Toy Fair 2016, Prettie Girls Dolls - New Dolls, Fashion Packs, Books, More!

In this video from this year's Toy Fair, doll designer, Stacey McBride-Irby shows the new Prettie Girls offerings from Tonner One World Dolls.



The same video along with still photos taken at the Tonner One World booth can be seen in this article by Crazy Al Cayne of Sugarcayne.com.

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Check out my eBay listings here.

The One World Doll Project Announces First Order From Walmart

I have been a supporter of the One World Doll Project since day one, beginning with an interview of Stacey McBride-Irby in March 2011.  Several posts about Prettie Girls Lena and the Cynthia Bailey doll have followed.

Prettie Girls Valencia (Latina), Dahlia (South Asian), and Kimani (African) have joined Lena and Cynthia Bailey.

I recently acquired, Valencia, Dahlia, and Kimani, shown above.



I was very excited to learn about the company's most recent accomplishment:  The One World Doll Project Announces First Order From Walmart.  This is major because it is no easy feat to get products on the shelves of America's largest discount department store chain.



Trent Daniel, CEO of One World Holdings, announces the Walmart deal in the following Youtube video.







Congratulations to OWDP and Stacey McBride-Irby! 







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A great interview of the designer of the Prettie Girls dolls from Lioness Magazine can be read below or at the provided source link:

Stacey McBride-Irby revolutionizes the doll industry

Posted on October 10, 2014

by
Katelyn Gendron

Stacey McBride-Irby, cofounder of The One World Doll Project Inc., had 15
years invested in corporate America as a project designer at Mattel in
El Segundo, California, before deciding to make a radical career move.


One simple question from the project’s cofounder, Trent T. Daniel, in
2010 changed the landscape of her life’s work with their creation of
the Houston, Texas-based company.


“He asked me what my dream would be and I said to create my own
fashion dolls. This was a huge leap of faith and this was the hardest
choice I ever had to make. I was ready mentally but I wasn’t ready for
the no benefits and paycheck,” McBride-Irby recalled. “The whole
work-life balance with two children was difficult and corporate America
took a lot of my time so I felt like I was growing [professionally] but I
didn’t just want to be a doll designer.”


McBride-Irby spent more than a decade designing dolls for Mattel,
which included many industry staples such as the Disney Princess
Collection and Barbie Career dolls, as well as creating the company’s
first African-American doll line, So In Style, in 2009. Her vision for
the industry, however, stretched further than just doll design and play,
which was why she created The Prettie – an acronym, which stands for
Positive Respectful Enthusiastic Talented Truthful Inspiring Excellent –
Girls! dolls for The One World Doll Project.


“I didn’t want to leave out other nationalities that are overlooked
in the fashion isle. I can’t say all because there are only five
[Prettie Girls!] dolls, but I want to create dolls for girls that don’t
just have blonde hair and blue eyes,” McBride-Irby explained, noting
that the ethnicities – African, African-American, Caucasian, Latina and
South Asian – and physical characteristics are just as important as the
stories behind each of the dolls.


“A basic Barbie doll looks more Caucasian and I wanted girls to know
that it’s OK to embrace your fuller lips, and larger butt and curly
hair,” McBride-Irby said, adding that each doll also stresses the
importance of academics and community service as attendees of the
fictional Dream Academy of Excellence.


“There are so many negative influences out there for our girls and
with a story it makes them more relatable: one loves to cook, one to
recycle, one is spelling bee champ,” she noted.


McBride-Irby credited her time at Mattel, especially her early years
under Kitty Black Perkins, as well as her prior struggles to gain access
into the industry, for her professional and artistic growth.

Stacey McBride-Irby

“I got my first job as a design assistant for an entrepreneur and
then I started out as a customer service rep and then a design assistant
and then worked at another fashion job but my jobs were only lasting
for six months to a year. I began to wonder if I had chosen the right
career,” she recalled. “[Working for] Mattel had never even crossed my
mind but I loved toys and playing with Barbie. I cold-called the
designer [Perkins] and got her voicemail and called her again after a
month.”


