Paper doll

When color lithography became available in the 19th century, manufacturers used brilliant colors to make product labels of ordinary canned and boxed goods stand out on store shelves, and they offered colorful premiums, like paper dolls, to attracted customers. Beverages, patent medicines, sewing materials, foods and confections, cleaning products, and other common household products offered elaborately illustrated paper dolls and toys in some early efforts of product advertising and promotion. In the golden days of color lithography, product manufacturers offered paper dolls and toys in a variety of subjects like sedately dressed Victorian men and women, little girls in frothy dresses, characters from fairy tales and popular stories, children from other lands, soldiers, animals, and Palmer Cox's Brownies.