The two Disney films that I feel most represent my childhood have always been "Aladdin" and Pocahontas." Not only were Colleen and I equipped with a plethora of dolls from these movies, but some of them took on a life of their own. Certain characters that were staples in our dolly play both were from our two favorite movies. Not only that, but we also had oodles of other merchandise from them–school supplies, clothes, figurines, etc. "Pocahontas" just so happened to be the very first movie I ever saw in theaters…well at least, the first I can somewhat remember. Obviously as I was about four years old when "Pocahontas" was released, I don’t have a clear memory of seeing the entire thing for the first time. Rather, I have a grainy recollection of seeing the opening sequence that followed the river and played the credits. However, the large toy and merchandise displays burned themselves into my brain. "Pocahontas" was one of the Disney movies that was massively commercialized, unlike later films such as "Hercules." But beyond the merchandising and the initial release of the film, Pocahontas resonated with me on a deeper level. It was one of the movies that shaped my young self into the animal/nature loving and respecting person that I am today. Pocahontas was a hero in my eyes, and she stood apart from the other Disney leading ladies.
I honestly don’t remember what came first at our house–the VHS of "Pocahontas" or the toys. We had both for pretty much my entire childhood that I can recall. The movie was one of the tapes that was constantly played, probably on a weekly basis. It never got old listening to the enchanting songs that moved my younger self. We never failed to laugh at Meeko’s food grubbing antics. And even though I personally thought John Smith was kind of a tool when I was younger, and I rooted for the "more handsome" Kocoum to win Pocahontas’s heart, I still loved everything about the movie. Colleen and I were both appalled in later years when Disney released a direct to video sequel. Although they were trying to integrate some historical accuracy into the storyline, by having Pocahontas go to England and marry her actual husband, the decision did not sit well with us. Colleen and I were devastated, and could not enjoy any part of the film. In fact we denounced the sequel altogether. Even as grown adults, we refuse to watch or purchase the second movie. This is where our passion for "Pocahontas" differed from our love for "Aladdin." We adored all three of the "Aladdin" films and the cartoon series. In fact, the first movie seemed incomplete without its predecessors.
Early on, Colleen and I grew to have quite the expansive collection of Pocahontas merchandise. I think in part this was due to the fact that we were old enough to both enjoy the toys. Similarly we each had a selection of Aladdin dolls and other trinkets (it helped that Mattel kept cranking out more dolls several years after the first movie was released). Prior to that, Mom and Dad had not bought us much in the way of Disney dolls. I believe we each had a lone "Village" Belle until "Aladdin" and "Pocahontas" dolls entered the world. My most vivid memories of Pocahontas surround the toy sections at stores. There were HUGE cardboard cutouts of the characters, and what felt like dozens of little shelves loaded with dolls and toys. Colleen says that our first dolls were both Pocahontas–we got them on vacation as a treat. I have no memory of this myself, but it makes sense they were our oldest, as I don’t have any recollection of the two looking new. The first doll I can visualize actually picking out from the store was Kocoum. Mom took me into this since closed store (which was later replaced by Wal-Mart, and is now an Ocean State Job Lot). Despite my age, I still was given some form of allowance/reward system. When we were in the store doing some light shopping, Mom let me pick something out from the toy aisle. As I sat in the seat of the shopping cart, Kocoum caught my eyes. He was magnificent, what with his manly claw tattoos and his jet black mohawk. I HAD to get him….despite the fact that there were also Nakoma dolls in sight. I sat in the shopping cart the rest of the trip, eyeballing the back of his package. I made a mental note to myself that I wanted to collect the entire set. I was almost equally enthralled by John Smith, and I knew I needed to get my hands on him too.
