Baby, teen, adult and in-between, dolls are basically human — or human-like — figures that are toys for children. Dolls go back for nearly all of human history and are likely one of the oldest toys to ever exist in some form, with archeological evidence of dolls being found as far back as Ancient Egypt, and continue to prevail as one of the most popular toys for children of all ages.
Doll frequently are a symbol for youth and innocence; a child that still plays with dolls is likely not yet knowledgeable to the darker ways of the world. Dolls are also frequently used to show that characters are girly or feminine — dolls often come in pink clothes and have pink accessories, and Pink Means Feminine. So the Tomboy character is likely not going to like dolls and may even wreck or destroy them, as opposed to the Girly Girl who eagerly plays with or collect them — or the Lonely Doll Girl who only has dolls as friends instead of real people.
Dolls often get a bad reputation from more "serious" people who think badly of them or think they're useless toys, under the idea that dolls don't "do anything" (like implied in a
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic) — or if they do, it's not explained outside of being "magic" — and limit the girls they're targeted at to only caring about frivolous things such as fashion, taking care of babies, boys, Slumber Parties, makeovers, housework, and tea parties instead of "interesting" or "smarter" topics like science, math, sports, and technology. They're also considered childish, with older kids thinking they're too cool or old to care about things like dolls and that dolls are toys to grow out of fast; the idea that one still "plays with dolls" over a certain age means you're acting under your real age and should grow up and stop being a Manchild.
However, dolls have their own uses and can spark thoughtful activities and creative play of their own. These include pretend and imaginative play, hair and clothing styling, sewing and crafting (it's much easier to sew for a doll than for a person since they have set body shapes and are less pliable), photography, and much more. And not everyone ages out of dolls and considers them temporary toys; doll collectors range in ages from children to adults and a collector can focus on specific brands, types, or even one specific kind. Several doll brands lean into the Creepy Doll trope, focusing on macabre and strange dolls which are not aimed at the typical little girl audience. Some doll collectors even go beyond just getting and playing with them and highly customize dolls which can mean taking them apart and putting them together again, repainting faces, resculpting bodies, and changing them completely from factory default. (Akin to Sid from Toy Story, but with a lot more artistry.)
Dolls can be sorted into several variations:
- Baby Dolls: Dolls shaped like babies or young children. Many of these dolls focus on the idea of caretaking of infants and young children, with diapers, feeding, cribs, strollers, and the like. These dolls get the worst rap when it comes to dolls being "for little kids" and are considered to have the "shortest" lifespan of playtime. However, there's an interesting use past childhood where realistic baby dolls (such as RealCare Baby) are used for teenagers Egg Sitting; these electronic dolls cry and need "feeding" and care, in an effort to inform the teens how much work a baby actually is before they go out and make one.
- Companion Dolls: Dolls that are intended to be "companions", or friends or playmates to the owner. These—if named characters—are often elementary school child age (6-12), neither adults or teens to look up to or babies to look after. Companions are probably one of the oldest kinds of dolls along with baby dolls, and sometimes are treated like baby dolls in media. These historically were in the form of homemade cloth or "rag" dolls; one of the most well known "branded" rag dolls is Raggedy Ann, with the other highly known rag doll being Amish dolls (well known for having no faces. Manufactured companion dolls vary, but are frequently of 18" height; this is because one of the most well known brands is American Girl which launched in 1986 and sparked many other companies to follow their design and sizing—though there were, as stated, companion dolls long before their style came along.
- Fashion Dolls: Dolls intended to be dressed up in various fashionable outfits as play. Generally these dolls have characters in the range of teen to adult, with a plethora of dolls in the late 2010s and 2020s being focused on High School aged characters. The idea is to buy a few dolls and then lots and lots of clothes for them — or buy multiple dolls in various fashions to mix and match among them. Barbie is the most famous line of these dolls, having launched in 1959 and remaining some degree of popular ever since, setting the standard for fashion dolls. Many doll collectors focus on these since they're considered less childish and fleeting than baby dolls, with more to "do" with such as style hair, change clothes, and customize.
- Ball-Jointed Dolls: Dolls (of varying sizes) that have ball joints in the limbs and bodies, held together internally with strung elastic cord (much like dolls were in the late 19th and early 20th century). Abbreviated to BJD by collectors. The looser style of joints allow for varied and more complex poseability. Many of these are designed in East Asian countries and have Animesque features, but Western style dolls may also be ball-jointed. They're also exceptionally customizable, with many dolls being purchased blank, nude, or as separate body and head parts; the blank canvas is to allow the owners to paint and design the look themselves, making them one of a kind. Ball-joint dolls are one of the more expensive style of dolls due to the complex joints, small level manufacturing, and often being made of higher quality resin (though some brands are lesser plastics and may have internal PVC skeletons or permanently connected joints). Many fashion dolls starting in the 2000s added multiple joints in the limbs and body similar to ball-jointed dolls, though most of the time they aren't strung with elastic cord like the larger PVC skeleton ones and the joints are snapped or molded together.
