Dolls

Dolls are mostly a girl thing, of course.  Boys call them "action figures," like GI Joe and He-Man.

I saw a really funny German silent movie once, The Doll, directed by the great Ernst Lubitsch.  It's about this irresponsible playboy whose father is threatening to disinherit him unless he mans up and gets married.  So he buys a life-size doll to marry, so he can fool his father!  But before he arrives the doll's arm gets broken off, so the dollmaker's daughter takes her place, unbeknownst to the playboy...

One of the White House's most famous first ladies was Dolly Madison.  Someone said about her that after you met her you'd not only like her, but like yourself more than you did before! (She must have had great emotional intelligence.) She'd carry around a copy of Don Quixote and ask people if they'd read it.  If they hadn't, she'd say, "Neither have I--we have something in common!" If they had, she'd say, "Then you can explain it to me." She got the big hostesses around the country to send her their best recipes, and it was she who introduced ice cream to America.