1950's Roddy doll. update

This Roddy plastic doll dates from the early 1950's and is twenty inches tall. She is a walking talking doll though the voice box no longer works.
Her clothes are original and so older than me! and her wig needs replacing as that is from the 1950's as well.
The thing is here. Do I attempt a restoration? or shall I leave her pretty much as she is and clean her up a bit and see if I can restyle the wig? I am tempted to replace the wig but then that will change her character.

This lovely is mine now. I just bought her.

Roddy Dolls.

About 1945 a new plastic was introduced by doll manufacturers to replace composition.  So I thought. What is composition exactly? I do not have any composition dolls......Yet.  So I looked it up.
Composition dolls are made from a mixture of sawdust, glue  some have corn flour, resin and wood flour. They were first made in the 19th century to replace more fragile material such as porcelain. Composition was almost unbreakable.

By the 1950s hard plastic was used  to replace composition. This is durable, can be moulded and easily cleaned by washing.

The Ideal doll company was the first to produce hard plastic dolls from 1946.

D.G.Todd and Co. of Southport started making Roddy Dolls in 1934. Roddy dolls were named after the owner of the company. Their first dolls were of composition and unmarked.
In World war 11 the production of dolls stopped. After the war in 1945 dolls were then made from a new material. Hard plastic. Roddy dolls produced their first hard plastic dolls in 1948.This continued until the late 1950's when they began to use Vinyl.

In the 1960s the company was sold and Roddy dolls were produced under the name "bluebell" some had Roddy name on them. They were cast from original moulds....

1974 the company was sold to Denys fisher.

Denys Fisher was set up in Leeds in 1960! Denys Fisher is actually a person, and he invented the spirograph. which went on sale in Scofields in Leeds in 1965. in 1970 it was bought by Hasbro and he continued to work with them.

Hasbro are a rival to Mattel. Hasbro are the developer of the worlds popular board game Monopoly.


This is my latest doll that I have bought. Having written up this research and photos I have "more or less" decided to leave her as she is and try and restyle the wig.... I have looked for new wigs and I think they will be too modern for her....though I am out and about today so I will look and see what I can find.
 I am now after a composition doll in reasonable condition...........

24th April 2018 and we are still drinking tea. I have been up and cleaned up and reorganised my Barbie house by putting fairy lights out as part of the display in the sunroom at the front of the house.
We are going to Ilkley to take Monza dog to the woods and the charity shops.

So off we go then. catch up later.

Thursday 26 th April 2018.

I have started to clean up this doll. My intention was to reset the wig and pretty much leave her as is.
The wig disintigrated when i removed it and the head was then left covered in two types of glue.



most of which I have now got off.....







This is how she arrived . the spots on her face are also glue. I have managed to get that off too.

So .....I have discovered this doll has moulded hair. I think she looks much better without the wig. I am going to go with it....... I  have carefully washed her clothes and bonnet and intend not replacing the wig........