- Figurines and Display Dolls: Dolls that are less for play and more for display. A lot of porcelain dolls fall into this category. This also includes dolls for dollhouses, which can be played with but rarely change clothes and are intended to be the residents of the doll house they're made for.
There's also variations such as marionettes (dolls as puppets), bed dolls—a fashion of the 1930s—paper dolls (flat dolls with paper clothes to dress up in) anthropomorphic dolls (dolls that are Funny Animals) and many more. Lots of media about dolls—or some that have them as a character's prop—will create the dolls as The Merch.
Compare My Little Pony, which are toy horses, and Teddy Bears, which are their own category. Notably, humanoid figures aimed at boys and/or adults (such as Figma or G.I. Joe) prefer to be called "action figures" or "figurines", lest they end up in the toy equivalent of the Girl-Show Ghetto. Voodoo Dolls are a completely different type of doll altogether. Also not to be confused with the following:
- A 1987 horror film.
- A 2002 Japanese art film.
- A 2012 short story.
- A 1995 manga anthology about living dolls.
- A 2005 josei manga.
Please Note: Tropes that apply to dolls should be listed on Dolls and Puppets Tropes or Toy Tropes. This is intended to be an index of doll brands and media that focus on dolls or have a prominent doll character. Just having a doll being carried around by someone else (or as a motivation for character actions but the doll not being a character of their own) doesn't count. If you could replace the motivating doll with a lamp, toy truck, or a shoe, it's not doll media.
Media listed here needs to have dolls either be the foundation of the brand or episode, have major characters that are dolls, or the doll aspect needs to be just as prominent as other media that's related to it or has taken it over so that the dolls are more well known than the original media. So Child's Play counts (as the franchise is based on a murderous doll), but not Disney Princess (who, while many dolls have been released, is not a franchise based on dolls).
Media properties that have dolls released as part of The Merch aren't part of this index either, or we could list practically every media ever made.
Doll-Focused Manufacturers:
Outside of the large toy manufacturers Mattel and Hasbro, these brands are known for their various doll-lines:
- Madame Alexander
- MGA Entertainment
- Tonner — released high-end character dolls for multiple franchises, as well as their own lines of Tyler Wentworth, Kitty Collier, Antoinette, and Ellowyne Wilde.
- VOLKS — manufacturer of high-end ball joint dolls, and arguably the Trope Codifier of the modern day BJD.
Doll-Focused Brands and Lines:
- American Girl: The Genre Turning Point for companion dolls, launching in 1986 to focus on American History.
- WellieWishers: A spin off of American Girl aimed at early elementary school children.
- Barbie: The most well known doll brand worldwide, launching in 1959.
- My Scene, a teen spin off of Barbie.
- Bratz: The girls with a passion for fashion, these were one of the most competitive dolls to Barbie in the early 2000s.
- Cabbage Patch Kids
- DC Super Hero Girls
- Disney ILY: Disney's foray into 18" Companion and 11.5" Fashion dolls, the dolls are examples of "Disneybounding"—the act of dressing up in casual clothes to evoke the idea of a character without directly cosplaying them.
- Diva Starz
- Dream Ella
- Enchantimals
- Ever After High
- Frame Arms Girls
- Hairdorables
- Jem
- Lady Lovely Locks
- Lalaloopsy
- Licca-chan
- Little Apple Dolls
- Living Dead Dolls
- L.O.L. Surprise! (and its spinoffs OMG and LOL Tweens)
- Lottie
- Magic Attic Club
- Maplelea Girls
- Mermaze Mermaidz
- Milky Way and the Galaxy Girls — while never a mainline brand, these characters were designed to be dolls.
- Monster High
- Moxie Teenz
- My Buddy
- My Friend Cayla
- My Pretty Mermaids
- Novi Stars
- Peppermint Rose
- Pinkie Cooper and the Jet Set Pets
- Polly Pocket
- Rainbow High
- Stardust Classics
- Star Fairies
- Teen Trends
- Troll Dolls
- Ugly Dolls
Franchises and Media that are focused on or star dolls as characters:
- Angelic Layer: A battle anime with dolls as the fighters.
- Busou Shinki: Stars doll-sized Robot Girls as the main characters.
- Dolls (1995): A shojo manga of various interdependent shorts that all revolve around a set of living dolls.
- Frame Arms Girls: Focuses on the dolls of the titular doll line.
