Yard Sale Haul (Sorting and Cleaning)

The Boy's neighbor had a yard sale.  His mom, urged to "get Jeanie up here", instead opted to just buy me an entire bin of assorted used dolls.  The hair is going to be a challenge, but otherwise they are in pretty good shape.

Here they are after the communal bath, standing around naked, as you do.  The Boy's mom stripped them for me and washed the clothes.  (Thanks!)  All I have to do now is sort them out, decide who is a keeper, find homes for the others, and assign roles to the keepers.

Two soft-body dolls, after a run through the washer and drying in a patch of sun.  Use of a commercial dryer might damage the hair, so we avoided that. I love the face on Purple Slippers.

Google wasn't a lot of help with the trio on the left.  Obviously they are Strawberry Shortcake characters, but I found little to no information on 12 inch dolls in that line.  The long-legged things on the right are Winx dolls.  Again, I don't remember this specific line.  All the Winx I ever saw were leggy, but not to this extreme.  All five of these dolls have the basic five points of articulation and click knees.  Winx faces are gorgeous but they are so... wispy? Well, they are meant to be fairies. 

UPDATE

The "Strawberry Shortcake" dolls are Holly Hobbie and the "Winx" are a line called Hi Glamm.  Thanks to Treesa for the correction!

A plethora of Wee Three Friends.  The bodies are dated 2000.  My only real recollection of them is being mad that they gave Stacie boobs.  The whole reason they introduced her was to fill a void left by the aging-up of Skipper!  Google tells me the friends are Whitney Hadley (kin to Midge, I assume) and Janet.  Most of these have the standard five points of articulation and click knees.  Some of them have jointed elbows. 

Bratz.  Like the Monster High dolls, I love the clothes and accesories but I'm not a fan of the dolls.  Giant noggins, tiny bodies...   Most of their clothing will fit Stacie and friends.  The clothes from the smaller ones will fit the toddlers. Five points of articulation and click knees on most of them.  I did spot a few jointed elbows.  I'm eyeing the boys as body donors for Kevin... he don't even have click knees.

Assorted others.  Two "Lovely Patsy" dolls, Monster High, Steffie Love, a Diva Star, and I think Farrah Fawcett.  She's a Mego from 1977.  I hope to find the Monster High boy's forearms, but no luck.  Others in the doll community have told me he's a good match for Kevin's skin tone.

Another assortment.  These look to be dollar store finds, mostly with click knees.  That little Ariel in the front was wearing a Snow White dress.  That gray-bearded fella is definitely moving to Barbieville.

Mattel Disney Princeses.  Jasmine, Aurora, Belle, Snow White, Rapunzel, and Anna.  Poor Anna is missing a foot. Click knees on most, if not, all of them.    

And the actual Barbies!  That gal in the back left, with the crazy hair, I cannot place.  I think she's one of The Rockers. I'll get a closeup of her face in a later post.  Kyra's identical twin (Secret Spells Kayla) in the back row, between the headless and the brunette with working elbows. 

That poor Ken on the end doesn't even have click knees. Mixed in with the Barbies are some My Scene and maybe a couple of celebrities.  At least one of them will end up being Cho's mommy.

Bits and bobs, as I call them.  Clothes that were missed during the inital stripping. The swimming pool does hold water but needs a bit of railing replaced.  

And the clothes.  There were several dresses that fit my bigger gals.  Only a handful of items were not usable - in part because I don't want kindergarteners in corset tops.  Next step is rescuing the hair and deciding who goes and who stays. 

Creatable World

This one is gonna be very short on the pictures and long on the words.  I even considered putting it on my regular - political soap box - blog.  But as it applies to dolls, I felt it fits better here.

In case any of my readers have been in a cave the last few days:  Mattel has released a line of "gender inclusive" dolls.  Most of the doll community has taken it as Mattel clearly intended.  A few of us, and an awful lot of people outside the doll community, seem to have missed something.  This post is for that group.

1. These dolls are not being marketed as LGBT.  "Gender inclusive" simply means they can be used in play as either sex.  The dolls are the size of Skipper,  Barbie's pubescent sister.  Granted, I have not seen these dolls in a state of undress, but the body mold appears to be clearly a child.  Without genitals, there are no markers of biological sex, and we all know that even the adult dolls have no genitals.   

Get your hands on a doll and ignore anything below the shoulders.  What you are looking at is "gender coding".  This is what marks a child doll as male or female.  Possibly the most common customization done on child dolls is the cutting of hair and removal of make up - turning a girl doll into a boy.  The Creatable World dolls just save us the trouble.

