Customer Reviews

Dolls and Teddy Bear Department : Memorable Catalog Pages from the Legendary Sears Christmas Wishbooks of the 1950s and 1960s, Volume I

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4 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is AWESOME!!! I've had it for over a week now and haven't put it down. If you are a doll collector, this is definitely better than the other book "Girls Toys of the 50's and 60's" This book is primarilly all dolls, not kitchen sets, costumes, games, etc.! Although it is in black and white, the pictures are very clear and definitely help in identifying original dolls, outfits, and accessories. I'm going to also buy "Girls Toys of the 70's and 80's", but I wish they also had a DOLL ONLY book for that time period. Anyway, if you collect dolls from the 50's and 60's, this book is just GREAT!

Just as the previous commnetator stated, this book does not contain all the SEARS Wishbook catalog photo from the 1950's-60's.

However, since I only purchased this VOLUME ONE, it could be that VOLUME TWO had more Sears catalog photos, ---those not shown in this Volume ONE.

I still enjoyed this book though, for it's historical value. As also stated by the previous commentator, this book is not really a DOLL & TEDDY BEAR Value book, but rather, it is more a book that compiles some of the 1000's of Sears catalog photos from their CHRISTMAS Catalog.

This book covers dolls from 1950 to 1970. If you are a collector of vinyl dolls,like me, this is a must. It shows what these dolls looked like new, with original hair styles, clothing and accessories. Sometimes you can find out more about these dolls in these descriptions than you can in reference books. It not only shows you popular names in dolls, like Ideal, Horsman, Mattel, and Effanbee, but you get to see the lesser known dolls like Uneeda, Duchess, and Sear's own brand "Happi-Time".(made by other doll companies). (Disney toys too). All the dolls are nicely displayed by year, which makes easy to find them if you know approx. when they were made. (Sometimes they appear in the catalog a year after they were made). The downside is all the pictures are in black and white,not always good quality, and Sears didn't sell every doll ever made every year( but what book would have all that?) A another reviewer complained it doesn't have every page of dolls for each year. My guess is they cut out some of the repeats from year to year. Still, you are not going to find this much variety for this many years anywhere else.

Having gotten your attention, I think this is a fun book BUT the buyer should be aware that it does not represent the complete pages of dolls in each year of the Sears catalogs. If you are doing research on vintage dolls, this book will not serve you well AT ALL. It lists only a few of the dolls pages from the catalog, and it isn't clear what method the author's used to decide which to include and which to exclude. On the other hand if you just want a book for a bit of nostalgia, it is indeed a fun look at dolls from yesteryear.