The foundation of nesting dolls is widely known and the story of how the hand painted dolls spring into existence has been told numerous times. The hope of this article is to inspire some new artists with the ideas for a few great new products that hopefully they will bring to life. There has been a lot of work that has gone into the developmentof the ideas, let's hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoyed putting them together.



Great television familes would make great doll sets. These are the familes that we all grew up with and hold a great place of nostalgia in our hearts. The Brady Bunch, starting with the kids from smallest to tallest and featuring Alice in addition to Mom and Dad would make a great selling set of nesting dolls. In addition to being a great honor, I think they would fly off the shelves and into living rooms across the globe. The next family to enshrine as a doll set would be the Partridge family. Rueben Kincaid, their business manager, should be included along with my all-time favorite TV mom, Shirley Jones. Beverly Hillbillies is a TV show most of us enjoyed when we were younger and they would make a great set when including Miss Hathaway and the banker.

I would then move to the greatest sports teams of all times. I would include a couple sets of Yankee teams with Babe Ruth, maybe another with the Boston Celtics when they were winning all those championships. Another set would be of the Big Red Machine, since many people in the Midwest would probably love that set and they are my favorite team of all-time. The Pittsburgh Steelers would also make a great doll set, tough guys as dolls kind of catches me off guard, however.

I would also include a hall-of-fame set where you might be able to take any sport and make up dolls of a couple of years of hall-of-fame inductees. I think these would also sell well because a person could do a set for every sport, so there are lots of great groups to select from to start sets. You could even have a set devoted to people who are not in the hall of fame but who should be. Players like Davey Concepcion of the Big Red Machine comes to mind.

I think small groups would be interested in having a doll set commissioned of themselves. While a little pompous, many corporate executive teams are so full of themselves that a doll set might be right in line with their self rewards, particularly after a great year. For a great keepsake idea, I think that many small organizations such as churches, executive teams and even families would enjoy having a doll set made of all of them in a single set. Having fun with someone else's problems may be more fun and enjoy better sales, however. I am thinking that Enron executives and several Wall Street firms doll sets would sell well at the moment, despite all the trouble those firms are currently in.