2. The entire point of these dolls is an acknowledgement that traditional gender roles have been dying since the days of Rosie the Riveter.  Today's children are seeing women on the battlefield and men in the kitchen.  Today's children's parents grew up seeing that.  Only the grandparent generation remembers when Wonder Woman was the only super heroine and we were born in the Woodstock era.  Long-haired boys everywhere!

3. As a doll player - I am not so delusional as to call myself a collector -  the important thing to me is the potential of the toy.  The big selling point for me is the articulation.  These adorable children have working joints!  When you consider that they come with several mix-and-match fashions and accessories, the price point isn't bad.

They can be boys or they can be girls whose mothers haven't caved to Big Cosmetics. They can be non binary, if the player so chooses.  And I'm okay with that.  Because it's all about the potential. Oh, yeah, and DEATH TO GENDER ROLES.

Doll Envy

One of the bloggers I follow shared a picture of the dolls she'd bought in 2018 - it was more than Barbieville's entire population!   I can't do that.  I'm on a very limited income, and so have to be very choosy.  That said, I do have some plans for Barbieville.    

Lots of my fellow Internet Doll People are reviewing the Team Stacie dolls right now.  I've even posted about the boy in the line, mistakenly thinking he had the exact same head as the Babysitter Inc boy.  Of this line, I'm eyeballing the scientist, the gamer, and the artist.  I plan to call them Janet, Layla, and Todd - after past friends of Stacie.  But they aren't a priority because they aren't very well articulated.  Just the standard five points.

The ones I'm prioritizing are the new Harry Potter line.  Articulation, check.  Kids, check.  Elderly folks, check.  Well, one elderly folk - I'm not charmed by Dumbledore's beard.  It's hard plastic.  If you look up under it, it's not touching the chin at all.  It's like they molded it separately and glued it to his top lip.  I'll only get him if he's ridiculously marked down and then likely use him as a donor body.  I planned to start slowly buying this set in January.  But then I saw...

  

...these two on eBay.  The seven inch, fully articulated Harry Potter dolls from the 1990s.  Got them both for less than one of the new dolls is priced at and both are in excellent shape!  I'm saving the names Hermione and Harry for the new line, though, so these two are Emma and Dan after the actors who played the roles in the movies.  There is a Ron, also, but he seems to be rare and therefore expensive.  I doubt Rupert will ever live in Barbieville.  

Since the Grangers in the books were dentists, I've decided PJ is Dr Granger, mother of Hermione and Emma.  Dan and Harry will be siblings. Ron and Ginny will remain the siblings they already are.  The family make-up of the Potters and Weasleys in Barbieville is undetermined at this point.

Another one I want is Fashionista 110.  I just love her face and that green and black hair!  She isn't a priority because of articulation.  I do have donor bodies, though, so she's ahead of Team Stacie.  

Of course, there's always room for a bargain, but as it stands right now, these are my only planned purchases.  If Publisher's Clearing House shows up at my door, though, I'm gonna be the one giving Doll Envy! 

PS: None of these photos are mine.  They're mostly from Amazon.  Emma and Dan are the pictures from the actual eBay listings where I bought them.

What Is Mattel Thinking?

My Froggy Stuff posted a review of a new line of dolls.  Team Stacie.  I was thrilled!  Finally, some friends for Stacie!  Only the five basic points of articulation, which I can live with at that price point.  We can always find at Stacie with at least click knees and a matching skin tone, right?

Froggy said the two she reviewed were only part of the line, so I did a little research.  The Team Stacie's boy has an identical noggin to the Babysitters Inc boy.  The same mold, the same paint, everything. And maybe it's just me, but that face seems kinda mature for Stacie's age.

 (The boy in the dancing skeletons shirt is the one in question.)  

Head and face molds get reused all the time, it's no secret, but the face paint and skin tones can create many different looks.  Even the second run of Babysitters Inc isn't identical to the first, and I assume they're meant to be the same people!  I can live with lesser quality for a lower price point, I really can, but not even giving Team Stacie Boy his own noggin?  

Todd had the Stacie face mold.  His face paint was male-coded - shorter lashes and more neutral lip color.  A lot of people make their own boys by repainting the faces and cutting the hair on girl dolls.  It's actually pretty simple on a child.  Often even the same body mold works.  

It is possible that the picture I saw was a prototype.  He may end up with is own noggin.  I hope he does.  That one just hurts my brain.

Update:  Ms Leo over at I-Luv-Dolls posted better pictures of him and I totally stole one of them.  He doesn't have the same noggin after all!  In fact, he kind of looks like they took Babysitter Inc Boy's head and put the face of the Club Chelsea boy I named Bobby on it.  

