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| The Evolution of Dress Up Games: From Paper Dolls to Picrew |
Dress up games have come a long way; from carefully cut paper tabs to infinite scrolls of pastel avatars. What started as a quiet, analog hobby became one of the most creative genres in casual gaming, especially for girls, artistic teens, and niche communities. Here’s how it all unfolded:
Antiquity - Dolls in Ancient Times & Indigenous Cultures
Long before paper dolls or pixels, humans crafted figurines for play, ritual, and teaching.
• Ancient Egyptian doll – In a Roman-era burial near Rome (2nd century AD), archaeologists found an articulated ivory doll with movable limbs, a sophisticated toy likely belonging to a young girl. These high-status dolls suggest the existence of storytelling and gender training through play.
• Corn-husk dolls – Native American tribes across North America made dolls from dried corn husks and braided fiber for over a millennium. Often faceless, on purpose, these dolls taught humility and reflected spiritual beliefs about the “Three Sisters” (corn, beans, squash). The tradition continues today in crafts and cultural education.
• Inuit and Yup’ik dolls – In Arctic regions, dolls carved from bone, soapstone, or wood dressed in animal skin educated girls in traditional clothing and survival skills. Some date back over two thousand years, showing how dolls served as cultural tools as much as toys.
• Hopi Kachina figures & ritual poppets – In Southwest US tribes like the Hopi, carved kachina figures served ceremonial and teaching roles. Meanwhile, European folk traditions created “poppets” from twigs, wax, or cloth, used in rites and sympathetic magic.
These ancient examples show that dolls have always been more than toys; they’re tools for storytelling, cultural transmission, gender training, spiritual connection, and creativity itself. They laid the foundation, both material and symbolic, for everything that followed, from paper tab dolls to digital characters.
1800s: Rise of Commercial Paper Dolls in Victorian Era
With the advent of affordable printing and color lithography, paper dolls went from occasional novelties to mass-market sensations by the early 19th century. In 1810, London's S&J Fuller released Little Fanny, one of the first commercially successful paper doll books, complete with moral stories and seven changeable outfits. Two years later, Boston’s J. Belcher published The History and Adventures of Little Henry, launching the American paper doll industry. By the 1820s, boxed paper doll sets were being widely produced across Europe and exported to the U.S. In the 1830s–1840s, celebrity-themed dolls appeared, ballerinas like Marie Taglioni and eventually even Queen Victoria herself received paper paper dolls, merging public fascination with fashion with collectible imagery. During this period, dolls served both as toys and as fashion education, with illustrated magazines and newspapers regularly featuring them to showcase the latest style trends, moral values, and domestic ideals, especially aimed at young women.
1900–1920s: The Pageant of Victorian & Edwardian Paper Dolls
As printing became cheaper and magazines more accessible in the early 1900s, illustrated paper dolls exploded in popularity, especially among girls. Publications like The Delineator (ca. 1896) and Harper’s Bazaar featured elaborate, high-fashion paper dolls complete with elegant outfits, from corseted evening gowns to boater hats and parasols. American illustrator Frances Brundage (1854–1937) designed hundreds of charming children’s paper doll sets, while McLoughlin Brothers, Saalfield, Whitman, and others mass‑produced them for kids at home. The earliest known examples date back to 1650s Germany, but by this era, paper dolls were cultural touchstones: affordable, collectible expressions of style, identity, and social norms.:
1930s–1960s: Kewpies, Raggedy Ann & Mid-Century Makers
Mid-20th century dolls moved beyond Victorian elegance to include beloved characters like Kewpies-created by Rose O’Neill in 1909 and sold as both paper dolls and ceramic as early as 1912, and Raggedy Ann (from 1935 onward), whose cloth and paper versions taught kindness and storytelling. This era brought diverse roles into the mix; career women, brides, nurses, reflecting societal shifts. Manufacturers like McLoughlin Brothers (later bought by Milton Bradley), Whitman, and Golden Co. kept churning out collectible paper doll books through the 1960s, offering creativity and aspiration amid changing gender and cultural norms.
1970s–1980s: Revival with Dover & Tom Tierney
In the 1970s, paper dolls found a renaissance thanks to Tom Tierney, a former fashion illustrator who published his first doll book in 1976. Over the next decades, he created more than 350 paper doll titles, spanning historical figures, iconic movie stars, and cultural styles, selling over 4 million copies worldwide. Tierney's work was backed by Dover Publications, who reissued or produced these meticulously researched and beautifully illustrated dolls as accessible art/history books. Together, they breathed new life into the paper doll hobby, elevating it from simple children's play to collectible and educational art forms that continue to influence modern designers.
Late 1990s–Early 2000s: Dollz & Forum Culture
Enter pixel art. On sites like The Palace, GaiaOnline, and DollzMania, users crafted tiny avatars made of modular heads, bodies, clothes, and backgrounds. These “dollz” weren’t interactive games; they were assembled manually in image editors and shared in signature banners or online profiles. The vibe? Y2K glam, emo stripes, glitter backgrounds, and Hotmail chainmail aesthetics. Many of these sites would be web pages that loaded huge numbers of draggable gif assets. Dress up fans would patiently wait for the pages to load in full before dragging an albino boa onto Britney Spears.
2003–2016: Flash Game Golden Age
This era exploded with Flash-based dress up games hosted on sites like Doll Divine, DressUpGames, Stardoll, Rinmaru, and Cartoon Doll Emporium. Suddenly, players could click outfits, change colors, and sometimes drag items freely. Artists teamed up with coders or used DIY tools to build immersive creators. The genre flourished, especially for fantasy, anime, historical fashion, and original character creation. Many of these sites were solo-run passion projects… until Flash died.
2020: Flash Discontinued
Adobe officially pulled the plug on Flash at the end of 2020, rendering thousands of dress up games unplayable overnight. While emulators like Ruffle and preservation tools like Flashpoint saved some, many creators moved on or lost access to their original files.
2010s–Now: Mobile Apps, Picrew, and Meiker
As mobile gaming rose, dress up mechanics shifted to avatar apps like Gacha Life, Covet Fashion, or niche RPG character builders. But a quieter revolution was happening in the browser world. Sites like Picrew (portrait-style avatar creators from Japan) and Meiker (free, one-click dress up game engine) brought customization back to the web. These tools let artists upload their own work and share it with the world, reviving the genre with modern tools, open collaboration, and diverse styles. While Picrew became wildly popular for its quick loading time and large anime artist user-base, it also came under fire for a lack of skin tone and ethnic facial feature options. There were also many clashes between the LGBTQIA+-friendly American users and the more conservative, Japanese Picrew community. While Picrew remains popular, many users have abandoned it, due to its lack of diversity. Most note that Meiker is much more diverse, thanks to its largely American creator base.
From Play to Creation
The genre’s biggest shift: going from passive to participatory. Today’s players aren’t just dressing characters, they’re making the games themselves. Platforms like Meiker and Picrew turn fans into creators, and let anyone with digital art skills build immersive fashion or identity-based experiences. It’s no longer just about playing dress up. It’s about worldbuilding, expression, and aesthetic autonomy.
...and that makes me very happy ^_^
~OLa
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