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1990's |
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Family Corners
by Mattel |
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Now Playing:
"We Are Family"
by Sister Sledge |
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Return to
"Who's That Doll?"
Home Page |
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In the mid 1990's, Mattel was very busy, producing many lines of miniature fashion dolls, from the Princess dolls they manufactured for Disney, to Princess Tenko, to these---the Family Corners dolls.
There are ten complete doll sets in this series, five girls and five guys. The concept for the dolls was to pair them up as couples, and the little girls could pretend they would get married and start a family. The guys were the ones who came with the babies.
According to Mattel, "any combination makes a family." There was no "right" or "wrong" way to mix and match the couples. |
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The girls, shown above in their wedding attire, are Becky, Lacey, Nichelle, Melody and Trista.
The guys, at right in their tuxes, are Kurt, Ryan, Joey, Derek and Nicholas.
The babies (below) are all little girls who come in non-removable onesies, rompers and playsuits. These are five of the cutest babies you'll ever see!
They do not have names, so I picked out a few names in my own mind that are trendy and comtemporary, and seemed to fit them.
Left to right below, meet Serena, Amanda, Kayla, Bailey and Kimmi. |
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In addition to their formal attire, the dolls also came with a casual set of clothes, seen below. No other additional fashions were made for either the guys or the girls. |
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As these dolls were all made at the same time as the Disney and Tenko dolls, the body-style is pretty much the same.
The guys have a one-piece torso with no twist-n-turn waist, arms jointed only at the shoulders and legs only at the hips with unbending knees. The right arm is bent at a permanent right-angle. The head turns only from side-to-side. Hair and other facial features are painted on. Shoes are formed to be the feet, and they are painted as well.
For the girls, a one-piece torso with no twist-n-turn waist. Rooted hair and painted facial features with no rooted eyelashes. Arms jointed only at the shoulders and legs only at the hips with unbending knees. Two of the dolls, Melody and Trista have almost straight left arms, while Becky, Lacey and Nichelle have left arms in a right-angle attitude. Heads rest on a ball-and-socket joint to turn the head in any direction.
Shoes are formed for the feet with flat soles rather than high heels. And this is unfortunate, because while this might be a good look for their casual fashions... |
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...it doesn't look so hot with the wedding gowns!
(Don't be fooled...Nichelle's white shoes are tennies!) |
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Speaking of casual fashions, let's take a look at them here, since there aren't enough of them to warrant making a separate Fashions page for them. |
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Becky wears a pink, short-sleeved mini dress; Nicholas wears light blue pants, a yellow tee-shirt and a plaid overshirt. |
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Lacey has a white tee-top under her black and white spotted jumper; Joey has black slacks, white tee-shirt and a green and black patterned vest. |
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Melody's outfit is a denim skirt and jacket over a gold lame tube top; Ryan sports a multi-color button-front shirt and beige slacks. |
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Trista's outfit is a yellow tee-shirt under a blue and white sleeveless vest tied at the front, and a pair of tie-dyed blue shorts; Derek wears a checkered shirt over a red tee-shirt and black shorts. |
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Nichelle is wearing a long-sleeved yellow top under bib-fronted denim shorts; Kurt is wearing a striped button-front shirt with dark blue slacks. |
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The girls came with their house which had four scenes (in a sort of "book" formation) with stickers to personalize it. The guys came with a wedding chapel which flipped around to become a nursery, because the guys were the ones who came with the babies (and they are the most adorable little things you've ever seen!). The chapel/nursery slides into and becomes part of the girls' houses. |
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For such a carefully thought-out series as the Family Corners dolls, with the unique folding dollhouse, the bride-and-groom fashions and the adorable little babies, it's unfortunate that they didn't last very long. Mattel never followed through to support these dolls by adding additional playsets or fashions. Perhaps they had too many irons in the fire already, manufacturing the Disney Princess dolls in all their incarnations, or perhaps they sensed the market for miniature fashion dolls was just about played out.
Whatever the cause, the Family Corners dolls brought with them something few other lines of dolls had done: faces with ethnically correct features, rather than just taking a standard doll and using a different color plastic in her fabrication, or rooting the hair a different way . They also emphasized and affirmed that, no matter what others might think, "any combination is a family". |
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