Girl's World
Disembodied head in a box
Another one of those somewhat macabre girls’ toys1 destined to lie around the house and strike fear into the hearts of visiting relatives who didn’t have their glasses on. You’ve seen that bit at the end of Se7en, haven’t you? That’s the sort of thing we mean. Oh, sorry, have we just spoiled it?
Basically the life-sized severed head of an unattractive shop dummy, Girl’s World served two potential purposes; number one, you could do its hair; number two, you could do its make-up. But oh, the grown-up glamour that it encapsulated! Needless to say, the brunette bonce (we know, according to the picture on the box blonde heads were also available but we won’t believe it ‘til you show us one) was rather disappointing in action. Putting rollers in plastic hair produces a curl with a half-life of approximately 0.36 seconds, and while some of the hair could magically “grow” by cranking a Frankensteinesque bolt in the side of the neck, the rest of the hair didn’t grow, so either she had a huge ponytail on top of her head or she didn’t; your choice.
Meanwhile, the eyeshadow (green and blue crayons) and lipsticks (choose from reddy-pink or pinky-red) were actually thick smears of oily grease that were, we would find out later, nigh on impossible to remove from your mum’s best cushions, and had the ominous words “Warning: contains lanolin” printed on every pot. Girl’s World was a handy training course in make-up design for girls who planned on growing up to have PVC skin (i.e. anyone you might see in Heat magazine).
Later came Super Girl’s World, which had rotating, rolling eyeballs (tilt the head to change her iris colour; amber, green, blue or brown) and streaky hair dyes. More intriguing altogether was the spin-off Girl’s World Fashion Designer. Bizarrely carrying on with the “dismembered women” theme, it was a box full of plastic squares that featured the outlines of various ladies’ heads, bodies and legs. These could be matched together and fitted into a frame; then you put a bit of paper on top and rubbed it with a flat crayon to create what was basically an haute-couture brass-rubbing. Look, she’s got long hair, she’s got short hair, she’s playing tennis, she’s a gal about town! That girl in the Tramp advert was probably wetting herself with envy.
Steve
14 Comments
Email Article to Friend
Except where otherwise noted, this work is
licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Reader Comments (14)
A few years later the poor thing got thrown away because I chopped all her hair off!
Sad to relate but after two weeks I was bored with her. I made her up to look like a clown and then kicked her face in with one deft but vicious movement. She buckled, and I quailed under my mother's wrath for a) being spoilt and getting tired of a toy and b) getting impossible-to-remove lipstick all over the sole of my white school sock.
I am now 33 and my makeup still looks like shite. I can't even use mascara properly, and my eyeshadow looks like a 12-year old chose and applied it. There must be a moral in this story somewhere.
My Mum wasn't happy & I wasn't happy anymore as it wouldn't wash off & since I'd been inspired by Adam Ant's make-up it started to frighten me. It ended up hidden at the back of my wardrobe to stop giving me nightmares.
I was devastated at the time, as it also coincided with an Action Man "terrorist attack" on my Sindy's living in their 3 storey Sindy Town House. I found them bound and gagged on their cream and lemon plastic sofa with a machine gun weilding balaclava clad maniac standing over them. I think he'd pistol whipped them as thier hair buns were in complete disarray.
I wish I had photos of it, I'd wet myself now......