Hogwart's Express Playset

 If you do not have a passing familiarity with the Harry Potter franchise, please seek out your favorite Potterhead to explain anything that might confuse you.  Also there will be spoilers if you are new to the Wizarding World.

Taking a break from my winter projects to open my other new toy.  When I bought Jeff, I noticed the price on the Hogwarts Express had gone up a good bit, so held off to research similar (cheaper) options.  Anything I found that met my criteria cost even more!

I was never happy with my DIYs for a diner... even had to turn Sunburst Diner into a cafe during my Barbie Soap Opera.  When I saw this, my first thought was DINER BOOTH!  That might seem strange to you, but I'm a strange woman... as you well know.  

But that's for Walmart's "My Life As" dolls, you say.  The scale is way off, you say. Look how small Snape and Bellatrix are next to it, you say.  I've had a lot of experience with using this scale for my Barbies.  It does work with a little ingenuity and imagination.  

Anyway.  Here my volunteers stand beside the freshly opened playset.  It really is coincidence that I grabbed a couple of Harry Potter characters.  They were the two dolls closest to my work table. 

The white cardboard under the window opens to be a backdrop.  I'll be keeping this, although usually folded down so my dolls can make use of that window. 

The big picture was enclosed in the backdrop.  It's meant to slide behind the table window. 

This other stuff was in a Hogwarts envelope.  There's a cardboard rug, instruction booklet, stickers, and the boxes for goodies from the trolley.

Also Harry's first letter, its envelope, and two train tickets.  These are large for my dolls, but could work as wall art.  We shall see. Snape's toes for scale.

Sticker in the frame and Hogwarts outside the window.  The opposite side of that window card is a night view, for if they take the midnight train to Hogwarts.  Hedwig says "get me outta this dang plastic".

 The big blue box and plastic hold even more goodies.  I popped the trolley together and put up curtains.  Snape and Bellatrix noticed the height of the tabletop, but I told them I have a plan for that problem.  More on it later. The table folds down against the wall.  Because reasons. 

The little balcony thing on the rear was easy to install.  That lantern has a working light which I will never use.  The batteries will be removed so they don't corrode. I also remove batteries from the headlight and interior lamp.  

 

Photo is sideways because I am lazy.

It was at this point that I said "Where's Scabbers? He's supposed to be in this set."  Found him in the trash, right where the little traitor belongs.  Which reminds me... if we've got Harry's first letter, why is Crookshanks there?  Chronologically confused much? 

Pocahontas is 18 inches tall. She's a lot skinner than the intended dolls, but will serve to demonstrate the size of the pets.  Crookshanks is supposed to be a big boy.  Not a lion cub! I'm debating if he'll work as a Barbie pet.  I've had some huge cats in my time.

Even as skinny as she is, Pocahontas still takes up more than half the seat.  Snape and Bellatrix share easily.  This is one of the benefits of using larger-scale items with Barbies.  This picture makes me giggle.  Like they're Pokey's kids and Bellatrix says "Feet on the floor, Mom!  Gawd!"

Like the children they resemble in that photo, the table-height problem can be resolved by sitting on a suitcase or stack of pillows.  Come story time, I'll probably make risers out of Lego and use camera tricks to hide them.

The table folds back and the benches become a bed.  No blanket, though, unless you rip the curtains down.  The gray bolt behind the seat back is one of the two that hold the smokestack on.  Smokestack is off here because I was removing the batteries.

My dolls are very happy with this playset.  What they can't use will have a home, probably with my favorite Potterhead.  I'm not fussed about keeping the set complete.  Not a collector.  These are toys.  Play with them!  Or maybe I can use the pets to ward off home invaders (Crookshanks and Hedwig are heavy!)  

Jeff

WARNING NEKKID PLASTIC DUDE 

 

Santa was so busy bringing me other cool stuff, he forgot my Wizard of Oz doll! 

So I bought him my own self.  Like a grownup.

