Monthly roundup!

I've been on a dolly diet this month. We're coming up to Christmas which is an extremely crazy time of year for me.
Not only do we have christmas itself, but also 3 birthdays so it's a frenzy of stress and present buying and just... madness.

It's also a point in the year where I get super down, but you're not here to hear about my mental health are you?

Anyway, this all means that November and December are points where generally I try to slow down my purchasing.
But uh..

I have poor impulse control.



Baby Zombear:

Firstly, Build a Bear had teeny "small fry" halloween plushies. This year it was small baby versions of last year's full size halloween bears and while their full size bears this year didn't appeal to me as much as last year's "Zombear", they had a BABY ZOMBEAR and omg how could I not have one?

Unfortunately our local (ish) branch of BAB doesn't stock small fries, booo. So I had to order online.
But while it meant paying an extra £4 on top of the £8 price tag, it was totally worth it for this teeny ball of adorableness.

Look how little he is!

My full sized Zombear is called Romero, so of course I needed to find another appropriately zombie director name for the baby. I agonized, and settled for Savini. He looks like a Savini.

He's an adorable teeny rendition of the full sized bear, albeit with a few alterations. Savini doesn't have the torn ear, or the ripped arm but he does have the stitched on heart, the stitched head and the missing eye. And that adorably sweet lopsided smile.

He's made from the same soft mossy green plush that sheds all over and while super soft to touch, isn't so good for snuggling because it irritates my nose (it's a very shed prone material sadly)
He also has the cute embroidered zombie eye.

I love this little guy

There's his little stitched on heart. Though of course unlike my full sized bear, he hasn't got a heart inside of him as well. Hehe.

He's just under half the size of the full sized bear and fits nicely into the palm of your hand. He's a lovely size for snuggles, so long as you don't put him near your face. He seems a bit more shed prone than the large bear, but both leave me feeling like I have fiber up my nose so.. yeah...
Not nearly as snuggable as my other BAB plushies, who don't shed fur.
But I still love my zombears, they're adorable and random and fabulously macabre.

Sindy dolls:

Of course I already talked about Berkeley, the poor chewed up Sindy doll.
But I also got a new mystery Sindy doll this month.
And a Tonner Sindy.

The Tonner Sindy actually came last month I think, just for some reason I didn't upload pics. Go figure.
She was a nude doll purchased from the US. News of the terrible new Sindy relaunch made me pine for the fashion doll.

Well, let's talk about the Sindy relaunch first shall we? oooo hooo dear. Prepare for rantage... prepare.



So, you thought the Monster High reboot was a slap in the face? Oh sit down, you ain't seen nothing yet.

So, I assume most people know what Sindy was. She was a fashion doll made for the UK market, basically the British Barbie for many many years. She was first made in 1963 and continued to be made until 2006. In that time she's undergone many changes, many relaunches, many reimagininings but one thing has always remained consistent, she's always been a fashion doll.

I've collected Sindy dolls for many years, and while many collectors feel she sort of jumped the shark about the 1988 point where she became a Barbie knockoff (so much so Mattel sued and WON) but i've always found her changes really interesting.

Tammy was included in this photo because she was the inspiration for Sindy. (she's the doll in the yellow and white dress).

Now, Sindy's big changes have been numerous. in the 70s she became slimmer, shorter, more hourglass shaped. Slowly small refinements happened until 1986 where in a last ditch effort to combat the sudden surge of Barbie popularity in the UK, they changed her face sculpt completely from sweet and doe eyed to well... she's called "smirky" by fans and she has duck lips lol.
Soon after Sindy was sold to Hasbro.

Hasbro went through three variations before they settled on "looks pretty much like Barbie only cheaper" and that worked for a good decade.
then in the late 90s Vivid Imaginations took over and produce Sindy for a few more years before she disappeared from shelves completely in around 2003.

