Dolls of the Valley

Coffee cups and key chains imprinted with a grandchild’s photo are by now a familiar sight, but Mavis Robertson’s “Loveable Huggable” dolls are something else altogether. With digital imaging equipment and an inventory of retro occupational outfits, Robertson can transform a toddler into a doll-size cuddly clown, a karate black belt or a cowgirl. Or adults can be born again as elaborately dressed totems of themselves--pro bowlers to gourmet chefs to fishermen. All for around $25 and up.

The 15-inch dolls are strangely endearing as they smile out at the shoppers in the holiday bustle at Robertson’s kiosk in the Burbank Media City Center mall. They start with shapeless limbs and featureless ovoid heads. Using a photo or a live video sitting, Robertson’s husband, Bill, scans and screens the subject’s face onto a hood, slipped over the doll’s head and fastened with Velcro. The more extravagant doll costumes allow radical reality adjustment: a wage-slave who reports for work at some monstrous HMO can, as a Loveable Huggable, wear the peaked cap and snowy dress of a heroic Red Cross nurse circa World War I.

The dolls have assuaged loss and loneliness. Robertson recalls a Guatemalan grandparent who had not yet seen his 6-month-old American grandchild, but could still cuddle a doll with the newborn’s face. A traveling salesman packs a pint-sized replica of his wife to keep him company. The couple have made dolls in memory of boys killed by guns, from photos provided by the bereaved.

There is attire, too, for celebrations--communions, graduations, weddings. The groom’s face is slipped onto a doll wearing tux and tails; the bride flashes her presumably radiant smile above a miniature wedding dress. At the wedding, “they put them on the registration table, then move them to the cake table,” Robertson explains. Of course, in the event of a divorce, the dolls might serve other purposes. “A lot of people have them made of their ex and put pins in them,” Robertson says. “But we don’t like to publicize that.”