Black doll produced in Barberton changed look of US toy industry
“She drinks!” “She wets!” “She cries!” The Sun Rubber Co. of Barberton announced the birth of a baby girl in 1949 that changed the complexion of the U.S. toy industry.
Her name was Amosandra, and she was the first mass-produced rubber doll with black skin. Little girls couldn’t wait to cuddle her in their arms.
The adorable bundle of joy, which sold in the millions, was a promotional product for one of the most popular radio programs in American history, although it’s a series that many people would find objectionable today.
“Amos ’n’ Andy” drew more than 40 million listeners at its peak. Originating in Chicago in 1928, the radio show featured white actors Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll portraying African American characters Amos Jones and Andrew Hogg Brown. The program employed racial stereotyping and exaggerated dialect, and the actors wore blackface when posing for publicity photos.
More than one-third of the nation stayed home at night to listen to the show. It spawned a television series and remained in popular culture well into the 1960s.
Thomas W. Smith Jr., general manager of Sun Rubber, came up with the idea for Amosandra. For years, he said, the company had been bombarded with requests for “a Negro doll made of rubber,” and he wanted to produce toys that appealed to all ethnicities, not just white children.
Smith flew to Hollywood in 1948 to meet with CBS executives as well as Gosden, Correll and their lawyers and business managers. He proposed that Amos Jones and his wife, Ruby, should welcome a baby girl on the comedy show, and that Sun Rubber would celebrate the occasion with a new doll.
Amosandra, whose name was a combination of the show’s title characters, debuted Feb. 20, 1949, on the Sunday night broadcast. Born on Valentine’s Day in Harlem, she was the family’s third child behind Amos Jr. and Arbadella.
“She’s the most beautiful doll baby in all the world,” her father gushed.
A week later, hundreds of thousands of Amosandra dolls arrived on store shelves across the nation. Sun Rubber had invested $100,000 in the product (more than $1 million today) and boosted its employment from 800 to 1,150 to manufacture it.
The baby’s delivery was a big production. Smith had hired a photographer to take dozens of photos of Harlem children and then turned those pictures over to artist Ruth Newton, who had illustrated more than 40 children’s books.
“I get a kick out of my work – just love it,” Newton said during a visit to the Barberton factory. “I never took orders from anybody. It’s more important to be doing what you like than to be making money.
“I can roll off pictures by the hundreds. I have enough ideas to last me a hundred years and I have hundreds of ideas for books.”
Six sculptors molded designs from Newton’s sketches until a model of a smiling, wide-eyed, dimple-cheeked baby was selected. Sun Rubber artist Bernard Mcdermott readied the 10-inch doll for production.
“Amosandra is here!” Sun Rubber announced.
The doll, which retailed for $2.98, peeked out from a cellophane window on a colorful box. It came with a white flannel diaper, nursing bottle, soap and soap dish, teething ring, hot water bottle, bell rattle and a framed birth certificate.
“From her turned up nose to the tip of her toes, this adorable drinking-wetting doll will win her way right into your heart,” Sun Rubber advertised. “She’s completely new, with pudgy little knees and a provocative baby smile that makes her seem real and lifelike.
“She cries for her bottle, drinks from her bottle and wets her diaper just like any young lady of her age. ‘Amosandra’ is molded of beautifully tinted soft rubber – fully joined with a soft rubber, movable head and jointed, movable arms and legs. She’ll never break – is completely safe for the tiniest of tots. See her and you’re bound to love her. She’s irresistible to young and old alike!”
The doll was available for purchase at Akron Dry Goods Co., M. O’neil Co., A. Polsky Co., the Yeager Co. as well as chain stores such as Woolworth’s, Kresge’s, Mccrory’s and Penney’s.
For weeks, Sun produced 12,000 dolls a day to keep up with demand. Amosandra topped many baby boomers’ Christmas wish lists from 1949 to 1952, and was one of the top-selling toys in the Montgomery Ward catalog.
The innocent infant wasn’t immune to the stereotyping of her day. Some advertisers referred to Amosandra as “a cute pickaninny doll,” “a colored per
sonality baby” and a “cunning bundle.” Others, though, proclaimed her “America’s Favorite Baby,” “The Charming New Arrival” and “The Cute Baby of Radio Fame.”
Sales spiked when “Amos ’n’ Andy” moved to CBS television in 1951. The show cast African American actors Alvin Childress and Spencer Williams in the lead roles, but NAACP Executive Secretary Walter White urged the Blatz Brewing Co. to withdraw its sponsorship, calling the program a “gross libel on the Negro and a distortion of the truth.”
“The picturization of Negroes as amoral, semi-literate, lazy, stupid, scheming, and dishonest perpetuates and extends a harmful stereotype which departed with the old-time minstrel show,” White wrote.
CBS canceled the show in 1953, although it continued in reruns until the mid-1960s.
The Amosandra doll, however, earned accolades. Ebony magazine cited the Barberton baby along with Terri Lee Co.’s Patty-jo and Ideal’s Saralee, for being “some of the most beautiful Negro dolls America has ever produced.”
“A transformation has taken place in toyland and new colored dolls with delicate features, lighter skin, and modish clothes are being introduced in the world of childhood fantasy where always before the Negro doll was presented as a ridiculous, calico-garmented, handkerchief-headed servant,” Ebony reported.
Sun Rubber stopped making Amosandra by 1958, and foreign competition drove the company out of the doll business in the 1960s. An Arizona company, Talley Industries, bought Sun in 1969 for more than $6 million, shut down the Barberton factory in 1974 and moved production to Georgia.
Over the decades, Amosandra has become a collectors’ item. In mint condition with the original box and accessories, the doll has sold for more than $500 at auction. Online sites list the toy alone for $200 to $300.
When the doll debuted in 1949, the Beacon Journal published an editorial expressing the hope that Amosandra would have “a constructive influence in the cause of brotherhood.”
“Little children don’t know prejudice,” the editorial noted. “Finding it natural for dark and white dolls to associate together, they may grow up with minds that are more open than their elders.”
Now in their 70s, those children are today’s elders.
Mark J. Price can be reached at mprice@thebeaconjournal.com.