Howdy Doody Ventriloquist Doll

howdy-doody

Howdy Doody was an iconic figure in the late 1940’s into the early 1950’s. We baby boomers grew up watching Howdy and we were all part of the “Peanut Gallery”. Now Howdy was a marionette and the show was done live with all the great marionettes and of course Buffalo Bob.

The popularity of Howdy of course went into main stream advertising and all kids wanted a Howdy Doody of their own. They were produced as true marionettes and were made of composition. The entire cast of characters were available for purchase.

The Ideal Toy Co. was granted the right to produce Howdy Doody as a ventriloquist figure and they were made with sleepy eyes. If you laid the doll down the weighted eyes would close. The mouth moved by way of a string out the back of the neck. These are very cool figures and came in 2 sizes. One is 20″ tall and one came 26″ tall..

Original issue the dolls had cloth hands and cloth boots. The later version had rubber hands and slip on cowboy boots.

These Howdy Doody vent figures are very collectible today.

Dan
www.ventriloquistcentral.com

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Ventriloquist Central is the brainchild of Dan Willinger and Steve Hurst. Dan is a ventriloquism enthusiast and ventriloquist figure collector. He has been collecting for over 25 years. He created the Ventriloquist Central Collection. It now has over 100 ventriloquist figures and over 50 of them are Frank Marshall figures. Steve is a ventriloquist as well as builder of ventriloquist figures. He also has a background in sales, marketing, building websites and computers. Because they both love the art of ventriloquism, the website Ventriloquist Central was born. For more information about the website, go to: http://www.ventriloquistcentral.com

Copyright 2013 by Dan Willinger and Steve Hurst

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2 Responses to Howdy Doody Ventriloquist Doll

  1. bob abdou says:

    nice photo of the puppet with the scarf, that was the first to get lose since it was not attached directly on the puppet. I love collecting Howdy, they reissued these dolls some years ago, but the one’s from the 50’s are the real gems.

  2. Ashley Van Vurst says:

    Do both of the eyes close at one time or one at a time like one eye closes and the other one stays open

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