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Kewpie Dolls For Sale

Rose O'Neill, a Midwest native who had worked as a writer and illustrator in New York City, initially conceptualized the Kewpie as a cartoon intended for a comic strip in 1909. According to O'Neill, the idea for the Kewpies came to her in a dream. The comic, featuring the cherub-faced characters, was first printed in Ladies' Home Journal in the December 1909 issue O'Neill described the characters as "a sort of little round fairy whose one idea is to teach people to be merry and kind at the same time.  Their name, often shortened to Kewpies, derives from Cupid, the Roman god of erotic love.  After the characters gained popularity among both adults and children, O'Neill began illustrating paper dolls of them, called Kewpie Kutouts.