About 1980 or so, a few years before I began collecting Barbie dolls, Mom decided to move a chest of drawers that had been in the bedroom for my sisters and me, into the kitchen. She wanted more storage space for her towels and other items.
The bedroom was, of course, where the toys were kept. As I emptied out the chest of drawers, way in the back I found a light blue vinyl Francie shoe and a vinyl Dawn shoe (don't remember the color). I got them out and then got out our old doll stuff (by this time I was in college). I found two unmated shoes that, alas, did not match the ones I just discovered. The Francie shoe was orange and the Dawn shoe was white.
I decided to try and get the shoes to match. I got out the bottle of black shoe polish and attempted to recolor all four shoes. The blue and orange shoes absorbed the black polish, and I ended up with a dark blue shoe and a brown shoe. I also couldn't get the Dawn shoe colors quite to match, although they weren't as bad as the Francie shoes. I put them on my Angie doll and let her wear them for a while. Of course, Angie ended up with black shoe polish on her feet, but fortunately I was able to wipe it off.
After I started doll collecting and ended up with all sorts of loose shoes, I threw out those four poor polished shoes.
There are two morals to this story:
1. Obviously, don't ever try to dye vinyl doll shoes.
2. If you acquire a used chest of drawers, such as a bureau, dresser or even a file cabinet, be sure to pull all the drawers out and empty them. You will never know what you might fund stuck in the back, or on the back. Also, be sure to check the inside frame of the drawer in the chest itself; stuff gets stuck back there too.
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