Kewpie is a brand of dolls and figurines that were conceived as comic strip characters by American cartoonist Rose O'Neill.

[2] Rose O'Neill, a Nebraska 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.

[4] 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.

[5] After the characters gained popularity among both adults and children, O'Neill began illustrating paper dolls of them, called Kewpie Kutouts.

Kestner, a German toy company located in Waltershausen, set forth to manufacture small bisque dolls of the Kewpies.

"[1] O'Neill traveled to Germany and had the company destroy the moulds of the dolls, and oversaw the final redesign of them, working with a 17-year-old art student named Joseph Kallus.

[8] The Kewpie brand soon became a household name, and was used widely in product advertising, including promotion for Jell-O, Colgate, Kellogg's Corn Flakes, and Sears.

[2] The Kewpies also appeared as a brand on a multitude of household items and other memorabilia, such as dishware, rattles, soap, pepper shakers, coloring books, poetry collections, and stationery.

[10] After World War I began in Europe, production of the bisque Kewpie dolls moved from Germany to France and Belgium, due to rising tensions after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.