McBride-Irby’s persistence paid off when Perkins brought her in for
two rounds of interviews. “I had never designed a Barbie fashion in my
life and I had to present it to her at my second interview. It was a red
jumpsuit. They never designed jumpsuits for Barbie so it was really an
out-of-the-box experience,” she recalled.


McBride-Irby credited the red jumpsuit design, her time at fashion
trade school and her dedication to the craft for landing the job as an
assistant designer at Mattel, as well as a mentorship under Perkins.


The scope and breadth of her designs have come a long way since her
early days under Perkins, McBride-Irby said, adding that thankfully she
only has to concern herself with the artistic side of the business at
The One World Doll Project, while her cofounder handles the financial
aspects.


“We always say that we each stay in our own lane and Trent’s lane was
to get funding for the dolls and mine was to get the dolls built and
their sculpting and the fashion. I didn’t have to worry about how to
grow the business and get funding and he didn’t have to worry about the
design,” she explained.


Such delineation allows her to make her own schedule and create
quality time for her husband and their two children, ages 13 and 11.

“You can have it all, you just have to know how to create a balance.
With Mattel it was very difficult and you have to have a support system;
I have my husband and my mom and dad live close,” McBride-Irby said.

“With One World Doll, I am able to work from home and set my own hours …
the kids love me being home. It’s just a balance of support systems and
you create date nights with you and your husband but you need personal
time too.


“I think that women are happier when they are doing what they are
passionate about,” she continued. “I encourage women who have that 9 to 5
to find something on the side and then grow it into the business.”


Source:  Lioness Magazine

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In Case You Missed The Prettie Girls Interview on NewsOne Now

Journalist and NewOne Now's Roland Martin is joined by Ellen Livingston, LCSW-C; Trent T. Daniel, founder of One World Doll Project; and Stacey McBride-Irby, designer of Prettie Girls Dolls

Via Skype from Los Angeles, California, and Houston Texas, respectively, Stacey McBride-Irby and Trent T. Daniel of One World Doll Project were interviewed on Roland Martin’s NewsOne Now show earlier today.  Present during the segment was Ellen Livingston, Licensed Clinical Social Worker, who spoke on the importance of Black dolls in promoting the esteem of Black girls. 

As an obsessed Black-doll enthusiast, not only did I watch and record the segment, I also took still shots and transcribed most of the questions and comments as the show aired.   My transcript is not word-for-word, but comes as close as my flying fingers allowed.  

*****

Prettie Girls Dolls on the set:  Dahlia (Middle Eastern/Indian), Cynthia Bailey Doll (from the collector series), and Kimani (African)

Roland Martin's initial questions and comment:  Can a line of Black dolls boost the self-image of Black girls?  Does it have an impact on how they see themselves later in life?  We will explore that topic on what these dolls actually mean to the images of sisters.

Roland's brief commentary prior to introducing the guests:  For a lot of African Americans, they actually did not have dolls that were made in their image in terms of their hair, in terms of how they looked, and when you talk to women as they got older, they talk about how the beauty or definition of beauty in America was determined by those images, not just what they saw in magazines and television commercials, but also the kinds of dolls they were able to play with.

Today we have a couple of African American entrepreneurs who have gone out to help Black girls embrace their own self images by creating a line of dolls they can relate to.  We also want to expand this beyond that and talk about what this means in terms of the self-image, in terms of the self-esteem of Black girls and eventually Black women.

Martin to Stacey:  Stacey, I want to start with you.  It's no surprise that you are calling these the Prettie Girls, and I would say that I wouldn't be surprised that you chose that.  Because when we talk about Black girls, when we talk about that image, you have folks who grow up who say, 'I never saw myself as pretty' because they didn't see themselves reflected when it came to the dolls they played with.

Stacey McBride-Irby:  Definitely, and I can speak to that because I didn't see fashion dolls that looked like or represented me.  I had baby dolls that looked like me, but not fashion dolls.  Everyone in this world wants to be pretty wherever you come from; race, creed, background, old or young, you want to feel pretty.  So I wanted to create a line of Prettie Girls dolls that represent being pretty not just inside but out.

Dr. Mamie Clark and husband Dr. Kenneth Clark developed and conducted the Doll Test during the 1940s and 1950s to study the psychological effects of segregation on Black children.

