The other day, on the way home from work, I discovered a new illegal dump-site. As is my wont, I pulled over to see if there was anything good there. As it turns out, yes, there was.
Here, you see Janet and John. As best I can estimate, these two hail from the 1950s and despite their dusty/muddy state, appear to be in actually pretty good condition, though Janet’s dress has not weathered the passage of time gracefully. This is not a huge concern, as two other dresses were found on site, both in significantly better shape.
The fictionalised back-story for this pair is that they’re fraternal twins, born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1955, whose misadventures with a wormhole landed them in a shady district of Kansas City in the year 2013.
Stephen and Phyllis are fresh out of medical school, and are learning the ways of practical patient care (and falling in love) in a wildly popular afternoon serial drama.
It seems that Stephen and Phyllis may be fairly antique – this website suggests that Phyllis may have been on duty as early as the 1940s.
As these dolls were picked from the trash, I have nothing like a provenance on them. Janet is a Horsman doll, and appears to be Horsman’s answer to the Betsy Wetsy. John is unmarked, but appears to have been well made. He has his “wetsy” drain in his left buttock, in the same manner as the Betsy Wetsy. He also was found wearing a terry cloth diaper covered by a pair of rubber pants. Janet is wearing stockinet underwear. I think it’s pretty cool that she has her original shoes and socks. The shoes are made from a soft rubbery plastic which remains pliant. I think in their day, both were fairly high-end dolls.
I wonder if Stephen and Phyllis were, in fact, tie-ins to some sort of movie or radio drama. I did a search on the maker’s mark found on their necks (MPF Hong Kong) and turned up several other nurses identical to Phyllis, though I found no other doctors. No real information about the dolls, however. They are very, very cheaply made of thin, rather brittle plastic.
Well, hell. I’ve had a lot of problems keeping up with my little one, so apparently I missed A LOT. Congrats!
If there’s anything you need (kids patterns, baby shit) let me know.