Intermission - AKA I bought stuff and want to talk about it okay?

So we're taking a brief break from the collection sort out to talk about some new things I bought this month.

Oh yes.




So first off, on Shpock where I spend more time than I really should, I found someone selling a Fashionistas Ken Hip Hoodie, a doll I wanted when he was released but never saw in a physical store and was at the time trying to really not buy static barbie dolls.

He's now stupidly expensive on ebay.

Boo.

They wanted retail for him so I snagged him happily.

His box is pretty crushed to hell.

Suck a bag of dicks Mattel... precisely what did THIS achieve? He wasn't even stapled into his box, these were attached to nothing!

WHY!???

For some reason he has two right shoes. Actually I KNOW the reason, the reason is Mattel.
Fucking Mattel.

His pants are elasticated at the waist but made of okay fabric. They have a printed contrast stitch on them which looks fine.

His shirt/hoodie is one piece but this baffles me becuase it seems so much more complicated to sew it this way than to just make a t-shirt and a vest.
And it means there's two arm holes on each side to line up which makes it actually really kinda awkward to get back on again.
I don't like the construction of this piece, it fails my "playability" test and the extra aggressively sticky velcro made it even more difficult by grabbing every single bit of the rather thin fleecey fabric of the vest and trying to tear it.

the seams around the arm holes are tiny and fragile looking. Basically this whole piece just doesn't look like it'll hold up to play.

It looks fine ON the doll but this is a child's doll, it's supposed to be able to be taken off and put back on again over and over. Just removing it the once I was worrying about tearing a seam around the arm section because there's so little fabric there and the fabric is really thin.

I just can't see this shirt NOT ripping.

You fail Mattel.

I thought there was maybe something wrong with his legs but no, he stands fine barefoot. His two right shoes seem to mess with his balance and the angle of his legs meaning he can't stand up in them. WHY!?? WHY MATTEL!???

Is this a factory error or do they all have two of the same shoe? Because honestly, this is Mattel, I don't expect them to get anything right and honestly believe this was just an intentional cost cutting measure.

Glad I didn't pay more than retail.

the big problem with elasticated pants is they fall down way easier than velcro. They are pretty easy to get on and off though, and feel like they'll withstand play fine.

He has a rather unusual face to be honest. His lips are a but ducklipped, like he's pouting? It's a bit odd for a boy.

I do appreciate a closed mouth black sculpt though, I HATE the Steven sculpt SO MUCH so i'm glad we're seeing black kens that don't have a psychotic grin.

He has molded hair with painted sides because being a fashionista he's made as cheap as possible. That said, the Barbies get rooted hair and flocked sides so it's sort of disappointing they didn't at least try here. This style IS doable with rooting, MGA proved this decades ago with Bratz Boyz ffs.
Now cornrows, those really work best molded at this scale, but a high fade with curls on top?

It is in fact the exact hairstyle Bratz Dylan sported

And granted Bratz heads are 2x the size, but even so, flock at the sides, tight curled fibre at the top, it's doable. We've had rooted hair Kens before.

But eh, at least it's an interesting molded hairstyle.

I still like him despite my complaints. I think he's a fairly attractive boy doll and you know i'm a real sucker for boy dolls.

I think I prefer Cornrows though.

Facebook marketplace is also a dangerous place ahem.

I spotted these two for £10 each (yes, ten pounds) + £7 postage and was like "omgwtfbbq!?"
The seller said she got a bunch of them in a "unit" (I assume a storage locker?) and assumed they could be resold. I don't think they knew much about Bratz beyond "mint in box dolls probably will sell for money", they didn't know they were very new stock.

Now apparently they ONLY found Jade and Camerons in the unit, just these two dolls.

What the hell?

I wondered if they were store returns Amazon had shoved in a unit to store and abandoned as a tax writeoff or something, but given Amazon are selling "warehouse" dolls in opened boxes (for not much cheaper than full retail) i'm not totally sure they aren't just reselling opened returns.

Either way, the seller said they were totally sealed (which I wouldn't expect from store returns, i'd expect them to have some tampering and retaping surely?) and looked okay to their eye.

I expected errors though, because this is MGA and these are random Amazon abandoned storage locker dolls.

