Brea Woman Embraces Kewpies, Says President Could Use a Doll to Cuddle

Jody Cooper, 40, was talking about her office birthday party when someone asked how old she would like to be. “I said 8, and everyone started to laugh, but I was telling the truth,” she said.

That was about the time that Cooper got her first Kewpie, the wide-eyed, cherub-faced doll that first became widely popular in the 1930s, during the Great Depression.

Kewpies have since became one of her passions and collector’s items to others. Depending on their age and condition, the dolls can bring $75 to $20,000. New ones start at $9.95.

“I wouldn’t sell any of mine,” said Cooper, a bank loan officer who owns 100 of the dolls, which were made in varied sizes and shapes. “I picture my Kewpies as an investment in my own personal portfolio.”

But it’s more than an investment for her: “During a time I was going through a bad period in my life, I would go into the room where I keep my Kewpies, and it was a nice escape.

“It helped relieve the stress. You can’t be mad with one of the dolls looking at you,” said the Brea woman, who repeated the words of Rose O’Neill, creator of the Kewpie in the early 1900s: “The dolls are as full of love as their tummies are round.”

She said Kewpies come in such forms as a miniature, a cranky Uncle Hob from the Kewpie story line and a Kewpie bear that combines a Kewpie with a teddy bear.

According to Cooper, Kewpie mania made O’Neill a millionaire through the marketing of the Kewpie image on greeting cards, paper gifts, label pins, dish sets and sterling silver jewelry.

For years, carnivals gave away plaster of Paris Kewpie dolls as prizes.

O’Neill was married three times but never had children of her own. “Her children were the dolls,” said Cooper, who has two children and is a member of the Huntington beach-based California Rose O’Neill Doll Assn. and was its vice president for years.

“It’s hard to explain what attracts people to the Kewpie,” said Cooper, who was married on the stairs of the White House reproduction in Hobby City in Anaheim, where the association often holds meetings. “For me the dolls are a treasure, because Kewpie stands for happiness, joy and doing good for others.”

And it also provides her with some worthwhile trips.

“We find some of the dolls at garage sales, and once I paid $3 for a Kewpie I found in a little store in Montana,” she said. “It’s worth a few hundred dollars, but finding dolls is the fun of it all.”

Moreover, she added, “Kewpie doll collectors are my favorite people. They are a breed unto themselves, and all seem to have joy in their heart.”

Rightly so. Her mother, Evelyn Taylor of Brea, an avid Kewpie collector, is president of the Long Beach Doll Club and is one of eight members of the select Blue Wingers Kewpie Doll Club.

Cooper said it would be a good idea if the White House in Washington had a Kewpie as a permanent resident. “It would bring a lot of good and happiness there,” she said.

In all her 56 years, Carolyn Neff had never entered a contest, but husband Charles (Bud) Neff persuaded her to try one. “He told me to take the dare,” the Yorba Linda resident said.

It was a good thing, because she ended up winning the national “I Look Great for My Age Contest” sponsored by Oil of Olay, a beauty product she has always used.

Thousands entered the contest by sending in photos. Semifinalists then wrote why they still look good.

“I became a regional winner and then was one of 30 semifinalists, which got me the trip to New York. Then I became one of the five finalists,” said Neff, a retired registered nurse who worked for 10 years at the UC Irvine burn center.

Besides the trip to New York, she also won the choice of a year’s membership in a gym or the cash equivalent. “I still haven’t decided” which to choose, she said.

When she sent her picture, Neff thought she might have a chance.

Now retired from nursing, she works as a photographer’s model.

Acknowledgments--The San Clemente-based National Foundation of Wheelchair Tennis named Gina Jalbert, 13, of Arcadia as winner of the David Shanbrom Memorial Outstanding Wheelchair award and presented the honor to her at the group’s sports camp held at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo. The award is given by the parents of David Shanbrom, an accomplished county athlete who was killed in a traffic accident a year ago at age 27.