Doll:African American Drink-and-Wet Baby Doll

For much of the 20th century, doll manufacturers have worked to produce dolls that look and move like infants. In the 1920s, doll designer Grace Storrey Putnam presented the Bye-Lo baby, an incredibly popular doll crafted to look like a three-day-old newborn. In the 1930s, one doll maker developed the Dy-Dee doll, the first of the drink-and-wet dolls. Betsy Wetsy, Tiny Tears, and others followed. With the introduction of dolls made of plastic and vinyl in the 1950s, doll manufacturers perfected baby dolls with a variety of functions including eating, crawling, walking, talking, playing peek-a-boo, and even responding to a child's voice. Baby dolls of all kinds serve a special kind of nurturing play in the pretend worlds of young children.