Angela’s Collection – Influential Dolls – Classics Aurora

So sorry for the long delay between posts! We’ve been in the middle of the move Bay talked about in her interruption to Kate’s message. On that note, here’s part two of my most influential dolls series – Disney Classic Sleeping Beauty Aurora doll circa 1990.

Aurora influenced my collection in a big way. She was a hand me down from my favorite cousin when I was about six years old, along with a few other 12 inch Barbie-size dolls. Aurora was my first Disney Princess doll (prior to my Mermaid Princess Ariel doll) and although she came to me with only the blue bodice and the pink side of her skirt shredded by its own velcro, I loved her to pieces…literally.
Mind you, because of the pink bit of her skirt being shredded and the pink bodice missing, I sort of assumed she was Cinderella with her torn pink dress after the stepsisters got at it and never realized it was Aurora with her dress the way the fairies kept color changing it on her. But that’s beside the point completely.
When I was about nine years old, Aurora’s head came off. Both of the plastic tabs on her neck peg that ought to have kept it on had weakened and her head just came off in the middle of play. At the time, not knowing any better, I asked my Dad to crazy glue her head back on. I was perfectly fine with knowing her head would never move again if it were glued, I just wanted my doll fixed so she could rejoin my game.
Aurora lived out her days in a shoebox bed with a soft baby blanket mattress on my “dollhouse” shelf before she mysteriously went missing one day shortly after swapping bedrooms with my Dad. I get the feeling she wound up in the basement just before the flood and probably got tossed in the process without anyone realizing.
That said, the doll in the photo is clearly not my childhood original doll. She’s a replacement I recently purchased after I found my Hot Skatin’ Barbie replacement. She was one of my most wanted childhood dolls to bring back into the collection.Why was she influential to my collection, you ask? A few of the same reasons as Hot Skatin’ Barbie – She was among those that inspired me in more recent years to learn how to repair dolls and restore them to their former glory.
But she was also influential because she was my first Disney doll, my gateway into a world of fashion dolls beyond Barbie and friends. And she was a gateway for my imagination, she allowed me to play out the fairytales that I could spin in my mind before I learned to write them down as stories for others to read.

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