In 1967, apparently imitating Remco’s successful Beatles dolls of 1964, Hasbro introduced a cute-as-the-dickens line of “Show Biz Babies,” featuring several popular musical acts of the moment, including The Monkees,The Mamas and the Papas, Herman’s Hermits, and The Spencer Davis Group.

The packaging of these adorable dolls is a delight, as you can see here. Every doll came with a “groovy 33 1/3 record” that “tells all about” the personality whose doll was inside the package. Even better, every doll “bends into swinging poses,” which is an album title waiting to happen. In addition, wasting no square inch, the back featured an “autographed photo” like this one of Bobbie Gentry:
 

 
There were 12 dolls in all: all four Monkees, two Mamas and two Papas, and an additional ad-hoc quartet made up of Bobbie Gentry, Spencer Davis, Mitch Ryder, and Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits. On eBay, the dolls routinely fetch about $100, with the Nesmith model reaching as high as $250 on at least one occasion.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
The “groovy 33 1/3 record” you would get was actually a “letter” read aloud by “New York disc jockey Gary Stevens,” if the Dolenz and Nesmith files I was able to track down are any indication. In other words, the musicians didn’t actually record anything; Stevens would just read a kind of witty bio that had presumably been generated for publication in teen magazines and the like. You can listen to the Dolenz and Nesmith “records” below.

Dolenz:

 
Nesmith:

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Monkee Mike Nesmith is one of the great underrated musical geniuses of our time
Bobbie Gentry, the Mississippi hippie, performing with Donovan and The Hollies