Around late noon, when I was having my lunch in my room, I turned on the TV and see this adorable, very natsukashii doll. Her name is Lica, well at least it was by that name I first came to know her, it turned out that the doll "real" name is Rika-chan, written in katakana.
My memory about this special toy is that this doll was my first human-look-alike doll after the longggg yearsss of playing with my dear old snugly big Snoopy (still have him, or was it her??, back home). Lica was a birthday present from my dad, if I'm not mistaken, for my 6th birthday. And not only did Papa gave me Lica, he also gave me Lica's house!!! There was of course no need to the describe how happy I was at that time, as happy as a six year old little girl can be when receiving such sweet presents **thanks, Papa... 
And why all the sudden of this reminiscing mood? Let me get back to the TV show. Apparently it was about Lica's new series after a long 40 years of production. While promoting the new series, they took the opportunity to analyze the history of Lica, as good Japanese always did... hehehe...
There were four announcers, two of them was women who had the luxury of playing with Lica during their childhood, well, one of the male announcer also join in.... "Heee???" was of course the responds from his colleagues, which he afterwards calmly explain that the Lica was his sister's and he usually played it with his GI Joe, for war scenes... (LOL)
Anyway, as easily as the two female announcers did, I also really got into the story. And here are some of the facts that I didn't know about Lica:
1. My Lica was the third version of Lica series: indicated by the three stars in each of her eyes, higher nose, and a rather round face.
2. Lica is a 11 years old girl! Which kind of explain why she look so out of place next to my Barbies, how do you compare an 11 years old little girl's figure with Barbie's, anyway?!! Duuhh...
3. Lica is half Japanese, half French!! At the first production of Lica (around 60s), though international marriage had became a social icon also in Japan, the relationship between the US and Japan wasn't in a good term (hence, the hanbei nationalism sprung to mind), so they chose French to be the nationality of Lica's father--plus there was this image of romanticism along with the French, even now I think. Interesting...
4. Lica is "only" 21 cm tall. And why? Because Takara Tomy wanted to make a doll fits the Japanese house. The dolls from West are usually too "big"--average 30 cm--for the Japanese domestic situation. And this was also the reason for producing Lica's house that can be fold. I think Japan was the first to invent a folding doll house (I had one also, I think it was the 4LDK version). The Western doll's house is simply too bog for the small and efficient typical Japanese houses.
5. The inside of Lica's house changed according to the Japanese real economic situation. During the bubble period the folding house consists of a proper room by room set up, a room for one, this was made because during this period any luxury was affordable. Nowadays Lica's house, consists of big kitchen/dining room, because Takara Tomica wanted to emphasize on the necessity of family having meals together, to support family communication, especially because there were a lot of family tragedies/incidents lately in Japan.
6. Even the psychology disposition of the doll swifted along with people's way of thinking and identifying themselves. Lica who was once "I want to be like my mom, to be fashion designer like her", now is traveling around the world alone, trying to find her own self while saying "I want to be like my mom, a sophisticated woman like her"
Interesting how a "mere" doll can produce such analysis, wasn't it? But I think you can do a lot of observing the society from the toys they produces... want to try it on GI Joe? hhehehe...
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