Anyway, it's time for my late monthly roundup. I was going to do this on the 1st but got distracted by shiny things. Or rather, got distracted by being able to finally play video games again with my new pc. Ahem.
I didn't buy a lot in October/November mostly because Christmas is coming and it's a stupidly expensive time of year for me. I have three birthdays in the weeks around Christmas itself too, so its hugely stressful and involves a lot of organization. Boo.
However, just because i didn't buy a lot doesn't mean i didn't overspend, because being near Christmas stores have started putting their sales on. *gulp* It's a dangerous time to have money burning a hole in your pocket isn't it?
So, Oct came and with it came news from Makie labs. They were removing their boy dolls to do some much needed tinkering with their designs, and they wouldn't be back till Feb next year. NOOOOoooo.
Now, you all know i'm OBSESSED with boy dolls, so when I was told "you have until the 9th of November to order" I kinda panicked.
I was good though, or rather, i only had enough money to order the one Makie I had intended to make anyway. He's still at the printer, supposed to be here some time this week but we'll see. The lab is moving really slow since the switch to IM bodies and i'm not totally sure I understand why.
Then Asda finally put the Boo York Boo York Monster High 3 pack on sale. I'd been waiting for the price to drop for weeks. Lowest i'd seen was £40, down from 50 and still felt that was more than I wanted to pay. So when the price dropped to £25 you better believe I pounced.
That wiped me out for the month money wise, oops?
But that doesn't mean I don't have STUFF to write about. So here's my text heavy reviews of stuff I totally took photos of and then failed to write up at the time, and stuff I didn't have enough to say about to justify a full review.
It's the monthly roundup! And yes, it's 2 months late, i'm aware of this. I'm a slacker ok?
First up
4-ever best friends fashion packs:
I actually got two of these from different places. the first arrived last month, this one came with my brand boo students from the US.
4-ever best friends is an old line now, long defunct. It was MGA's answer to Mattel's Wee 3 friends, or maybe Mattel's line was a response to this line, I dunno. They're really similar dolls though, but I sadly don't own either any more. the outfits though seem to still pop up from time to time, often mistakenly listed as Barbie.
The 4-ever best friend dolls like the wee 3 friends had chunky bodies and Barbie can indeed fit their fashions, but the biggest draw for me was knowing that Wee 3 Friends shoes fitted Makie dolls, would 4-ever best friend shoes also fit?
The answer is a resounding YES YES oh YES. And the outfits fit too, so it's all round excellent.
I picked up a single fashion pack off Ebay first of all. It was about £5 which I thought was an ok price for a gamble. I was pretty certain the clothing itself would fit a lot of my other dolls, but the shoes I wasn't sure about.
I was very pleased to find the whole outfit fitted my Makie dolls perfectly.
This pack is called "school time style" though paradoxically doesn't look very schoolgirly to me. I suppose the whole US not wearing uniform thing and all that but... I dunno, a crop top and cargo pants? Is that within the uniform code? lol.
The back of the box has a little cartoon of one of the characters and claims the set includes two charms (oh joy?) and tennis shoes, which are so exciting they deserved an exclamation mark too.
Uh... ok? they're just shoes guys, calm down.
The image along the bottom is the other packs available. What looks like a fitness sort of tracksuit (I hate tracksuits), pjs, a ballet outfit (eugh, I hated ballet too. Yes, I DID Ballet, I have the grace of a geriatric hippo and someone thought that was perfect for ballet. Suffice to say, i was a terrible ballerina), a cheerleading outfit and then two casual outfits.
I like the other casual one, it has plaid pants bwhahaha.
The pack actually isn't that hard to open, which is rare for MGA. All the pieces came out with a quick snip of the scissors and here they all are.
The set includes a backpack that actually opens (I love when they do this!), a crop top with a bratzy faced heart, a pair of cargo pants with a chain detail, a fur trimmed jacket and a pair of red shoes. Are they Tennis shoes? I dunno, they look kinda like sneakers I suppose.
All the pieces are really nicely made. The cargo pants are a thin fabric but there's stitched detailing across the whole piece, teeny fake ties at the elasticated cuffs and itty bitty fake pockets.
The jacket has a sort of padded effect across it, and while also thin it looks great.
I don't own a 4EBF doll, so Fizz the Makie leaped in to model. Like the 4EBF dolls, Makies have a stocky younger girl style of body and big, flat feet. Not only do all the outfit pieces fit, the pants and sleeves are even the right length, but the shoes fit perfectly too! YES!
