Ebay and charity shops still, will it ever end? NEVER!

I admit it, i'm ADDICTED to charity shops.

They are like a treasure trove. Sometimes they have nothing interesting but other times they have amazing things and it's exciting, that "will they have something incredible this time?" thing is hugely addictive. It's always a gamble, always a treasure hunt and probably 1/3 of the time I come away with something neat.
So of course I keep going back.

it helps that the prices are generally super low, a few pounds here and there is easy to justify and it's going to charity so it's something i find much harder to curb than my buying of new products or ebay purchases.

But Ebay is still a cruel temptress. And because i'm selling things on Ebay right now it's already up and just... looking... it's too tempting.

So this week i've ended up with a couple more things I probably shouldn't be buying but oh well.



First let's talk charity shops.

Of my local charity shops (there's about 5 of them) only 2 actually sell "children's items". YMCA and Shooting Star.
The rest mostly just sell clothing and cds and dvds and books. Fara mostly sells furniture and old electronics.

So i spend most of my time in the two that sell toys.

Now YMCA may sell "children's items" but they don't often have much. it's a small corner of their store and more often than not is a small pile of cuddly toys, some action figures and a lot of kid's books. But sometimes, SOMETIMES they get something interesting in.

Shooting Star on the other hand is 75% toys and the rest is kids clothes and baby stuff. It's usually a much surer bet to find something interesting and I have found a lot of really cool things there over the years.

This week however, it was YMCA who managed to get some of my money instead.

Shooting Star has 2 doll boxes but they're all ratty Barbie dolls and Steffie Love dolls right now, neither of which interest me at all. They also have loads of Action men (90s ones) and Max Steel, again, not overly interested.
All I got from them was a small action man accessory baggie for the boots and the small pistol (1/6 scale pistols are great)

In YMCA, hidden among their cuddly toys and other junk I found this girl:

I recognized her immediately. She's an MGA Story time princess doll. TK Maxx used to sell these back when I first got into collecting dolls lol, they came with a little book which was cute.

She has lost her book, and her shoes, but otherwise seemed to be in pretty good nick. These dolls aren't that easy to find, I don't think they sold that well to be honest, which would explain why they're so uncommon. Ebay has a few, but they want more than I want to pay once you factor in shipping.

She was labelled £2:99 which I felt was a bit steep (dolls are 1-2 pounds in the other shop) but I knew i'd regret it if I didn't buy her.

I took her to the till and the manager scoffed at the price "£2:99? that's a bit much. 1:99!" so I got a quid off lol!
Sometimes it pays to be a regular hahaha.

She has a VERY "MGA" face. It's like MGA does Disney, I kinda dig it.

Her hair is soft, it doesn't feel plasticky like nylon so i'm not sure what it is.  It has a soft curl to it and is about waist length.

From what I understand, this particular doll is from Beauty and the Beast. Her eyes look wonked in this pic but I don't think they actually are as the "eyelash" part, the bit that's painted black is actually raised in the mold, meaning they really couldn't miss the right spot. 

Her dress is very pretty with a flower patterned red bodice with princess seams and a little lace around the sweetheart neckline. She has a big red ribbon rose on one boob (hahah) and another yellow one on her hip.

this long piece of fabric trails from one shoulder around and down her arm (least according to all the stock photos I could find of her)

The skirt is a shiny pink fabric with a sparkly yellow and pink tuelle over the top to give layers and volume.

It's all nicely made and quite pretty for a princess dress.

It likes to twist on her though, her bust is a bit small for the bodice I think.

She is a CHUNKY doll, with heavy vinyl legs. She's taller than a Barbie by quite a margin, but similarly slender in the waist. Her legs click and hold once but they're really hard to bend because they're so thick.

She's kinda pear shaped which I dig. I rather like her shapely legs, they're really quite attractive and she feels so damn sturdy. Old MGA dolls are SO good for this sort of thing, really well made and really weighty, chunky things that can withstand quite rough play.