Then in 2006 she was relaunched with great fanfare by Pedigree toys (the original owners) via Chad Valley. These were exclusive to Woolworths for... some reason and came in two sizes. Teeny little 6 inch dolls, and regular 10 inch dolls. They came in a variety of fashionable tracksuits (yes, tracksuits) and weren't overly popular. Then Woolworths went bust and Sindy was gone.

Fast forward to 2013, Sindy's 50th anniversary and Pedigree started talking about a relaunch.
Oh there was such hope. But they annouced instead a partnership with Tonner to produce expensive collectors dolls.
Collectors dolls made in the USA, for a British market? Because.. that made sense?
Weird.
Anyway, the Tonner dolls got 2 waves before the license expired and Pedigree kept talking about a playline doll.
Collectors were eager to see a playline doll, and pedigree started promoting the franchise on facebook and even created a website (Sindy.com) which showed a lot of really misleading pictures of ooak reroots created by an artist that were never intended to be sold.
All this confusion was really frustrating, nobody seemed to know what the hell was going on.

until last month...

A familiar heart shaped logo appeared on shelves in the supermarket chain Tesco.
But the dolls were not Sindy dolls.

At 18 inches tall, these dolls have more in common with American Girl or Generation Girl than they do Sindy.

And the fans were NOT happy.

These were not the Sindy "fashion dolls" Pedigree had implied, they weren't even fashion dolls, they were toddler dolls and quite a different product.
It'd be like if Bratz had relaunched as a range of plushies or if Barbie relaunched as a range of construction kits. These are not Sindy dolls in anything but name and the waste of the franchise hurt.

3 years of waiting for Pedigree to come through on their promise, and we were left with a product nobody had asked for. Not a fashion doll, not a Sindy, some sort of cheap generation girl knockoff presumably because trying to take on Mattel in the doll aisle is way too scary.

Disappointed, this prompted me to think of the Tonner dolls. Much as many had complained they were too expensive and not deluxe enough to justify the cost, I had rather liked my Tonner Sindy doll. Yes she was overpriced, her eyelashes were terrible and she was flawed but she had a sweet face and I LIKED the way they'd reproduced the trendy girl head and body.

My only real complaint with the Tonner dolls was that they were so expensive and coming from the USA, which made shipping really prohibitive. however, the disappointment of "sindy"'s return to the toy aisle got me checking ebay again.

And i found someone selling some nude Tonners.

I never much cared for the outfits on the Tonner dolls and found them hugely overpriced for what you were getting, so nude for like $10? heck yeah.

Of course, with shipping my new girl came in at about £25 which was a bit steep but substantially less eyewatering than the £60-100 price point of the brand new ones.

She arrived in a plastic baggie with slightly squished fingers on one hand but otherwise perfect.

She's Bridal Bliss Sindy, and let me tell you, coming without her bride gown is a great thing in my eyes. I never liked bridal dolls.

Alongside my new Tonner girl I also found a curious Chad Valley Sindy. I was drawn by her very unique face. Most of these mid 2000s Sindy dolls have rather unattractive facial screenings with overly small eyes and a lot of blankness. This girl however had huge cheerful eyes and a really sweet smile.
And, more unusually, was actually 10 inches tall unlike most of the ones you find which are 6 inches.

So I got her too. But I actually have no idea which Sindy she IS.

Her head is marked PD&T 2002 like a lot of them, and she has the same body as the chad valleys and indeed the air hostess dolls made for Hatchett in the early 2000s. But her face seems to be unique.

She reminds me of Fairy Princess Sindy who was made by Vivid Imaginations, but she's not.

The closest i've found is an air hostess Sindy dolls. They made a few for various British airlines including Monarch, My Travel and XL (as well as BA themselves) but they look to be smaller sized.

If anyone knows who this Sindy doll actually IS, that'd be awesome. Let me know!