So when I ordered the new MH characters from the USA, I added a fashion 2 pack to the order. It was pretty cheap, only about £8 all in. Old doll fashion packs can be a bit unpredictable in their pricing, sometimes they become ridiculously overpriced and other times they become really cheap. The 4-ever best friends stuff seems to fluctuate wildly though, so hmmm.
The twin pack is packaged in a fairly chunky box with each piece clearly visible. It includes two full outfits and bags. This set is called "school is cool" for some reason. The plaid skirt does kinda look like a school uniform I suppose, but the rest is pretty random casual wear. *shrug*
The two pairs of shoes look to be the same mould, a sort of round toed slip on with a buckle. They are however different to the trainers/sneakers from the last set.
The back of the box shows off the other twin packs and some of the dolls. interestingly the doll in the khaki pants seems to be wearing shoes that aren't included. Mga, go figure.
I admit it, I haven't opened this pack yet because i'm a lazy BUM. Also the outfits are all like... warm looking and it's cold, I feel cold if I look at dolls dressed unseasonably so all my dollies have their winter coats on lol. *is a freak*
Sparkle Girlz dolls and outfits
I scoured the mess that was Asda for these. It's been like a year since the Sparkle Girlz fashion packs hit the US, yet being backward and lame it's taken this long for the UK to finally bloody get them. *huff*
Anyway, they're only a few pounds each and offer something a little different to the usual Barbie stuff. The dolls are about £4, use the exact same sculpt as the Pixie Punks and are about as "okay" in quality.
I bought the dolls only because I wanted their clothes. Ahem.
We don't seem to get anything but whitey white boring bland Sparkle Girlz over here, I can't recall if there were blonde ones but they do have a redhead which is nice.
They're kinda.. meh looking imo but they're not terrible.
The dolls are about 11 inches tall, they're shorter than Barbie but taller than a Bratz. Unlike the Pixie Punks, the Sparkle Girlz don't have jointed arms. They have fairly generic rubbery limbed bodies with click knees that feel a bit fragile and bendy noodle arms.
They're actually quite heavy to hold, no hollow fragile bodies here, Sparkle Girlz may be cheap but they're solidly made.
Their hair is also quite nice, it frizzes a bit but it's lovely and soft to touch and VERY thickly rooted.
Despite being super skinny and spindly, the Sparkle Girl outfits and shoes fit barbie absolutely fine. go figure. In fact, several of their outfits don't seem the fit the DOLLS that well, making me think perhaps they were an afterthought and the intention was always to do cheap fashion pack alternatives for Barbie dolls and similar.
Their shoes are pretty boring and I think I lost the ones mine came with pretty fast. Theyr'e so small! barbie shoes are just as teeny and frustrating.
The excessive elastic banding warped this doll's soft rubbery legs and left lines across them. Whoops.
Yep, fits Makies. whoo.
Will also fit most other 1:6 scale dolls, which is nice.
I had to snip the ribbon in the skirt (there's a ribbon to stop it riding up on the doll) but otherwise, it's all good.
The clothing is nicely made. The skirt is made from thin soft denim-like material while the top is red cotton with a lace overlay that's hemmed in place really neatly.
For the price, the overall package is pretty impressive.
I didn't like the creepy grinning faces though. So I tried my hand at a little repaint with my watercolours.
Sparkle Girl faces are kinda flat and child-like, and rock hard. I think they repaint pretty nicely and it's kinda a shame they have these attempted grown-up faces when really their sculpt is so child-like. She reminds me of the Wee 3 friends dolls to be perfectly honest
Same coy open mouthed smile, button nose, fat cheeks and pretty flat face.
I also picked up three fashion packs, which all include one outfit (in this case two dresses and one top and pants) with a random plastic accessory.
the plastic accessories don't seem to come with any rhyme or reason, one set has shoes, another has a teeny clutch, the third has a huge handbag with a moulded flower. Wth?
The clutch and shoes I immediately lost, but the handbag though rather thin plastic seemed like it'd be super sweet with a lick of paint to pick out the handle and flowers.
Each of the outfits aren't under any sort of protective plastic or film,they're just tacked onto a card and put on a shelf. It makes them pretty easy to get off the card, but makes me wonder how easy it must be to nick them (what kind of person steals a £2 doll dress though?)
The black dress has a lycra bodice with some abstract pattern and a shiny silky fabric skirt, it's all one piece but the attached silver belt hides any seam.
The blue and black dress is the same pattern, only this time in stretch cotton with a thicker cotton skirt. Everything's hemmed and machine neatened, which is more than can be said for a lot of big company doll clothes.
I feel this dress could have done with a belt to hide the seam in the middle too. Oh well.