Building Families

When I decided to do a Barbie blog and thus spare people on the rest of my social media, I knew I wanted to do stories.  Most of my favorite Barbie blogs do that, with great variety!  Some are silly, some downright adult in content, and I wanted to join in on the fun.  

  I've not figured out how to divide this blog into sections like most of them.  They generally have an area for story lines, for character lists, and the like.  I found the idea of building Barbieville all at once intimidating.  Stephen King once said "The story is the boss", so I decided to simply let Barbieville evolve as the stories demanded.  

 At first, the only family I had developed was the Pike family.  Main characters, if you will.  A few of the family members I decided on had official names and I tend to stick to those.   Pike could be the dad's first name, so I had to decide if he'd stay Christopher and answer to his last name.  My other options were O'Dair (the twins), McKessie (Taylor), Roberts (Stacie), and Flintstone (Fred).  

I decided to make them a blended family since there are clearly two races represented.  It's been my experience that mixed-race humans do not remain so clearly one or the other.  I toyed with the idea of ex-wife drama, but that's been done to death.  Candy, Pike, and Rose-Grace love the kids and will not put them through the wringer. 

So Barbieville began with one big happy family.

The Smiths happened to give us a peek into Rose-Grace's life between husbands.  Since John was a widower, I found a couple of brats who looked like him.  I used the Dad's surname, as I had with the Pikes.  Roxy is technically a Stacie, so both she and Kelly should be Roberts.  There's some history between him and Pocahontas Nedakh to be explored.  Will she be the new Mrs. Smith?

The Eatons are named for the eldest son.  The only one with a character surname was Four (Tobias Eaton).  Esmeralda never had one.  Both the younger boys are named for former Mattel dolls that never had one.  Marcus was named for Four's dad in Divergent - but he's a much better person.  They evolved to further the KBV storyline.

The Montez family was almost accidental.  Joe was mentioned in a bit of dialogue and I didn't want another widower.  Gabrielle and Courtney were already sisters, at least in my head.  I noticed Courtney has very dark auburn highlights.  Batgirl has auburn hair!  Maybe her maiden name was Barbara Gordon.  Jenny joined on a whim.  

Violet needed a last name.   Her daughter Raven should make an interesting contrast - I see her as very easy going.  So they are the Baxters.  Raven is very firm in my mind as an only child, but does Violet have a spouse?  (BTW, the doll is the main character of "That's So Raven".)  

These two had a very sisterly vibe in the Disney films and I knew I wanted to bring that to Barbieville. When my Kida Nedakh died of Head Transplant complications, I made them her daughters.  Pocahontas left college to take over her mother's storyline amusement park and take custody of younger sister Nakoma.  Their father has always been absent.

Claudia Kishi is my favorite character in the Babysitters Club books and I named the Babysitter Inc Asian for her.  Ben is raising his little sister.  Why?  That remains to be seen.

These are my characters, short Peeta Mallark, with surnames but no assigned kin.  Midna was originally Sunburst of the Fairytopia line, so I made that her last name.  Brent Spiner had no name when I got him, but reminded me of the actor. Ken's official last name is Carson,  Hikaru Sulu runs a greenhouse - botany was a hobby of Sulu's on the original Star Trek. 

 Tris Prior, Mariko Nakano, Alex Russo, and Skipper Roberts in back.  Charmaine (originally Sharpay) Evans and Wendy Darling flank Wilma Flintstone.  What will become of them?  What will become of the Barbieville citizens without surnames?  Only The Story - The Boss - knows for sure.

**Of course, the disclaimer.  My characters share only faces and names with those of the copyrighted characters.  Well, maybe some personality traits.**

May Haul (part two)

Wow.  Never expected to run out of room in a blog post!  Maybe that's not the issue - I did notice spellcheck wasn't working.  Might be a blogspot hiccup.  But no matter.  I'm adaptable.

I cut a couple of the skewers to size and used electrical tape to make drum sticks for the timpani.  

My Barbieville has a tiny Asian population and I considered two gals from the flea market haul, but one of them looked like she'd just smoked an entire acre of marijuana and the other had Vapid Face. Also, I'm not a fan of diversity for the sake of diversity.  I did find a Generation Girl Mariko, who I LOVE, on eBay.   She even still had her original hair style!  

I heard they had a pair of boys in the newest set of friends for Chelsea.  Fred asked me to get them because he was the only toddler boy in Barbieville.  I found Cactus Shirt, still looking for Camera Boy.  Couple of my minions decided he's Tyrone - I'm just calling him Ty.  

May Haul (part one)

May was another good month for Barbieville.  (So far my blog looks like I'm luckier than I usually am!)  Most of this month's luck came from town-wide yard sales and the flea market haul.  

