It's febuary already? - A monthly (ish) roundup

 2021 seems to be shooting by, but I suppose it's difficult to determine the passage of time when you're stuck in the house 24/7. 

Still, lockdown and late season snow hasn't stopped me from indulging in online shopping. In fact it's probably made things worse. 

I've noticed the prices of most stuff on ebay is shooting up as more and more people give in to boredom and go on a spree, and a lot of parents are desperately ordering toys to try to amuse their house bound kids who are off school for the forseeable future. 

I've been trying to be good, trying to sort of focus on finishing up stuff I have here (like getting wigs and eyes and stuff for bjds who need them still) but inevitably the "new stuff!" itch happens and I end up splurging on stuff just for the sake of that momentary buzz of seratonin. 

Dum de dum. 

So let's have a look at "stuff I bought this month"!

Of course as anyone who reads this blog knows, I am an absolute sucker for a bundle of vintage dolls. 

This particular bundle caught my eye for two reasons. A Sindy and half a vintage barbie with the Steffie face sculpt which I loooove. 

Now this photo was taken AFTER I washed the mildew and other disgustingness off the dolls. The clone doll in the middle was the worst, her whole face was just black with gross. It washed off no trouble though. Eugh.

These dolls were sold as "tlc" and boy howdy the seller wasn't kidding.

Steffi Love while structurally sound was balding, badly. Her hair was just coming out in clumps as soon as I lifted her from the box. AIIEEE!

Poor girl. I didn't have to cut her hair or anything, just touching it caused it to fall out of her scalp. It took me only about a minute to remove all of it with a gentle yank. Instant bald dolly. 

Poor girl. 

Poor Barbie looks like a dog got her. Her arm is mangled. She's a pretty boring 90s Barbie anyway though so I can't say it's a great loss imo.

The clone doll has a hollow shitty body and dry sparse hair but once she was clean she seemed to be okay.

Sunshine family doll was grubby and one eye seems to have an issue I can't figure out (it doesn't shine like the other one, I think part of the outer lens may be damaged? I don't know.) 

she creeps me out though. What the hell were Mattel thinking? She has no visible sclera so her eyes look like animal eyes in a human head and it's extremely unsettling.

Sindy also had gouges but these don't look like teeth marks, they look more like gouges caused from being caught in something or dragged. 

ouch.

She scrubbed up pretty good though. Her hair needed taming and she's lost her hair switch thing (she's one of the hair cut/hair growing Sindy dolls) but she's still cute.

I glued her fingertips because they were coming away but there wasn't much I could do for her gouged up thumb.

Shoes cover her foot damage though.

Steffi Love got rerooted in yarn because it's quick. I decided to go for a bit of a punky alternative look for her. I didn't have any flock so I painted the sides of her hair but to be fair, this is how Simba themselves would do it so it makes sense. Steffi isn't exactly a high end doll.

I really do like the 80s Steffi sculpt though. She has a sweet round little face that appeals to me (which is why I also love Sindy) and unlike modern Steffi Love, she has a distinct look that makes her unique rather than just looking like a cheap Barbie doll. 

Sadly much like Sindy, Steffi really suffered from 90s "everyone needs to look like Barbie"itis. We lost all the distinctive unique fashion dolls and ended up with an army of stepford wives instead. 

Bleh. 

this is why I prefer vintage dolls. 

They all scrubbed up okay though. 

Sindy got very quickly rehomed while Steffi and er... Steffie are staying here with me. 

I haven't decided what to do with half Steffie/Barbie yet. I considered I could make her a plush figure body and turn her into a sphynx or a dragon taur or something fun but I could also pretty easily stick her head onto a modern body and just be done with it. 

I dunno, we'll see how creative I feel. 

Right now i'm just pleased  to have another vintage barbie. I don't particularly like the early 60s ones or the 80s onward ones but there's this specific era that appeal to me (the mod ones) which are, sadly, very hard to find in the UK. 

The second wave of Rainbow High finally hit the UK so I used my christmas Amazon vouchers to order three of them. 

I wanted River because you know.. boy doll. Also he's adorable. 

He has a major baby face and he reminds me of the Moxie Boyz with his toned body and prepubescent facial features but at least when he's dressed that's less jarring.

