Doll

After the 1909 exhibits of artist-crafted, lifelike dolls known as the Munich Art Dolls, German doll manufacturers offered dolls with a wide variety of realistic faces based, on real children. Doll makers thought these new "character" dolls superior to the "dolly-faced" dolls, that is, doll faces that personified childhood beauty and innocence in an idealized form. Manufacturers also gave their dolls expressions that mimicked children laughing, crying, yawning, squinting, smiling, pouting, sulking, and sleeping. Toy makers thought children would think of these realistic-looking dolls as companions, not, as the makers said of the dolly-faced dolls, as "ladies that go to the ball." Children, though, did not like these new dolls; doll manufacturers made character dolls for just a few years.