A return to the world of Liddle Kiddles
- col-teri-stein
- May 30, 2021
- 2162
Creativity has always been my thing. As a child, I got lost in creating other worlds and scenarios in my head. While relaxing on the front porch swing, I’d imagine I was flying on a plane to exotic locations. The paint spots on the front porch floor were cities I spotted from the air and wanted to visit. Was that the Eiffel Tower?
Sometimes that creative world involved playing with dolls. When Liddle Kiddles dolls came out in the 1960s, they were the doll of choice for my sister and me.
Yeah, I had my doll, Karen Kay, that I had been toting around since I was a toddler. She was about 12 inches tall with eyeballs someone had painted white and then scratched off to reveal the irises again. You couldn’t do much with Karen Kay because she was a baby doll. I just wrapped her up in a blanket and carried her around.
Barbie dolls weren’t our favorite either. We each had a Midge doll. Midge was Barbie’s friend. Later, after I got married, I did get into Barbie’s and had some around to make babysitting easier.
And I realized I had missed out on a big trend, but it was not too late to get back in. Joe and I visited toy store sales everywhere, and I amassed a small Barbie collection with numerous outfits and shoes I still have.
Back to Liddle Kiddles, from what I found out online, the dolls debuted at a New York toy show in 1965. They were sold from 1966-71. The dolls caused a big splash because, while other dolls were larger, Kiddles, made by Mattel, were only 2 ½ to 3 ½ inches tall.
They were made of vinyl-covered wire, giving them bendable bodies that were jointed at the neck. They had rooted hair and painted facial features.
Each doll came with its own action accessory and (I don’t remember this part) a Kiddles Komic funny book that told a story about the dolls.
In 1967 Lucky Locket and Skediddler Kiddles were introduced. Then in 1968 Kiddles went even smaller, as tiny as 7/8 of an inch tall. Production ceased after 1971, and a great doll tradition was no more.
Kiddles were given special “iddle” names. My sister and I each had seven Kiddles, according to a list we made of their names, but a few extra have turned up, bringing the total to 17.
One that I have is Beddie Bye Biddle, who came with her “action accessory” bed, and my sister has Liddle Diddle, who came with her own “action accessory” crib. Probably not much action was going on with those accessories, but we loved them.
The marketing of Liddle Kiddles was elaborate. There were storybook characters and Kiddles packaged in lockets. There were Skediddlers (I don’t think we had any of these) and Kiddles in cologne bottles (I had Sweet Pea). They had holiday-themed Kiddles, Kiddles in pop bottles, pop-up books and all kinds of other themed Kiddles we didn’t have. We were happy with our 17, and with only getting two television channels on the old 1960s TV antenna, we likely didn’t know what we were missing.
Our Liddle Kiddles dolls were well housed though. We had four: the Liddle Kiddles Klub, Liddle Kiddles Talking Townhouse, Liddle Kiddles Kottage and the Liddle Kiddles Ranch House.
The Kiddles houses were made of vinyl cases, and there was snap-happy furniture. Kiddles products were everywhere including paper goods, games, lunch boxes, records, posters and more. Other manufacturers made some Kiddles clones, but, of course, those could not compare to Liddle Kiddles for us.
When my sister and I moved out of our parents' house, she took the Kiddles, which had been relegated to the attic, with her because she had more room at her house. We could not bear to see those Kiddles separated into hers and mine. They had been together for years, and they still are together.
Recently, my sister has passed on our love of Kiddles onto her granddaughter, who loves them as much as we do. Now Liddle Kiddles mania has started again — at least for us. We even joined a couple of Facebook pages devoted to Kiddles.
I looked online and found a Liddle Kiddles Klub House. Only one was available at $48. And two people already had it in their cart. How does that work? Do they want other shoppers to swoop in and buy it out from under another shopper?
I found some original ads for Liddle Kiddles. They sold for $2.49-$2.88 originally. Do not try to get them for that now. The tiny locket Kiddles are selling for $30 and up, plus shipping.
We would love to have some more Kiddles and may go looking for some this summer at flea markets and other sales. But what we really need is a time machine. Turns out we should have been garage sale shopping for Liddle Kiddles in the 1970s.