting forum I think and quite like it as a description of mixing parts of different dolls. I grew up around Adelaide myself, from age eight anyway so although my Tammy and Sindy came from England with me I have seen clone dolls. I had a Barbie clone myself.I am pretty sure that Ideal never used HK bodies, if they had they would have still had them marked Ideal I think. I have the Tammy book so I’ll have a look in the morning just to be sure.

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    • Hi Mary, I was going back over old posts having acquired a few more Tammy family members in the past year. I discovered that my own Tammy is marked the same way as yours and although her body is a different skin tone from the other Ideal and Reliable Tammy’s I know she was the real deal because I remember getting her. I have seen photos of made in Hong Kong Pepper’s as well so now I think that perhaps they were made in HK for the European and possibly Australian markets while the made in Japan ones went to the US market. Just a theory however.

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  3. I bought a ‘Tammy’ doll from a doll show in Canada and she has a braid on top of her head, her face is rather brownish? compared to the rest of her body and says reliable made in china on her back… could this be the case of a Frankendolly? Can you tell me anything about this doll? Thanks.

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    • Hi Lorraine. I have seen photos of Tammy dolls with a braid on top of her head. I can’t recall having seen one that said made in China as well as Reliable. Reliable made Tammy under licence for Ideal but Ideal Tammy’s were made in Japan so that is a bit of a puzzle. As for the brownish appearance that’s different too unless she has just discoloured with age. Can’t rule out Frankendolly. Have you got a photo you can share? If you can send me one at sadieinoz.1957@gmail.com I would love to have a look. I could post her picture on the blog and we can see if any other collectors have any ideas too. I get a lot of Canadian doll collectors dropping by.

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  4. Hello xx

    The carrot haired *Tammy* is not Tammy, or Tammy family, but a cloned doll. I have had loads of them in England., with many differemt hair colours. For sure this is a clone, no doubt at all. xx

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      • Thank you for your reply…I hate to disagreee, but I do. The entire thing is concocted. Not a Frankendolly. Look at the head shape…it’s squashed compared to a genuine Ideal product. The neck is the wrong length and a slightly different shape. The vinyl is much coarser. Even the face paint is different.

        I have one of these in front of me right now. A brunette. The body in fact I consider to be a better dupe than the head. The head is *off* in every way it can be….the hair has a nasty feel. I am a HUGE Sindy collector and I come across these now & again, far too often in fact. I also get them on Tina Cassini bodies xxx

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      • So you think that whoever made her faked the Ideal mark? Well that is possible of course . They were pretty brazen copiers in those days. Thanks for your input.

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    • They didn’t remake the marks, specifically. The markings are on the doll head which they cast it from.
      There are some worse clones as well, that look similar to these and ostensibly they have no markings. However, if you look really really hard in raking light, turning the head as you do, the markings can be very faintly seen.
      I’ve collected Sindy for decades, she is my main area of interest and I have most of what i need now, have seen many different clones and permutations of clones/Sindy dolls etc. At the risk of over egging the cake, the heads on these clones are not anywhere near Tammy/Ideal standard. Everything on them is wrong.
      The first Sindy was taken from a Tammy mould as we know and the quality shows. The clones we are talking about here are made of an inferiour vinyl.
      Nevertheless, they are an interesting part of dolly history.

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