Migliorati Dolls

Migliorati Bambola Simpaty – My First Big Eyes Doll.

Migliorati – Bambola Simpaty

Company: Migliorati
Doll: Bambola Simpaty
Country: Italy
Year: 1973-1975
Size: 14in

Four different Migliorati Bambola Simpaty Dolls.

Migliorati is an Italian company that makes all types of dolls. My Favourite is the ‘Bambola Simpaty’. It is a big doll and has a plastic body with rubber movable arms, legs and head. There are a number of different types in both girl and boy versions. They all have painted shoes and faces. Their hair can be either rooted nylon or glued on synthetic fur. The colour of hair is usually, blonde, yellow, orange or brown. I have found some of the hair is longer lasting than others. One of my girls when I washed the hair, it disintegrated in my hand, so I decided to re-root it with pink nylon hair.

Before and Afters. I changed the brown haired girl to pink hair and swapped their legs over to have different coloured shoes.

Some have a hole in their right hand which holds a flower or a bucket. There are 4 or 5 different types of painted eyes, some are more complex and some simple. Some have eyelashes and some don’t. I have found that their arms, legs and head are easily detachable which is good for washing and rerooting the hair.

Their clothes are all removable but are often simple or naive looking and often made from a felt like fabric. I made new clothes for my dolls as the original ones were falling apart.

Original clothes of my first Migliorati doll.

These dolls also have their hair glued down at the front under the fringe and at the back. It can be removed but it was painstakingly slow but totally worth it in the end as their hair is so much nicer after the glue is removed.

Glue used to stick the hair down.

Here are a couple of advertising prints extracted from an original period magazine. You can see the original clothes and different types of hair.

Two advertising prints extracted from an original period magazine.
The Migliorati doll mark is a girl symbol holding the initial ‘M’.

Useful Links:

https://dollreference.com/italian-doll-makers.html