Makies

I gave up on Makie Labs reopening a loooong while ago now, and I gave up on winning any of the ebay auctions too. The price of them just kept going up and up and up and it was really disheartening to see them become such prestige deluxe items. Not having £200 to blow on a doll that originally cost £50, for a while I turned off my ebay notifications so I didn't have to see the temptation and be disappointed when the price hiked to crazy levels.
But a month or so ago I decided I was curious so I reactivated the alert and since then have watched several more fly waaaaay beyond my price range.

I'd resigned myself to never getting another. I was fortunate to have the ones I had and consoled myself that at least i'd managed to get them and at least i'd managed to nab 2 classics in the giant ex stock ebay purge. I mean, it's not like I didn't go a bit crazy and buy like.. loooooads back when I could heh. <_< *looks a little coy*

But I still watch them, out of morbid curiosity more than anything else, to see what the market is doing, whether they're still selling for crazy money and exactly what's showing up. It's interesting to me.
Anyway,

This week there was a glut of them.
2 injection molded bodied girls in the US, who were snapped up for about £120 each. There was a classic girl who after not selling twice I think was sold off site, least I hope so as the lady selling needed money, another classic who's still sitting with a £200 BIN price and another full 3dp "Cutie" who sold for about £165.
Suffice to say, the prices hadn't come down.
But still I watch.

So it wasn't hugely surprising when Ebay emailed me to tell me a new Makie doll has popped up for sale. I checked it out of my usual curiosity. A cutie girl, 3dprinted body, starting price blah blah. ... wait.. there's a BIN price. £45?
Yeah I clicked that BIN button so fast baby.

screw my overdraft

This is her auction photo.

She's a worried looking cutie, apparently the seller's daughter had loved her very much but outgrown dolls. I was more than happy to give her a new home heh, especially for a bargain price.
now, I always feel slightly guilty when I get a bargain, because I feel bad that the seller didn't get as much as they could have. but at the same time I tell myself it's not my job to research the market for them and a quick look at previous sales would have been very easy.
I feel less guilty about this one than the one I got for £8 though. That was crazy.

Like.. absolute madness.

Anyway,

I asked her name because I always like to know as much as I can about these little dollies. I was helpfully informed her name is Koral. Yes, with a K.
So Koral she shall remain. I like to keep their original names where I can, with Makies it just... feels right for some reason.

Postage was super prompt and she arrived today.
Husband came home with her in fact because the postman spotted him walking to youngest's nursery, stopped the truck and was all "Hey, I have a parcel for you!"
Gotta love our postman.

I'm terrible at taking photos of Makies blank, so Koral got stripped off and got her faceup done pretty much immediately.

I didn't really know what I was going to do with her, she was a real impulse buy but I had a vague idea that freckles was the way to go.

Originally i'd considered a red wig, but going through my meager wig stash I found the blonde just looked so cute that i'd leave it.
I don't actually have many blonde dolls.

I couldn't decide whether to have brown or green eyes, so one of each it is!

All dressed up and ready to go.

She has one weak knee which I need to elastic band, this seems to be fairly common and I assume is a slight printing error. Zhi has the same flaw, he has a weak knee too. It's an easy fix though, you wrap an elastic band around the knee and bam, it's all good.

The short wig I think is actually the one that came with Sweetie, it looks way better on Koral I think. 

Of course, with her heterochromia and being a blonde, blue eyed girl originally I thought of Ayla, who arrived to me as a similar looking gal.

 Same wig and eyes, and same skin tone.

So in my mind they're sisters. Which makes Nate their great great.. whatever grandfather.
WHOO.

more family!

She's fitting in well with the others, it's all a bit awkward initially but i'm sure everyone will warm to this sweet nerdy girl.

I'm delighted with my new girl. She's Makie number uh.... 30 i think? WHOO 30!

Resinsoul

And the final thing I bought this month was a Resinsoul Jun. He won't be here till next month at the earliest, possibly not till after christmas. So i'll post more when he arrives.
He was expensive. I sold a lot to afford him. I'm excited and nervous as all hell.