I actually LIKE his clothes. I know some people say they're boring but to be fair, menswear IS pretty boring most of the time. His jacket is something I would wear and his jeans are a decent piece. 

His shoes are semi transparent which is bewildering and his second outfit the shoes have transparent soles which is even MORE confusing. 

I appreciate that he has inset lashes like the girls. You don't see that often on boy dolls and it really helps reduce the "staaaare" factor of inset eyes.

I did a full deboxing review on my youtube channel if you want to watch me ramble on for half an hour and swear at a box. link here.

Krystal combined three things I love. Dark clothing, purple/indigo colouration and dark skin. 

Hell yeah! 

Sadly there's quite a bit about MGA's handling of this particular doll that made me pretty grumpy. 

First there's her hair. It's gelled to HELL to give it bit chunky ringlets in the box but as soon as you get her out of the box you realise that actually means a glued ratnest  you can't comb out without it just becoming frizz. So you have to wash her hair, and wash it again, and then wash it some more and scrub the sticky disgusting gloop off your hands too. 

but once you've done that she's left with all the curl dropping out of her hair and shedding huge chunks of hair that was only held in with the glue gel shit everywhere. 

ARGH.

And she IS a very pretty doll but her hair makes me grumpy every time I look at it. It should be lovely and soft like the others but the residual gloop I couldn't get out of it makes it feel coarse and unpeasant in parts and the lack of any defined curl makes her look all "blah" to me. I could recurl it I suppose, IF I had the tools to do it but I shouldn't HAVE TO. She should have come with her hair done, not fucked to hell and back. 

*sigh*

I'm also not sure I understand the white highlights on her lips. The top lip one looks like a moustache lol. 

The shimmer of her face is really blotchy and scuffed and shows every single flaw thanks to her dark plastic (She's sasha toned I think?) which looks pretty bad. But i'm not sure how to remove the shimmer without removing other paint too. 

Her clothes have issues as well. While most of the pieces are pretty decent her jacket with the stars has a very fragile belt that splits as soon as you try to thread it through the buckle and is NOT going to last and the pearly overshirt that comes with her in box look is already unravelling on me and I only took it off the doll and put it to one side! It's made of horribly stiff plasticky feeling fabric which I don't think helps but damn MGA, it shouldn't be unravelling already! Fix your shit! christ. 

Her hair is a really cool blend of colours. There's multiple shades of purple and blue in there which is neat. But it's princess length (I HATE ankle length hair SO FUCKING MUCH) and all the curl is going and it just makes me cranky.

Her shoes are cool looking. Her original pair has ankle straps as well but it's VERY stiff plastic and the position of the ankle strap means you can't actually get the shoe on and off easily. It should have a slit in the back but neither pair has one. This wierd watch pair (why are they watches? Does she have to contort her foot into her face to tell time?) are slightly softer but still a pain in the arse to get on.

Another annoyance is that when trying to put her other pair of shoes on over the top of her stockings, which you SHOULD be able to do as her whole 2 outfit thing is SUPPOSED TO ENCOURAGE MIXING AND MATCHING tore her stockings to shreds at the toe.

Which just made me angrier. 

You can watch my frustration Here

Another bewildering thing is that she has earring holes, but doesn't actually come with earrings. Wtf?

Suffice to say, much as I like the doll in theory and many of her outfit pieces are really cool, a LOT of the execution left me with a pretty bad taste in my mouth. 

And it seems pretty suspect to me that the ONLY doll i've had an issue with has been the black doll. It's almost like MGA are just sabotaging her out of spite or something. 

-_-

I also got Karma because I LOVE neon green. I put her into Krystal's other jacket which is pretty cool with the tied on sleeves. 

I like the pop of contrasting colour. 

Karma's hair out of the box is BORING as fuck in how it's styled. It's just straight and long, there's nothing to make it in any way interesting and it feels unfinished to me. I mean no offense to people who wear their hair like that, but with dolls I sorta expect something slightly more interesting than just "straight, not even parted, it'll do" you know? 

Thankfully her hair is rooted in such a way it's not too difficult to put into a high ponytail with some longer front strands which I think suits her far far better and makes her look a bit more unique. 

I love that she has brown eyes, she's the first (female) character in Rainbow High to not have blue or purple eyes I believe. It's refreshing. 

