The Most Horrible Collectible

SG from Rancho Cucamonga sent me two doll photographs. I thought this a joke from my best friend Eli, who trained as a psychiatrist and knows about my rare phobia called pediophobia. Pediophobia, a type of automatonophobia, in plain English, a fear of humanoid looking figures. As a little girl, I screamed if I opened a present and found a doll in a box. When I received these two ghastly images, on my birthday no less, I screamed first, then thought – Eli is playing one of his practical jokes.

Alas, I still need to learn to separate fantasy from reality, and a doll with a human face terrifies the child part of me. This phobia plays out in “Chucky-style” movies, when an innocent plaything lurching in plain sight turns into a silent but raging killer.

I failed to find pediophobia among the top 10 phobias, which I disclose after assessing the value of these dolls. The photos, sadly not a birthday joke from Eli, came from a real reader. SG found these horrors at a local garage sales and he wrote to ask if he had a million dollars here.

SG, you don’t even have $100 here. In the 1960’s, tourist dolls became hot. People bought such a doll as your little Swiss Mädchen to torment a little girl or as a souvenir. The English label “Swiss Doll” on the front of the casket-like box signals a dead giveaway that your doll came from the tourist market. You did do one thing right; you found the dolls in their original boxes. Without the boxes they’re worth about $10 each.

With the Swiss Mädchen comes another kiss of death – a “Certificate.”  When you see a paper certificate, 99% of the time, that rings of not genuine. For something genuine, you don’t need a certificate, right?

This brings me, reluctantly, to the other doll. She possesses the scariest face I’ve ever witnessed. Looks to me like the “Baby Jane” doll with Betty Davis lips in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. Again, points for finding that thing’s original box, titled “Susan’s Porcelain Dolls,” with a picture of Susan smiling gamely. My database doesn’t find Susan, however. Another kiss of death, the doll’s clothing, a Victorian fright. Good dolls don’t wear polyester, SG.

What tops my pediophobia according to the National Institute of Mental Health:

1. fear of heights
2. Claustrophobia
3. fear of the dark
4. fear of snakes
5. fear of spiders
6. fear of needles
7. fear of thunder and lightning
8. fear of having a disease
9. fear of germs and
10. fear of the number 13

My doll phobia didn’t make it into America’s top 10. SG, send me a snake or spider next year for my birthday photo.

What scholars on doll-haters say

Researchers at the University of Bath in England who study impacts of corporate branding on the adolescent public reported that girls 7-11 years old torture their Barbie dolls. The hate them so much they scalp them, microwave them, pull off their legs and decapitate them. Although my dislike of dolls never reached such heights, Dr. Agnes Nairn from the University of Bath’s School of Management said, “When we asked groups of junior school children about Barbie, the doll provoked rejection, hatred and violence. The meaning of Barbie went beyond an expressed antipathy; actual physical violence and torture towards the doll was repeatedly reported, quite gleefully.” Gleefully, no less.

Finally, I advise SG to keep looking, Eventually he will find an amazing doll. But, SG, send it to some appraiser without pediophobia, Please don’t send the picture to me, especially not on my birthday! I’m scared of birthdays (at my age) almost more than dolls.