The other dolls from the Sun Colors line subsequently followed. Colleen and I got our two Nakoma dolls together. John Smith, I believe, was the last to join the family. I saved up for him, and was a tad older and more responsible when he came home. That’s why he was in the "best" condition of the dolls. Colleen’s fashion packs also fared decently. She had managed to collect all four of the seasonal themed sets over time. While I had turned my attention to the dolls themselves, she was more keen for the outfits. Nothing from our Pocahontas doll collection stayed perfect though. On the contrary, the majority of our early childhood stuff is no longer surviving. The two Pocahontas dolls were decapitated, but after all their kanekalon hair had been dreaded or lost. The Nakoma twins suffered the worst in terms of chew damage. At the time we each had a guinea pig, both whom lived in my bedroom. I was obsessed with Peter and Tina (who was also a boy, but lived under the ruse of being a "girl" to appease Colleen). In those days, Mom made the mistake of leaving me unsupervised with Peter and Tina out of the cage. Granted, I was always as gentle as could be with the rodents themselves. But I enjoyed "pampering" them by letting them feast on whatsoever caught their fancy. Let’s just say Peter and Tina had a taste for plastic. They gnawed ferociously at whatever doll limbs or accessories came near their mouths. Perhaps the Pocahontas stuff was tastier than the standard Barbie items, as they seemed to be devoured the most. Fortunately, despite all the plastic they consumed, Peter and Tina lived to be very old pigs (Tina was six when she passed, Peter was eight).
Due to the extensive guinea pig damage, not much of our childhood Pocahontas stuff could be saved. We actually had to throw out what was left of our pairs of Pocahontas and Nakoma dolls before I was nine years old. However, their outfits and remaining accessories were still intact. Kocoum was one of the most brutalized dolls of the bunch. He had nubs for hands and was missing the better portion of his feet. I had also given him a fabulously unstylish hair cut, after his black kanekalon hair became dreaded. He lost ALL of his things, except one chewed blue arrow and his loincloth. I didn’t even remember what the other items looked like until I saw pictures of them as an adult collector. Despite Kocoum’s mutilated appearance, we could never bring ourselves to part with him. Colleen introduced him as the father figure in our doll games, and gave him a quirky accent that left us in fits of laughter on the basement floor. John Smith was also spared as he was the least affected by the guinea pig carnage (although he still had a chew here and there on his body). Kocoum took on a life of his own, and even to this day, he is the Pocahontas doll from my childhood that I have the fondest memories of. Originally he was married to our 1987 Doctor Barbie, aka Julia. Julia was a shabby secondhand Barbie Colleen had gotten when we were very young. She had a fully tangled head of blonde hair, and was on the incorrect body. Julia became the evil mother and cheated on Kocoum. But his heart was healed when he offered to help a homeless woman…who turned out to be my Gypsy Dancing Esmeralda. The two became our first classic doll couple, and paved the way for later scenarios with other pairs like Water Jewel Magic Aladdin (Leroy), and 2001 Sparkling Jasmine. Without the magic provided via Kocoum, I’m not sure that our later doll games would have been the same. He introduced the idea that a man doll could be more developed…that a guy doll could actually be fun to play with. Prior to that, our guy dolls, such as the shabby All American Ken who came from the Salvation Army, just sat around or played generic boyfriends. Kocoum also continued to impact me in later years. I subconsciously took a shine to other male dolls with mohawks. This explains why some of my all time faves include dolls with similar hairdos, like Deuce Gorgon, Punkz Eitan, and On the Mic Thad!