She also has a nice tanned skintone that's lighter than Sunny's but still definitely "not white" which I appreciate. 

Her lips have glitter which is a bit... wierd. I don't much like glitter lips, they always look chunky which I don't think is a good look but they're subtle enough that they don't bug me too much. Or maybe i'm just getting desensitised to the trend, I dunno.

Both of Karma's outfits are cute but I was surprised that the skirt she comes in the box wearing is actually two pieces. The skirt itself is a short stretchy fabric skirt with a transparent longer mesh over the top and then over that she wears a cut off denim thing that forms a sort of belt. 

I didn't expect that. 

Unlike Krystal, both of Karma's pairs of shoes have slits in the back so are easy to get on and off even over socks. SO WHY did Krystal get fucked over?

Eugh. 

*GRUMP*

one of the things I wondered when I was playing around with Karma was if her hair was the same colour as the OMG Bhad Girl (however you spell it). Both have a neon highlighter quality to their hair that doesn't photograph well but it turns out nope, Karma's hair is definitely GREEN while Bhad's is quite clearly yellow in comparison (despite looking kinda greenish in isolation)

It's hard to tell in pictures but irl these two are quite obviously different colours. Both are however NEON as shit and it's awesome. 

I love neon. <_< >_>

Overall, I really enjoyed River and Karma but Krystal made me grumpy and annoyed. Thing is, I know if I complain to MGA they'll just tell me to get bent. UK customer service is absolutely SHIT with the American toy companies, they flat out do not give a shit about any customers outside the USA. They'll fall over themselves to issue replacements and appologies to US consumers but if you ring the UK hotline they basically tell  you to get lost and that it's "not their problem". 

Thing is, a replacement will likely have the exact same issues and I really can't go through the rinsing glue out of her hair thing again. I just can't. The unpleasant stickiness it left in my hands for hours afterwards despite scrubbing made my skin crawl.

So I just have to make do. I can repair her damaged shirt and I already sewed her stockings back together, it's messy as shit because it was so torn but it'll have to do. 

but i'm salty about it. 

Really fucking salty. 

In happier news, I splurged on some 87/88 Sindy stuff. The earliest Hasbros from 87-88 are my favourite era of Sindy and sorely underappreciated. They have really sweet faces but better, their outfits are fabulously detailed replicas of the kind of stuff that real teens were actually wearing at the time. 

This trend seemed to sort of fall out of fashion in the 90s with a lot of dolls opting for outfits that really honestly felt more "costumey" even when they were meant to be casualwear. In fact, I don't think it was really till Bratz debuted that we saw dolls wearing real person clothing again. 

I love mini replicas of human clothes, it delights me and the absolute insane 80s-ness of the Hasbro fashion packs makes me grin. 

Citygirl in the yellow jacket is in most of her original outfit. I need to get her some socks and a pair of sneakers like her sister there is wearing. But Sindy socks are very difficult to find and for some reason I can't find anyone making reproductions, which confuses me. You can get knee high socks and stockings for sindy but little ankle socks aren't so easy to find. Wth?

Active Sindy wears some mix and match pieces I bought from Ebay MIB. I LOVE the mix and match sets, they're absolutely glorious. 

Problem is, now I want MORE of them and a lot of these fashions are extremely difficult to find. Hasbro didn't make this particular Sindy style for long (about 18months at most) but they produced a LOT of fashions for them (there's at least 2 different waves of mix and match fashions which include a good 20 different pieces each. Wtf?) Sadly, i'm not sure they were that popular. Which is a pity because the mix and match bits are a lot of fun and very brightly coloured and well made. 

I still think it's a huge pity Hasbro couldn't make this Sindy work, she had so much more personality and individuality than the knockoff Barbie style ones that followed in 89.

Speaking of Sindy, my Kid Kreations Skater Sindy finally got through the port delays and made it home. 

I haven't deboxed her yet. She's stunning though. Her hair is this soft blue and silver and she has grey eyes.

She has very soft makeup with pale pink lips and her earrings are diamante snowflakes. Adorable.

She even has little old fashioned skates. 

