By Lisa Hix — My Little Pony galloped into the world in 1983 on a cloud of pink and purple sparkles, bent on winning the hearts of little girls. Set to a saccharine jingle, commercials showed pigtailed girls admiring these pastel-colored vinyl toy horses, unicorns, and pegasus, lovingly brushing their unnatural neon manes. And love them girls did. Now, nearly 30 year later, My Little Pony mania has exploded again. But this time, the main drivers of the craze are teenage boys and 20-something men. Known...

Antique Dolls, from Wood and Wax to Kewpie

By Maribeth Keane and Jessica Lewis — We have a very small team here at the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood, so we all have to do lots of different things. I don’t look after all the dolls, but I oversee the collections. I do the waxes and the woodens. I’ve got colleagues who are in charge of the cloth ones and the plastic ones and the porcelain ones and so on. I used to do all of it. When Caroline Goodfellow took early retirement about 10 or 11, years ago, I had to take on the whole doll collection as well as all my...