werepuppy wrote:Anyone got any thoughts themselves?
You should have known better than to ask!
First off, £80 UK is currently about $98 USD, so this definitely elevates the proposed New Sindy from a Barbie-type playline doll to something more akin to an Integrity Toys collector item. Rather than being any sort of prelude to a re-introduction of playline Sindy, this looks to me like an attempt by Kid Kreations to tap in to the Baby Boomer / Gen X nostalgia market.
MGAE's recent attempt to re-introduce classic-style Bratz dolls as "collector priced" Amazon exclusives seems to have met with limited success. Sadly, I do not foresee a significantly better result for Sindy.
The early Baby Boomer generation were enthusiastic toy collectors for at least a couple of decades, driving up prices on original 1950s-1970s toys and providing a market for a few re-introductions and reproductions. Today, as a look at secondary market prices on eBay reveals, those collectors have reached an age where they're dying off...
err, I mean where they are downsizing their collections. Prices on vintage toys are on the decline for anything other than the most pristine mint-in-box examples, and re-issues and reproductions are selling for far less than their original purchase price.
The late-Boomers and Gen-Xers were not as collection-oriented as the early- and mid-Boomer generation. Gen-Y were the first of the fully digital generations, with the traditional toy and doll markets nosediving as a result. By the time Gen-Y was of the toy-buying age, mid-1980s to late-1990s, kids were transitioning to video games from traditional toys, movie and TV franchise toys were absorbing what market share remained in the non-digital market, and Sindy was well past her prime, with the brand changing ownership, undergoing various re-designs, and being dropped by major retailers.
Tonner Dolls tried to cash in on Sindy nostalgia five or six years ago with "collectors edition" Sindy dolls retailing in the same price range as this proposed Kidz Kreations release. Not only did the Sindy doll not catch on, but Tonner Dolls itself ended up closing their doors. I would not attribute the end of Tonner to the Sindy doll alone, but rather, to a lack of a significant market for collector-priced dolls, and in particular for "nostalgia" themed dolls.
(Around this time, Tonner also attempted to revive the 1960s Captain Action line with a Lady Action doll, and brought out the Addams Family influenced Maudlynne Macabre, neither of which proved to be particularly popular ((other than Maudsie being probably my single favorite figure in my collection, but I am an a-typical collector, I'm afraid)). The failure of the New Bratz playline dolls and the Collector Bratz special edition dolls over the past few years further illustrates a lack of demand for "nostalgia" releases.)
If the photo you've found is an accurate indication, the face sculpt of the proposed New Sindy is an accurate recreation of the original 1960s Pedigree version, before Hasbro "Barbie-fied" her. It appears, however, that the body is made of a different material than the face, possibly a hard plastic, and the neck joint is extremely unattractive. The wrist joints, too, look coarse and unfinished. The outfits, in contrast to the bodies, appear to be of high quality. (The other dolls in the proposed range can be seen in the
Jenjoy's All Dolled Up post to which you linked). Of course, these are prototype dolls, so the final production versions may differ in materials and quality.
While Sindy dolls were not widely distributed or popular in the U.S. (and then, mostly the later Barbie-inspired versions), I have read a fair bit about them over the past few years, inspired by the
photos and the entertaining captions posted by CooperSky, one of my Flickr contacts.
CooperSky introduced the world... or, the Flickr world... well, okay, the small niche community of her Flickr followers... to the hard driving, harder drinking wild woman of the road,
Daredevil Sindy (known to her [s]handful of[/s] legions of fans as simply DDS).
A major appeal of the Sindy line to the collectors who still bother to collect Sindy dolls appears to be the incredible range of detailed costumes and accessory playsets that were available. Will a re-introduced, limited edition, high-priced collector version of Sindy have much of an appeal without the playsets and costume options? As
CooperSky's Flickr photos illustrate, many adult Sindy fans still like to
play with their dolls. I don't know how much appeal there will be to playing with £80/$100 dolls.
In summation:
1. High price for what the doll appears to be.
2. Primary appeal is to a nostalgia-driven market demographic that is in steep decline.
3. Poor performance history for previous attempts to tap in to the 1960s-1990s nostalgia market.
4. "Tainted" reputation for Sindy dolls by decades of redesigns.
5. Younger generations have less interest in collecting things.
6. Limited "play value" without additional costume packs or accessory playsets.
I would love to see Sindy resurrected as a playline doll made as closely as possible to the mid-1960s originals and sold at playline prices, but I do not think there would be much appeal to kids unless there were a "major studio" media tie-in with a motion picture franchise, [s]television[/s] a Netflix series, webisodes, and video games. The Pedigree Sindy era was so long ago that parents and even most grandparents of toy-age children are likely not familiar with the doll, or at least, not familiar with the original Pedigree version. Re-introducing Sindy to the toy market would in essence require a totally brand new introduction as though she were a new, original product. (We can see through the poor roll-out of the Wild Hearts Crew line here in the States how difficult a new product launch can be, even for a major company like Mattel.)
The adult collector market is not much different than the potential playline kids' market. The Sindy Generation is not buying collector dolls and figurines anymore. The collector doll and figurine buying generation is largely unfamiliar with Pedigree-era Sindy, and are buying superhero movie tie-in figures modeled with uncanny realism on present day film and television actors. Is there a market among present-day collectors for a doll who looks like a cartoonish toy version of Twiggy or Jean Shrimpton or Felicity Kendal? (
Who th' heck?)
Obviously, I am not optimistic about the success of the Kids Kreations Sindy release.
But on a more positive note, I am almost invariably wrong about these things.
