Blubbing, enuresis-afflicted doll

Are there any vintage girls’ toys out there that aren’t just plain creepy? The vacant-eyed, H₂0-seeping Tiny Tears is yet another case in point. A kind of cross between Play School’s Hamble and a hospice in-patient, Palitoy’s innovative doll was nevertheless an acknowledged Rolls Royce in the field of plastic surrogate children.

Created in the 1950s, the doll reached the UK by 1966. Initially sporting a hard plastic head, which made for a weighty cosh if younger brothers became annoying, the doll’s novelty came in its ability to both cry and piss its pants. Simply fill it with water from a bottle, and the thing was off.

Promoted via an insidious advertising campaign as an actual new member of the family to be placed in the care of all little girls, it seems as though Palitoy were advocating keeping tots miserable and permanently soiled. And because of that, Tiny Tears was an absolute must-have; a real stayer that hadn’t floated in on the back of a Saturday morning cartoon and wasn’t about to lend its name to a flotilla of spin-off merchandising (although a Tiny Tears endorsed travel rubber bedsheet would have made childhood sleep-overs at friends’ houses a little less fraught).

Potential crossovers into the world of boys’ toys never happened, alas. ‘Cos we would have gone mad over Men-At-Arms incontinence pants. They’d have been great!

Further reading:
Tiny Tears and First Love A Celebration of Two Classic Baby Dollsby Susan Brewer