The final outfit is a thin cotton one armed tee with a yellow heart printed on and a pair of tight paint splattered "jeggings"
They're a bit ugly around the top, having an elasticated waistband and all but they cute with the shirt covering that up. They fit as capri sort of ength on taller dolls like Barbie, but full length on short limbed dolls like Makies.
Sa'dii found a Barbie belt and the vest is from a Pixie Punk doll, who are pretty much the exact same doll as Sparkle Girlz. In fact, several of the Sparkle Girlz fashion packs look to be repackaged or slightly altered Pixie Punk pieces. This makes the amount of time it's taken to get these packs here all the more baffling because we've had sparkle girl dolls and pixie punk dolls for years now, but the sparkle girlz we WERE getting all that time were fantasy princess or mermaid themed and super boring to me.
The more casually dressed ones are much more appealing, though I don't really care for their faces I can't say they're bad dolls. They're bland and generic but they're not terrible and they're SO cheap, for what they are they're a bargain to be fair.
Barbie sushi
it's freaking Barbie sushi! what more can I say here? I've been searching for this for AGES. Asda had ONE, randomly on the shelf amongst a lot of discarded and messed up boxes of tat.
It comes with chopsticks, two cups of drink, a plate... basket.. thing and a board of sushi (the sushi is attached to the board unfortunately)
I couldn't resist.
Build a Bear: Zombear
When I saw the halloween bears for this year I KNEW I needed a zombear in my life. Sadly during October I overspent so I couldnt' afford one, so I waited, hoping the hints I kept dropping would inspire other half to get me one. Alas, he's not good at picking up hints and halloween came and went zombearless. Then they removed them from the website and I thought i'd never have one in my life. I was sad.
I've found it's always when you can't have something you want it the most, and every time I saw a picture of the zombear online I felt a stab of envy and sadness. I NEEDED a damn zombear, more than even i'd realized.
So I popped into a BAB store in the hope they'd have some leftovers in the stockroom or something. I wasn't overly optimistic so imagine my delight to find a cache of all three halloween plushies hidden behind the big bear bins.
I grinned my face off seriously. I didn't stop grinning till i got home.
He has a little stitched gash in his head and a torn ear.
He's missing one eye.
His good eye is rimmed in purple and bright yellow and so cheerful. He has a lopsided little smile.
"Stuffing" is popping out his arm.
He has a stitched on heart on his chest (and a heart inside him, I had to do the whole ridiculous kiss the heart make a wish thing)
Stitches on his other arm.
How could you not love this creepy little guy? He's adorable!
Here he is with "William" who belongs to eldest son.
Zombear's a fair bit taller but as soft and squishable as all BAB. I opted to keep him nude because his details just make me smile so much.
I named him Romero, for reasons that should be obvious. I love him SO MUCH.
Makie Labs: Last call for boys
As I mentioned earlier, Makie labs sprung more big news on us fans in October. Boys were going on "vacation" so if we wanted a boy doll, we had to order it then and there or risk never being able to. They're changing a lot, so there was no guarantee when the boys came back they'd be able to print the old ones, sooo... I hurried to buy my last boy before the closing date.
Adhar was the last one of my boys I knew I wanted RIGHT NOW. Oh sure there were others I could order, but I didn't have the money for more than one and I can always remake the others later.
Ad though had been waiting long enough. I'd already passed him over to buy Tor and the other white Makies after those were discontinued, so finally he got his chance to be "made real".
Back when the discontinuing of white was annouced I ummed and ahhed over whether I should have Ad made real in white or to make a new boy in the same principle (alien looking features made more alien with creepy eyes and markings). In the end I decided to go with a different character because once I turned Ad brown he just... seemed right. Brown and teal or aqua just looks so GOOD.
So Tor'ba usurped my poor alien boy and was made to resemble his sister Sa'dii.
So much blue.
The wait for my new boy was agony. I was fine for the first week, but as the second came around I started itching to see my creation made real (no, it doesn't get any easier no matter how many times you go through it lol). Week 2 came and went, which made me super antsy. Some unknown delay meant my boy didn't actually get here till nearly 3 weeks after ordering. ARGH.
He arrived in really cheerful festive packaging though.
I ordered him with a long aqua wig thinking i'd save up and buy him a darker green one, but after hacking the wig into a strange half short, half bob style I decided it worked too well. So he gets to keep the wig heh.
He looked so sweet and worried straight out the box.
The first complication was figuring out how the heck to attach his hearing aids. Makie Labs started making hearing aids and coclear implants for the dolls, which is awesome, so I had to buy a set just because damnit. The only colour options were pink (bletch) or green, and thankfully green worked well for what I had in mind for this guy.
