![]() ![]() As one white toy executive put it bluntly at the time, “Anyone who’s in dolls has to be aware of Negro dolls. All the major manufacturers, targeting a rising middle class of black Americans who wanted representation at the doll counter as well as the lunch counter, were introducing black dolls. The late 1960s were a turning point in the industry. Shindana’s, and Baby Nancy’s, timing could not have been more propitious. Now consumers could pass up Pretty Pigtails, the original Nancy doll, for the more politically potent Shorty Curls, which employees called Natural Nancy. The factory line workers used a hair comb to fluff out the natural and give it a more realistic appearance and texture. Shindana imported a special oven from Italy and slid synthetic doll hair under the heat to achieve a crimped, matted texture. The toy industry had never genuinely attempted to replicate short, natural African American hair before. By the end of 1969, the company was representing what women were doing at the time: wearing their hair “natural” to buck white beauty norms and show their solidarity with the black liberation struggle. The first Baby Nancy dolls had rooted black synthetic hair that may have come from Mattel’s suppliers: long, fine and straight, it was styled into pigtails. The way Shindana pioneered Nancy’s hair is particularly notable. In some of its ads, the company played up the racial composition of the workforce, implying that only black toy makers had the cultural know-how to make a truly black doll.Įnter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute » With a few exceptions, the company’s employees - in the front office, in research and design and on the factory floor - were black. But Shindana’s staff felt fully authorized to make such pronouncements. Given the toy industry’s history of racist imagery, a white manufacturer touting its dolls’ “typical” ethnic or racial characteristics would likely have drawn suspicion. Nancy’s hard vinyl body was brown, like other dolls aimed at her market niche, but her nose, mouth and facial structure were designed to be what some industry observers had started to call “ethnically correct.” And she was the first doll marketed as “black.” She is an authentically beautiful black doll.” She is not a black doll with Negroid features that is unpleasing to look at. Mattel would provide capital, industry contacts and suppliers, and training by Mattel personnel.Īs one Shindana worker proudly explained, Baby Nancy “is not a white doll with black skin. The makers of Barbie admired Bootstrap’s emphasis on economic self-help, and they offered to back a Bootstrap toy business. Three years after its founding, Smith and Hall were invited to meet with the white leadership of Mattel, the world’s largest toy maker, then-headquartered in Hawthorne. a not-for-profit community development and job training center dedicated to the Black Power movement.īootstrap turned out to be a great success, hailed as a model by the left and the right. That October, two months after the riots, Robert Hall and Louis Smith, two black civil rights activists working in Watts, founded Operation Bootstrap Inc. Nancy was its maiden doll, a product of the rebirth of Los Angeles after the 1965 Watts rebellion. The revolutionary doll’s manufacturer was a newcomer to the trade: Shindana Toys. A 13-inch black baby doll, Nancy transformed what was racially acceptable in Toyland. Fifty years ago this month, Baby Nancy made her debut at the American Toy Fair. New coffee table books trace the doll’s fashion savvy, and Mattel is issuing a new line of birthday Barbies.īarbie deserves her party, but that celebration has overshadowed another doll anniversary that is arguably more relevant to our cultural moment. Target has launched a commemorative “girl power” collection. This month marks the Barbie doll’s 60th birthday, with a lot of attendant hoopla.
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