lol.
In all seriousness though, distractions are good for you right now.
With shops closed I can't do what I usually do which is charity shopping and browsing. Online shopping is mostly still functional but I kinda feel bad using it when it's non essentials.
However, I have got a lot of stuff around here I never blogged about or that arrived recently before lockdown and I didn't get around to or figure out a way to include in my blog posts.
So we're gonna have a pretty random post which is a "random stuff I happened to have photos of on my camera roll" post, HAH.
Soon enough i'll go debox the boxed things that are upstairs and do reviews, including a very very long awaited review of an older collector line Barbie who i'm sort of intimidated by because she's so freaking awesome. Meep.
But that requires energy I don't currently have.
It's too hot for energy.
Cut hair sidepart Sindy got some new lashes. Poundland human lashes cut to size and rammed into the slits hah.
They look a little more like her original lashes being think and rigid.
Three sideparts together.
I still haven't decided what to do about the cut hair on short blonde. I'm sort of undecided because what hair she has is quite nice but it's such a wierd length i'm not sure how to style it to look decent. I just really don't want to reroot her because removing her head is a scary process.
I'm a wuss.
Speaking of vintage dolls, Francie here is technically a vintage repro of a vintage doll lol. She was made in 1996, meaning that she's been in this box for 24 years already!
It kinda tickles me that the 30 year anniversary doll is herself nearly 30 lol.
I haven't edited these photos or cropped them because i'm too tired to do so and screw it.
It's hot and i'm exhausted, leave me alone.
Francie was one of the 60s Barbie "cousins" and she's quite an unusual size.
I've honestly wanted some late 60s, early 70s style barbies for a while because they're the only ones that really appeal to me (they have very cute faces I think) and my search for a repro TNT girl for a good price (as original barbies from that era are near impossible to find in the UK) led me to this girl for honestly a steal.
She comes with a swimsuit on and an extra outfit called "gad-about"
She has rooted lashes and flip curled hair.
And a little sticker label on her arm that says who she is and that she's a repro.
I don't much care for this swimsuit, it fits wierd in the crotch because it has short style legs and catches in her leg/hip gap.
She's an odd size. Somewhere between Skipper and Barbie. I'm not sure how much this body was actually used as I don't really know much about vintage barbie dolls, but she's quite a bit smaller than the 60s Barbie body, much more realistically proportioned and also taller and bustier than Skipper. So hmm, interesting.
I like the labels which make it clear this is a repro.
She actually came with two pairs of shoes. A pair of green ankle boots and a pair of pearly white heels. Also a random coat hanger.
Her body is a LOT like the 60s Ken/Allen and Ricky/Skipper bodies in construction with a square hip joint and very limited articulation. Her legs and arms move up and down but that's it.
the square hip joint gives her quite boxy hips and a rather unattractive groin area. Poor girl.
I like her less exagerated body shape compared to Barbie's body though. I always HATED Barbie's 60s body with those huge shoulders and teensy waist and hoof feet. Her giant chest and shoulders always bothered me because it makes her look like one of those Liefield drawings of a superhero.
Yep, that's the one.
Hideous.
Yes I understand WHY Barbie had that wierd ass shape back then, but ultimately other dolls didn't go as exagerated and looked fine. 60s Sindy, Skipper, Ken even didn't have the ridiculous shoulders and looked fine.
I still find it hilarious that old Barbie had wider shoulders than Ken.
Francie's second outfit is this... wierd knitted thing.
the dress is a one piece with a sort of knit sweater with a roll neck and a thiner fabric skirt.
Because Mattel are idiots, they tagged the skirt to hell in the box so even carefully cutting them left multiple holes in the thin fabric -_-
Morons.
Her stockings are made from the same knit as the top and VERY thick. Honestly they're a bit TOO thick, they look strangely out of scale on such a small doll and just feel a bit too bulky for my tastes.
Her shoes are very soft and flexable to go over the thick stockings but they also feel a bit flimsy as a result.
