Dawn dolls are small fashion doll

Fashion doll

Fashion dolls are dolls primarily designed to be dressed to reflect fashion trends. They are manufactured both as toys for children to play with and as collectibles for adult collectors. The dolls are usually modeled after teen girls or adult women, though child, male, and even some non-human...

s that were made by Topper

Deluxe Reading

Deluxe Reading was a toy manufacturer based in Elizabethtown, New Jersey USA which produced toys under several names including: Deluxe Topper, Deluxe Toy Creations, Reading Deluxe, Topper Corp., Topper Toy Group, and Topper Toys...

 between 1970 and 1973. The dolls were smaller than Barbie

Barbie

Barbie is a fashion doll manufactured by the American toy-company Mattel, Inc. and launched in March 1959. American businesswoman Ruth Handler is credited with the creation of the doll using a German doll called Bild Lilli as her inspiration....

 dolls, slightly over 6" in height.

The dolls were popular (they topped sales of Barbie for a while), but the company that manufactured them, Topper, went out of business in 1973. They were reissued in the late 1990s to 2003 by Checkerboard. Mattel's Rockflowers, produced in 1971, were in direct competition with Dawn. In England, Palitoy

Palitoy

Palitoy was the name of a British toy company.It manufactured some of the most popular toys in Britain, some original items and others under licence...

 had a doll of similar size known as Pippa.

Characteristics

The basic Dawn dolls were made of vinyl, were jointed at the necks, hips, and shoulders, with their knees being able to bend with a bending mechanism. The waists also twisted for posing. The dolls had painted eyes and rooted eyelashes.

Special types of dolls included "Dancing" dolls (where you moved the arm and the doll "danced"), "Head to Toe" dolls which featured short hair and three wigs (possibly inspired by the Crissy Doll

Crissy Doll

Crissy is an American fashion doll with a feature to adjust the length of its hair. Crissy was created in the Ideal Toy Corporation's prototype department in 1968. She has auburn hair and is 18 inch tall...

), and "Majorette" dolls which spun a small glow-in-the-dark baton. Another, rarer, type of Dawn dolls were the "Flower Fantasy" dolls, which had the dolls standing in the middle of a plastic flower pot.

Friends

Dawn, like Barbie, was the main doll of the line. Dawn's friends included Angie, Dale, Glori, Fancy Feet, Jessica, Kip, Connie and Longlocks. There were four boy dolls as well: Gary, Van, Kevin and Ron. Dawn also had friends who modelled

Model (person)

A model , sometimes called a mannequin, is a person who is employed to display, advertise and promote commercial products or to serve as a subject of works of art....

 for a modeling agency: Daphne, Dinah, Denise, Maureen and Melanie.

Items

Cars, purses

Handbag

A handbag, or purse in American English, is a handled medium-to-large bag that is often fashionably designed, typically used by women, to hold personal items such as wallet/coins, keys, cosmetics, a hairbrush, pepper spray, cigarettes, mobile phone etc....

, cases, and special clothes were all made for Dawn dolls. They also had a fashion show stage, a sofa phone, a beauty pageant stage, beauty parlor, dance stage, and an apartment.