It cost me £27 for the pair. Like 50% of what ONE new one would cost ffs.

Amazon listing
(They ARE dropping on Amazon too but the cheapest i've seen so far is Cameron for £35 and they're fluctuating wildly)

Cam has a slightly fuzzy eye but I can't see any other obvious flaws on him.

I don't NEED a second Cameron but how could I not buy him for less than £15!?

I dunno, I might resell him to someone who really wants one and is happy with a slightly fuzzy iris.

As the seller said, they came in taped plastic bags that were VERY solidly taped shut. I had to snip the tape to get Jade free.

Her box looks a bit squished from storage/transit but it's completely factory sealed and she's totally tagged into the box so hmm.

Back of the box with her two outfits.

I still think her furry jacket looks like pompoms in this picture lol.

You can see the damage at the side of the box here.

thing is, these boxes aren't actually very easy to open without damaging them.
So i'm gonna assume this box hasn't been previously opened and was just taped shittily.

I went to open the box and this lump stole the radiator.
She wouldn't move when I prodded her, she didn't even open an eye!

Jerk.

So I just put the box on top of her.

She STILL didn't move lol.

As I mentioned when I reviewed Cameron, I HATE this box design. It is SO hard to get open and you need to untape and untab 3 out of 4 sides which is just ridiculous and means there's even more chance of tearing stuff.

It very much feels like they were going with all or nothing. Either you keep them MIB or you open them. There's no real way to return the doll to the box for display afterwards which I feel is a bit foolish. I mean a lot of collector dolls DO have a box you can return the doll to and display in box while still being able to remove them when you want to (like living dead dolls with their coffins) and I like that option.

I don't like having to destroy a box to get a playline doll out. I resent having to destroy a box to get a collector doll out all the more.

She seems to have some sort of strange mark on her shoulder strap.

And a lip rub that I can see.

Clothes look okay though.

For some reason they tabbed her long laces to her jeans in multiple places.

and they fucking SEWED HER HAIR into the goddamn fucking box.

I HATE this. I hate hate hate hate hate it.

It's awful and it fucks up the doll hair trying to remove the stupid thing.

WHY mga? WHY?
What does this really achieve beyond messing up the hair in deboxing?

The thing was hard to get out of her hair as well because the thread appears to be some sort of plastic thread and it didn't unravel nicely, I had to unpick each loop individually.
Usually these things you unpick like one or two loops and the whole thing unravels because it's just thread. This is NOT thread. It's sharp and plastic feeling, like thin fishing wire.

again, WHY MGA!??

Getting her secondary outfit out proved very difficult as well. The back of the backing card is so much selotape and tabs and slots and bullshit. You can't access the back of the sticking up card insert the pieces sit on easily to snip the tape, instead you have to carefully remove that whole piece to turn it around.
I found that too difficult as well, things were tearing and I decided "fuck it" and just ripped the whole stupid thing off to snip the plastic and tape and get the clothes and shoes removed.


This box is AWFUL and I hate it and MGA should feel bad.

Here's Jade with everything she came with.

two outfits, two sets of shoes, 1 pair of glasses, 1 compact, 1 handbag.

Now that she's unboxed I can get a better look at her face. She has some fuzzing to her eyeliner which is far more obvious in photos than it is irl and a rub on her lip that barely shows up in pictures and you can only see from certain angles anyway.

the stain on her clear strap bugs me WAY more. It looks to be some sort of adhesive with fluff stuck in it but I can't get it off. I've tried.

Under her hat she has cute litlte space buns going on.

her hair is ankle length saran so it's sort of greasy but it also feels quite thin. It's decently rooted but I think the style with the pulled up bits and the fibre itself make the long part feel very thin. I wonder if maybe they could have rooted a little bit more in to thicken it up a bit but it's okay.
I'm just nitpicking because this is a £50 collector doll.

Her outfit is quite nice.

She comes with a pair of standard Bratz boots that we've seen several times already. In plain black with painted buckles.
A pair of fishnet sleeves, a little choker collar thing, a fabric bag that actually opens and has a chain strap, jeans with a flame print decal, a vinyl feeling beret (odd choice) and a little plether corset with really long laces.

the laces on the top are printed for the most part with the long bits then incorperated in. It works pretty well.