Martin mentioned the results of Dr. Kenneth and Mamie Clark's1947 Doll Test where then and even today the children tested (boys and girls) preferred the White doll over the Black doll. 


Stacey commented:  That test always saddens me.  That is why I did want to create dolls because a doll is our first image that we really see and we are able to nurture and play with.  So I wanted to create images for little girls that really change the institution and make them feel good about themselves.

Martin asked Trent:  What is the origin of that particular name? [One World Doll Project]

Trent: When Stacey and I first met and decided that we wanted to do this, we first of all wanted to send a message that it’s not just about Black people or Hispanic people or one group, and I think that's kind of the messaging in our culture that gets lost.  If somebody creates a Black doll, all of a sudden they are a Black doll company, and we're not a Black doll company.  We are actually a company focused on multicultural diversity.  We want our dolls to reflect the melting pot that the United States of America is.  And so that's when we thought about the name of this.  We wanted to make sure we had a name that sent a crystal clear message that it’s about all of us and not just about one particular group.

(Martin reflects on his mother's difficulty finding Black dolls for his sisters, having to buy White dolls in the absence of Black dolls, yet wanting dolls that reflected their image.  He admits things in the doll market are better now than they were then.  Martin then asks Stacey why she left Mattel.)

Stacey:  A little bit of my Mattel history:  I used to play with fashion dolls as a little girl.  I played with White Barbies because that was my fantasy world and I didn't have a doll that represented me.  Fast forward to 2008.  I am a Mattel designer, designing Barbies, and my daughter wasn't playing with dolls.  I realized the time had changed and she didn't see an image of herself in a fashion doll.  So that's when my passion and designer [instincts inspired me] to create an African American line of dolls through Mattel [So in Style Barbie].  They embraced it.  My community embraced it, but I realized that my passion was bigger than Mattel’s marketing plan.  They did not really promote the dolls like I expected them to.  My passion outweighed that.  That's when I decided, I'm bigger than this.  This is a bigger movement.  I need to go out on my own, and that's when I partnered with Trent T. Daniel and we created the Prettie Girls line of dolls. 

Images used in CNN's 2010 Doll Test where results illustrates self-esteem in Black children has not improved much since the Clark's Doll Test of the 1940s.

 A video of CNN's 2010 Doll Test using images of characters that rang from white to black is shown.   Show me the smart child [the Black child points to white character].  Show me the dumb child [points to black character].  Show me the ugly child [points to the black character].  When asked why the negative image was chosen, each time the child said, "Because 'she' black."


Martin to Ellen Livingston, Licensed Clinical Social Worker, regarding CNN's Doll Test:  This really speaks loudly to the self-hatred that Black women and even Black men grow up with in terms of how we look at color, how we look at hair, how we look at all those different things.  We saw it in Bill Duke and Channsin Berry's Dark Girls.  [It's the] same thing, how you have these beautiful brothers and sisters, these beautiful children who grow up thinking they are ugly because beauty has been defined as not looking like this but only looking like someone who's White. 

Ellen Livingston, Licensed Clinical Social Worker

Ellen Livingston:  This speaks from generations before.  When I was growing up, the only Black doll we had was the Julia doll... [from the 1960s TV Show starring Diahann Carroll.]  All of our dolls were White...  As we've come along, and this company that we have here, is wonderful to provide an array of what Blackness and what beauty looks like in all colors.  Because I understand it is not just African American dolls, there are brown dolls of all  different types.  It does affect our children and it does affect them negatively.  

Martin to Livingston:  Do you see it in your work in terms of women who come in and here they are adults, some of them in their 40s and 50s and 60s and they still are bothered by that notion of what is beautiful?

Livingston:  Absolutely.  In my practice I have seen women who have gone to great lengths to either participate in plastic surgery or changing their hair by adding hair extensions and different things to look more like what we consider beauty in America, which is very different from our broader nose, our broader hips, and our kinkier hair and curly hair and what have you, who have gone through great lengths and they don't like themselves, even after they have gone through all of that, because that's not their authentic personality.  That's not who they are really.