 

Wicker chair from thrift store and Lego set marked WAY down.  Lego blocks are very handy for building anything the dolls might need temporarily.  Also, they're fun all by themselves! 

Craft supplies and a sleigh.  Giant bear for the girls' room.  I had a sleigh before - a thift store find that I tried hard to make work but ultimately failed.  This one I can already tell is going to be much easier.  It simply needs the bed lined and a seat installed.  The craft supplies will help me with that.

Scenic placemats with words on them, but careful placement of props or dolls allows use as backdrops.   They've already proven useful for the story-telling posts here.  

 

The "lollipop stick" was cut off and these two are novelty pillows for the twins.  The girls get bears and hearts.  The twins get the other shapes.  These came from a claw machine.

Cardboard covered in shiny gold tape as the bed liner.  I used wire from the edges of the decorative ribbon to make a web-like support for the seat.  Seat is made of skewers cut to length and covered with gold tape.  The back of the seat is a burp cloth I already had. (Burp cloths are the perfect size to be blankets on a single bed.)

SUV!  So glad Mattel is making cars that seat more than two!  Clothes and a new dude.

Close-up of the new dude.  I think he looks like Brent Spiner, so that's his name.  He's a World Peacekeeper.  Tanner totally mugged him and took the dog tags.  

I was pleased to find gold elastic for this.  It carries over the gold from the sleigh.  The traces are actually one of the wrapped-wire decorative ribbons, just looped around the sleigh runner. 

Blue button for trim and pink shoelace reins match the seat back. Peeta needs to bundle up before his sleigh ride, though.

Esmeralda copied Tanner and mugged a Flea Market Haul gal.  New ear ring to replace the one I took out.

New stuffies - most of which Fred claimed.  The girls claimed Ginger Snap.

New Residents of Barbieville, from the village of Flea Market. Pocahontas, Kelly, Nakoma, Callie, and Ricky in front.  Batgirl, Roxy, and Whitney in the rear.  There are other new folks in town but I guess I've exceeded the picture limit.  I'll have to do a seperate post about them. 

Flea Market Bonanza: Part Two

WARNING NAKED DOLLS 

The sorting and research is done.  The keepers have moved into Barbieville.  The others will find homes elsewhere, whether it's via a yard sale or donation.  The clothes and soft bodies still need washed, so that'll be part three.  

The Disney Gals - Two Nakomas, Aurora, Pocahontas, and Belle.  Belle makes a ding sound when you press the button on her back.  One of the Nakomas has a pink/purple streak in her hair. 

The Jasmine with a battery pack is Arabian Lights Jasmine.  Her ear rings and forehead gem light up, or are supposed to.  Either the batteries are dead or she's broken. 

When I got her in the April Haul, I removed Esmeralda's hoop ear ring.  So she sneaked into the kitchen and totally mugged one of the dolls from this batch.  Can't blame her - it is a cute ear ring.

Brushes, Bags, and jewelry.  

Kitchen stuff, sports stuff, head bands, a book, and a flower bouquet.  

Shoes with mates.  I'll probably keep most of these.  The big gold ones belong to the Jasmine of Unusual Size.  They're upside down so the water can drain.

Turns out Power Ranger's neck hole is not compatible with the donor body.  Making it work is beyond my capabilities and inclination.  

Hole-In-The-Gut is Tressy.  There used to be a gadget there to make her hair grow and, um, ungrow.  WTF Barbie is American Idol Barbie.  Poor thing looks like she's been in a horrible accident, but she's rocking out.  I keep trying to straighten her torso!  

The keepers.  Pocahontas, Nakoma with the pink/purple streak, Callie, Needs-a-name, Kelly, Roxy, and Needs-a-name.  (I already have a Kevin and a Stacie.)  I noticed Callie has 3 piercings in each ears, which gave me something specific to research - she's Cali Girl Barbie.  

Donor body recipients.  Kida doesn't quite match hers, but considering now she can bend and has no gem embedded in her chest, it's close enough.  The redhead Teen Skipper is Courtney, who was usually brunette.  I already have a Courtney.  There was a Stacie friend named Whitney, who was a redhead, so she'll take that name.  Batgirl loves her new not-weird shoulders.    

These two have to wait for laundry before their fate is decided.  If Jasmine's clothes survive the wash, I might keep her as a BOUS.  Love the character, but not so much the dolls.  Disney dolls often have Vapid Face, but Jasmine and Ariel seem to have it the worst.  I don't know why.  

A dollar a pop at a yard sale and I make my money back?  Donation?  Haven't decided.