But how do they get into collector hands? I know that a lot of the Kenner prototypes from about 88 are from people within the company that managed to grab stuff when Kenner annouced that it was closing its doors (and some were rescued from dumsters outside the building- can you imagine?)
I don't know much about Mattel's prototypes/samples- how some might have leaked out- but I was just reading the interview with Stefanie Eskander (see below) and it sounds like designers really didn't usually get samples prototypes. Therefore- the people who may still have the samples would probably be the sample makers/seamstresses that made the samples for mattel- or possibly the higher ups who reviewed the sample for final approval. I have no idea who the guy that I bought the prototypes from was- he would only interact with me throgh a third party.
However, he did have some one of a kind and pre-production samples/prototypes, as well as some that had the tags for further revision, and also some dolls that were used in the Toyfair catalog-
So... marketing? Sample makers? All of these people are probably more likely to have been able to keep (illegally) the samples. WOuldn't it be cool if a sample maker from the 80s could re-make one of the prototype dolls? I wish I knew who made Stormy... I guess the problem is that Mattel is a big scary company and these people would all probably be afraid that Mattel would sue.
Stefanie Eskander: We have our own sample-makers at Mattel. Sample-makers are seamstresses who sew the samples we design. Designers don't usually sew their own samples, it's a better use of time & resources for the sample-makers to do it for us. So, I would give the sample-maker color drawings, and probably swatches of fabric, and they would make it exactly as I drew it. Mattel also has their own rooters, who root the doll hair. Since we were working with yarn, it was a bit different, but as I recall, the rooters also sewed the yarn hair for our prototypes. Since we also designed the doll faces, our face design department would paint the doll heads to our specs. Since we were using existing head molds for RB, I didn't need to start from scratch on heads. Our prototypes looked almost exactly like the production dolls. The only thing I can remember that was different, was the holographic glitter label on the belt of the outfit was sticky-back on the sample, and in production, it was sewn on. And as I mentioned before, my original design had white hair. When the prototype was made it had the peach colored hair Sample-makers are very clever in how they construct the dolls, clothing, bodies, etc. Reinforcement is totally normal, sometimes by the time a product gets into production, we have to eliminate some of these quality touches for cost reasons.
