Another random roundup.

April came and went and the two things I was saving for never materialised. Bummer.

Maybe next month.

I don't like Limited releases because they mess up my budgeting. I can't like, put them back on the wishlist because I have to get them WHEN they're released or never get them, which is highly stressful when there's other stuff tempting you and you've got limited funds.
Oh wouldn't it be nice to have unlimited cash?

Anyway,

I didn't go without this month anyway. I bought a few small bits here and there, and opened a few things I had laying about at long last too. So here's a random assortment of STUFF. Whoo?

First up it's something old. This girl is an old Tressy doll I bought many years ago. During one of my many purges I decided to sell her. So she sold on Ebay, I parcelled her up and I posted her out and heard nothing back. I thought little of it, a lot of buyers no longer bother to leave feedback these days so I forgot all about it, till many months later a parcel arrived. I was confused, I hadn't bought anything off ebay that week.
So i opened it and sure enough, there was this girl. She'd been returned to sender after the buyer failed to pick her up from the depot.

Weiiird.

I hung onto her in case the buyer ever contacted me but they never did.

So I finally stumbled upon her again in one of my boxes and decided the poor old thing deserved some attention at last.

She got some "new" clothing I got from the charity shop the other week and some liv shoes that are far too big but stay on fine.
They balance out her giant head.

She's an 80s Tressy, her hair supposedly "grows" but i've never worked out how you're supposed to get it to work. She has a sort of key/crank in her body but it doesn't seem to do anything (maybe it's broken?)

She reminds me of 80s Hasbro Sindy dolls.

She has a rock hard head and her hair isn't bad for an old doll. it's very "floofy"

I also purchased this girl off Ebay.

She's a Tomy Dream Dancer. I admit, this is because I saw her on a friend's flickr page and was taken by her cute retro looking face. Apparently she uses the same mold as Yukko Chan?
Either way, she's cute

Her hair is dry as heck and her filtrum is kinda deep and weirdly crooked. She has quite arching eyebrows (there looks to be a lot of variation in eyebrows on these dolls) and her body is craaaaaap.

These were gimmick dolls, meaning they aren't really dolls so much as a figure that does stuff. In her case, she slotted into a base and rotated, which made her very floppy joints move like she was dancing.

It's actually pretty cool to see in action, if you check youtube you can find videos of this, but mine didn't come with a base.
I didn't want a heavy clunky base. It's the sort of gimmick that after a couple of times you'd just get bored of. Like well, almost all gimmick dolls.

Her arms are on ball joints so they can move quite a bit, but due to her gimmick are rather floppy.

Her hips has a really floppy leg on one side and a fixed one on the other (the leg that slots into the base). Both legs can move backward but her stiff leg can't move forward so she can't sit, at all, ever.
poor girl must have tired legs.

One knee bends, the other doesn't.

Her shoes are molded on and rather bizarrely, the tights she wears are glued UNDER the shoes (wtf?) so they can't actually be removed.

this is particularly bizarre as the doll came with two outfits originally. A ballerina outfit and a workout outfit.

The shoe that slots into the base has some damage to the socket, it looks like it might be broken which might explain what happened to her stand.

Because she's "en pointe" she can't stand up either.

I knew she needed a new body before she even arrived in the mail, and by chance happened upon a Liv doll in the local charity shop for £2. I always pick up livs when I see them cheap, they're extremely useful bodies to have laying about.
sure they aren't as pretty as many others on the market but they're very functional and sturdy, and I have a LOT of shoes that fit them (more than I have barbie shoes)

It took SO LONG to get her onto this body omg. Her head hole is teensy tiny and the liv neck is rather fat, it took a while to get the head soft enough and give enough force to actually ram it on and have it stretch enough around the neck.

Because liv dolls don't have a hook inside their heads and just have a sort of toggle thing her head isn't that securely on either, the toggle is actually smaller than the neck so it's not that effective at keeping a soft squishy head on. But she had a ball socket on her original body so it's not like she wasn't designed to have her head stay on with nothing but pressure.
I think she'll be alright as long as I don't say, swing her by her hair.

The new body is a bit broader than her old one and a bit shorter, nude the proportions are okay but could be better. But dressed i think she looks okay. I picked out the only dress that didn't make her look too mature, with her rather youthful face it was a challenge.

I love that she can pose now though. And sit! and kneel!

And the colour match isn't bad either.

Poor old girl's got a new lease of life now. I'm pleased.

While in the charity shop I also picked up this guy. I think he's a Elite Force world peace keepers doll or... something like that. They're a bit like Action Man, but modern and fairly low priced. I remember a shop up in Bradford having some in and they were about 15-20 quid for a big set with outfit and accessories which wasn't too bad.