As we grew to be a bit older, Pocahontas dolls were not produced on the same scale as other Disney movie dolls. I had a chance to get a brand new Pocahontas for the first time in what felt like an eternity, circa 1999. I was Wal-Mart with Dad one afternoon when I stumbled upon a cluster of brand spanking new Disney dolls. All were part of the My Favorite Fairytale line, and were just $13 each. When my gaze met Pocahontas, I knew she was the one I was taking home with me. I’m pretty sure I bought her in part with allowance money, and in part with a few dollar bills we’d found in the parking lot of McDonald’s. It could have only been a week or so earlier when we were leaving McDonald’s and I spotted around $7 in $1 bills on the ground, blowing in the wind. I pointed them out to Dad who had me go inside with him and ask if the money belonged to anyone. When nobody claimed it, Dad said I could keep the cash. I am almost 100% positive that I used that money to pay in part for Poca. Anyways, when I came home and presented Colleen with my goddess like Pocahontas doll, she was less than impressed. While I was enchanted by the ribbons in Poca’s hair and her unique facial screening, Colleen thought she was wearing too much makeup. Either way, Pocahontas became a bit of a leading lady in our games for a while. She was married to Hollywood Hair Ken (who was a jerk to her), and then later to Kocoum. She fared better than my other early childhood dolls…in fact, she’s the only survivor to date (even though she does sport a haircut). I was fortunate enough to find other Sun Colors dolls as a preteen. At a dark, dingy indoor flea market we found Sun Colors Pocahontas, and Nakoma stuffed inside her moldy box. Dad let me get both of them, despite their outrageous prices ($5 for Poca and $8 for Nakoma who turned out to have NONE of her stuff). I made sure to treat them with far more respect and care than I had my previous dolls. Today, they still are part of the family, and are always on my display. And of course there was Shining Braids Pocahontas, the last to join my childhood collection. I got her sometime in 2004, when I was thirteen years old. She was still sealed in her box, along with Matchmaker Magic Mulan, at an indoor flea market. Dad bought me both dolls and I kept them out on display in my bedroom, above my desk, for some time. I never played with Shining Braids, which is probably what preserved her youthfulness!
Flipping through the pages of Margo Rana’s Disney doll book in 2010, reignited my passion for my cartoon based friends. While the thought of collecting dolls again had been tempting, my nineteen year old self scoffed at the idea. But after purchasing the book online and ogling all the Disney dolls I either had at one point or wanted, I caved. Pocahontas was one of my first priorities, as it was a favorite film of mine. Not to mention, the state of my surviving childhood dolls, warranted an upgrade. Sun Colors Pocahontas and Nakoma 2.0 were still like new, but Kocoum and John were on the last leg of life. So I scouted the entire internet in hopes of getting replacements. I found a boxed lot containing Kocoum and Sun Colors Poca on eBay. I was able to purchase them as a late Christmas gift of sorts in early 2011. When the dolls arrived they smelled a bit like cigarettes, but I was ecstatic about having a brand new Kocoum. Opening this doll was a cherished experience. As I removed each item from his package, I was flooded with forgotten memories of my childhood friends early days. Pocahontas stayed boxed for a few days, until Colleen convinced me her stuff would be cool to see out of the package. The doll herself was not nearly as attractive as my flea market rescue–what with wonky hairline and asymmetrical eye placement. It wasn’t all that long later when I tracked down a boxed John Smith on Sears website (the "Peddler’s Marketplace" as it was called). He was very pricey at $40, but I HAD to get him. When John arrived, the world felt right…well at least my Pocahontas display did. Colleen and I held a funeral of sorts for our childhood John and Kocoum dolls. We paid our respects to them and told the boys one last time that we loved them. We in essence thanked them for all the years of fun, before delicately placing them in the garbage bag, for their final journey. There was simply no way to salvage either doll, however, their clothes and remaining accessories are still here in their honor.