The similar sized waist means this girl can share most clothing with Barbie. I wouldn't attempt trousers, her legs are so much thicker than Barbie's, or shoes, her feet are much larger, but even bodices seem to fit. "Beauty" may have a smaller bust but she has a wider chest so it evens out.

Her dress fits the Barbie body actually really nicely. Barbie's bigger boobs fill the bodice nicely lol. It's a tad too long though.

I have since taking these pictures realised that Beauty fits Sindy shoes! Her feet are almost identical to Sindy feet, which is interesting. So she's claimed a pair of Hasbro heels I had laying around haha.

Her crown is stitched to her head so I haven't yet attempted to take it off.

But she's a really pretty doll and I admit, I have a fondness for MGA's non Bratz dolls, I find them really fascinating. Especially their failed lines.

Bottom line? The MGA Story time princesses are really well made dolls with pretty nice outfits and cute faces, i'm not sure why they didn't do better. I guess they were directly competing with actual Disney stuff, which is always gonna be a challenge. But they did some interesting Princesses. Along with a Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Snow White there's also a Princess and the Pea doll and the Swan Princess, two stories Disney hasn't touched yet.

It's also worth mentioning that this isn't the only time MGA would make princess dolls. Along with their Moxie friends Princesses they also made the dolls for Shrek 2, the hilarious Kung Fu Princesses.

Those also have very heavy shapely legs, and "kung fu" action ahahaha.
I have a couple somewhere, they crack me up.

Then Ebay suckered me in. Someone was selling a bundle of two "non working" furbies, this little guy and a 2005 one which I really wanted.

I put in a cheeky offer of £10 for the pair and it was accepted.

this particularly furby is a first gen furby Baby.
They're a bit smaller than the standard 98 Furbies but apparently have more games and stuff.

Now this one was sold with an "unknown fault". Also it was filthy and smelled of candy hmm.
this dude was well played with that's for sure.
(I put silly kid's nails on it for a laugh okay?)

As it turned out, this little furby's fault is one I can't quite figure out.
When I first turned it on the motor roared to life but nothing else happened, the motor kept running, it kept blinking, moving, but no sound. I thought "Oh it's mute" but the movement didn't stop. Usually a furby will stop moving after a moment but this one didn't stop, it just kept running through a constant loop of startup sequence.

Now, apparently this is because the gears inside are spinning and trying to find the safe default position before starting up the rest of the stuff. As the gears spin they push a little pin that presses a metal piece into another metal piece to complete a circuit, which tells the furby "gears are in the right position, start now" but this wasn't happening here.

I took the batteries out and put another set in just in case and the furby suddenly came to life.

It talks, but the speech is SERIOUSLY garbled. I can only understand maybe 10% of what it says to me. "Mamma" "tickle tummy" and "I love you" are decipherable but the rest of what it says? It's so garbled and full of issues it's just indecipherable.
I suspect the speaker is failing.

I also learned that the tickle sensor and the pet sensor on the back dont' work.

So I skinned the furby. AIEEEE.

(don't worry, I didn't take pictures. Your dreams are safe)

They're really easy to skin actually, you just snip the ziptie holding the skin on. Baby Furbies have their face plates screwed on as well so you halfway through have to unscrew those two tabs as well. On my guy one of those tabs had already broken off anyway. I don't quite know what the screws do because the older furbies I don't think have them and I put the skin back on without rescrewing the face plate and it doesn't seem to matter. I dunno man, seems random.

Anyway, I could find no loose wires at all but I did get to see how the sensors all work.

like the synch sensor with the gears, they're all two pieces of metal that connect to complete a circuit. I removed the button above the tummy to get a look at the metal pieces, they both look fine. The wires connecting look fine too. Same with the back switch. I also found out the reset button ALSO doesn't work.
So basically no switch in this furby is functional, which raises the question, why?
Do they all connect to a certain spot that's become corroded or loose? has the board itself failed? I really don't know. I don't know enough about electronics so I intend to ask my father who actually knows what all this stuff does.

