Have fun in the little world of Mattel's Sunshine dolls!

This sweet little doll family (only 9 and 9 1/2 inches tall), made in the 70's, celebrates some of the values of the 60's and 70's - family unity, simple living, artistic creativity, "right livelihood", love of nature, back-to-the-land, "do it yourself", neighborliness. The dolls came with booklets showing the child owner how to make items for their dolls themselves - balancing consumerism with creativity, improvisation, and participation.

Children had, and can still have, hours of creative imaginative fun enacting family adventures and interactions, as my daughter did with her dolls.  Adult collectors can celebrate their memories of - or understanding of, since many were too young to have experienced it - this idealistic era, which has had lasting effects on reviving many of our traditional cultural values. Or just enjoy the pleasure of the family group.

The earlier families are more "hippie" - the Sunshine Family of mother ("Steffie"), father ("Steve"), and baby ("Sweets").  There was a corresponding black family called the Happy Family ("Hattie", "Hal",  and baby "Hon").  Next there was a differently dressed (but same) white family of three.  And lastly, there was a somewhat more mainstream version with more makeup. etc., and with a toddler Sweets and a new baby - the Sunshine Fun Family. The black family had a similar development - the Happy Fun Family. The families also had grandparents - one white set and one black - and a cat and dog.

The Sunshine and Happy families had fascinating accessory sets: clothing sets with a craft feature such as adding stencils, ric rac, yarn to the clothing. The clothing was appropriately Hippie! The Fun Family, the next series of clothing, lacked those features and were more Barbie-like - but not totally -  all had long skirts which were still pretty cutting edge in the 70's!

There were activity sets with a do it yourself feature - a camping trip, river rafting, family projects in cooking, gardening, making baby toys, a backyard swing, etc. also a folkmusic set with guitar and autoharp, and tambourine for baby! Every playset had a booklet showing children how to make more accessories for the family, out of common household materials like egg cartons, popsicle sticks, paper cups!

There was a farm set with animals, a produce stand, a green house, a crafts store, a farm truck, a crafts truck to go to the crafts fair. These folks practiced right livelihood and a home based economy!  There was an innovatively designed ranch style house, and later, a two story house.  There was a bicycle "surrey", and a rare horse and wagon - alternative transportation!

The boxes all these items came in have charming graphics depicting the close knit devoted family in idyllic natural settings.

We had no idea at the time that all these wonders existed for our dolls, and made them houses out of cardboard cartons and wood panels, including a chicken house. - but this is totally in keeping with the spirit of the Sunshines, creatively satisfying, and fit our budget!

So there is a lot to collect  - as much or as little as you like!

And if you need more folks for your Sunshine family, community, or commune, there are  the Star Spangled dolls made with the same Sunshine body for the Bicentennial in 1976, dolls dressed and coiffed for different periods in U.S. history - very lovely, but you can also redress them in more contemporary clothing and have red haired and dark haired women, long haired and blond haired men, and a Hispanic or Native American etc. brown woman.

If you should want more children for them, different colors of children are available from among  Barbie's Kelly/Tommy friends and family and the Barbie Happy Family children, including boys.  They are 4 1/2 inches tall to Sweets and Hon's 5 inches, but can just be a little younger, and black Hon is rare enough to be expensive to buy. The Stacie/Todd series of 8 inch children can be older brothers and sisters, although some of the girls' middle period garish eye painting may make them seem unrelated to their Sunshine parents. (The earlier Tutti and Todd 6 inch children have a wire covered anatomy which has often become dysfunctional.)

As for clothing, besides the wonderful original Sunshine clothing (still available on eBay), 10 inch child (not teen) Skipper items often fit. The Stacies' clothing may also fit, and Steffie's clothes will fit the Stacies, whose own clothes are usually pretty garish. (The Sunshines' clothing was made in the era before velcro replaced snaps, and cotton was more prevalent than synthetics, so it is usually better quality as well as better style.)  Fitting shoes is trickier - usually everybody needs their own shoes, but the exceptional slightly loose Kelly shoe will fit Sweets and Hon etc. Clothes which are too large can often be adapted with a little sewing, but not shoes. Kelly and Sweets/Hon can probably share tops but not bottoms (except for stretchy underpanties). (Steffie, Skipper, and Stacie can share panties, if you can find any.) The Mattel babies are various shapes and sizes and generally can't exchange clothing.

And of course you can make clothing for them, or buy it handmade. Real hand knitted sweaters are special enough to spend a little more money on.

Should you want more furniture and accessories, you can probably do better by collecting outside the Sunshine/Mattel line. Those items are all made of plastic, not a very durable substance, and definitely not as enjoyable, intriguing, or educational for children's developing aesthetics as accessories made of wood, metal, leather, fiber, etc. You are more likely to find the latter as imported folk or other handcrafted toys.

The Sunshine's own plastic furniture is not bad, though, and easy to find. Also worthy of attention is the furniture made for Ideal's "Jody, an Old Fashioned Girl", also created for the  Bicentennial.  Jody's Old Fashioned Kitchen has a (plastic) wood stove, icebox, and sink with a hand pump - just as many of us backwoods hippies had then, or our rural grandparents!

Jody's General Store would be a fun adjunct to the Sunshine country community, with its counter with bins and post office as part of the store!  And Jody has a horse barn with a horse drawn wagon! You may not want all the items in these sets - Jody herself, for example, doesn't resemble the Sunshines (her clothes don't fit them that well, either), and the walls of these buildings may be too detailed if you're improvising Sunshine housing with cardboard boxes or wood - or too large for your space.  But the used sets are often missing Jody and other items you don't need, and the seller may be willing to omit the heavy walls, and thereby save you some shipping expense.

You can also find more animals for the farm or household outside the line. The "scale" of the Sunshines is 1: 8.  Barbie's is 1: 6, also called "play scale"; it is probably close enough. Sellers don't usually know the scale, but if you have the Sunshine cow, you can use her as a rough guide to choosing other compatibly sized animals.  (Children usually don't care, although there is a definite value to having them experience the actual size disparities in nature, say between a dog or cat and a horse, or even between a horse, cow, and goat.)

The Sunshines were only made between 1973 and 1978. Mattel then, or meantime, added doll families with children to the 11 1/2 inch Barbie line. But so many Sunshines were made that you can still easily find them.  When buying them, you'll probably want to look out for and avoid these common problems: loose and swingy hip joints and knee joints, arms loose in their sockets (stuck arms can usually be carefully unstuck), frizzy hair on the moms, thinned hair and bad haircuts, melty or missing eyes. ( I hope to learn to replace worn parts and write a how-to about it when I do. I've heard that a hair dryer to carefully heat the parts helps in limb and head exchanges.)

So whether you decide to recreate the 60's/70's or bring your Sunshine Family into the present era, enjoy!
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