Replacing our childhood friends was certainly at the top of our "to do" list back then. But I didn’t want to stop my collection there. No, I wanted to get my hands on all the other Pocahontas dolls featured in the pages of Margo Rana’s book. I had some luck in those days tracking a few faces down. I acquired Braided Beauty Poca at the local flea market, still donning her outfit. Feathers in the Wind Poca turned up, crammed back inside her original box with all her fixings, at an indoor flea market. She was the best find "in the wild" of all my Pocahontas dolls to date. I rescued a battered Color Splash Hair doll from "Dollar Lady" at the local flea market. I had been learning how to boil wash at the time, and I knew I might be able to un-dread Pocahontas’s hair. She was one of the first dolls I bought that I was able to radically transform. It was in part due to this doll that I changed my way of purchasing secondhand dolls. No longer was I concerned about how great the dolls looked upon finding them, but rather I started to see the potential they had. We also had luck acquiring duplicates in bins, like John Smith, my second Braided Beauty, and of course a slew of Sun Colors dolls. Over the years I have amassed a ridiculous number of Sun Colors Pocahontas dolls…they seem to pop up in just about any lot that happens to have 90s Disney dolls. I was excited when I found one in the "Ken Suitcase Lot" of 2016, who resembled our childhood dolls perfectly (shabby appearance and all). These dolls were so mass produced that they were manufactured in a variety of countries, and therefore had many facial variations. Color Splash Hair Nakoma was also an early acquisition. A former friend sent her to me, as she had no need for the "creepy" Nakoma. I still don’t have her outfit, but she is always one of the ladies on display. I recall that glimmer of excitement when we unearthed a River Rowing Pocahontas at an indoor flea market in 2012. She may have been donning Barbie clothes, but her articulated arms were a distinctive feature. Colleen always dreamed of getting that doll as a little girl, so naturally we couldn’t leave her behind. For a long time my collection consisted of only Mattel dolls, but as the years progressed, some diversity entered it. I had my eyes on the Disney Store Pocahontas dolls when I got my first ones back in 2012. But it wasn’t until Colleen purchased me a massive pack of eleven Disney Store dolls in 2013, that I first got a Pocahontas. In 2019, two more joined the family in the "Princess and the Pauper Lot." They are from older generations of Disney Store dolls, and while I would have spurned them in the past, by that time I welcomed them with open arms. Truth be told, they are some of my favorites. Although my Pocahontas collection might not be as widely diverse as some of my other Disney ones, I’m just grateful that there are other options to sample!
As a film Pocahontas resonated with me as a child, but the dolls have also left their mark on my life. I’ll never forget those early years spent sitting out on the stone steps in front of the house with Colleen, watching the leaves appear on our Sun Colors dolls’ ensembles. I still remember it like it was yesterday when Dad built us each a teepee, and Colleen and I sat in the dining room decorating them. I can envision our white cat, Marshmallow, taking naps in Colleen’s teepee on a regular basis. The hours of fun we had making Kocoum the affectionate father of our doll families will likewise always stay with me. Even though many of our early childhood Pocahontas dolls are gone, their memories remain. But the best part is, the legacy lives on. Since delving back into collecting dolls in 2011, I have created so many more memories with them! There are Kocoum’s silly appearances in skits as Dracula’s sidekick and Milo/Quasimodo’s boyfriend, and Pocahontas cast as a crazy hippie. There were all the hours that kept me occupied designing my Pocahontas dolls handmade stands and trying to perfect a painting to display behind them (even though I always seem to fail). The dolls of my adulthood in many ways are just as sentimental as those from my youth. The "replacement" Kocoum, John Smith, and My Favorite Fairytale Pocahontas are cherished even more than their original counterparts. But even when it comes to those "pointless" duplicates, I have a soft spot in my heart for them. Although I could have thrown out another set of Sun Colors Pocahontas and Nakoma dolls from the "Oldie Moldies Bin" of 2019, I refused to give up. It was too heartbreaking to leave them to rot in a landfill when I knew I could easily remove all their mold stains and make them beautiful again. They are now two of my favorites in my collection. My Pocahontas collection is a beautiful blend of old and new dolls, memories from the past and the present….and that’s what makes it mean so much to me!
Posted by A Thousand Splendid Dolls on 2020-04-15 20:23:59
Tagged: , pocahontas dolls , pocahontas collection , my story pocahontas , a thousand splendid dolls , 1995 sun colors pocahontas , 1995 sun colors kocoum , 1995 sun colors john smith , 1995 sun colors nakoma , 1995 braided beauty pocahontas , 1995 river rowing pocahontas , 1995 shining braids pocahontas , 1995 color splash hair nakoma , 1995 color splash hair pocahontas , 1996 feathers in the wind pocahontas , 1999 my favorite fairytale pocahontas , 2008 disney store princess pocahontas , 2000 disney store princess pocahontas , 2013 disney store princess classic film collection pocahontas , 1995 american stories collection american indian barbie , 2003 Swan Lake Enchanted Forest Playset