Prettie Girls Dahlia (now sold out according to my search for her today)

Martin to Stacey:  When I look at these dolls, I see some with straight and braided hair but also I see a huge Afro...  So clearly you were thinking about all of that in terms of offering different looks.  Because we have a lot of women who really emphasize natural hair versus getting a perm.

Prettie Girls Cynthia Bailey (from the collector line) and Kimani (also sold out, according to day's search)

Stacey:  Definitely.  I did want to put an Afro in our collector line of dolls.  This is actually the Cynthia Bailey Doll, our first collector doll.  I also wanted to add curly hair, straight hair. I wanted to give little girls something they can play with and also see themselves and women in their community.

Martin to Trent:  ..,The reality is, this also impacts us [as men].  It impacts it when it comes to our relationships, when it comes to our our daughters as well as our nieces and their interaction with men and boys.  

Trent:  That's a key point that you brought up, Roland.  It is always about the messaging.  When you walk into our local retail stores, when you see an entire aisle of one race of dolls and this little small sliver of another race, it does send a message.  And that's a message we intend on changing.  But I think a bigger dynamic, Roland, is we also have to understand it's not just a situation where the retail stores don't want to carry Black dolls, and White-owned stores don't have an interest in little Black girls.  There is also a supply problem.  That supply problem comes from the fact that there have been many attempts for businesses to create African American dolls, but when you talk about the financial dynamics of being able to bring a product to the marketplace that a major retail store can put a hundred thousand units in, that becomes a whole other different topic that goes into the Black business community's responsibility to create the supply for the demand because the demand is certainly out there, and in our conversation with many major big box retail stores, they want the product, but it is a matter of their having a problem sometimes finding the product.  That's really what the core of our mission is:  to provide the supply for the demand.

Martin to Ellen:  Do you believe that this line of dolls and others can have a dramatic impact on changing the view of the next generation to understand the different views of beauty and also greatly improve the self-esteem of the next generation.

American Girl dolls Addy and Kaya and Doc McStuffins were also on the set.

Ellen:  I believe it can...  I see the array of the dolls that they have, the different hues, skin tones, and the different hairstyles.  [Martin referred to the dark skinned dolls that Livingston brought:  American Girl Addy and Kaya and a Doc McStuffins doll and pointed out that dolls' shapes and sizes matter.  Ellen agreed. She pointed out that Black dolls representing professionals are important, like Doc McStuffins.]  I think that it is important for the self-esteem not only of our daughters but also of our sons.  Our sons do get impacted by how the women in their world feel about themselves and how they allow the men to treat them.  I think it is very important for our daughters to see these types of images.


Trent shared where the Prettie Girls dolls can be found online:
Oneworlddolls.com
Wayfair.com

Stacey's final comment:  Prettie Girls are beautiful.  You are a "prettie" girl.  We want you to embrace your "prettie" on the inside and out.  

The show ended after Roland patted the Cynthia Bailey Doll's Afro into shape and next asked viewers the question of the day:
Do you buy black toys and products to help boost your child's self-esteem? 

Each caller answered, Yes!

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Stacey McBride-Irby + One World Doll Project!

I am so excited! I was recently informed about former Mattel doll designer, Stacey McBride-Irby's new doll-designing venture.

Well known for the very popular So In Style dolls, Stacey has broadened her horizons further in the doll arena.  She will be designing the Prettie Girls Dolls for THE ONE WORLD DOLL PROJECT.  According to their website:

Stacey joins entrepreneurial success trainer, author and “activational” speaker Trent T. Daniel; Bettie DeBruhl, former public relations senior vice president and general manager of one of the largest ad agencies in the Southwest; Gene Insley, former Mattel™ senior vice president; and Joanne Melton, former banking vice president, in forming a new company that will revolutionize the way mainstream dolls are designed, marketed, and integrated into the fabric of America. THE ONE WORLD DOLL PROJECT promises to make one of the most significant positive cultural impacts on play and in the doll category in recent history.

If you are as excited as I am and desire to learn more about OWDP's Prettie Girls Dolls  and the other dolls and community work they have planned, read more here!

Congratulations, Stacey (and thanks Janice for the heads-up!)

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