The tilt sensor, which is basically a ball bearing inside (which is why old furbies rattle) works fine, the furby responds to being turned upside down as expected. The light sensor also works. I haven't tested the IR to see if it can talk to other furbies but I assume if the light sensor in the forehead works so will the IR.

So hmmm...

Still he's cute and i'll try to get him working. I mean I lose nothing mucking about with it.
It's already broken.

I took the oppertunity to wash the heck outta it while it was skinned though. The white bits? they were kinda uh.. grey... before I dunked it into water and laundry detergent.

Baby Furbies are a little smaller than their full sized siblings, with much smaller eyes and beaks. I find the small beaks a bit awkward actually, my big fat fingers are too fat to fit in there and press the tongue switch down lol.

Also with this little guy was the furby I actually wanted, a 2005 furby.

Tiger redesigned Furby in 2005 to I suppose try to compete with other electronic robot toys on the market. This was the same year Furreal friends and similar came out so the market was a bit saturated with fluffy robots.

They boasted voice recognition, so at last you could actually TALK to your furby and have it respond (the original ones just have a single microphone on one side that can only pick up loud noise, so they respond really only to claps or loud bangs)

They also had an actual OFF switch (omg!) and facial expressions.

Oh and they're creepy as shit.

They have a rubber covered beak that degrades over time, making quite a few of them flat out terrifying. It also has both upper and lower eyelids and extremely detailed feet

Look at these things!

The battery compartment is cleverly hidden under some fluff and yes, has an off function (WHOOO)

sadly this battery compartment is utterly stupidly designed. See, the actual lid also contains the contacts for the batteries which go into the compartment vertically rather than horizonally. This means that the full pressure of the springs and the weight of the battery is on this little plastic cover. Not only is it therefore REALLY hard to get to close once you put the batteries in (as you're pushing against the springs) but it also puts a massive amount of strain on the tiny single screw holding it all together.
what the hell Tiger and Hasbro were thinking is just beyond me. It's the singly worst designed battery compartment i've ever seen.
Suffice to say, a lot of these 2005 furbies have broken battery compartments. This one you can see the strain starting to show on the plastic.

He was sold as "not working" due to battery corrosion. I was expecting a mess but actually it wasn't too bad. Seems the dumb compartment design was actually a blessing in disguise there because when the batteries leaked they only leaked downward, onto the removable base piece. Only 2 of the 4 contacts were corroded anyway, I scrubbed them with some lemon juice (it FIZZES!) and rinsed it off, then let it dry for an hour or so before putting batteries in to test.

Well, the furby talks.
so it's getting power.

Sadly the motor seems to have died because the motor never even starts. Furbies are never quiet, the motors in them are quite loud but this little guy cannot move. he's totally paralyzed.

His voice recognition however does work. They can only understand a few key phrases, kinda like Siri or Alexa I suppose lol. And much like those, you have to kinda yell and speak very slowly and carefully or it just doesn't understand you at all.
My accent probably doesn't help matters.

First you yell "hey furby!" and wait till it responds. it'll say "yes?" or "doo?" or "hmm?"
now you can give your instruction.

"Dance" "sing me a song" "tell me a joke" "tell me a story" "how are you?" and "i love you"

Of course my poor guy cant' dance, but he tries.
It took me ages to get him to sing. I kept saying "sing a song" and he kept replying "no" in this petulant manner. Jerk.
Finally he sang me Twinkle Twinkle in partial furbish.

I cannot get the jokes to work. We get as far as "knock knock" but it cannot understand me saying "who's there" at all. So we end up in a loop of "knock knock". Maybe that's the joke? I dunno, it's weird.