The top has sadly stained the doll, she has black marks on her boobs which hilariously look like nipples.
I giggled a lot.

I'm mature like that.

The body itself is a hybrid body with the old original style body (A shame as I prefer the 2010 body with the wider waist, it fills out clothes more flatteringly I think), bendy clicky vinyl legs and the Movie body gorilla arms.

I say gorilla arms because these jointed arms are RIDICULOUSLY overlong.
I find them a bit wierd.

They are however very articulated with a joint at the upper arm for rotation, an elbow joint and a wrist joint.

and the hands come off! for easier dressing!

WHOOO YES!

They pop on with a bit of force but are actually easier to get back on than a lot of Monster High hands. The plastic is softer so it's less "stab your thumb as you shove".

Her hair has a kink in it from that stupid sewn in packaging shit.

I'm cranky about it.

I still think ankle length hair is stupid and wish they would have given these girls more diverse and modern hairstyles. The buns are cute and add intrest to an otherwise pretty boring hairstyle but ankle length hair is just so.. playline... so 6 year old girl's toy you know?

I could cut it, but it feels like a lot of effort.

I dunno, for an adult collector line I feel like, at least with the hair and makeup, they really did play it very safe, very marketable to small children rather than actually pushing some boundries like they COULD have for an adult targeted line.

I've said it before and i'll say it again, this line feels like playline with a needlessly inflated price tag.

Jade's secondary outfit which I admit I keep taking the piss out of and describing as her "Soho sex worker outfit"

I'm sure that's horrible of me but there's something very uh... trampy... about this outfit.

The skirt is really beautiful though, it's made of brocade fabric with a dragon pattern and it's super pretty.

I was surprised to learn the red bra thing and the white shirt were separate pieces.

I have a few issues with this outfit.

I mean the first is that she's very difficult to pose wearing the fur jacket. It sits awkwardly and is really thick so it gets in the way.

The second is that the red bra top doesn't actually FIT. It's gapy and illfitting and it's also insanely fragile feeling. It's made of the same stuff as her collar but it's a larger piece and it's unlined with this very thin easily tearable fabric. I don't like it at all, it feels like it's going to just rip every time I touch it.

It's a disappointing piece.

The white tee is well made but fucking boring.

Her fishnet stockings are a bit gapey and baggy but have a cute sort of frill to the top of them. I wasn't sure about the transition from fabric to painted fishnet but it works okay I suppose.

You can see how poorly fitting this whole outfit is. Her skirt is too big around her waist (which is the case for just about ALL bratz clothing on this body and the reason I prefer the 2010 body, it actually fits skirts without them falling down and gaping!) and the bra top thing just doesn't fit right.
I tried to reposition it repeatedly, nothing helped. It won't sit neatly over her bust. It doesn't seem to be sewn quite right.

I began to notice at this point that along with her lip rub her eyes are also actually wonky

I can live with it, but god the quality control on these is BAD.

Without the fur coat she can at least pose again but the poor fit of her skirt is all the more obvious and the bagging of her stockings is a real issue.

I mean LOOK AT THIS!

Can you honestly look at this and say "yep, that fits this doll"?

I had a go at some mixing and matching to see if that helped at all. The black corset top doesn't fit over the white tee very well at all.

The fur coat still gets in the way but also pulls the straps of the black top askew. Bah.

This is pretty fabulously trashy, but the ill fit around the waist really bugs me.

So I returned her to her default outfit which I think is the best look.

Unfortunately putting her glasses on really highlights her eye wonk.

Like.. SO badly.

Which is a shame because I quite like the shades on her, they add a splash of colour that ties into her jeans.

A better look at her eye and lip rub.

the lip rub is really subtle and perfectly acceptable.

the fuzzy eye is... odd and the face the whole eye appears to have been made longer than the other is baffling.

A do love her smokey eyeshadow though.

her eyebrows are fine under her bangs, I checked.

Untimately though, I think she IS a very pretty doll. Her body is well made and the articulation and removable hands are nice touches. She has decent hair and her legs aren't too sticky which means getting her jeans on wasn't too much of a chore as it is with some bratz clothing and dolls.

I like her outfit pieces too, least most of them.