The lab claimed the aids should fit "all but the juggiest" of ears but there was some worry about whether they'd fit pointed ears. I made Ad's ears less pointy than i'd originally intended just in case.
It helped when I finally found a picture online and realised i'd been trying to put them on upside down lol.
they slide onto the top of the ear with a little ridged piece and sit very snug and very secure. I was worried I might have to tack them in place but nope, they stay on fine and he's fallen off my shelf several times and not lost his aids. he's lost a foot a few times, but not the aids. So yay?
The boy Makies were hybrids till they stopped being sold, with 3dp heads and torsos but Injection Moulded arms and legs. It's an odd combo but the colour difference isn't actually nearly as bad as this photo makes out. It's actually quite close to my eye, just the different materials react differently to the flash of my camera.
The arms and legs are a bit loose on the 3dp body, the feet and hands come off a little too easily for my taste though i've not had them fall off unintentionally YET (ok his foot comes off if he falls off the shelf but that's no biggy and the cleaner needs to stop knocking my damn shelves rargh)
The hands have a bit of seam remnants but the rest looks fine.
I spent a few hours layering up pastel and watercolours.
I made the eyes a while back. I accidently scraped the inside of one too much and removed a chunk of the eye detailing, so when I added the red behind the brown it leaked through and caused this sorta splotch. I decided to just roll with it and use it anyway, adds character heh.
I'm going to miss the 3dp bodies, not just because they're SO tactile but because even though most of the time clothing covers them, I do love doing body detailing. My dolls always get a little bit of body blush, not much, just a teeny bit because I like for them to feel "finished" like that.
You can see the festive Makie tube here. Isn't it colourful?
Doing coloured markings on dark skin is super time consuming.
I learned a couple of things though.
1: the new IM makie feet are slightly narrower than the old feet, so his shoes keep slipping off and the slip ons he came with don't fit my other Makies. This is troubling, means it's unlikely those who own the older 3dp dolls will be able to continue to buy accessories for their dolls. Mmmm, not sure that was a wise move.
2: The plastic hands mean you can squeeze them slightly to get things like gloves onto the doll's hands. FINALLY a Makie can wear these Liv gloves i've had for years.
The final thing I noticed was how DARK this new Cocoa boy IS. He's a lot darker skinned than my other cocoa Makies and his skin tone has a more dull desaturated quality to it. Gabe is reddish toned, while Juniper and Fizz both have a yellowish caste to their skin. Adhar is more well... greyish brown in natural light.
He shows up more vibrantly coloured in photos.
Not that it's not an attractive colour, it's just striking how different the tone is.
Of course I can't really get a decent photo of it. But you can maybe tell how red Gabe at the end is alongside the yellowy girls.
After I finished Ad's faceup, set his eyes in place, glued his wig back on and dressed him I decided I wanted him to wear a necklace. This mean taking his head off.
Now i've taken the heads off countless Makies, popped em on and off and on and off and nothing bad has ever happened. The heads are supposed to come off for easier dressing after all, so imagine my shock when I tugged and heard a loud CRACK.
My beautiful brand new £50 doll had just broken. His neck had shattered.
I admit it, I very nearly cried.
The theory is there was some printing flaw in the neck segment that caused a microfracture which then split and cracked as I applied light pressure. This should NOT happen, and the lab is apparently printing me a new body. Hopefully that'll arrive soon.
It does mean I have to do all the body blushing again but ahh well. better than a broken neck right? Poor Ad.
He's joined the rest of the Makie space pirates lead by Tor, the very Makie who took his place in the make real queue hah.
I'm pleased to see they look quite different despite being very similar in facial structure. You may also notice that my concept doodles and the finished product seldom look anything alike lol. I never look at the concepts before I start on the doll, so I just kinda wing it and go with what looks "about right". And some things that work in photoshop don't work irl anyway, so hah.
I love my aliens though, they're cuties.
Other stuff
Of course, this isn't the only stuff I got over the past two months, despite trying to be good and not spend before christmas. Ahem. *coughcoughnotgonnahappen*. But the other things deserve a full review and i've already photospammed and babbled on too long.
Coming soon: Monster high city ghouls 3 pack, Bratz selfie booth and a flashback to a doll from a few years ago.
I'll try to get those up ASAP, I know i'm a lazy bum, i'm sorry!
So I leave you with a question: Are there any dolls you'd like to see in Sparkle Girl or 4ever best friends clothing? Leave a comment and i'll see what I can do.
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