067 Laverne

Laverne is one of twelve dudettes. 

All dudettes came out in 2002.  None of them have arms.

In release order, Laverne and Laura (#69) were the first dudettes to hit the market.  They both arrived in Crew 8.  Andie (#3), did not arrive until Crew 10.  Although this was all in the same year, I have to imagine that Laverne hit the shelves first. Remember that the first 60 (or so) figures were not released in numerical order.

Anyway, Laverne is a "greenskeeper" and her hobby is "curling."

All I know is that she is the dudette with the strange vertical ponytail.  I have found her in three different version.  I dig that they changed her hair color and not just her clothing color.

I thought she might have been named after the city of La Verne -- a suburb of Los Angeles.  At first, I thought that X-Concepts was based out of a Los Angeles suburb as well.  But Escondido is actually closer to San Diego, 90 miles south of La Verne.

I also thought maybe "la verne" meant something cool in Spanish.  Maybe something to do with being green or gardening?  But all I can find is that "verne" is actually a French grape used in wine-making.

Laverne is probably just another name with no cool link to pop culture.  Maybe one of the TDD designers named the figure after his mother?  Who knows.

Along with Barbie (#88), Laverne was the only other dudette to show up on the TDD website with a significant redesign.  However, this design was never produced as a figure.  None of the dudettes ever moved forward into the G2 phase with the newly added arms.  This image is only an indication of what could have been.  My guess is that the dudettes were simply deemed not popular enough to warrant ever being produced again. Oh well.