Just like Madame Morrible, this doll does a great job of capturing the likeness of the actor.  Jeff Goldblum can now come to my house and play with himself!  I just love Jeff Goldblum.  Almost as much as I love Sam Neill. 

But I digress.  Here we have The Wizard.  He's really leaning into his emerald theme.  The chains on his paisley waistcoat are all one plastic piece.  There's an eye on his Adam's Apple. And flowers on the long coat.  I think poppies, as a nod to the original story.  

I was disappointed to see that most of his wardrobe was all one piece.  I expected to find the shirt and waistcoat were one, but thought the coat might be separate. Bummer.  I wonder if the real Jeff looks this good.  I know he did once.  I've seen The Fly.

I have it on good authority that this is the same body as the other Wicked dude doll.  Jeff (and presumably that other guy) is nicely articulated.  Jeff can sit totally upright, an improvement on Mattel's Harry Potter men. I understood why Hagrid has a lean, being a portly fellow, but not the others. 

A better look at his shoes and cane. 

Anyone who knows me knew this would happen.  I just had to turn him in Ian Malcolm. I forgot his shoes, but barefoot is the norm for my dolls anyway.  "There will eventually be dinosaurs on the dinosaur tour?  Oh, excuse me, Miss Raptor, I didn't see you there."

Playing With Yourself

 

I've seen this meme, and others like it, and they always make me giggle.

We can always use a little giggle.

So I decided to see who could come to my house and do this.

Sadly, Sir Ian did not make the cut. 

We'll start outside the dollhouse.  (I did limit this to live-action characters.  Mainly because I haven't got the slightest idea which doll lines have animated versions, or how to qualify it.  Would my 1990s Midge count as Life In The Dreamhouse Midge?)

Here we have a couple of Robert Englund, Litefoot, Andre The Giant, and Kevin Peter Hall.

Steven Yeun, Norman Reedus, Andrew Lincoln and Jeffery Dean Morgan.

Two versions of Danai Gurira transitions us to the dolls.

Seated: Susan B. Anthony, Jimin, Jung Kook

Standing: Sir Christopher Lee, Theo James, Shailene Woodley, Sam Claflin, Gal Gadot, Eva Marie, Becky Lynch, Samuel L. Jackson

Standing: Robbie Coltrane, Gary Oldman, Sir Richard Harris, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Dame Maggie Smith

Seated: Robert Pattinson, Katie Leung, Tom Felton, Bonnie Wright, Evanna Lynch 

3 of Emma Watson, 3 of Daniel Radcliffe, 2 of Rupert Grint 

**And thanks to my friend Leigh, Michelle Yeoh is on the way!**

 

Downsizing Is Hard (Part One)

 Since I came to the realization that Barbieville had gotten out of hand and decided to stop the soap opera, I have been really strict with myself about what can stay and what must go.  I started with the standing sets.

Here we see Bellatrix laying on the floor of Sulu's Greenhouse, the denuded hospital exam/waiting room, and a giant couch in the grocery store.  I'm sure you can guess that I had already started work before thinking to take pictures.

The exam room walls became a wall full of graffiti.  I kept the canyon sunset, as it can be either a mural (as it was in the waiting room) or simply the view.  Green felt for grass, and I have a permanent spot for the playground.  The children will hang out here full time.

Sulu's greenhouse and the Witch's Cove ticket booth combine with the grocery store to become a kitchen/pantry.  New wallpaper and the barn backdrop, cut to size.  (I need to construct an oven door.  Or make one of the refrigerators into a sideways-opening oven.) 

The grocery space is now the classroom for adolescents to hang out.  I kept only the Harry Potter and Creatable world dolls, with the exception of Claudia.  Claudia is a Babysitters Inc Skipper (Asian) on an extra Hermione body.  Classroom is obviously is a work in progress.  Ignore the phone charger cord.

Non-dollhouse-family babies will live in this crib. It keeps getting moved back and forth between kitchen and playground.

