Arrow Novelty Skookum Dolls 1920-1950s

Arrow Novelty Native American family of dolls

Arrow Novelty composition Skookum dolls

Native American Indian Family

Arrow Novelty Skookum Dolls 1920-1950s

The Arrow Novelty Company of New York was founded in 1920, they are best known for their souvenir or tourist Skookum Native American Indian dolls (1914-1962) designed by Mary McAboy who was from Montana. The history of the earliest Skookum dolls is they had dried apple heads with a wood frame body wrapped with an Indian blanket. Later the heads were made from composition, then hard plastic. The dolls costumes represent various tribes in native outfits; males, women, children and papooses (babies), in sizes of a few inches to 36" tall.

Paper identification tags were often affixed to the bottom of the dolls feet, tags from the 1940s to early 1950s read in an oval circle; Trademark Registered - Patented, inside circle, Skookum (Bully Good) Indian U.S.A.

Arrow Novelty also made dolls of cloth, composition, hard plastic and vinyl. 1881-1962 Harry Heye Tammen - H. H. Tammen Company or H. H. Tannem Curio Co. of Denver, Colorado also supplied Skookum dolls, mostly to the west coast under their Tannem label