COMIC BOOK TOY SOLDIERS
"100 LITTLE DOLLS all for $1.00"
The only known "Girls' Version" of Comic Book Toy Soldiers!
These unique Sets were called "100 LITTLE DOLLS" and were sold "all for $1.00." They were designed and advertised exactly like classic Comic Book Toy Soldiers except that the figures were not Soldiers, instead they were tiny Civilians, all in pink/flesh tone color, representing various different “Character Dolls”, many with a European look to them. It would appear that some smart toy makers saw how well the boys’ Comic Book Toy Soldiers were selling, and decided to simply produce a similar item for the girls!
As many excited young girls would unfortunately find out the hard way, the "100 Little Dolls" were not actually Dolls at all (at least not in the sense that one would normally associate with the word "Doll".) In fact, they were just a bunch of unpainted, 1.5 inch tall, styrene/hard plastic Semi-Flats. They were all sculpted with distinct front sides and back sides and were molded to look like Nurses, Babies, Brides, Grooms, Dancers, Ballerinas, Clowns, European/Foreign Costumes, Cowboys, Indians, etc. There was even a Santa's Sleigh pulled by Reindeer - which was designed a lot like the Horse-Drawn Chariots from the "132 Roman Soldiers" Set of Flats.
The Set arrived in a small cardboard box, similar to the Toy Soldier “Footlocker” and “Gun Box” except the Dolls box was plain with no art or graphics on it at all (see image above.)
The image at the top of this page shows a "100 Little Dolls" Ad which was found on the back cover of a February 1969 Archie Giant Series Comic Book called "The World of Jughead."
The image at the bottom of this page shows a slightly different version of the add from a decade earlier which was found in a 1958 "Movieland" magazine. It offers 100 "Real Dolls" for "1 Penny Each", "In Exquisite Detail Up To 4 Inches!" This 4 inches claim was highly misleading. In fact, only one figure measured four inches - it was the Santa's Sleigh figure which was 4 inches LONG. This misleading claim was mirrored in the Toy Soldier Sets which usually had one or two molds up to 4 1/2 inches long (but the Ads made it appear as if they were all that large - and most kids simply assumed it referred to Height, not Length!)
It seems that the 100 Dolls Sets first appeared in comics in the late 1950's and probably stopped appearing in comics around the mid-late 1970's. However, this web site has not yet determined when exactly these Sets first came into production or when they went out of production. Any information about this is always welcome.
In the image above, all of the 30 different figures from the "100 Little Dolls" Set are shown. The 30 figures were simply duplicated multiple times to fill out the Set of 100. Despite the Comic Book Ad claim that the Dolls were "expensively molded in true dimension - Height, Width, Depth" they are actually just typical Semi-Flats. Definitely lacking in the true "Depth" department, but many of the Dolls are actually very nicely sculpted for such small figures.
THE EUROPEAN CONNECTION:
Research has shown that several of the best looking 100 Little Dolls molds were exact copies of some 1950’s European toy/premium figures called “Margarine Figuren” (margarine figures.) The following explains how this occurred.
The Margarine Figuren of Europe were small, hard plastic premiums, usually plain ivory or creamish in color, offered as free give-aways inside product packages such as rolled oats, coffee, tobacco, shoe polish and particularly different margarines in the 1950’s and 1960’s. They were similar to Cracker Jack Prizes and Cereal Premiums often seen in America, but their sculpting was often far superior and was quite detailed.
The Margarine Figuren concept is credited to a German entrepreneur named Fritz Homan, of the Fri Homa Company, who evidently had the brilliant idea to put small toy figures inside his margarine packages to help sell and advertise his products (he may have been inspired by the USA Cracker Jack toy idea if he was aware of it, but this is only conjecture.) About 1950 Homan is said to have contacted a European toy company called SIKU (a division of Sieper) who started manufacturing many of the tiny plastic figures for Homan’s margarine packages and those of many other food companies.
The Margarine Figuren became extremely popular collectibles among European children at the time and they remain popular items to this day among grown up collectors in Europe and to a lesser degree in America.
By the end of the 1950's the Margarine Figuren idea had grown so much that it became too expensive and it was no longer profitable for companies to add the relatively expensive premium figures to their products. Thus, the practice slowly faded away. It is said that many of the original 1950's European Margarine Figuren molds were eventually sold to other companies, primarily in Belgium, France and America, where the molds were evidently used for various toy products. This may well be the reason the "100 Little Dolls" Set was made with some of the old Margarine Figuren molds - but precise details about exactly how these molds first came to America remain unknown to this web site.
What is known for certain is that at least 10 of the figures (all female dancers) in the 100 Little Dolls Set are exact replicas of Margarine Figuren premiums originally manufactured in 1954/55 by a German company called Kuster. Kuster called the 10 dancer series "Tanzerinnen" (Dancers.) All of the Dolls which are from the female Tanzerinnen molds can be seen in the first two rows in the image above. The original Kuster Tanzerinnen figures can be seen at the very bottom of this page (they are ivory in color.) They are quite beautifully sculpted and they stand out as superior molds.
At some point around the late 1950's & early 60's, Kuster sold the Tanzerinnen molds to other countries including a bisquit company in Belgium called Huedebert which then began producing the same 10 dancer figures in the 1960's (utilizing them as "Margarine Figuren" by packaging them with their bisquits.) Some of the Heudebert figures can be seen at the bottom of this page on either side of the 100 Dolls Ad. They were also ivory/creamish in color.
The original Kuster molds may also have been sold to a French company called Le Baby, but this has not been verified for certain yet.
Eventually the Kuster molds ended up at least one American toy company in the USA (name unknown) which eventually led to the "Tanzerinnen" molds being used for the "100 Little Dolls" Set.
As for the rest of the figures in the 100 Little Dolls Set (those not known to be from Kuster/Heudebert molds), it is not yet clear where those figure molds were originally found. It is possible that they were also Margarine Figuren originally, perhaps made by different companies in Europe, but they may also have come from totally different original sources, possibly American in origin. More research is required to determine these details and any information is always welcome to help fill in these blanks.
In any case, the 100 Little Dolls are legitimate and interesting Comic Book Figures that stand out as the only known feminine alternative to classic Comic Book Toy Soldiers. Their European ancestry makes them even more interesting. We look forward to learning more about them from any source we can find.
A final interesting note: There have been 100 Dolls Sets found in their original cardboard mailing boxes with at least five different return addresses on the boxes. It is not known at this time if these sellers were the same people simply changing addresses, or if there were in fact several different toy makers, with only slightly different names, selling the exact same Sets:
1) The 100 Doll Co., 228 Lexington Ave, New York 16, NY.
2) 100 Dolls Co., 11 E. 47th Street, New York 17, NY.
3) 100 Dolls Co., 730 3rd Ave, New York, NY.
4) 100 Dolls, 285 Market Street, Newark, NJ.
5) A contributer submitted an email stating that her box of 100 Dolls had a return address of 160 Amherst Street, East Orange, NJ. The postage on the box was only .24 cents.