The glasses that also came with this look utterly ridiculous.
I didn't bother putting them on her and risking damaging her lashes.
I do like how crisp and clean the repro faces are, the vintage faces are much like this too, very simple and neat, which I appreciate. I quite like a simple doll face, there's something appealing about a less is more approach.
Her dress actually does up with buttons. not a popper, not velcro, a BUTTON and it's an absolute pain in the arse because it's tiny and my fingers are fat and pudgy and it hurt.
Skipper stole the stupid glasses because they suited her better.
I decided Francie looked better without the extra bulky stockings. This looks a lot more comfortable to me.
Her outfit is well made and clearly done to vintage specifications, it just annoys me that Mattel elected to then plastic staple the whole damn thing to the backing card, damaging the fabric.
She's a solid nicely made little doll of good quality, though her hair is, I think, probably kanekellon and very whispy. Just handling her made a lot of the curl and style fall out of it and that's a bit annoying. A more dense fibre would have held style much better and something like nylon would have been more period accurate wouldn't it?
I don't know, i'm a Sindy collector, not a Barbie one.
Fact is, Barbie didn't really hit the UK till the 70s so the earlier Barbies just didn't get sold here. It means you just don't see them often on the secondhand market and when you do, they're expensive.
Much like finding vintage Sindy dolls in the US I suppose.
Sadly the repros aren't cheap either, having been made for the collector market. Mattel has always charged through the nose for their "collector" dolls without them really being much worth that inflated tag (I mean SOME are but the repros really aren't overly fancy so why are they so damn expensive?)
One day i'll find a TNT girl.
One day.
But I like Francie, she's extremely cute and honestly? I kinda wish Barbie dolls still looked more like this. Ahem. I really LIKE the faces of late 60s and early 70s dolls, they really appeal to me.
Apparently this girl is a clone doll, one of the Zodiac Sindy lookalikes from the 70s. I bought her with some Victoria Jane dolls (Another Sindy clone) asjust a head because I thought she was gorgeous.
Her head is soft and squishy, her hair is thick and shiny and a beautiful ash blonde colour. She looks like she originally had rooted lashes.
She looks SO MUCH like a Sindy doll but she has no markings on her head at all and the vinyl is quite a bit softer.
even so, I had to ask the experts to ID her for me as I couldn't figure out what she was or whether she was legit or a very very good clone.
She would have originally had a jointed body like Victoria Jane did, with a lot of hinged joints and she'd have been in a ballerina outfit.
Mine is on a spare Sindy body I had. The skin tone match is near perfect and while the neck knob is slightly too big it's not a bad fit.
I don't know exactly the story behind the Zodiac/Ocean/debenhams sindy clones, but i've heard they were licensed or something, that or Pedigree simply didn't give a damn. Either way, i'd neer seen a full sized Zodiac girl.
They also did a mid size 8 or 9 inch doll who I was told was called Geraldine, but she seems to be extremely rare. From what I can establish, Zodiac was a toy shop in the UK and the Zodiac Toys ones were presumably made exclusively for them using the same molds as the ones made for Debenhams but with different packaging. I do not however know who the heck Ocean Toys were. Were they another toy store? Were they the actual company producing these dolls? Not a clue. But i'm pretty sure the zodiac, ocean and debenhams dolls were all made using the same molds for the most part.
Debenhams also sold their own Sindy sized doll called Victoria Jane and later a non articulated one called Debbie Glitter, but neither look quite like Sindy.
I the picture above there's a Sarah Louise, Geraldine and Sarah Louise. Note how the two smaller dolls definitely look like Sindy but the big girl doesn't quite?
This new imposter MIGHT be called Rachel, if she is indeed a Zodiac one. But the question then is, why did Zodiac's doll look so much like Sindy while Debenhams one got her own face mold but all the smaller sized ones were identical? it's so confusing!
And i'm still none the wiser about the connection to Pedigree themselves.
Still, she's a damn pretty doll.
