Yard Sale Haul (Choosing Keepers)

I was surprised to see that most of the dolls did not need extensive trims.  Almost everyone's hair combed out with little effort.  Those I don't keep will appeal to a new human more if they don't look like they just got hit by lightning.  

After that was done, the selection process began.  Since my space is small, I limit the number of dolls in Barbieville.  One of my friends added more dolls to her dollyverse than I had in total during 2019!

The Mattel Princesses and Barbies.  There were a few here I knew were keepers from the start, even without working knees and elbows.  I was hoping some head swaps would help with that.  Also, I hoped some of the boys would be body donors for Kevin and Jeremiah.

Clone dolls, Monster High, and Hi Glamm (previously identified as Winx).  Only one of these was a keeper - the man with the gray beard.  The rest suffered from poor articulation, deformities, and/or Vapid Face.

Bratz.  Neither boy was suitable for Kevin or Jeremiah, even with feet attached.  The lemon-on-a-toothpick proportions are just too far from reality for me, so none of these dolls will be keepers. 

Holly Hobbies (not Strawberry Shortcake) and Wee Three Friends.  I debated these for quite a while.  The combinations of childlike features and adult shapes or sizes led me to decide against them.  I even had the Wee Threes with jointed elbows in my keep pile for a while.

This is the gal I mentioned in the previous blog, with the wild hair and face I really liked.  I thought she was Diva, from Barbie And The Rockers, but once I tamed the hair... she's Midge.  Every Diva I've ever seen had really heavy eye makeup, but I can't remember a Midge with super curly hair.  Research provided only the information that Diva and Midge share a face mold.

I think these three are celebrities.  Pretty sure the one on the left is Brandy Norwood.  

Shoes.  Lots of sizes and only three orphans.  They will all stay except the orphans.

Cinderella figures.  I waffled on these because that one of the stepsisters makes me giggle.  Decided not to keep them or break up the set.

Bratz feet and snap-on hair for one of the smaller gals.  I was bummed to see the black boots were Bratz.  None of my dolls can wear them.  Same with the roller skates.

Happy Meal toys.  Bratz and Barbie.  These will go into Doll County Day Care's toy stash.

Madame Alexander Happy Meal toys. Not keepers, but I stole what clothes I could for the toddlers. Was mad when the pumpkin costume didn't fit anyone.  

Cabbage Patch Kids.  Happy Meal toys,  Not keepers.

Sally Secrets Happy Meal toy - her feet are hole punches (one makes stars, the other hearts).   Debated keeping her just because she's so cute, but decided against it. I wouldn't use her.

 Wedding cake and bowling set.  Those balls are not the original ones - they're stress balls. The kind that clank against each other, not the squeezy kind.  The cake is a double of the one I already have, just in a different shade of pink.  The stress balls will probably go away but I'm keeping the pins and cake.

I have no idea what this is.  I thought it was the cap for a pencil-shaped pencil case, but it has what looks like Hebrew characters on it.  A dreidel?  I'll be keeping it for now.

After some head swapping and debate, these eight will be the only ones kept.  My Scene Chelsea, Gray Beard, Rapunzel, Hula Hair Barbie in rear. Brunette, Midge/Diva, Cho's mommy, and Purple Slippers in the front.

Hula Hair Barbie is on a My Scene Kennedy body - her own was very floppy and she chose to be less articulated.  Also, she gets a nice shoulder tattoo.  A snowflake in colors that match the dyed portion of her hair.  I kept Rapunzel because I thought they made a nice mom/daughter pair.

Midge/Diva and Purple Slippers upgraded to jointed elbows and a solid body, respectively.

I've got roles in mind for Gray Beard, the brunette, and of course Cho's Mommy.

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. 

Let The Carnage Begin

WARNING: DOLL CARNAGE AND NUDITY AHEAD

TURN BACK NOW OR SHUT YOUR PIEHOLE

I've had my eye on these gals for a while.  For the articulation, frankly, but more on that in a bit.  This is my COVID-19 splurge.  The rest is going to bills, I swear!  Okay, most of the rest...

The single pack Comfy Princesses do not have knees.  Not even click knees.  So I had to buy the double packs, which gave me a couple of extra gals.  

