There is an article over on Our Sindy Mueseum about a collector finding three almost untouched prize collections from this competition over the years. (Some people get all the luck!)
Anyway, during my newspaper archive trawl for Sindy snippets, I found a few local news pieces on some of the original winners. Apparently over 100,000 people entered for 600 sets of a Sindy doll, apartment with full range of furniture, beach buggy, horse, and £15 worth of outfits.
The Hinckley Times (21/02/1975) published a small piece on Fiona Campton, aged 9:
Bury Free Press (28/02/1975) reporting on Angela Baxter, then aged 8:
The Ormskirk Advertiser (06/03/1975) on 11-year-old Fiona Johnson:
The article on the Museum suggests that they were trying to shift the old style packaging, which may well be true. Rovex were rapidly expanding their operations at the time - the newspaper trawl also reveals they spent £100,000 on advertising in Australia alone in 1974, for instance. In '75 it was all systems go to push the new ultra flexible Sindy, doubtless inspired by feedback like this from the Daily Record in the run-up to Christmas 1973:
I find it pretty interesting when you contrast that with toy company insistence today that kids prefer static joints for ease of dressing. I guess the age range for doll play has trended down a lot since '73 though, which is a shame. I reckon a company making a decent doll and range of furniture for displaying the huge array of blind bagged minis available could do well with older girls, especially if they got some of the right influencers behind it. Alas, all the latest Toy News mags tell me the big companies are bringing out make-up ranges to try and win back tweenagers instead.
(Which the target age range will have zero interest in, mark my words. It might sell okay in the 5-8 range but that's about it...)
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