I'm not sure i'll keep her in this outfit as it's a little too "costumey" for my taste but I do really like the wool capelet she wears and her skirt would be gorgeous if it wasn't quite so tutu-like. I feel like with a pair of standard shoes she'd probably work quite well as a winter casual look though.

KK also sent me a card to say sorry for the issues I had with dream date (her replacement is perfect and beautiful) which came with a little metal badge.

it's cute but I have to admit I wish it just said Sindy rather than "sindy girl". There's a fair few of us Sindy collectors who aren't girls, it's a bit presumptuous and unneccisary.

Now because I ended up getting all 6 of the collector line Sindy dolls (because i'm weak) I also qualified for the special charm bracelet without having to send in the little plastic tokens. It came with a hand addressed card which was cute (same as the one pictured with the badge) and comes in a lovely little pink box.

Supposedly the charms are silver but they aren't hallmarked so who knows. 

It's a little Sindy heart with the S on and a handbag with 2020 on a short chain. 

It's a cute little memento but not something i'd ever wear. I don't wear bracelets anyway, I hate having things around my wrists and on top of that it's not really my style.

Still, I appreciate the gesture and it's going to be kept with the dolls for the time being. Maybe one day i'll have the space to display it all together. 

It'd be pretty neat to have all six dolls, the badge AND the bracelet all together. 

Auction photo

I can't really explain this one beyond "I saw this and it appealed to me". 

It's not something I usually collect, a fabric bodied little broken clown doll. But the hand made nature of the thing and the vintage look to the face just spoke to me in a way I can't really articulate.

Auction photo

He was badly damaged with a lot of missing paint, a broken and missing leg and no fingers. He needed to be reassembled and required a lot of tlc. He also seriously looked like the sort of doll you'd see in a horror movie, a good one, and that of course drew me to him all the more. 

There's something spooky but endearing about that face and it's something I could believe could be haunted or something. 

The first thing to do when he arrived was to gently clean his face. Doing this I learned that a lot of the paint didn't seem to really be very well sealed so I sprayed it all down with sealant before moving on to repairing the missing paintwork. 

The seller claimed this doll was vintage which I understand as he certainly LOOKS old but examining the body and materials used i'm not convinced he's actually very old at all. The head, arms and legs all seem to be made from some sort of air dry clay that's quite fragile and soft while the body showed signs of having been hot glued together. neither of those things feel very "vintage" to me, leading me to believe this is probably someone's craft project from the modern era rather than some antique. 

Whatever it was sealed with appears to be some sort of laquer as it's cracking and crazing like glaze would on pottery. But this is clearly NOT made of fired clay, fired clay isn't nearly this soft. You can pierce a pin straight through the material and the thinner pieces just snap and crumble if you put any strain on them. 

he's very fragile the poor thing. His head is also really heavy because it's pretty much solid with just a small narrow channel through the middle.

I ended up matching the yellow of the face and filling in the scuffed sections with paint to disguise them. I also repainted the lips which were quite badly scuffed, the hair and the nose which was missing most of the paint. I also blushed the cheeks. 

Interestingly, my sealant matted down the shine of the original varnish which had the curious result of making the head look like it was made of paper mache which is pretty neat.

He was missing all his fingers but I didn't bother to fix those as I figured his hands were hidden under his original sleeves anyway. Also, I didn't trust I could sculpt fingers. 

I did sculpt a new leg but I got my measurements wrong and it's slightly shorter than the other one *sigh*

but I can't be bothered redoing it, it'll DO.

His outfit needed a teensy bit of resewing and is unusual because this sort of pierot clown usually are dressed in monochrome white and black. instead this one has a kinda chaotic gold and blue ensemble which is curious. 

(incidentally, the garment fastens with a plastic popper, which furthers my theory he's not that old)

I had to resew one arm which was coming off and his head was hot glued and sewn to his body which took a lot of effort due to the wierd angle of the holes in the chest plate. 

I also glued a hat to his head because he needed one. I suspect he originally would have had a hat that matched his outfit but I have nothing that would work for that. Which is a shame. Maybe i'll find something at some point. But for now it'll do.

I added a big bow for a final touch.

I find his face facinating. He really does look like something you'd see in an antique store. 

I really like him, husband thinks he's "cute" but the kids think he's creepy as all hell. lol.

But i'm sure he's pretty relieved to be in one piece again, even if it's a bit slapdash. 

