Some found items

 I decided to hunt around a little for a couple books I had as a kid. I didn’t find one of them, but I found one set:

A set of four books: one on farm animals and pets, and then baby animals of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. 

I got these as a birthday gift when I turned 7; I can’t remember if my parents gave them to me, or one of the aunt-uncle pairs. They’re basically very brief encyclopedic entries about each animal, along with drawings. 

I liked learning about different animals as a kid, and these books have some unusual ones like saiga and pangolins. I was surprised to find that the books were originally published in French and then translated. They’re old enough to have “Rhodesia” on the map of Africa. And they don’t show a partitioned Korea, though they bear a 1970s copyright date.

I used these books as references when I wanted to draw animals as a kid, and I just liked looking at them.

In my looking for the bird book I didn’t find, I did find a few other things 

Makit and Bakit kits were a thing when I was a kid: tiny hard plastic crystals you put inside a frame and baked. I now wonder what kind of damage I took from the plastic fumes (we made them in the kitchen oven) but they were fun to do.

I suspect this design was cashing in on Miss Piggy’s fame (it would have been about 1978) but she actually looks more like the Richard Scarry pig characters.

And then Hector. This is a small (3” or so) mouse I made when I was 8 or 9. He was one of my favorite toys for a while and I’m glad to find I kept him. He’s kind of worn but I carried him around a lot and I think he had at least one “bath” after getting dirty when I played outside 

And then finally, dolls I had bought for my collection but absolutely didn’t remember having. I may have bought them at a doll show when I was in grad school.

In the 1970s, Mattel made a line of dolls called the Sunshine Family.  I had a set, which I played with a lot- basically a wholesome, back to the lander family.

There was also a Black family (friends of theirs) called the Happy Family. I’ve never actually seen them. 

But close to the Bicentennial, they made a “historical” line called Star Spangled Dolls - some were couples (a Revolutionary War soldier and his bride, a pair of jazz musicians) and some solo “girl” dolls (presumably: teenagers too young to marry yet)

I was already kind of “out” of being interested in dolls when they came out but in recent years I wanted some. And I did buy another Sunshine Family, plus the grandparents, from Etsy. From time to time I saw one of the Star Spangled Dolls, but they were either more than I wanted to pay, or were in poor shape.

So imagine my surprise when I found these packed away in a box: the Colonial Girl, the Pioneer Girl, and the “Indian Maiden” (of very nonspecific tribe).

They’re about 9” tall 

ETA: they DO have names. The Colonial girl is Alison Thompson, the pioneer girl is Sarah Jane Benson, and the Native American girl is “Smiling Eyes,” and it says she’s from a “Northern Plains Tribe,” which, okay, that’s probably the best fit for the costume. (Living where I do I am much more familiar with Choctaw and Chickasaw traditional dress, and I have a nodding acquaintance with how Diné women would have dressed…)

One of the online auction/ valuation sites had photos of the boxes showing their names.