Tintype of a Man Feeding a Doll

This bizarre image depicts a man tenderly cradling a baby doll, feeding it something from the dish on the table.

The photograph was made sometime between 1864 and 1866, according to a tax revenue stamp on the back. It has been hand-colored, to giving the doll’s dress and man’s cheek a pink glow.

One can only wonder why this man posed feeding a doll. Here are some theories of the picture which spotted by The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things:

• The man’s kid died and he snapped and now believes the doll contains the spirit of his dead child
• The photograph was made by a loving family humoring an odd brother who loves this doll belonging to his dead sister
• Haunted doll whispers demands for food in the man’s ear
• The man is demonstrating how to feed a small child
• It depicts a doll that’s supposed to be treated like a living thing to bring luck and prosperity, like a Luk Thep doll
• A playful photograph made for the man’s daughter before he departs on an extended voyage
• A subject study of a man with some sort of mental illness

(via The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things; follow their Instagram for more)

Rocket Express Ride: Vintage Photos of Department Store Monorail for Kids in the U.S From the 1940s and 1950s

These monorails sized for kids, called the Rocket Express, that travel around and above the entire toy department (Toyland) from 1946 to 1984, along with the camera, piano and organ departments. Kids rode these monorails slowly around the toy department in view of all the toys. Adults would be hard-pressed to fit inside the enclosed cars that the children sat in as the ride operated.

It has been speculated that the original monorail was retired because it could not be maintained as a viable and safe children's ride. The ride was removed in 1984 and was saved from the salvage heap by a foresighted worker who called the curator of the Please Touch Museum located in the Centennial District of Philadelphia (Fairmount Park), where the ride now resides.

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Jan. 23, 1957: Machines at the Wham-O Toy Company Roll Out the First Batch of Their Aerodynamic Plastic Discs – Frisbees

Fred Morrison never liked the name “Frisbee,” but he stopped complaining after sales began to soar.

The flying disc was Morrison’s invention, first sold by the Wham-O toy company on this day, Jan. 23, in 1957 — as the “Pluto Platter.” Wham-O changed the name the following year as a misspelled homage to the popular New England pastime of tossing around pie tins from Connecticut’s Frisbie Pie Company. “I thought the name was a horror. Terrible,” he told the Press-Enterprise of Riverside in 2007.

The story of the Frisbee began in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where William Frisbie opened the Frisbie Pie Company in 1871. Students from nearby universities would throw the empty pie tins to each other, yelling “Frisbie!” as they let go. In 1948, Walter Frederick Morrison and his partner Warren Franscioni invented a plastic version of the disc called the “Flying Saucer” that could fly further and more accurately than the tin pie plates. After splitting with Franscioni, Morrison made an improved model in 1955 and sold it to the new toy company Wham-O as the “Pluto Platter”–an attempt to cash in on the public craze over space and Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs).

In 1958, a year after the toy’s first release, Wham-O—the company behind such top-sellers as the Hula-Hoop, the Super Ball and the Water Wiggle—changed its name to the Frisbee disc, misspelling the name of the historic pie company. A company designer, Ed Headrick, patented the design for the modern Frisbee in December 1967, adding a band of raised ridges on the disc’s surface–called the Rings–to stabilize flight. By aggressively marketing Frisbee-playing as a new sport, Wham-O sold over 100 million units of its famous toy by 1977.

High school students in Maplewood, New Jersey, invented Ultimate Frisbee, a cross between football, soccer and basketball, in 1967. In the 1970s, Headrick himself invented Frisbee Golf, in which discs are tossed into metal baskets; there are now hundreds of courses in the U.S., with millions of devotees. There is also Freestyle Frisbee, with choreographed routines set to music and multiple discs in play, and various Frisbee competitions for both humans and dogs–the best natural Frisbee players.

Today, at least 60 manufacturers produce the flying discs—generally made out of plastic and measuring roughly 20-25 centimeters (8-10 inches) in diameter with a curved lip. The official Frisbee is owned by Mattel Toy Manufacturers, who bought the toy from Wham-O in 1994.

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The Story of the Cabbage Patch Kids Craze of 1983

In the history of all Christmases that have come to pass, there never was another that so turned the American consumer into a stark raving lunatic like the Cabbage Patch Kids craze of 1983.

During the 1983 holiday season, 3 million Cabbage Patch Kids were sold. After Black Friday, stores were sold out across the country and frustrated shoppers were in revolt. News stories documented near riots at shopping malls and retail stores across the country: a pregnant woman trampled by a crazed mob, a shopper who broke her leg in a scuffle, another who was knocked unconscious in a customer rush.

