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. 

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. 

DIY Britches

Thanks to the pattern I featured in my previous blogs (6/27/19 and 7/9/18) my muscle dudes have lots of work shirts.  Another issue is pants.  Ken fashions with Velcro closures won't close around the waists of many of my non-Ken dolls.  My Star Trek guys can't wear anything but shorts because long pants won't go on over the molded-on boots.  T-shirt fabric isn't stretchy enough to go over the boots.  It's a dilemma, but I found a lazybones DIY for sweat pants.

I had knee socks that had worn out, in the feet only, as they do.  I was looking for ways to repurpose them into doll clothes.  Ugly Christmas sweaters are pretty common projects, but these socks are mostly zombie themed.  I have made tube dresses in the past, for my 18 inch Pocahontas dolls, but they've since reverted to just wearing their Disney-issued clothes year-round.

I thought "What if I cut a tube dress up the middle most of the way?  Would that make workable pants?"  So I tried it and guess what!  It worked!

I didn't think to take pictures as I worked, so Four and one of my still-intact knee socks volunteered to help me out.  The top of the sock will become the waistband, so position the doll accordingly and then cut straight across at ankle length. 

Put the doll directly on (or into) the sock to find where the crotch should be.  Cut from there to the bottom, creating an inseam.  Then flip them inside out and start sewing!  

My seams don't look purty, any more than the ones on my work shirts, but no one will see them unless man-spreading occurs. I did go through a few trial socks before getting it right, but the results were better than I'd hoped.  Turns out socks are stretchy enough to go over those Star Trek boots! 

Here's a variety of my dudes (and Nancy) modeling the sweats! I have a good variety of body molds so the fit varies.  The Boy told me some of these have ridiculously high waists, but that's easy enough to fix.  You can cover them with a shirt....

.... or turn down the top so it looks like a thicker waist band.

                                                                                                                                                                         

 The real test for doll pants, of course, is the Half-Moon. Most were good, and all but two of the others were fixed simply by turning up the folded down waist.

Hank and Ben switched pants with other guys to see if this was a pants problem or a doll problem.  It's the doll.  Hank and Ben will need to either wear long shirts or sit in the back row.  If they're in these britches, anyway. 

I can now do raggedy work shirts and raggedy sweat pants.  Pike and Sulu can wear something besides shorts, which they'll be glad for with winter coming.  And I didn't have to toss my worn-out socks!  At least, not the whole sock.   

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.

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.  

Old Guys (and Becky)

One of the issues I have with dolls is the lack of age-group diversity.  Rarely is any plastic person meant to be over thirty.  Granted, some of the face molds can be used to push that to a youthful fifty. Rarely do we get senior citizens and when we do, they quickly leave my price range.  

A few of the "soap opera" Barbie blogs have managed.  I was pleasantly surprised to see the demographic represented by Star Wars characters.  I was even more pleasantly surprised to be able to get three of them within my budget!

 

I'll explain that young gal in a minute.  All the guys arrived in their birthday suits - thus the low prices!  All four have jointed elbows and twist waists as well as the standard shoulder, neck, and hips.  The men have wrists and one even has fingers that move!  I do gotta say, these are some buff Grandpas.

Knees and ankles.  Obi-Wan only has click knees.  Neither he nor Becky have ankles.  

Ever since Marcus had his accident, I've been trying to find a replacement for his bastardized My Froggy Stuff wheelchair.  I kept being outbid - one jerk even swooped in at the last minute to beat me to a BROKEN one!  I got the last laugh, though.  Becky is here because -- (drum roll) 

 

--- she came with this.  Even better (at least from a collector's POV) she was Share A Smile Becky, with her original outfit and both necklaces!  She had been removed from the box and gently played with or displayed.  Seller shipped her in the original box, even.  Take that, Last-Minute-Swooper!

Marcus:  Thanks, Becky.  What role will you have in Barbieville?  

Becky: Jeanie hasn't decided yet.  I hope I'm not KBV.

Mace Windu looks slightly demented.  I did have a small quandary with these guys - I've established my twins as Star Wars fans and the overlap of universes was hurting my brain.  I was considering calling him Sam Jackson but it was pointed out that I've got plenty of others who "just happen" to have the same name as characters.  Amazing coincidences, right? 

His role in Barbieville is decided.  Stay tuned for more information.

This guy will have to stay "Obi Wan" because I already have a Ben.  I just can't wrap my brain around calling him Alec Guinness. Maybe he'll go by his last name like Pike does? His role is still undecided.  

I had no intention, ever, of letting this guy be Count Dooku. Or, as I pronounce it, Count Dookie.  That's got to be the worst character name I've ever heard.  The actor was Christopher Lee and I considered that for a while.  Christopher seems too formal, considering my plans for him, and he just ain't a Chris.  What to do, what to do...

(Light bulb over the head moment) 

Pike is Christopher Lee Pike the Third.  Grandpa was "Christopher", Dad is "Lee", and Son just uses the last name.  Probably a habit he picked up in the military...  ideas for Pike's back story...  

Lee does have some finger articulation, as I mentioned.  He also has stains on his hands that I've been unable to remove.  I have, however, come up with a in-universe explanation. 

The Lando Calrissian kept calling to me.  I was hunting specifically senior citizens, but come on!  It's Lando!  He must be rare, because he's pricey.  I decided to hope they make a Lando for the new movie - another old guy.  I just love Lando. 

They also had Anakin Skywalker from The Phantom Menace.  Not a senior, but a child.  I changed my mind about him when I found out his boots are molded on.  I get enough of that from the Star Trek guys.