The following is a post from my website Chrissy…In Her Sixties, which I am currently working on shutting down. The website you are now looking at, That Hobbit Lady, has been with me since November 2004 (nearly 20 years) and contains over 500 posts. In Her Sixties only goes back to 2017, with less than 40 posts. So, you see…in the interest of consolidating, I could either send 500+ posts from That Hobbit Lady to In Her Sixties, or 30+ posts from In Her Sixties to That Hobbit Lady. In addition to the math of that first option not making much sense, it also happens that the term “In Her Sixties” will only to apply to me for a few more years. But I will be a Hobbit Lady forever. So: no-brainer.
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September 21, 2017
I was born in 1957, which means I was three years old when Whimsies appeared on the scene. What? You don’t know what Whimsies are? Okay, I’ll show you.
Most little girls in the 1960’s played with Barbie dolls, or baby dolls, but I guess I wasn’t quite like most other little girls. Sure, I liked the Barbies and babies just fine, I guess, but my heart really went out to trolls and Whimsies. You know what trolls are, of course—Wishniks, “Dam Things”? I was such a big fan that I even had a little house for them, and of course lots and lots of homemade clothes, 
which were mostly teeny tiny scraps of material that you could twist around their ugly little bodies.
The key word being “ugly.” I don’t know why I developed such an affinity for ugly dolls. I’m sure a psychoanalyst could figure this one out right away. But I’m not here to talk about trolls. I’ll save them for another time. Right now, I want to talk about the Whimsies, who were so much a part of my childhood in the 1960’s.
As I mentioned, they came into being when I was three, but I did not know about them until I was probably…oh…seven or eight? I had some older cousins, Linda and Patty, who about the time I was seven or eight would have been twelve or thirteen, outgrowing their dolls, so my sister and I ended up with them as “hand-me-downs.”
I don’t remember exactly how many Whimsies we inherited from Linda and Patty, but I feel there must have been at least three or four. I know for sure one of them had pink hair and her name was Tessie. She was my favorite. (In the picture below, Tessie is on the far left.)
The thing I like most about the Whimsie dolls is that they don’t look like Barbies or conventional baby dolls. In fact, they aren’t babies at all (though they do very conveniently wear a baby’s size “Newborn” in clothes.) They’re just girls (mostly, though there are a few male Whimsies, but I don’t think I had any of those. If I did, I would have put my grandmother’s old wig on that boy Whimsie and turned him into a girl!). To my way of thinking, Whimsies are so…peculiar looking they’re actually cute. They have dimples and freckles and turned up little noses, and fat bottoms so they can sit up very admirably on their own. They’ve got rubbery straight legs and arms, round bellies and somewhat large feet.
I don’t have to tell you much more about the Whimsies, because you can see them here. And the Whimsies you are seeing here are MY Whimsies. Not the ones I had as a kid, but the Whimsies I have recently adopted on E-Bay.
About four years ago, I started buying up Whimsies on E-Bay. At first, it was just one, and guess what? Her name is Tessie! And wouldn’t you know it? The Tessie I adopted through E-Bay is actually the very same Tessie I had as a kid! (At least, that’s the Whimsieville mythology.) It was such a joyful reunion when we found each other again!
Then Tessie got a couple of friends, Trixie and Tillie, and in a little while they were joined by Tootsie.
These four Whimsies have their own website, called Whimsieville. I helped them run this website for about three years, but it sort of went dormant in February 2016. (Which helps to explain why I don’t have a lot of confidence that this new website I’m writing on right now is going to be able to survive for ten years. I tend to lose interest, get distracted, etc. If you’ve ever had a website, I’m sure you know how it is…)
One day the Whimsies may decide to start posting on their website again, and when they do, it will be like no time has passed at all, because Whimsies are ageless, not bound by the constrictions of Time. They are nearly as old as I am, and have barely aged at all! They live in the Eternal Now.
I told you about the main four Whimsies, but wait! There’s more! When the time is right, Whimsieville will also host:
Cousin Tulip, a vagabond hippie, who will mosey into Whimsieville one day after reading about her cousin Tillie on the Whimsieville website. She’ll stay for a while, but her heart belongs to the open road. Of course, after she’s gone, the crowd in Whimsieville will be graced with frequent letters and postcards from their adventurous new friend as she travels across the country.
Gabriela, a sophisticated fashion model, who always appears on the cover of Whimsie Magazine (sort of like Oprah), and writes flowery and reverent articles about Fashion (which all Whimsies love, almost as dearly as they love eating sugary treats!)
Tori, a Whimsie with flaming red hair, who lives in Madrid with a family of bullfighters! They send her out to run around the bullring and get the bull all worked up just before a fight. Don’t worry, folks! She’s very fast, and hasn’t been caught yet! And oh, how she loves being the center of attention!
So you can see what fun it is to play with Whimsies…whether you are a girl of seven or eight, or a kid-at-heart in her sixties.