Most Disney Princess dolls suffer from a severe case of Vapid Face, so my intent from the start was to do some head-swapping.  I bought three princesses of color for the best match to Nikki, Courtney, and Gabriella.  I hoped the extras would match Wendy and Alex.  

Skin tone match isn't perfect, since the noggins are Mattel and the bodies are Hasbro, but I can work with it.

Here Nikki and her body donor compare how well they can hold a phone.  Neither can put it to her face, but at least Tiana can FaceTime.  Whoever Nikki is talking to is looking over there!

Nikki only has click knees, which is an improvement over no knees at all.  But only a slight one.

No, this isn't cannibalism.  

Boiling water softens the heads so they can be easily removed and minimizes the chances of neck pegs breakage.  We don't want the pegs stuck in there because then the new peg might be too big.  Wendy and Alex were already off their bodies.

I'm not so nice to the noggins I don't plan to keep.  This way the neck pegs are intact and not even bent.  You'll notice only four heads when I said I was rebodying five gals.  The Alex head didn't match any of the skin tones at all.

So I'm just going to recast her with one of these two.  Comparing them to Alex's father and sister, Aurora seems to fit in best.  (I guess my dark-haired Alex is gonna get a makeover.)  Not sure yet who Rapunzel will end up being.    

UPDATE: Alex will be the fashionista with the green mohawk on whichever body matches best.  There was an issue with my delivery and Amazon gave me a credit on my account, as an apology.  I chose to get a different noggin for Alex!  Neither of these big-eyed blondes were Alex for me. 

And here they are!  

Wendy Darling, Courtney Montez, Gabriella Montez, and Nikki Pike 

Debuting working elbows and improved knees!

They do have a slight case of bobble-head but that's all right.  

Jeremiah, the younger Eaton boys, and most of the children are jealous.  

They don't even have click knees.

That will be my next project.

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.

Holiday Fashion Show

My dolls got all kinds of spoiled this Christmas.  Cleo De Nile and Lagoona Blue joined the party.  The Bags behind Cleo and Lagoona are full of things for dolls - mostly clothes.  The bag with the tree is for Barbieville citizens and the Santa bag is for Rusty.

Today we're focusing on the tree bag.  I'm not sure what I'll end up doing with Cleo and Lagoona.  They're my first Monster High gals,  as I'm not really a fan.  It is nice that I have a Cleo again.  I had a feline companion for almost 20 years named Cleo.  

Keep in mind, these clothes were removed from any packaging!  I had to conserve space as much as possible to fit all my gifts into my vehicle and then my apartment, since Santa delivers for me at a relative's.  Some were store bought.  Some looked to be from Etsy shops or EBay.  

This red purse and yellow watch were, I think, in the package with the Super Mario dress.  

The kitten came with a ball of yarn and a bag of food.  Puppy can hold the Frisbee in his mouth and has a bone-shaped chew toy.  Both came with removable collars and a food dish.  Max, Soot, and Ash are happy to have some new friends.

Four pair of shoes, two colors, all the same mold.  The ankle straps either made putting these on difficult or just broke.  I'm mad at them.

Two pair of purple clogs.  These stayed on surprisingly well, considering only the single strap help them in place.  

I've heard this style called mules.  Jointed knee dolls they slipped off of easily, but the click knee dolls had no trouble.  The different types of plastic?  

Pointed toes!  Something about these says "witch".  Also, kicking people gains a whole new level of pain infliction.  They stay on well and look cute in the process.

Now we're on to the fancy pairs with detailing.  Red studs, Red grapevines with a cluster of fruit, Blue roses (remind me to remove that extra bit of plastic before putting this pair away), and simple blue sneakers. My favorite here is the grapes, hands down.

The first pair here looks like the ruffled collar and buttons down the front of a Victorian dress.  The second reminds me of a curtain tie-back.  The third pair is stunning, and I heartily apologize for not being able to get a better picture.  Trust me, I tried!  They are translucent and look like liquid gold dripping off her ankles and heel.  

White sneakers, white studs on a wide ankle strap, and black studs.

