A Doll Manufacturer's Conspiracy

A New York toy maker, an obscure doll and a 1960 court case.

My great-aunt Mimi lived in a small house in South Minneapolis with a postage-stamp yard, black-and-white TV, and a couch she called a “davenport.” On the living room wall was a mid-century sunburst clock that would wind every few hours with a sound like firecrackers, especially at night.

She also had vintage dolls she let me play with: Jill, a “teen fashion doll” by Vogue, and Candy, a pudgy pre-teen doll with bendable knees and a mild glower on her face. Aunt Mimi had two of Candy’s outfits: a red-and-white striped dress and a red velvet skating dress trimmed with silver rickrack.

You won’t find many Candy dolls on eBay because the company that made her — Bal Dolls, Inc. — didn’t put any markings on her body. (In Doll World, markings are everything. They tell you who made the doll and how much it might be worth. An American Girl Doll with the original Pleasant Company stamp is worth a lot more than any Mattel version.) But thanks to Aunt Mimi, who saved the little catalogue that came with the doll, we know her name and her manufacturer.

A newspaper ad from 1955 featuring Candy and her many outfits.

We also know the story of the death of Bal Dolls.

Bal Dolls Inc., a New York toy manufacturer

Other than a brief description on dollreference.com, some eBay listings and Records & Briefs New York State Appellate Division, which is available via Google Books, there’s not a ton of easily accessible information about Bal Dolls. Here’s what I’ve pieced together so far: the company was based in New York City with offices in Manhattan and factories in Brooklyn. In the 1940s, Bal made celluloid “self-walking” dolls that came with a lead weight attached so that you could stand the doll on a table and pull the string across it to make the doll “walk.” The dolls came in various costumes; Scottish bagpiper, pirate and Peter Pan are just a few of the examples I’ve come across on eBay, up for auction in their original boxes.

A want ad for Bal Dolls that ran in the Brooklyn Eagle in 1953.

Sometime in the 1940s, the federal government banned the use of celluloid in doll manufacturing because it was highly flammable. In 1942, Ideal pioneered the use of hard plastic for doll making, and other manufacturers followed suit. Vogue’s Ginny, still highly collectible to this day, launched in 1948.

Bal Dolls may have believed that Candy was their answer to Ginny, but history seems to show that she was their path to insolvency.

The facts of the case

In 1955, William Resinol signed a contract to serve as the foreman in the Bal Dolls factory. As a part of his contract, he agreed to lend the company “a number of hair rooting machines at a rate of $50 per month.” Court documents show that Bal Dolls agreed to pay Resinol $100 per week, which would rise to $150 per week when the shipment of merchandise began. Resinol would also receive “additional compensation, which was to be monthly 10 cents per dozen for each dozen rooted heads manufactured and shipped, and 7.5 cents for each dozen costumes manufactured and shipped.”

Resinsol’s contract ended on August 24th, 1956. Bal Dolls owed him commissions on all of the rooted heads and doll clothes he’d shipped, but they didn’t pay. He dragged the company to court, and on May 2nd, 1958, a judge ordered Ball Dolls to pay Resinol $3,560.48, which is almost $40,000 adjusted for inflation.

A conspiracy hatches

But Bal Dolls was determined not to pay William Resinol and entered into an agreement with Valentine Dolls. Bal Dolls approached Harry Lodmer and Ben Wolf from Valentine Dolls, and said that if Valentine agreed to buy all of Bal’s assets, Bal Dolls would pay off its creditors. Representatives from Bal made no mention of Resinol’s lawsuit, which was pending at the time.

On December 16th, 1957, Bal Dolls sold everything, including their lease at 307 McKibben Street in Brooklyn.

A list of the assets Bal Dolls sold to Valentine Dolls, screenshotted from court documents.

Once the deal went through, Bal Dolls claimed they were stripped of their assets and had nothing left for paying creditors. But William Resinol smelled a rat and filed suit against Bal Dolls, naming Lodmer and Wolf from Valentine Dolls as co-conspirators.

On December 15, 1960, a judge agreed that Resinol should get his due, but the defendants from Valentine Dolls filed an appeal. The appellate court ruled that Valentine Dolls owed nothing to Resinol and let them off the hook. Because Bal Dolls no longer existed, Resinol likely never saw a dime.

Plaintiff comes into court with unclean hands and must be denied

Court records show that the defendants claimed that William Resinol had “unclean hands” and that the lower court decision in his favor should be reversed.

“When the plaintiff terminated his employment with Bal Dolls, Inc. on August 24, 1956, he took with him certain hair rooting machines and a quantity of merchandise belonging to the defendant Bal Dolls, Inc.,” said a brief for the defendants-appellants.

The brief went on: “At the time of the taking the plaintiff knew that Bal Dolls was on the verge of insolvency or was actually insolvent. The plaintiff knew that there were many unpaid creditors. The plaintiff not only gave no notice to Bal Dolls, Inc., from whom he was taking the merchandise but he gave no notice to any creditor.”

There’s a slight discrepancy here, as the court documents show that part of Resinol’s contract with Bal Dolls was an agreement to lease hair rooting machines to the company. How could he steal something that was actually his?

Running off with “a quantity of merchandise” is another matter. You have to wonder what he took, considering that the court documents mention “rooted heads” repeatedly but say nothing about doll bodies. Let’s pause for a moment to reflect on the image of a man sneaking out of a factory with a suitcase full of bodyless rubber heads.

Not-So-Sweet Candy?

What role does Candy play in all of this? We don’t know, but two things are clear: 1) she would have been expensive to make with all of those costumes. And 2) she faced stiff competition. There’s still a lot we don’t know about Bal Dolls. For all we know, the company owners were insolvent because they owed money to the mob and their downfall had nothing to do with Candy’s frown.

One thing is certain: Bal Dolls stopped using celluloid and still went up in flames.

Author’s note: Check out my story, Midnight at the Doll Factory, for a fictional version of this story. I’m thinking of rewriting it as a horror story, as things like eyeless doll heads lend themselves to that sort of thing.