Story gets you a really strange stilted story. It starts out telling you about living on a pretty island and then how it likes to ..... dance (yes, with a huge gap. I assume it must have some action at that point but with no movement it's pretty wierd) and then it stops talking for ages, then continues telling you about how "when sun up, hungry. When sun down, sleepy" and then falls silent for a while before adding "you like story?"
I dunno, it's really odd. I don't quite understand the huge gaps. Seriously it shuts up for nearly a minute half way through the "story". I don't get it.

Is it just screwing with me? Maybe.

"how are you" the furby will tell you how it feels. Mine tells me he's "okay". At one point he was "happy" but then he declared I was boring and now is being petulant. Bah. Dang robot.

I love you gets "i love you" and a kiss noise.

Overall it's an endearing little jerk.

I'd take the fur off and have a look at the motor if I had the tool to remove those feet but they have weird triangular shaped bolts which I have nothing that'd fit.

The 2005 Furbies are HUGE. Like seriously big and quite hefty.

They're also way fluffier than the 98s.

They have this weird... thing on their head. In photos I assumed it was hair or a mane like the older ones, and indeed the newer ones but nope, it has fleshy fabric underneath like the ears have inside and it has a "bone" inside it suggesting that when the motor is running it actually MOVES. What the hell is this appendage!??
EEK.

It has beautiful coloured eyes, they're quite realistic though which I think adds to the creepy factor.

The eyes are hard plastic but coloured flesh tone with molded wrinkles. The beak is soft rubbery stuff and it's slightly sticky to touch, it's a bit.. latexy. It's really hard to get it open manually, inside is a painted on tongue. The rubber is starting to tear and perish a little on mine, but this is good condition for one of these guys, so many of them have the plastic underneath actually poking through it's scary. Like, withered animatronic creepy. *shudder*

Creepy as this little dude is, I think he's kinda cute in a soul eating kinda way. He reminds me of the critters you'd see in an 80s fantasy movie, a little Dark Crystal or Labyrinth or something you know?
This is why I wanted one, because much as they seem to scare the life out of a lot of people (Hey I like creepy things anyway) they remind me very much of the animatronic puppets from movies I grew up with, and I find that appealing.

It's like, this bizarre penguin owl teddy bear gremlin hahaha.

These weren't made for long, about a year before being discontinued making the 2005 Furbies especially rare and hard to find, especially in working condition without a decaying beak. So I would rather like to see if I could get this guy working again, but even if I can't, I had a lot of fun yelling at him for half an hour or so lol.
And even in off mode, he's a cute little toy who's likely to cause most visitors to my house to shudder and flee bwhahahaha.

He's quite satisfying to hold, being quite heavy and very fuzzy, it's rather like holding a cat or something.

But I can see why these maybe didn't go down quite so well back in 2005. They are bizarre looking and don't really look like a furby anymore, and their voice recognition is spotty at best. You really have to speak quite loudly to get it to understand you and it still doesn't always acknowledge you.

Like the old furbies it does have a tickle and pet sensor on tummy and back, it makes a bizarre noise when you pet it (it's not a purr, it's like almost a purr song? I dunno it's weird.) and it gets pissed off if you tickle it if it didn't ask "No tickle again!" it scolds hahah.

It's a lot less obliging than the older Furbies, a bit more ornery and kinda a bit of a jerk. I admit, while kids might find that really annoying, it just makes me like this cranky little shit more. It has a personality and that personality is "screw you".

Husband popped to the big Tesco to get shirts for eldest for school, while there he spotted that they'd finally restocked the Sindy dolls!
so he brought these two home for me. EEEEK! I was certain they'd discontinued these and i'd never see them again.

they're £6:50 each, which isn't too bad. They had one of each apparently, so they come in cases of 4.
I already have Laura and Kate doesn't interest me, but I desperately wanted Zoe (the dark skinned one)

I haven't opened them yet. It's amazing to me though what a difference the side glancing eyes made to these. They're kinda cute in a "cheap doll" kinda way I think.

So yay husband!