At Hamleys, the top London toy store, hundreds of people clamored for the dolls when the store opened at 9:00am on December 3rd.

The original dolls weren’t called Cabbage Patch Kids at all; they were called “Little People” and were the creation of Xavier Roberts, a Georgia artist. Xavier made his dolls like his mother made quilts. Each one was handmade, and he signed their butts with a permanent marker — later, some of them would come to be stamped (or signed and stamped).

As the “Little People” grew in popularity, he opened Babyland General, a doll hospital that specialized in adopting out “Little People.” Xavier still made each doll, but his staff dressed up in medical attire and helped families pick their perfect new addition. These dolls came with a slew of adoption paperwork which was all very official and marked them as a Babyland General official “Little People.”

These original dolls have some really distinctive things about them that set them apart and make them particularly valuable. Original “Little People” were completely soft, even the heads — later when they rebranded as Cabbage Patch Kids, they gained vinyl noggins. They also had a huge thumb which was a signature of Xavier originals. The final detail is that every single one of the early dolls was hand-signed by Xavier himself. Later in the line, they were stamped, and most, if not all, of these signatures, had an associated date which makes year identification easier!

In 1982 Coleco was given the right to produce “Little People” under a new name, Cabbage Patch Kids. They created what most people remember as Cabbage Patch Kids from their childhood — the vinyl headed, soft-bodied, yarn-haired dolls that sold in stores all over the world.

“What we are experiencing is an unprecedented consumer demand for the dolls,” said a Coleco spokeswoman.

To satisfy the demand, Coleco promised to increase production significantly, but many store owners across the country were telling disappointed shoppers that more than likely they would not ever have enough to meet demand before Christmas.

Hamleys toy store, London

Hamleys toy store, London

Hamleys toy store, London

Hamleys toy store, London

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40 Cool Pics Show Gifts That Children Often Received on the '50s and '60s Christmas

Which gifts did children often get on Christmas in the 1950s and '60s? Check out these cool snaps to see.

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1960s Space Age Toy Rocket Shoes Simulate Walking on the Moon

In the 1960s, toy manufacturers made a lot of space type toys as part of the Cold War rocket craze. They were to simulate moon walking. These rocket shoes are constructed of metal and plastic, and made to strap on to a kids shoes. The bottom have springs attached.

In the 1960s, NASA engineers built jet shoes for astronauts, which, in the revised history of everyone’s dreams, could have eventually trickled down to a consumer version. Jet shoes emerged because engineers and mission planners really didn't know what kinds of challenges astronauts would be facing in on spacewalks. They just knew astronauts would need a way to maneuver in a vacuum.

In 1965, NASA Langley engineer John D. Bird came up with the simple solution of putting jets on their shoes. Bird drew inspiration from two colleagues, Charles Zimmerman and Paul Hill, whose “Flying Platform” was a proof-of-concept technology that demonstrated humans were pretty good at controlling their direction for travel with a foot-based propulsion system. It made sense: humans spend a lot of time upright so why not harness this natural orientation for maneuverability in space? As a bonus, a foot-based system would free up the astronauts’ hands for working.

John D. Bird with a prototype for jet-propelled shoes at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, 1967.

Bird’s jet shoes system was pneumatic and fairly simple. The bulk of the system was external — a backpack served as the storage assembly for the 15 pounds of oxygen pressurized at 6,000 pounds per square inch that would power the jets. The gas would travel through a solenoid valve to the supply line that would bring it to the jet. Each jet would deliver a burst of the compressed gas at two pounds of thrust from each thrust valve nozzle with a pressure of about 165 pounds per square inch.

1970s Zingers! Full-Sized Toy Vehicles

These are the Zingers!, the “hairiest, scariest fistfuls of muscle yet,” according to the ads for the line of MPC plastic models introduced in 1971.

In the days when wild show cars reigned, legendary promoter Bob Larivee Sr. drew crowds by commissioning full-scale versions of top-selling toys. Perhaps the most well-known is the Red Baron, built in 1:1 scale in 1969 by Chuck Miller of Styline Customs based on the Tom Daniel-designed Monogram model.

