Here's Baby Crissy!

Baby Crissy was introduced in 1973 dressed in a simple two piece diaper set. She was a very popular little girl. She was made to represent a nine month old, even with all that great hair!! There are some variations in her diaper set from year to year, usually in the pocket and collar. By 1981, she was wearing a one piece romper in white that was trimmed with yellow gingham. Harder to find is the white romper trimmed in GREEN gingham. All issues came in a black and white version. There is really no way to tell which year your Baby was made if she is nude, since she was identical from year to year. Her box and outfit are the only ways to tell. Some say that the earlier dolls are have "squishy-soft" limbs. But I can't say that is always true. Why? I have very early dolls, mint in the box, with hardened limbs. On the other hand, I have later dolls mint in the box, with squishy limbs. So who's to say what is correct?

Baby Crissy's remarkable sculpt-work is so very reminiscent of the Playpal family of Ideal dolls. This is because they are sculpted by the same artist.

Another thing to note when collecting Baby Crissy...right up through the 80's issue dolls, she NEVER was issued with shoes and/or socks!

Above: Baby Crissy, "born" in 1973. This is a pretty early outfit...made by an outside manufacturer of real baby clothes...Baby went to market faster than they could produce outfits for her...so they had to "buy" clothes for her!

Crissy & Beth

The instructions for the same for both the seventies issues as well as the eighties issues. The copyright date didn't even change on the instructions found in the eighties boxes.

Crissy & Beth

Early black dolls usually wore lavender diaper sets with the white doll in pink, but you will occasionally find the white doll in lavender. Soon after she was released, Ideal finally started making their own outfits at their Hong Kong facility.

Crissy & Beth

Above you can see some color variation of the lavender diaper set worn by the black Baby Crissy. Some are rather blue-ish in color.

Crissy & Beth

Above: This is a very late dress, perhaps as late as 76 or 77. It has lace beading and baby blue ribbon trim. Not as easy to find as the common pink or lavender set.

Crissy & Beth

Above and below: In 1981, Ideal re-released their darling little money maker, in varying boxes and in two different outfits. The pink gingham set, somewhat hard to find, probably appeared in 1982. The white bubble romper was trimmed in yellow (sometimes green!) and came on both black and white dolls.

Crissy & Beth

On occasion, one will find a Baby Crissy, clearly an 80's reissue due to the box that she is in, wearing a lavender diaper set from the 70's! This is because Ideal liked to keep old inventory and reuse it. In this case, this black Baby Crissy was dressed in older inventory from the 70's and sold in the newer box. This clearly defines the need to have the actual box that the doll was sold in to determine which issue the collector may have. True, a well-intentioned though uneducated toy dealer could have put an older doll in a newer box, but the reality is that this combination (lavender diaper set, newer doll, 80's box) does turn up pretty frequently in MIB condition.

Crissy & Beth

Baby kept right on being released in different versions, some grew hair, some did not, right up through the early nineties. Above are some of these dolls.

Crissy & Beth

Isn't this little charmer just adorable?? She looks a bit different doesn't she, with her longer than normal ponytail. But that's not the only unusual thing about her...

Crissy & Beth

This Baby Crissy has no pullstring to operate her 'tail, like all of the other Baby Crissy dolls out there. She, in fact, does not have growing hair. "Why?" you ask.

There could be several reasons. One is that she may have been a prop for photo shoots, perhaps for department store catalogs. This type of doll would not need to grow hair. Or perhaps she was a model for Toy Fair, where several examples would be displayed, but not necessarily be picked up by potential toy buyers. Maybe she was a salesman's sample. Many samples did not function. There are photographs in the archive depicting dolls, such as a Look Around Velvet, that did not actually function. This Velvet was a straight-waisted, dressed doll (in her Look Around issue outfit) in the actual box. However, the box had a sticker on it with a stock number that also indicated that enclosed in the box was a non-functioning sample. So, this Baby Crissy could be any of the above, or something completely different. Aren't we glad that we are able to enjoy such a neat doll!?