He has a kind face I think. And it's unusual to get boy dolls that aren't well, white.

His hands come off, something I found out by yanking on them (they were on the wrong way around) and accidentally punching husband in the face as the came loose (he was holding the doll). Oops?
He's never letting me live it down.

He's got really impressive articulation. Double jointed elbows and knees mean he can kneel and there's a joint in the upper leg that means he can fold his legs too. It's awesome.
And looking this line up, it looks like they had a large range of different head molds covering a very wide range of ethnicities. It's cool.

He is however, sadly, shorter than a Barbie doll so looks a bit silly alongside her and other fashion dolls. Dang.

But he's a cool figure and for only £2, well worth it.

Off ebay I also got some lil' Bratz. This was because i've rekindled my obsession with Bratz boyz and spotted some mini ones and was all "eee tiny boyz! want!"

The lil' Bratz boyz had I think 8 characters, 4 who are larger dolls as well (Dylan, Eitan, Koby and Cameron) and 4 whole new characters (Mikko, Colin, Lakin and Deavon). I have an ongoing desire to own one of every boy character, so obviously had to grab a few when I could.

The bundle was quite large but I only kept a few I really liked of the girls.

There's a Sasha and a Meygan and a Yasmin in there, along with a few new girls. (Ailani, Zada and Talia I think)

The boys are Deavon (the dark skinned boy), Colin (in the blue shirt with the pale skin), Mikko (in the stripes) and Dylan. I shall have to track down the other four i'm missing, but they're quite hard to find. I assume a lot just got lost over the years, these things are tiny.

They're less than half the height of a standard Bratz doll, and in many cases their outfits are exact teensy little replicas of the bigger ones.

I'm amazed by the detail in such small things. not only do they all have quite good faces with well applied paint and crisp detail, their clothes have things like tiny decorative buttons and bows, contrast stitching and their bags even open! whaa??? What witchcraft is this!

Unfortunately they're so small and i'm not good at photographing such small things that I couldn't get any clear pictures of their accessories or clothing.

This is one of the girls from my "sell" pile. I think she's Ailani.

Her lips and eyeshadow is all glittery and her face looks just like a bigger bratz, complete with the lip liner that was popular back in the 2000s.

Her outfit is a replica of one of the bigger Winter dolls.

Her skirt is a bit simpler but all the pieces are individual just like the bigger doll.

The leggings are separate from the skirt, there's even a fuzzy cat ear hat and ear muffs

And her hair is in lots of teensy tiny braids.

She has a backpack too, that's fuzzy and opens up.

Wowza.

My spare boy also has a duplicate of a bigger boy's outfit.

in this case Formal Funk Eitan's frankly hideous lounge lizard look.

The leopard print jacket on the lil' bratz has buttons and the teensy pleats of his shirt are impressive.

Again every piece is individual. The shirt is a sort of bodysuit as with the larger scale outfit, the jacket is separate and the trousers go on over the top.

At Bratz 10 inch scale the detail of outfits is impressive, at 1:12 scale it's downright insanity! I tip my hat to MGA for managing to create so much detail on something so dang small. They didn't need to after all, but the fact they did is just so impressive and awesome.

Bratz clothing and the intense detail was always one of the things that appealed most to me about Bratz dolls, and these tinies are just a step beyond. I love tiny things so they absolutely delight me!

This is the rest of the "sell" pile for anyone curious. Like the boyz the girls came as a mix of existing characters and new ones. Here we have Cloe, Jade and Dana, all existing regular sized bratz characters, and one of the new characters Zada.

I'm not totally sure how many they actually released, it's quite awkward to find information about the lil' bratz and there appears to be no database for the characters that got "lil'" treatments. There's at least 4 unique to the line characters, but there could be more for all I know. It took me most of an evening to figure out who all this lot were.

I'd bought a ratty old Ever After High doll from the charity shop too, not noticing at the time that she had two right hands (doh). Aside from her hand flaw her body was intact though, so I decided to see what my spare Moxie Girl head would look like on it. Their big flat heads remind me of EAH, only with a little more charm I think.
I could never warm totally to the EAH moon faces but I have a real soft spot for Moxies.

Now I just need to find a replacement hand that's not being sold for a fortune. Grr.

And because I was on a bit of a Moxie kick, I spotted this bundle on ebay and purchased them (this is  their auction photo)

Like with Bratz boyz I have this strange desire to own one of every moxie character, and there aren't that many of them so it's a relatively straightforward goal.

