We have noticed that when people talk to us about Bunty or Twinkle the dress up doll wardrobe is definitely something that they vividly remember.
Mel Gibson also found that readers’ memories of Bunty were dominated by dressing the dolls. “Fiona said ‘For me the very best of Bunty was the cut-out dolls and the clothes on the back page, but I could not get it until all members of the household had had their read’. Maureen recounted how she ‘had a box full of those grubby, thin cut-out dolls and wardrobes’ and that because of the doll, ‘Mandy and Judy never had the same appeal as Bunty’ (Gibson, 2015:108).
The problem with the tabs that held the clothes on was a great point of contention for better and poorer cuter outers.
One of our librarians remembers:
“I used to get a Bunty on the day that I went to Brownies. My Aunty Meg gave it to me to read before we went over to the church hall. When I got home I would take the Bunty and cut out the dolls carefully and the clothes which were on the comic. I would stick the dolls onto cardboard and make more clothes as well. I had two little sisters. The youngest one particularly liked to join in. She was quite good at drawing clothes but they were all based on Marc Bolan’s outfits on Top of the Pops and she liked to put glitter on them. She would cut them out very carefully but she would always cut the tabs off even though I instructed her to be careful and cut around them. I became very good at making tabs and sticking them on invisibly with sticky tape”.
It is a bit tricky. The delicate hands and feet of the Twinkle and Bunty dolls can also be problematic, and a steady hand is needed to get around those fiddly areas!
However, the satisfaction of seeing the brightly coloured outfits and dresses attached to your very own Twinkle is worth overcoming the challenge.
Creativity was always an important part of the dress up doll. Mel Gibson quotes Fiona again “Perhaps the cut out doll, more than anything, inspired my initial career as a designer after studying Fashion at Trent Poly” (Gibson, 2015:116)
Looking at the back pages of Bunty now what I like is the stories associated with the dolls and Bunty’s imagined life.
Readers were invited to choose the outfit for Bunty to wear to a pop ‘n’ sandwiches party. Later on, she was making a dress in her sewing class at school.
Bunty cuts a dashing figure on the court in these super tennis outfits. As a Christmas treat readers were asked to cut out all the clothes that Bunty would be wearing around the clock on this special day.
We’re hoping that a new generation will find out about the pleasure of cut out and dress up dolls at the ‘Cover Girls’ Event this Saturday at 11-3pm Central Library Liverpool.
There will be a range of activities taking place on the day, including cutting out and dressing up your own paper dolls which will be available for you to take home.
Alex Johnston and Nickianne Moody
Gibson, M (2015) Remembered Reading: Memory, Comics and Post-War Constructions of British Girlhood ‘Studies in European Comics and Graphic Novels’ Leuven University Press
Femorabilia 