When Larivee wanted fullsize Zingers!, he called on Styline to build the VW, the van, and the Vettes shown here in these Mike Brenner photo outtakes from a story in the July ’71 HOT ROD. The dune buggy was built by show-car builder and drag-racer Steve Tansy. The life-size Zingers used real engines with half-scale bodies, and others on the show circuit (and in the model-car line) included a ’57 Chevy and a Super Drag dragster.

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Third Eye Sees All!

Wear your very own blinking third eye! Startling! Sensational!

All eyes will be on all your eyes... and imagine the uproar when all 3 stare back! Great for keeping an “eye” on things.

“Stuffed” Girl’s Heads! Only $2.98

This is less sexist and more just plain perverse. Honor House Products Corp. was responsible for Sea Monkeys, X-Ray Specs, Jet Rocket Space Ships, Polaris Nuclear Subs and apparently “stuffed” female heads.

Kind of like an old fashioned sex doll, you can tailor your woman’s head to your tastes and enjoy the elegant glow of a woman’s smile in your front room. Unlike a sex doll however, the ‘Conquest Doll’ isn’t even for sexual relief. It is just a plastic doll’s head mounted on a board like a sick, twisted trophy. Sexual deviants in the fifties were over the moon with this nifty bit of design ingenuity.

The “stuffed” girl’s head will set you back only $2.98 and comes in all sorts of colors— blonde, brunette, redhead— in order to enable the busy modern man to both keep track of all of the women he’s beheaded had sex with and let visitors to his house know that they’re dealing with a real piece of work. According to the product description,

... the first realistic likeness of the exciting women who play an important part in every man's life... and one of the nicest qualities is that they don't talk back! Accurately modelled to three-quarters life size of real gals, these heads are so life-like they almost breathe!

The heads came with a money back guarantee and request that the buyer specify what color hair they’d like their ladyhead to have.

Lovely Snaps of Little Girls With Their Baby Dolls in the 1950s

A lovely photo collection that shows little girls with their baby dolls in the 1950.

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A Young Woman Poses With Her Boudoir Doll Collection in Paris, France in 1922

A woman poses with her boudoir doll collection in Paris, France in 1922. The dolls were all over France, England, Italy, Germany and the US. Notice how some of her dolls are of different ethnic complexions, those were extremely rare even back then, and only really came from France and parts of the U.S.

Creepy Dolls Photographed by Anna Barna in the 1930s

The story of Barna Anna began around 1983 with a few boxes of photographs that came from André Kertész’s own negatives at his New York apartment, where he and his wife Elizabeth moved to this 2 Fifth Avenue in 1951.

While searching for negatives, Robert B. Menschel found a few boxes in which not the pictures of André Kertész, but the seal on them, were photographs of a photographer named “Anna Barna”. At Robert’s question Andrew said so, this is a sad story. He even met Anna in Paris, working there as a reporter, and Anna came to New York without knowing anyone else in the city outside. The photos came after Anna’s death, who became a victim of murder. There was nothing left but these photos and a few documents.

André Kertész moved from Budapest to Paris in 1925. He found his career in Paris and became a prominent photo artist and documentary photographer. Barna Anna met André here sometime in 1936, just before André and Elizabeth Kertész emigrated to New York. The Hungarians of Paris were forged into a very close community. There’s a photo of Anna and André are together, in which Anna with a notebook and André with a camera. They would probably have worked together as reporters occasionally. Did André teach Anna photography before leaving Paris? Or was she a photographer before? Did he allow her to use his darkroom? Or introduced to his friends?

In 1938 Anna had a press ID, on which the Lutetia Press International Press Service - Service de Press International, 6, rue Vavin, Paris VI - is reported as a journalist. On Anna’s photographic stamp, “Address 46, Eg Jules Ferry, Montrouge,” is located in a suburb of Paris, nearly in the south of the 16th district. The house in which she lived at that time does not exist today. Robert Doisneau also had a permanent residence and a studio in Montrouge from 1937 until his death in 1994. Did Anna and Doisneau know each other? Robert Doisneau knew André’s work as well in his Paris years. Was their relationship extensive with Anna?

Anna Barna was born in 1901 in Hungary. She became a Parisian citizen in the 1930s. When Anna Barna arrived in New York, she received an alien registration number. The registration of alien was introduced as part of World War II security measures, based on the 1940 Alien Registration Act. Between August 1, 1940 and March 31, 1944, more than 5.6 million immigrants reported. After April 1, 1944, a new kind of record was introduced, under the name of A-files, abbreviated as Alien Aliens Act. Anna’s brown A-file number was 6464756.

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