It really doesn't matter for the blog, since I'll be doing stand-alone stories with an ever-changing cast and characters, but for simple play off camera, this is the new dollhouse family.

These are the adults I'm keeping.  Before I reorganized, and purged, each of these pockets held two or maybe three dolls.  Granted, the third doll was often a child, but still...  

Honestly, I'm still waffling on a few dolls in the donation bag.  The top of the tall shelf is covered with things like the cash registers from both the grocery store and greenhouse.  But the hardest part is done.  

Funny story: I started my downsize and Sister Number One told me about a convention of sorts, buying and selling "collectables".  I playfully scolded her for undermining my efforts.   Then The Boy's mother made this quilt for my dolls.  So of course I had to playfully scold her as well. 

Then a friend of mine shows up with this! 

LMAO  

 

Doll Universes

 I got a little package in the mail today.  The note inside was signed by "The Main Giant" of Imagineville.  

I often muse on how individuals can diverge in their toy play.  I'm a doll gal, myself, so I'll be saying "doll" a lot, but this does cover the broader toy category.  I've often defended Barbie by telling people Ruth Handler insisted the doll is about possibilities, and my online "Barbie group" proves it!

I'm not one to join every group that comes down the pike, so I was wary when invited to join Toy StorieS on Facebook.  The second word in the name was what got me interested.  The same friend had invited me to other doll groups, but I'm neither a collector nor a displayer.  My dolls are for play!  Toy StorieS is a play group and WOW can we take the same doll in different directions.

This guy is a good example.  He is the Albus Dumbledore doll from Mattel's Harry Potter set.  It seems, though, that the only thing my Albus has in common with the Albuses of other people is that his beard has been trimmed!  Biker Grandpa seems to be a popular role for him. 

A lot of people have paired Albus with the doll version of  his fellow Hogwart's teacher.  I thought about that, but when I put him in regular clothes and the Bellamy Brothers started singing "Old Hippy" in my head, I knew that wouldn't work.

Another good example is Monster High.  I got these two for Christmas and they had to join my few display dolls.  (I do have a few, of the wrong scale and unboxed.  Guests are allowed to play with them. Hardly the usual life of a display doll.) 

I could rebody Cleo, but Lagoona is not a human skin tone.  Lots of other doll universes do go into the supernatural, but I keep Barbieville reasonably realistic.  Lagoona in one of those other universes could be an alien, the "daughter" of a mad scientist, or even just the monster she's designed to be.  

And every single possibility, every one of them, is okay.

It's so much fun to see what others do with the same toy, to explore a doll universe so unlike my own.  

 

BTS Dolls

                               

WARNING!   DOLL NUDITY AHEAD!  TURN BACK NOW IF THAT BOTHERS YOU!

The BTS dolls, which were reviewed in depth on My Froggy Stuff and NexJen (YouTube), were available at Five Below, but all gone by the time I was able to buy them.  GRRRR 

Mind you, I know next to nothing about BTS.  I just wanted articulated boys who aren't "action figures" and therefore built like Rambo.  The reviews of the dolls were good -- joints are solid, they have nice face sculpts and quality clothes.  

Someone dropped a bug in my ear about the pricing on Amazon.  I splurged, because it averaged out at less than ten dollars a doll.  And here they are!

Obviously, this is after they were freed from the boxes and got the product washed out of their hair.  I also wrote the names on the soles of their feet so I remember who is who.  

I just noticed you can't see the ankles are jointed, but you'll have to take my word for that one.  The joints are a little stiff but that makes it easier for them to hold a pose.  There are some limits - they aren't able to touch their faces - but I can adapt.  

I left the britches on them.  They are pretty standard pants, in patterns that match the jackets.  One pair has a belt and one pair is black (no red-with-paisley).  Shoes were nicely detailed sneakers. One guy was wearing a tie.

Most of the shirts are sewn into the jackets, but the front opens with velcro.  The one with a hoodie pulls off over his head and the jacket part has very little give, so it does give a bit of a fight.  The yellow jacket (glad it doesn't sting) had a white sleeveless shirt under it, which opens at the neck with velcro.