- Rozen Maiden: Focuses on seven magical dolls and their master, who fight in a battle royale called the Alice Game.
- The Dolls of New Albion: The Mad Scientist Annabelle McAlistair develops a method to bring people back to life by sealing their souls into lifeless dolls, and bringing back her first love Jasper who had previously died. After her death, her son Edgar turns it into a business, resulting in hundreds of these dolls being created.
- Betsy McCall, a mascot of the McCall pattern company, was initially released as a promotional paper doll in the 1950s that came in magazines with her outfits based on patterns for girls' clothing. A physical doll was released in the 1950s with patterns to make doll clothes; there was a later revival by the Tonner company.
- Dolltopia: A comic book focused on a doll who wants to be more than one.
- The Secret Life of Dolls is a fan fiction of dolls representing the characters they're based on and their exasperated owner, Cleolinda.
- Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure stars Raggedy Ann and her brother Andy, two rag dolls.
- The Toy Story franchise includes multiple kinds of dolls as major and minor characters such as Woody, Jessie, and Dolly. Toy Story 4 additionally focuses on Gabby Gabby, a 1950's era talking doll who no longer has a voicebox.
- Air Doll stars an inflatable sex doll that suddenly becomes sentient.
- Annabelle stars a Creepy Doll possessed by a malevolent specter.
- Barbie: The main character, Stereotypical Barbie, lives in a world of living dolls and has to cross over to the human world to find out what's recently wrong with her.
- The franchise Child's Play focuses on the evil possessed doll Chucky—who was based on the My Buddy line of dolls.
- The Christmas Toy has among its main characters Apple the Doll, who is trying to explain to Rugby Tiger that he won't be under the tree a second year.
- The Doll (2017): A Mongolian horror film about a Creepy Doll who grants wishes with blood sacrifice.
- M3GAN: The titular M3gan is a doll-like robot designed to be a child's greatest companion and protector. Things go wrong because this is a horror film.
- The Doll People: Focused on the lives of two dollhouse families and the adventures of the two girl dolls in each family, Annabelle Doll and Tiffany Funcraft.
- Girls of Many Lands: The line launched with display-style dolls to accompany the books, showing the characters as they appeared on the cover.
- Hitty, Her First Hundred Years is a memoir of a peg companion doll who was created in the 1800s and follows her through her various adventures and travels.
- The Lonely Doll: A series of picture books about a doll, with the images consisting of photographs of a doll and her two teddy bears companions.
- Mary Frances: The second book, The Mary Frances Sewing Book, focuses on teaching young girls to sew by making a wardrobe for a doll—in book, it's for Mary Frances's doll Mary Marie, who is a prominent character. There was even a mail order option for readers to send off to get a physical doll of their own. The 100th anniversary version of the book resized the patterns to fit 18" dolls (as the original book was sized for 16" jointed dolls of the era).
- Raggedy Ann: Started as a book series, but branched out to physical dolls and is one of the most iconic styles of rag doll.
- The Story Of Holly And Ivy: The Holly of the title is a Christmas-themed doll who wants to be purchased and loved by a little girl in time for the holiday.
- The Big Comfy Couch has Molly, Loonette's best friend, who is a living clown doll.
- The Secret Life of Toys (a spin off of The Christmas Toy) replaces Apple with Raisin, who is more of a rag doll style of doll.
- The Twilight Zone (1959): In "Living Doll", Annabelle Streator buys her daughter Christie a Talky Tina doll (a Bland-Name Product of Chatty Cathy dolls, even using the same voice actress). After stepfather Erich reacts poorly to the purchase, he starts hearing Talky Tina expressing hatred for him and appearing to have it out for him.
- Dollhouse (RPG Maker): The game revolves around the titular Creepy Dollhouse shop, with Marionette Master Antoinette and her living dolls serving as the child-kidnapping antagonists of the game.
- Poppy Playtime: Set in an abandoned toy facility, the titular character is a childlike technologically sophisticated doll named Poppy Playtime.
- Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse: Focused on the titular Barbie and those around her; notable from other Barbie media as it has the characters acknowledging they're dolls instead of characters.
- Holly Hobbie and Friends started out as a greeting card character, but was popularized as a series of rag dolls in the 1970s.
- Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy, a 1940 short animated film, tells the story of how two characters came to be. Notably this one deviates from most depictions by making Ann and Andy have a romantic relationship instead of being brother and sister.
- Rainbow Brite: Dolls were a heavy part of the brand marketing in the 1980s and have been rereleased over the decades where the animation hasn't.
- The Raggy Dolls focuses on imperfect dolls tossed out at a toy factory who have come to life and have adventures together.
- Strawberry Shortcake: From early on as a media, the line released dolls based on the characters during most versions, with the first ones being in the 1980s.
