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The Best Dollhouse Furniture EVER

So I have this thing for dollhouses. I have since I was a kid. It’s probably powered by the same set of impulses that made me a writer: obsession with detail, a love for imagining other lives, and a frank and unrepentant lust for power.

chicken

You will feed a chicken an entire stick of butter.   JUST BECAUSE I SAID SO.

I’d spend hours in the basement with the dollhouse my mom made me, constructing and reconstructing a plausible household layout for an unseen family. Laying out and taking away the tiny plates and silverware, arranging magazines and champagne glasses and empty pill bottles on the coffee table so the living room looked credibly lived-in. It was like that creepy Ray Bradbury story where the futuristic house keeps on humming after the whole family drops dead. I had a bunch of different dolls, but I hardly ever used them. Because they were made of plastic and pipe cleaners and had painted-on hair and giant wooden beads for heads, and all of them spoiled the illusion.

dolls

Sit your asses down.

In the late 70s/early 80s, there lived a group of toy geniuses with a secret superpower: gazing directly into the hearts of weird and nerdy children like me. This coven of masterminds worked for Tomy, the company behind the MOST FANTASTIC DOLLHOUSE FURNITURE EVER TO EXIST. They called the furniture (and the rad dollhouse that went with it) Smaller Homes and Gardens, which paralleled the grownup Better Homes and Gardens and was incontestable proof that they got what kids like me were after: 1:16-scale replicas of the real thing, the more detailed the better.

Look at the kitchen Tomy made us. This was a gift, the likes of which have not been mass-produced since. First of all, every single one of the drawers and doors opened, because Tomy understood that nothing chaps a budding miniaturist’s ass more than a drawer front that’s just for show.

drawers

Next: tiny fake woodgrain countertops, remarkably similar to big fake woodgrain countertops.

wood grain

This stovetop, complete with finely detailed burners and five miniscule control knobs, looks ready for a simmering pot of Hamburger Helper (or some celebratory Rice-A-Roni, if you brought home an A on that shoebox diorama):

stove

 

Some heroic smartypants installed an ice maker in the refrigerator door, because the ice maker is the coolest part of any refrigerator. . .

fridge exterior

. . .and inside the fridge is a thrilling little assemblage of drawers, compartments, and bins, all in a zippy retro robin’s-egg blue. My favorite is the egg holder. (Yes, I made tiny clay eggs that fit inside. What?)

fridge interior

There’s more, like the vents above the stovetop and the silver faucet that really pivots. But the star attraction here is the dishwasher, and I’m not just talking about the black-and-silver frontpiece that looks so much like my parents’ old dishwasher that I can practically smell the Cascade. I’m talking about this:

baskets

Baskets, people.

removable

REMOVABLE baskets.

I loved this kitchen. It is literally what I assumed my adult kitchen would look like; to this day, I’m sometimes slightly disappointed that my cabinets are white beadboard and not sun-yellow plastic. Along with the rest of my dollhouse, the Tomy kitchen helped me piece together fictions and envision adulthood. And also it was comforting, because I knew that if my worst fear came to pass and I inhaled an experimental perfume that turned me into the Incredible Shrinking Woman like in that petrifying horror film disguised as a family comedy, I would live out my last days in 1:16-scale comfort before dwindling to the size of an atom and blipping out of existence.

shrinking woman

Who else remembers when she WENT DOWN THE GARBAGE DISPOSAL.

Did you have a dollhouse as a kid? What was your favorite piece of furniture? If you weren’t a dollhouse-having type, tell me about another toy that helped you practice for grownupland, and still gives you a little thrill when you pick it up today. (Links to old toy commercials with quaint FX and depressing gender messages are strongly encouraged.)

 

This Post Has 6 Comments
  1. I see your creepy, and raise you one rabbit pelt purchased at a roadside souvenir stand in rural Arizona. I was obsessed with it (and was at the time, well ensconced in my “I have to have a cat, I will die if I don’t have a cat, why don’t you love me and buy me a cat!?” phase, so it served as a semi-suitable replacement).

    I carried it everywhere with me, pretended that it talked, wrapped it in swaddling, and even slept with it while sucking my thumb (the GERMS!). I named it Pelt. (I wasn’t very original.)

    One day while my brother and I were playing under some ancient pine trees it began to rain. We scattered and made for the dry confines of home, and Pelt was left behind. Predictably, Pelt suffered the fate of disintegration while laying in the rain. My parents promised to buy me a new one, but didn’t. However, the following summer (when I stopped sucking my thumb) I got Steiner and George—the best cats ever—and promptly forgot about Pelt until now.

    Ahh, childhood.

  2. I used to build space stations out of Lego and then conduct giant space operas with the aforementioned space stations, some Barbies, model horses, and random Ghostbusters. It sounds epic but mostly consisted of bullying my little brothers into playing goons so that my friends and I could throw them in jail and save the day. And when I moved my room down to the basement, I made my parents install mint green carpet and painted clouds on the walls so that the horses would have a “pasture”.

    I also saved up and purchased both a Skip-It http://youtu.be/-8B0PfV2R0I
    AND a Pogo Ball. http://youtu.be/tgYzHV7Ftqc

    I’m actually still kind of nostalgic for the mint green carpet.

    1. I remember Pogo Balls! Totally cracking up at the commercial, especially the part where the kid bursts through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man.

  3. That truly IS the most fantastic kitchen EVER. So jealous! I had a dollhouse that one of my older cousins passed down to me, made by my much loved and adored uncle who was a carpenter, which was amazing. It was a four level house, including the attic, which had an elevator (no clue what prompted him to put that in there) and a garage with a lift up door. My friends and I were in love with that house. It was a monster. Your kitchen is much, much better than mine was though!

    Sadly, my parents stored it in their shed after I left for college. It took up a LOT of space in the back room so I can’t really blame them for moving it, though the repressed little girl in me still holds a grudge. There was an infestation of termites at some point and it was demolished. *wipes away a tear* That was one that should have been passed down to another appreciative little girl.

    1. That house sounds awesome. Dollhouses that are handcrafted — as in, not from a kit — are the very best. I have one in my living room that I rescued from a Goodwill about seven years ago; you can tell it was built in the 70s just from the wallpaper and the retro diamond-shaped windows carved in the front and side doors (which, adorably, are painted mustard yellow).

      Your uncle was a genius to put an elevator in your dollhouse. I used to make my own houses and shops out of cardboard boxes and spent umpteen hours in my parents’ basement trying to figure out how to make elevators that worked. I think I even tried to put one in the cafe (which was painted Pepto-pink and called “Le Cafe”).

  4. I still own the whole complete collection including the family, tapestries, plants, chess game, forks, spoons… have to look for them at my moms house. These pictures truly made me melancholic

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