Popsi Power

Some dolls have everything--the cars, the clothes, the wedding dresses shaped like lilies.

At the other end of the scale, there’s Popsi, a trashy babe literally born in a dump. Popsi’s soft, rag-doll body belies her plastic origins--10 two-liter Sprite, Shasta and other soda bottles that are recycled to make each doll.

The doll comes with a children’s storybook called “Secrets of the Dump” and is packaged in clear soda bottles. “Popsi teaches children that everything in life can be used--nothing and nobody deserves to be thrown away like they’re worthless,” said doll creator Geraldine McMains, 45, of Newport Beach.

About 25 school districts and recycling programs across the country have bought the doll from McMains’ company, Post-Consumer Products, and Popsi has been written about by the Environmental Media Assn., The Environmental Magazine and Newsweek magazine.

On Monday, McMains’ agent, Richard Ellman of Los Angeles, left for Cannes, France, with a Popsi doll in tow for a video and television festival. Producers from around the world will consider whether Popsi’s humble origins and happy message might make a good cartoon.

“Popsi just causes all kinds of excitement wherever she is because people look at her and say no way can this thing that’s inside this pop bottle, come from soda pop bottles,” Ellman said.

“Her real value is the message that she has to say about keeping the environment safe and clean, but she does it without boring kids to death.”

Sally Pecora, education specialist for the Lorraine County Solid Waste Authority in Ohio, bought Popsi for precisely that reason.

Pecora visits 130 elementary schools every year, and instead of droning on about saving energy, she gives children hands-on props to sell them on recycling.

“Second- and third-graders need to see what you’re talking about,” Pecora said. “When I saw this, I thought it would be the perfect thing.”

Popsi, however, is not just a doll, she’s an educational package. The Popsi program for schools includes samples of plastic flakes made from shredded soda bottles, polyester fibers, charts, diagrams, coloring books, an activity list and a sing-along cassette. Yes, there is a Popsi theme song.

Children learn how the dolls are made from bottles chopped into little flakes and how the flakes are melted and transformed into polyester fabric.

McMains had been fascinated with dolls long before starting her company. As a child growing up in Bellflower, she said, she longed for a doll, but as punishment for doing poorly in school, her parents wouldn’t give her one.

“Later we found out I was dyslexic, but my parents thought I was a bad girl so my brothers and sisters would get dolls and bikes and presents at Christmas, and I got nothing,” she said. “One Christmas I got a shoe box full of potato peelings.”

The shoe box Christmas is memorialized in a photo she keeps in her office. A solemn, blond child stares at the camera while her siblings joyously unwrap their presents.

Before starting Post-Consumer Products, McMains owned an art gallery and an advertising agency. Four years ago, her daughter Rachel, then 15, persuaded her to become an environmental entrepreneur.

The company sells water sippers made from milk jugs to Fox Studios and note pads from recycled money to Warner Bros. Studios, hats and T-shirts from plastic soda bottles to the city of Los Angeles and the LAPD. The first Popsi was completed around Christmas 1996. The doll sells for $29 and can only be ordered through Post-Consumer Products.

“I started this company four years ago, and one thing I’ve found is that no matter what it is you’re selling, just because it’s made from recycled materials doesn’t mean it’s going to have an advantage,” McMains said.

“At first I thought everybody would want to recycle, but the truth is a product has to be the right price and the right color.”