Although considerable research has been devoted to the study of doll characters in children's fiction, rather less academic attention has been paid to dolls as supernatural helpers in folk tales. Irrespective of the culture they come from, the doll's role is almost inevitably related to matrimony. The doll character in fairy tales is shaped by the anthropomorphization of the ritual doll. The present essay seeks to explain the unique links between folk tale dolls and those depicted in children's fiction, particularly with respect to themes, semantics and even rhetoric.