I was missing Ida, Kellan and Merrin, and Ida and Kellan happened to be in this bundle so SCORE.
I also didn't have an Avery because you know, she's the boring blonde one but for completeness sake I think she'll stay anyway.

I've always liked Moxie Girlz, my only real issue with them was that when they were released they were extremely expensive. I paid £20 for my "more to me" lexa and a good £15 or so for my "budget" Sophina back in 2011. At the time most dolls on the market were £9.99 or £14:99 for more fancy ones, so the Moxies were very high end price wise.
But they were really nicely made dolls. Thick rooted hair, really nice detailed outfits and heavy as heck solid feeling bodies. They felt like a doll that would withstand a lot of abuse from a kid, which I appreciate in my playline toys.
they were a toy I felt comfortable giving to my then toddler knowing he probably couldn't totally trash it (unlike the very fragile Monster High and Fashionistas of the time) and they were just really sweet looking.

Their innocent young faces and rather age appropriate outfits meant they filled a niche critics of Bratz had been asking for. A more innocent, young doll that had the same big eyed look and the same quality.

This is why that big trend of "makeunders" for Bratz pissed me off so much. We ALREADY HAD madeunder Bratz! they were called Moxie girlz and you assholes didn't buy them!

Eugh.

Anyway, handling them always makes me smile. MGA knows how to make damn robust dolls okay?

Of course this bundle had been PLAYED with, by a child, so they were a bit worse for wear when they arrived. Their nylon hair was frizzy and tangled to heck and they were all slightly grubby.

So I boiled the kettle.

The advantage of decent quality nylon is that it's very heat resistant, and tolerates quite a lot of abuse before it totally gives up.

Kellan's long hair means she was a hair play doll, so her hair is designed to be brushed a lot and not break. Her hair brushed out and rinsed fine with a brief boiling water dunk.

Avery's hair is more standard moxie nylon, which means it's BIG and it's frizzy. The dolls also have a LOT of hair rooted into their giant hard heads, so their hair tends to poof out anyway. Thankfully the slight curl hides a great many sins and one of the curious things about this fiber is that it tends to relax a little if you run your hands over it after brushing. Smoothing the hair out with your fingers makes it less.. .poofy, and helps a lot with the volume issues the moxies have.

Ida's hair is choppily cut (factory I believe, MGA, like many doll companies, aren't very good at cutting hair evenly) but she also has some subtle blonde highlights through her hair. Now, I don't know if those streaks weren't heat resistant or if they were just damaged already (her hair was kinda matted when she arrived and I didn't want to try to brush it dry knowing it'd just tear it out) but after a boil dunk some of her hair is showing small sections of damage. Split ends and frazzled bits amongst otherwise soft shiny fiber. Strange, and annoying. The ends in general are dry and frizzy anyway, playwear that boil washing can't do much about.
It looks okay dried off, but it feels dry and scratchy.

Sophina likewise has hair choppily cut like Ida's, but unlike Ida the damage to her hair is just the ends as her highlights are brown and seem to have tolerated the heat fine. Her hair is a lot softer than Ida's, less "crimpy" feeling sections.

The hair at the scalps is ALL nice, shiny and soft, so I expect the damage is simply playwear and you know, nylon being nylon.

I elected to style their hair a little just to make it look a bit nicer. One of the problems with Moxie Girlz was that almost all of them just got the same hairstyle, side parted, long, whatever.
I guess the idea was that kids could style it if  they wanted, as there's certainly enough of it even on the non hair play dolls. It's so thickly rooted you can get away with rather a lot of different stuff.

For Avery I went with two braids pulled back to keep her giant mane out of her face a bit more and hold that puffball DOWN.

Ida got a small braid on one side of a ponytail. The ponytail hides how poorly cut her hair is but also how dry it is. The braid just added a bit of variation.

Kellan's hair was left as is. It's ridiculously long and it falls into her face a lot but I haven't the heart to cut it. It's soooo soft and nice to handle. (it might be saran, hair play dolls often are)

Sophina got a sleek ponytail for the same reason Ida did, it just looks better with how choppy her hair is, plus looked quite nice I felt with her rather more sophisticated dress.

Ida, Avery and Sophina were a 3 pack that I honestly can't remember seeing in stores over here. So they all wear the same shoes in different colours and dresses with a coherent theme. They're sort of matchy without being matchy and I rather like that. They look like they go together without being in the same outfit recoloured.
Husband thinks they look like a girl band ahahahah.

Strangely the denim skirts on all three dresses isn't hemmed, so it's fraying a little. Not sure why they opted for that, the outfits are otherwise well made and well sewn, so it seems an oversight in terms of durability. Still I suppose denim is pretty tough, even this thin fashion denim. These girls look to have been played with rather a lot and are still is very good nick. I think that's a testament to how well made the dolls were in the first place.

