The Cristy Lane doll (1985)

If you're here, it might be because you—like me—wondered what the Cristy Lane doll looked like.

This Cristy Lane doll was introduced in 1985 and sold by mail order. The doll was part of a merchandising blitz that coincided with the 1986 publication of Lane's biography, One Day at a Time, written by her husband/manager, Lee Stoller.

Big-hair energy

In early 1985, Billboard reported:

In March, Stoller will add a new product to the mix: a 14-inch Cristy Lane doll, which will retail, along with an album of her gospel and "positive" hits, for $19.95, plus $3 for shipping. He says he will test market it in "half a dozen" areas to give him the data he needs to buy tv time during the Christmas season.

Lane started out as a regular country singer and performed worldly cheating and divorce songs such as "Slippin' Up Slippin' Around" and "I Just Can't Stay Married to You" before moving into contemporary Christian music, so the reference to "'positive' hits" in the Billboard article indicated that the included album (actually a cassette) would not feature those kinds of songs.

Interestingly, the cassette that came with the doll was titled Simple Little Words and used the same cover as Lane's secular United Artists album of the same name but with a different track list that replaced every song except the title track with religious songs or innocuous songs like "Up on the Housetop" (the Christmas song).

The doll included a "birth certificate" and wore an almost Victorian dress "patterned after the actual garments worn by Cristy." When I read Lane's biography, I saw the ad for the doll in the back pages (reproduced below) and wondered what it looked like, so here it is for anyone else who has a burning curiosity about the Cristy Lane doll.

 

I wonder what the "free gift" was?