I wondered how many of my other guys could share clothes with BTS.  They look awfully skinny.  Pretty sure I managed to try one man of each body mold... let's see the results.

Ben and Ken are pretty comfortable.  It closed over Dean's chest, but the arms are tight.  The sleeve doesn't quite reach Dean or Ken's wrists.  (Ben is on a Disney Descendants body, Dean is either World Peacekeeper or Power Team, and Ken is a standard Ken.)

Albus manages to get his arms in, which is more than I can say for Sulu. Both these guys are on the original bodies. I didn't even try my Star Wars men and Hagrid.  Verdict is that roughly half my men and probably all my women will be able to share clothes with them.  I was very pleased. 

If you love dolls, you should buy these dolls ASAP.  They are pert-near perfect. 

A Much Needed Uplift

A little background for those who may not know:  I'm a Depressive and refer to said Depression as a demon in my head or the tenth personality.  As in "nine out of ten of my personalities approve".  The personification's name is Sybrie The Tenth.

Sybrie spent a good part of today raging at me that I'm a failure at life.  Specifically because I never had the brood of children I so badly wanted.  The same brood people "know" I have the moment they see evidence of my SSDI and supplemental Welfare programs. 

Heather, a recently adopted minion, texted to see if I was home.  She recently got her IRS refund, is quite generous of spirit, and had asked which Harry Potter dolls I don't have yet.  I'm hoping all those clues indicate she's bringing me someone. One being the key syllable.

She did.

Sybrie shut the eff up so fast!

I knew once I'd gotten over the wonderful surprise, at least to some extent, my hordes of Barbieville followers would want to know about this.  So here we are!

The Yule Ball dolls have the same articulation as the previous runs.  They can stand on their own, at least when wearing shoes.  We all know how seldom that happens in Barbieville! I couldn't get Cho to stand on her own. 

The first run and Quidditch dolls were based on Chamber of Secrets, in which they were 12/13.  This run obviously is based on Goblet of Fire, when they were 14/15.  As a result, these dolls have a new and more mature face sculpt. 

I think the guys look better without the dress robes.  (Poor Ron.) 

Comparison between Dan (90s Harry) and the newer versions.  The ones already living in Barbieville are named for the character or the actor.  Not sure what name Yule Ball Harry is going to answer to.  Yule Ball Harry's longer hair is more of a dark brown.  

Like Belle (Yule Ball Hermione), he will join the blended Potter/Granger family.  Belle was living with her dad.  I wonder where this guy was?

The Rons.  The new,  slightly more mature boy will likely be Rupert.  For the actor, just like Dan above and Emma below.  His hair is shaggier and a different shade of redhead. 

I've already established that Ron's only sibling is Ginny.  Maybe Rupert is Becky's little brother and therefore a cousin.

Emma is the 90s Hermione.  Hermione, in center, is from the Chamber of Secrets run.  Yule Ball Hermione, who I got for my birthday, was named Belle after one of Emma Watson's other roles.  Hmm... does that mean Yule Ball Harry is gonna be Iggy?  Horns is the only other Daniel Radcliffe movie I've seen.

I think these faces have the biggest difference.  Hermione looks far more serious than Belle and has more freckles.  Belle's even got a bit of a smirk. 

The Yule doll girls have different feet!  Cho and Belle are holding the big toe away from the rest.  Hermione isn't.

I don't have any previous Chos, so I'll compare her to Belle.  Same body mold, but the noggins are different.  Cho's face looks to be slightly rounder and Belle's nose is thinner.  I thought they had the same earrings, but no.  Both flowers, but details vary.

 Cho is an excellent likeness of Katie Leung.  Not sure how she's going to fit into Barbieville.  Yet.

Heather also gave me Belle for my birthday.  

Can you tell she's a Potterhead?  

HUFFLEPUFF PRIDE!