amed for Cupid, the Roman god of love and beauty, the first hard-plastic version of the Kewpie doll was introduced at the 1949 American Toy Fair in New York. Based on the illustrated poems by Rose O’Neill that debuted in Ladies’ Home Journal in 1909, Kewpies were also used to promote women’s suffrage on posters and postcards. With their images appearing on products from soap to salt-and-pepper shakers, Kewpies earned O’Neill an estimated $1.5 million — and a place in posterity, when Westinghouse Corp. included an early version of the doll in the time capsule it buried at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.
amed for Cupid, the Roman god of love and beauty, the first hard-plastic version of the Kewpie doll was introduced at the 1949 American Toy Fair in New York. Based on the illustrated poems by Rose O’Neill that debuted in Ladies’ Home Journal in 1909, Kewpies were also used to promote women’s suffrage on posters and postcards. With their images appearing on products from soap to salt-and-pepper shakers, Kewpies earned O’Neill an estimated $1.5 million — and a place in posterity, when Westinghouse Corp. included an early version of the doll in the time capsule it buried at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.