GREAT ESCAPES FAR FROM THE MADDENING CROWD : ANAHEIM : Doll & Toy Museum for Young at Heart

Mothers bring their young daughters to the Doll & Toy Museum to show them the ponytailed Barbies they played with when they were little girls. Back before Mattel came out with knee-bending, hip-swiveling, disco-dancing doctor dolls, the children learn that Barbie once wore a poodle skirt and went on goose-stepping dream dates with Ken.

Men, on the other hand, have been known to pay their dollar admission just to sit on the floor and point out to their sons the “real” GI Joes.

There are hundreds of childhood memories lining the shelves and handmade display cases of this quaint little paean to innocence that is tucked like a good-night prayer into the back of Hobby City’s six-acre lot in Anaheim. There are Kewpie Dolls, Gerber Babies, Madame Alexander Dolls, Campbell Soup kids and classic Ginny dolls, in addition to a huge case full of one of nearly every style of Barbie, Ken, Allan, Midge, Skipper and Scooter made between 1959 and 1970--modeling all but about 10 of the fashion outfits the dolls wore during those same years.

The museum also makes whimsical nods to the playful penchants of earlier eras and far-flung cultures that include 3,000- to 4,000-year-old Egyptian dolls, Indonesian shadow puppets, Haitian Voodoo dolls and a scale model of the Japanese Imperial Palace with finely detailed dolls resembling the Meiji royal family and its court that was actually displayed at the Japan Expo in 1896.

Bea DeArmond is the 76-year-old founder of the 34-year-old complex, proprietor of the doll museum and matriarch of the three generations of DeArmonds who operate about a third of the arts and crafts, hobby and antique shops in Hobby City. She especially loves to watch the children who get down on their hands and knees and crawl past some of the floor-level displays full of pint-size film stars, commercial characters, and locomotive legends.

DeArmond and her late husband, Jay, opened Hobby City in 1955 on what was once a chicken ranch. It has since grown to encompass more than 20 individually owned business on six acres. The present museum, a half-size replica of the 1917 White House, opened in 1979.