Holiday Accessories for Dolls Celebrating Chanukah

American Girl is just about the only company I have discovered to date that acknowledges the existence of holidays other than Christmas. I applaud them for being inclusive when it comes to different ethnicities and beliefs in the creation of their dolls and background stories. Their dolls are widely available and are not charicatures of children of various ethnic backgrounds, they are just children who happen to be different from eachother.
Although most adult fashion doll collectors do not include American Girl dolls in their collections, some of the accessories can be worked in. In my photo of Kaori, two posts back, I used an American Girl menorah and dreidel. This year AG has another menorah available and it's beautiful. It comes in a set called Rebecca's Hanukkah Set, [Item#F9723] and retails for $22.

Here are the photos from their website:


The description: "Rebecca can't wait to light the menorah and celebrate Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights! This set features: A beautiful menorah and nine pretend candles A dreidel Rebecca and her cousins spin to play games Three shiny coins, called gelt."

The price is right and can bring your gals into the multi-cultural world!

American Girl has also provided Rebecca with a Sabbath Set.
This beautiful set comes with:
"A Russian samovar and tray for heating water and serving tea
A tea canister and a ceramic teapot
Two glasses, pretend hallah bread and a scalloped cloth
A pair of [pretend] Sabbath candles that the women in Rebecca's family "light" before sundown
Two blue candlesticks that were a gift to Rebecca from Mr. Rossi"

The Sabbath set is back-ordered until March 2010. The retail price is $68.

Tea? My grandpa drank a shot of schnapps on Shabbos. I guess we can't give little girls bottles of Schnapps and shot glasses, can we?
In addition, hallah is spelled challah and hanukkah is spelled Chanukah. I'm just sayin'

O K Kader doll

Until I moved to Australia, I had never heard of these hard plastic baby dolls that were manufactured in the 1950s through the 1990s in Asia. OK Kader had factories in Hong Kong and Thailand. The Thai factory closed in 1993 after a massive fire killed many workers. There were both black and caucasian versions of these dolls.

Kader dolls seem to be popular among collectors in Asia and the Pacific, and no wonder. They have sweet chubby faces and characteristics unique to Kader dolls: a "clacking" tongue and twist wrists. The tongue is attached to the eye mechanism, so when the doll's eyes close, the tongue retracts and moves side to side. Wrists can be twisted so that the doll's hands can be posed. Dolls have hard molded eyelashes. My doll also wears replacement lashes.

All Kader dolls come with molded hair, although mine is wearing a wig (dolls usually lose most of their hair paint). The dolls may have residual glue on their head seams. I've seen them range in size from 13 to 25 inches (although there may be dolls on either side of that figure.) My doll is a 20 inch doll from about 1960. She has two little teeth in her rosebud mouth. Her matinee jacket and pants probably are not original to her, although I usually see OK Kader dolls for sale wearing knitted baby clothes. Most of the dolls I've seen for sale on eBay are vintage dolls that date from the 1950s and 1960s. Newer dolls have hard vinyl heads.

If you are a collector of dolls from the 1950's, you might want to have a look around for an adorable OK Kader doll.

O K Kader doll

Until I moved to Australia, I had never heard of these hard plastic baby dolls that were manufactured in the 1950s through the 1990s in Asia. OK Kader had factories in Hong Kong and Thailand. The Thai factory closed in 1993 after a massive fire killed many workers. There were both black and caucasian versions of these dolls.

Kader dolls seem to be popular among collectors in Asia and the Pacific, and no wonder. They have sweet chubby faces and characteristics unique to Kader dolls: a "clacking" tongue and twist wrists. The tongue is attached to the eye mechanism, so when the doll's eyes close, the tongue retracts and moves side to side. Wrists can be twisted so that the doll's hands can be posed. Dolls have hard molded eyelashes. My doll also wears replacement lashes.

All Kader dolls come with molded hair, although mine is wearing a wig (dolls usually lose most of their hair paint). The dolls may have residual glue on their head seams. I've seen them range in size from 13 to 25 inches (although there may be dolls on either side of that figure.) My doll is a 20 inch doll from about 1960. She has two little teeth in her rosebud mouth. Her matinee jacket and pants probably are not original to her, although I usually see OK Kader dolls for sale wearing knitted baby clothes. Most of the dolls I've seen for sale on eBay are vintage dolls that date from the 1950s and 1960s. Newer dolls have hard vinyl heads.

If you are a collector of dolls from the 1950's, you might want to have a look around for an adorable OK Kader doll.