Maybe one day i'll do the leg properly but for now i'm just pleased to have him put back together. 

Now I have to find somewhere to put him as he's so fragile i'm a bit worried about him falling and getting destroyed.

Finally, some of the LOL OMG dolls finally went on clearance. I think we've finally hit that point where MGA is shitting these out TOO FAST and people are getting release fatigue. 

When this wave came out I was tempted by Class Prez here but I couldn't justify the £30+ for her and maintained my standard "1 character per wave" rule to save my sanity as well as my cash.

Because the thing is, MGA release a whole new wave every 8 weeks or so and at £30-40 a pop that's quite a committment. 

Anyway, Class Prez appealed to me because she has freckles, glasses and very very vivid reddish pink

Smyths, Amazon and Argos all have this wave on sale for just over £20, though there's very limited stock. When I last checked Class Prez and Roller Chick were both in stock but it was pretty hit and miss whether Chillax or Da Boss would be available. 

(I was tempted to get the other two as well but I decided I couldn't justify it lol)

Let's talk about her hair though. It is... a bit of a mess. It was styled in the box to have big chunky curls set with gel (just a little gel, not caked in glue like poor Krystal) but they were a bit messy and uneven. Combing them gently resulted in a mess of frizz which was disappointing so I hastily recurled the hair with my fingers. 

Sadly the end result is well.. a LOT of hair. 

It's a bit of a mess honestly. 

I didn't actually debox this doll, my middle child did. He really enjoys dressing dolls so when he saw the unopened box he asked if he could open it and spent some time happily playing with Prez. 

He liked her hair because it's "red" (it's more dark pink to my eye but whatever) and the only problem he encountered was her earrings going AWOL because they were wrapped into some of the tissue inside the hatbox and he didn't realise when he took the other bits out. 

Now I admit I thought when she was released that her outfit would be like a standard thin cotton fabric but it's actually made of a sort of knit suiting material which is far more realistic. 

It's a nicer outfit than I expected from photos to be honest, which is nice. It's quite similar to Uptown Girl's in that it's a blue check suit with a short skirt which makes me kinda wish they'd opted for a different colour for one of them. But ahh well. At least it's a bright blue rather than baby blue like Uptown.  (this was another reason I didn't rush to buy her at full price)

Interestingly, Class Prez comes with two bags. I don't fully understand why.

She has a cute little plastic backpack that really opens and closes and has a sort of graph paper design on it.

And a little blue handbag that's hollow and one sided and really very disappointingly shit. 

I don't get this. Like, all the other omg dolls had fully detailed bags and accessories so why does she have this half bag? Was it really that much more expensive to just give it a back? 

I mean ffs. It looks SHIT.

I don't get the point of two bags anyway. If she's supposed to be in a school uniform or whatever why the fuck does she have a handbag anyway? What school girl carries a handbag? You keep your shit in your backpack surely? 

I dunno, I feel like maybe a bracelet or hair accessory or something would have been better than this crappy ass half bag. 

But still, given I didn't pay full price for her I can't be that salty. 

Like most of the omg her quality is fairly consistant. The clothes are pretty well made, her facepaint is clear and crisp and aligned (I suppose that's an advantage of the molded eyes right?) and unlike the rainbow high dolls, her hair isn't caked in shit and her stand actually works. 

I have to admit, I think I actually prefer the OMG dolls to Rainbow High. yeah the rainbow high dolls are really pretty, they have gorgeous faces but honestly the OMG dolls have more distinctive unique fashions, more variation in their hairstyles, skin tones and eye colours and just feel like they have a touch more attitude. They remind me a LOT of Bratz. Bratz mixed with Betty Boop but still Bratz. While Rainbow High feel a bit less edgy, more mainstream in their fashions where the OMG dolls have quite a few alternative fashions represented (cybergoth, goth, punk, rocker, etc) which is my JAM baby. Arguably the rainbow high dolls ARE better value, but OMG just has a certain "something" that speaks to my aesthetic more.

I wish the boy OMG had a better face sculpt. His big fat potato head doesn't work for me and it's frustrating. 

Honestly my ideal doll line would be OMG fashions and hairstyles etc on dolls more like Rainbow High. Moosh the two together and i'll be very happy lol.