Her red bra top is disappointingly poorly constructed and the decision to use the original wasp waisted body means pants and skirts fit really poorly around her waist which bothers me (this happens with ALL old Bratz, they all get gaping and it bugs the shit out of me)
Her fishnet stockings are a fun idea but they're really baggy on her and don't quite work.
Same with the fur coat, fun idea, but it really is too thick and bulky and interferes badly with the doll's articulation.

Ultimately, i'm pleased to have her for less than £15 but she's not a doll i'd pay full price for by any stretch.

She has too many flaws and nitpicks and while there's features I LOVE (like her bag opening so you can put the compact inside of it) I do feel like MGA are taking the piss a bit calling these "collector" dolls.

They aren't. They're overpriced playline with pretty shit QC.

Is anyone really surprised that Amazon have started to abandon stock of them?

I also bought these two tacky bracelets from a charity shop for £1 each.

but for a good reason. The tacky as shit letters come off

leaving you with two perfectly 1/4 scale doll belts.

And I can never have too many doll belts.

This also happened.

Okay for context, husband and I both started playing Hogwarts Mystery on our phones. It's a fundamentally shit game for sure, but it rekindled our love for Harry Potter and we wanted to do more with the characters/ideas it inspired.

I enjoyed making a Funko Pop of my Fallout 3 character Susan, so I figured why not do it again? There are loads of Harry Potter Funko Pops out there, this is totally doable!

of course, I then spent over a week trying to find the right heads.

Summer (husband's character) was relatively easy, but Henry was far more difficult because of how few black Funkos have actually been made and how little variation in hairstyles there are as a result.
I knew I wanted a high fade sort of style but ooo eee, it was hard to find.

I eventually ended up using an NBA pop and moving his facial hair.

I had to repaint their uniforms too. Summer is in Ravenclaw colours (the book colours rather than movie because we're nerds) while Henry needed a matching stripe in Slytherin colours so his outfit wouldn't look anachronistic alongside hers (His body is Tom Riddle so is wearing a far older version of the uniform with a different design. A pretty easy fix though and I liked the blazer, it felt very Henry hahaha)

Glasses were the biggest challenge. I foolishly assumed there must be someone out there who'd 3d printed glasses for pops that I could just buy. Oh ho ho... there aaaare... but they're hard to get a hold of and several don't make glasses with arms which I NEEDED because of the hairstyle of this head.

Eventually I found some American Girl scale glasses on Thingiverse and got my father to scale them down, cut the arms to the right length and glued them in place.
They work a treat.

Now i'm working on using the same models to make smaller glasses for dolls heh.

One of my plans at the start of the year was to get an outfit for Silas, my Resinsoul Yao who's been sitting around in pants and only pants for over a year now.

So as soon as CapsuleDoll reopened on Etsy I approached her about a commission.

It cost me a fair bit of course, but oh gosh it's a beautiful outfit and it means he's pretty much DONE!

I had planned to make him a breastplate and such as well, but that's not as urgant. He has clothes and i'm so relieved!

He's such a pretty doll.

It's funny because the doll itself isn't a very expensive doll, but he has a custom wig, a custom outfit and expensive eyes which together probably cost me about as much as the whole dang doll cost me!

that's the problem with bjds. The costs add up fast beyond just the base cost of the nude doll. Outfit, wig, eyes, faceup... these things all cost money unless you can DIY all of them and I just CANNOT sew well enough to be happy with it.

I'm delighted by this outfit though and pleased I finally talked myself into just paying for it already.

Now i've got my Dad printing me some weapons for him. I'm thinking a nice chunky battleaxe would be fun.

I also FINALLY got a new wig for Selador.
Much as I liked his green wig it did NOTHING for his overall look.

I thought Brown would work better, blending with his outfit and making the blue of his face makeup stand out more.

Also he has brown eyebrows so... you know... it makes way more sense.

He's so dang pretty.

He's my only SD doll, being 70cm he's just SO BIG.
Too big really.

I mean I love his gentle sweet face but he's unweildy and awkward to handle.

Still, I like his new wig. it's beautifully made and definitely worth the money.

and so that is "things what I bought this month"

We should be back to my collection review soon, I just have to finish editing those photos. Eugh.