The best known of all the Russian souvenirs are the Russian Nesting Dolls or Nesting Dolls. The russian dolls were first created in the late 19th century in Russia by Sergei Maliutin who was inspired by Japanese design. In the Russian language the word for wooden dolls is matryoshka. A set of nesting dolls has become very popular to everyone of all ages. They have become very trendy and best known Russian toy that will become a great collectible item for many years. Nesting dolls are small wooden figures that have a similar egg shape. The dolls design when pulled apart will have a smaller but similar design inside. There will usually be five or more dolls inside, all being smaller than the last. There are several different themes and interests to choose from. It can be anything from polical figures to current themes.

As 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics Games came to a close. I was watching the beauty of the opening and closing ceremony, I got the idea about how it would be nice to see the thousands of the host country volunteers be remembered as nesting dolls. The Summer Olympic’s ceremony will be remembered as one of the biggest and best ever. It would be hard to single out only a few of the performers to create the nesting dolls, but the performers I will remember would make a great nesting doll set. The largest doll would be for all of the very talented dancers eloquence. The next should be the drummers for all of their rythmic flair and ability. Another one should represent all of the acrobats who created an illusion of flying thru the air.

If you were going to make a set of nesting dolls for a team sport you can look no further than the highly anticipated men’s basketball redeem team being great representatives of the games. It would be easy to make the centers and power forwards the larger nesting dolls and the point and shooting guards as the smaller dolls. With the team having an average height of 6’7’ it would hard to pick which one would be the smaller dolls.

The major highlight that everyone will be talking about for years would have to be 8 time gold medal swimmer Michael Phelps. No other athlete won more gold medals at a single Olympics. He also won with class and style. A different nesting doll could represent each of the different gold medal races, each showing the events and times on the back of doll. A different idea could be a doll that represents each of the state of art new suits that the USA team wore.

The last group that I would like to see as dolls nesting would be the announcers of the Olympic Games. We could easily imagine play by play host like swimming Dan Hicks or track and field host Tom Hammond would make great dolls. Another group would be the studio hosts Cris Collinsworth, Jim Lamply, or Mary Carillo. We would want to remember to make the main studio host Bob Costas the smallest of the nesting dolls. With his 5’7” frame he would easily be the smallest doll.