I freaking love these little dolls, can you tell?

The other thing I did was a bit of an experiment.

See i've been playing Fallout 3 recently, on and off, working through the DLC expansions.
I've also been sharing these stories with some people online (it's very sweary lol)
So my character (a guy named Susan) has become rather dear to my heart after being my player character for almost a year of gameplay.

So I was pretty miffed to learn that Funko only made two Lone Wanderer Pops. Male and Female, but only white.
the game character creation offers you several options with 4 ethnicities to pick from, so it seems a bt presumptuous to assume everyone will play "generic white dude". And I mean I get it, they had to pick a look for the character, but it would have been nice to have at least had a "generic avatar" for all four options.
Plus you could then sell EIGHT different pops instead of only two! and there are people who would want all eight for completeness sake, don't say there wouldn't be.

Anyway, I wanted a pop figure to commemorate my character and completion of the game. Just because I COULD.
My character happened to be a black guy, with dark purple hair. Why you ask? because I COULD. The game gave me options, I took em.

So I had a look online and found the very rich funko custom community and their very simple tutorials that basically boil down to "heat it up and whip that head off". Much like doll hybrids.

As the base funko is grey vinyl painted and the match between head and hands isn't always very good even in official products I figured it wouldn't be that difficult to swap a new head onto the Lone Wanderer body and paint the limbs brown to match.
Voila, black Lone Wanderer.

So I bought two pops for cheap. The Lone Wanderer cost me about £7 and the Lucas was a similar price off amazon.

Word of warning about Amazon, as this is the second time they've done this to me. Double check where stuff is coming from if it's third party "fulfilled by amazon". I foolishly assumed that "fulfilled by amazon" meant they had it in their warehouse and it would be sent out by them. And more foolishly, that this meant it was being fulfilled by amazon UK from their warehouse.

Heck no.

This happened before with a monster high doll who ended up shipping from Poland unexpectedly, and again this happened with Lucas. He shipped from an amazon warehouse in the USA!?? what?

I don't get it.

Nor did I see any indication that this would be the case when I placed my order. it's free shipping, fulfilled by amazon, until it dispatches there doesn't seem to be any really obvious way to tell it's not shipping from your own country. I must be missing something, surely?
but it pissed me off because something that should have taken 3 days to arrive took nearly 3 weeks!

gah.

Both went into a pot of boiling water to soak for a bit.

It didn't take long for the heads to become pliable.

LW's head came off with one firm tug, leaving the disk that holds the head to the neck in place.

Lucas on the other hand had so much glue it was dribbling out his neck hole. It took quite a bit of prying to get it to loosen up.

Once they were beheaded I decided to see if i could swap the disks because Lucas' disk was already painted brown on the underside and thus matched his head, while the LW's was pale. But alas, it didn't work. The two bodies have different styles to them so while the heads are identical, the disks are not. LW's disk was thicker, keeping the head a little further up the neck to give an illusion of an actual neck. With Lucas' disk on that body he looked like he had no neck at all, the head sat too low.

Likewise the LW disk on Lucas' body made him look giraffe necked and strange.

So I swapped the disks back and just swapped the soft squishy heads instead. 

All that's needed once you swap the heads is a little squeeze of superglue or plastic glue to affix the disk to the head.

Then I painted the skin in a matching shade of brown and the bottom of the disk. I could probably have done this neater had I painted everything while it was disassembled but I didn't want to chip any paintwork getting the disk back on (those suckers are really tightly rammed onto the neck knob okay?)

These are the parts I was left with. A generic white dude head and a ghost busters body.

You can see the disk here quite clearly, that whole thing slides off the neck if you so desire but it takes a bit of force.

Funko paintwork is seldom overly neat, as you can see there's some errors around the hair. I elected to just paint over it, flaws and all rather than trying to strip any paint.

our crappy potholed road makes the perfect Capital Wasteland standin.

Of course nowadays Susan wanders the Wasteland wearing powerarmor and wielding a plasma pistol, but i'm claiming this as "just booted out of the vault by a load of assholes" Susan.

I considered using one of the power armor pops but they were more expensive and I wanted to retain the obviously Fallout elements like the pipboy and vault suit. It makes it more obvious what he's supposed to be you know? it's kinda.. iconic.

I had a lot of fun playing with this little dude.

And the advantage of how stylised Pops are is that you can make just about any character you want and they'll look "official". This delights me, and I may need to make more <_<

Now Funko... about those Dragon Age pops? <_<