I remember my older sister having a Shirley Temple doll that she took very good care of. I was the kid who operated on her dolls! The only collection I ever got, and believe I have kicked myself for not having the foresight as a 6 y.o. to hold on to this collection for the big bucks I'd now have,(just kidding), was the original Barbie doll. The doll, a complete set of clothes and available accessories was purchased for me that Christmas by my father's co-workers because my mother was close to death from cancer. If memory serves, Barbie is a Mattel toy and now the American Girl Dolls are as well? How sad. I wonder what we would have thought had we known back in 1959 just how much our culture was going to abandoned life.
My parents were still in school at the time, but I suspect that some parts of the culture had already abandoned life at that point.
When I was little, we had the original Playschool stuff, complete with wooden, not plastic figurines. Too bad we played with it.