Doll:Winking Winny 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. The Remco Toy company introduced Winking Winny at the American toy industry's trade show, called ToyFair, in 1968. According to the July 1968 issue of "Playthings" magazine, Winking Winny was one of four dark-complexioned dolls the company offered that year, no doubt because the Civil Rights movement made toy manufacturers realize that African Americans girls identified with dolls that looked more like them than the fair-toned dolls on the market.