Fine green chains.  Swans with stars for heels.  The boots remind me of Batman nemesis Poison Ivy.  A green pair of mules that don't want to stay on.

The first pair look like they're made from a purple toolbox, the truck-bed kind.  The center pair was almost impossible to get on the foot.  That third pair has heart shaped cut outs!  

Very Cupid-esque shoes.  The heel is an arrow and there are wings at the ankle.  The second pair has hearts along the front/top of the foot.  Both very cute.

Ballet slippers.  Nuff said.

First pair looks like drops of condensation on a cold drink.  Daisies on that second pair. Third pair has a nautical/mermaid vibe - scales and chains.  Simple wide straps on the fourth.

Ballet flats, sneakers, and a pair way too small for anyone.  I even tried them on Stacie! 

Guy shoes - high top sneakers, work boots, and regular sneakers.

All told, we're very happy with the shoes.  Only a few pairs that can't be used out of so many.  And I just love the details!  I just wish my close-ups had come out so y'all could see them!  

On to the clothing.  About time, right?  Especially considering how little time my dolls spend in shoes?

Four, Tanner, and Finnick are the most medium sized men I've got, so I chose them to model the few outfits I got for the guys.  These were all Mattel and I'm pretty sure I've paired them up right.  Four is rocking the lumberjack look.  Tanner flashes his abs in a bomber jacket and sweats.  Finnick looks preppy in a hoodie and faded jeans. 

They report these tops are slightly snug in the biceps, but otherwise quite comfy.  Bad news for the muscle men.  

The pants are another matter.  Four's sporting a quarter moon and Finnick has a full moon rising.  Tanner laughs at them both.  Kevin and Ricky steal Finnick's pants.  Four, who can at least move, flees the scene.  

On to the ladies.  Midna (who, remember, is named for a Legend of Zelda character) sports the Super Mario mini that I mentioned earlier.  PJ and Violet look ready for Ladies' Night.  Esmeralda is sporting a denim (yes, real denim) skirt.  

Here they show the difference in Velcro closures.  Esmeralda's dress might be better suited for a belly-button body. Violet's is straining a bit, but both PJ and Midna are secure.  This is a good indicator of variation in the mold of the dolls and the patterns of the clothes

Raven's ready to go motorcycle shopping (in a skirt?).  Batgirl's rocking separates - love the high waisted skirt.  Whitney is also in separates but she really wants Raven's jacket to complete the look. Too bad it's attached to the rest of Raven's outfit.  Mariko says her dress really needs to be a shirt.  She's no prude, but...  

Ready to hit the gym?  Rose-Grace, Tris, and Clara are wearing unitards.  Pocahontas and Kyra have separates.  They were gonna trade shirts but decided y'all needed to keep your eyeballs.

Let's go casual.  Zenobia's pantsuit is prone to wardrobe malfunctions if she isn't careful how she turns.  Nakoma, Candy, and Becky don't have those worries.  Loving the high waists! 

The extra separates. We already saw the unitard and Kyra's shorts.   Kyra's top is nice, but what is that thing around Rose-Grace's waist?  Maybe on a gal with slimmer hips, it could be a tutu?  Tag says Hairmonies.  Research will be done.  Because as it is... it's a very frilly belt.

Time for some glam!  Batgirl proves redheads can rock pink, Zenobia gets her peacock on, Tris sports an alternative to the LBD, and Candy hopes her top doesn't slip.  I am thrilled that the Liv body can wear that peacock dress.  It yelled "Zenobia" as soon as I saw it. 

Raven in another real denim skirt.  Mariko, PJ, and Becky ready to party.  Kyra?  Kyra, honey, what is up with that bow?   

And the last set of clothes... a whole passel of sundresses.  These shots show the fun designs, but also how well the dresses fit dolls of different body molds.  Rose-Grace thinks I put her in that dress because of the roses.  Really, it was the way that yellow pops against her skin tone.

Zenobia only took off the peacock dress because I offered her the blue and white.  These are so much fun, even just to look at.  

All told, I and the citizens of Barbieville are tickled pink (pun intended) by the vastly expanded wardrobe.  Kyra's already planning to wear the one she's modeling here to meet Brent's sister.