This was an impulse buy because i'm weak.
I spotted him on facebook marketplace a good month ago and was curious because random bjds sold by people who have no idea about bjds always make me nosy and curious. They wanted £100 for him and told me they'd gotten him as a gift from a friend but they found him "creepy".
I was fairly sure he was legit from my investigations because he had the head plate and a company faceup I could trace. I also managed to find his first sale photos, clearly him due to hand damage which resulted in one hand being replaced with a different one and faceup damage.
So what I could find out about him was that he was a Dika Doll Finn, he was 62cm tall, he was probably in their "yellow" skin tone and he was made in around 2010.
I resisted the temptation because I didn't NEED an SD doll but several weeks later he dropped to £50 and i'm sorry but.. a whole big ol' chunk of resin for £50? A bargain!
i had another chat to the seller and they seemed pretty on the level, I think they weren't really a doll person but were in fact a photographer who obtained this doll second or rather, third hand and weren't really enamoured.
Somewhere during his many sales he'd gotten more damaged, a few chips to his resin and a lot of chips to his faceup. He'd lost his wig and clothes as well as his alternate hands.
He'd also yellowed quite a bit.. maybe... i'm not sure because I don't actually know how yellow Dika yellow IS in the first place.
He arrived in a rather small box, squished all up in a ball. He was filthy and sad looking.
He lost one of his original hands years ago, in fact, the sales post I tracked down which I believe is the same doll mentioned it had broken and they'd replaced it with one of his spare expression hands.
hence the OK hand.
now, the OK hand is... not great. I mean it's really limiting for a start but also it has... connetations I want nothing to do with.
so I would rather like to replace his hand with something less potentially inflamatory.
Closer inspection of his faceup revealed the damage was a lot worse than i'd thought. It was filthy from age for a start, going grey, but also scratched up in multiple places and flaking off. I could actually remove a lot of it with my fingernail so yeaaaah.
the boy needed a good ol' scrub and new faceup STAT.
I redid his face, gave him new lashes that weren't crumped and bought him a few wigs to try.
I quite like this one, the length of it softens his rather sharp features.
He also got new eyes, smaller eyes. I think they're 16mm and they're very dark but actually blue with brown flecks. In certain lights you catch the blues and I find that quite appealing. His eyes seem to change colour depending on the angle which is fun.
He's currently wearing some Designafriend clothes while I wait to order him some proper clothes.
I only own one other SD doll which is a Resinsoul Long so I don't really have any SD clothes laying around.
Interestingly, Finn here is FAR heavier than Long despite being 8cm shorter. Her's a pretty solid hefty doll and he has HUGE hands.
Here he is modelling one of my Pullip wigs alongside one of my MSD dolls (A blue fairy Louis) to show scale.
Most of my BJDs are the same size as the smaller doll here so yeah... A regular fashion doll would come up to like.. his knee lol.
it's amazing the difference a wig makes. I'm not sure whether to keep him in the brown or the red.
I've named him Linden and I haven't a clue what i'm gonna do with him now but hey. £50 for a legit SD doll is a bargain damnit.
And i'm pleased to have been able to rescue him. He needed the tlc.
I just need to get him a new hand.
Meanwhile Sebastian, my Dream Valley Vine got a faceup at last.
I haven't gotten around to blushing his monster arm yet though.
But I do love how he came out. I was trying to make his markings look softer and not just drawn on, not sure how well I succeeded at that though.
His wig is a bit of an annoyance, it's the right size but the dream valley dolls have odd egg shaped heads so it didn't quite fit right. I had to trim the sideburns a little to fit right and then glue them down to stop them flapping up.
He has such a sweet face.
He needs a rather complicated outfit which i'm struggling to source parts for right now though. And that's annoying.
Recently I'm searching for an Sarah Louise dolls, I love them :) So your Sarah let me to find your blog :) And this Geraldine is a cutie, first time i see her. I'll be looking for her on our flea market:D
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