In my formative years of being a songwriter, the Captain and Tenille covered the AM radio landscape thicker than astroturf. Even their bulldog, Elizabeth, was part of the act that made wearing a dorky captain’s hat and walking around with a bowl haircut that looked like it had marshmallows stuffed in the curled under ends fashionable. But for whatever can be said about their ultra bubblegum, cringingly cute look, Captain and Tenille made equally as cute yet great Pop records like “Love Will Keep Us Together”, 1975 Record Of The Year, and the evermore schmaltzy “Muscrat Love”, a song with a great melody whose arrangement featured scrunched-up-rat’s-nose synthesized rodent sounds.
This Toni Tennille doll is a “fully poseable fashion doll” that’s 12-1/4 inches tall and features “cut out accessories”, which means you have to cut out cardboard shapes of Elizabeth the bulldog’s bones and bowls and then play with them flat on the table.
Ms. Tenille was made in 1977 by C&T’s own Moonlight and Magnolia, Inc. in association with Mego Corp, maker of some of the most popular and cheesiest dolls of the 1970s as evidenced on the back of the box where photos of other dolls in their TV Starz series feature Tenille’s identical face.
Kathy Cunningham
Is it me, or the impending Thanksgiving holiday but I always powder the bird’s legs. It helps with stuffing the dressing, too!
Then, stringing to keep it together.
Always a hit!
Deli
Allee… BLESS YOU for your Kitsch-o-the-Day and stuff like this!!!
I did get a laugh from the directive to ‘spread a little talcum powder on her legs’…
Lonely Night (Angel Face)was also a fun song
http://www.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=8573
And ‘The Captain’ was really quite a sport as you can see in this video (not to mention Toni singing to her ‘little man’).
You and your Kitsch-o-the-day are always a happy juicy light to my day!
HOWIE PYRO
now THAT is creepy! you wrote 1997 instead of 1977 in there by the way…
Allee
I, too, think that the talcum powder on Toni’s feet is the best part of the whole thing. And, Howie, thanks for pointing out the date typo.
Uma
I love this doll!
Oscar
Hello Allee,
Happy New Year! I found your website years ago and I’ve been enjoying it tremendously! I saw this post for the Captain & Tennile dolls and I agree, they are a strange pair to be commemorated in doll form but the strangest this about this particular doll is the fact that she has no ears! For whatever odd reason, Toni was sculpted without ears on the sides of her head. Maybe they thought kids wouldn’t ever restyle her hair or even take it out of the package. It’s true!
Allee
I never noticed the lack of ears. Now I love Ms. Toni even more! Happy New Year to you too. Also want to make sure you’ve checked out awmok.com where the lack of ears is surely to be spotted on lots of kitschy stuff!