When i'm grumpy I impulse buy dolls.

 I have a new problem, and it's Mattel's fault. You see, every time I miss the restock of Howliday Draculaura I get annoyed and go impulse buy something else in a fit of rage. 

this has happened too many times so now I have a lot of impulse purchases. 

and still no Howliday Draculaura. -_- 

I could rant for ages about mattel's absolute incompetence with their distribution but i'm tired and i'd sooner talk about pleasant things. 

So let's see what random secondhand stuff i've obtained this month. (and okay only HALF of it is Mattel's fault.)

Last but not least, it's Cleo! - Monster High ressurection

 Sorry this took me a while. I've been struggling a little with exhaustion lately. 

Also, I didn't have as much to say about Cleo that hadn't already been covered by the Frankie and Draculaura reviews. But here she is anyway. 

Not much preamble, let's just dive in.

Monster High returns - Frankie Stein

 Okay I haven't got any real preamble here except to explain one thing.

Frankie now uses they/them pronouns apparently. But you'd only know this if you'd been keeping up to date with the movie and cartoon series stuff. Which actually kinda pisses me off because what's the point of having a character using they/them if you don't bother to actually TELL PEOPLE THIS clearly on the goddamn fucking box!?? 

So yeah, don't get mad if some people still use she/her, a lot of people won't be aware of this change because Mattel didn't really make much, if any, effort to ensure it was known. 

Right now it kinda comes across as a sort of condescending "hah, didn't you know? Aren't you a REAL fan?" kinda gotcha which is irritating. 

And the thing is, I appreciate the representation but IS it representation if you don't bother to actually declare it on the doll's box? You know what I mean? 

It would have been such a small simple thing to just add "pronouns" to the very short little bio on the back of the box but I think I know WHY they didn't. Mattel are one of those companies who love them some diversity IF they think they can sell it, but at the same time are loathe to actually stand behind that diversity against the rage of the bigoted conservatives who also buy their product. So they try to court both by being wishy washy about the whole thing. By not having pronouns on the box it means the sort of people who whine about "woke nonsense" (AKA Assholes) won't be put off and start a stupid social media pile on and pointless ineffectual boycott. They won't notice because they aren't going to watch the animated show, they aren't going to watch the movie, they will however buy the toy for their kid. 

And this is an added frustration to the whole thing because it shows that Mattel aren't really the allies they pretend to be. Which raises the question, why bother changing Frankie's pronouns in the first place if you're not going to stand proudly behind it and own that? 

Even their official social media can't get the damn pronouns consistant. 

As I said. Wishy washy. 

That aside, I will be using they/them to refer to g3 Frankie throughout and she/her to refer to g1. It might get a bit confusing so i'll try to be as clear as I can. Singular "they" can be a little awkward in English and I say this as someone who uses they/them. 

But i'll do my best! 

Monster High is BACK baby! - Draculaura

 Aww hell yeah, they're back! And this time effort was put in. 

Unlike the reboot which was honestly super phoned in, this "threeboot" or "g3" as people are calling it comes with a whole new animated series, a live action movie and a LOT of new dolls. Like seriously Mattel is pushing out so much at once to compete with MGA's "flood the market and overload the shelves" approach that it's sort of overwhelming. 

Of course, the UK still has no sign of these new dolls while the US has people excitedly heading off for doll hunts and I can't say i'm not super envious. I miss doll hunts. 

BUT Amazon ships to the UK. It's bloody expensive, but it's an option so I ordered in a few of the first wave of the Threeboot while I wait for the UK to even tell us IF we're getting the damn dolls any time in the next fucking 6 months. -_- 

I want to do these thoroughly, or as thoroughly as I can, so first up is Draculaura with Frankie and Cleo to follow in their own reviews. 

Strap in. This could be a long un. 

Naturalistas by Purpose toys and Just Play

 Every few years we get another line of Black dolls hitting the market and almost every single time they're US only (because obviously black people don't exist outside of America huh? -_- ) which makes them extremely difficult to get anywhere else in the world. 

They don't usually last very long unfortunately, trying to compete with the big hitters like Mattel and MGA is very very difficult. It is however always interesting to see a new small company make an attempt and as anyone who follows this blog knows, i'm very much of the opinion that black dolls MATTER and these attempts to give kids that choice and diversity is extremely important. 

And so, the Naturalistas are the latest attempt. They're created by a group called Purpose Toys who appear to be more of a group that brings creators together rather than their own manufacturer? I'm not totally sure. They themselves describe it as "a supportive community of Black founders" and claim "Purpose Toys partners with entrepreneurs, providing the infrastructure and resources necessary to succeed at retail."

It appears that for this doll line they partnered with Just Play for distribution which makes sense. Just Play are a moderately sized toy company best known to the doll community at least, of making the 24 inch tall Barbies and such. They don't seem to have many franchises all of their own so much as they do things for other companies and act as a distributing partner or something. I'm not totally sure how it works honestly. But if you look at their website they have a partnership with Disney, Mattel, multiple kids shows and youtube channels, Warner brothers, Nickelodeon... the list goes on. They're even currently holding the rights for Slinky and Shrinky Dinks as well as producing those Art Squad dolls (which sorry, i'm not gonna be reviewing. They freak me out.)

Anyway,

the Naturalistas are a line of 11 inch fashion dolls who's big gimmick (can you call it a gimmick?) is that they each have natural Black hair textures and styles. Their aim is to promote the beauty of natural hair, something that sadly is still policed and discriminated against in the western world. 

I'm afraid with lines like this it's impossible not to get into politics because there are inherent politics to their existance. It's sad that something like hair IS political in the first sodding place, but that's the crappy world we live in i'm afraid. As the Skunk Anansie song goes "yes it's fucking political, everything's political"

 

Update on the Monster High bundle

 So I figured people might like to know what I did with the huge bundle of monster high dolls and how much success I had with deglueing them. 

So settle in and let me show you. 

Another huge bundle of Monster High

 As any regular reader knows, big bundles of dolls are my biggest weakness. I just can't resist them. I LOVE the dang things. 

So when one of my fellow Sindy collectors on Facebook posted that she was looking to rehome her daughter's old Monster High collection I jumped at the chance to get my hands on a huge bundle of tlc dolls and parts. 

The bundle was £35 and included "at least 40 dolls plus playsets" which is an absolute bargain. The only catch was that it was collection only, because it was too much stuff to easily post. So after some back and forth we settled on a time and place and on Saturday I made the trek across London to Essex with a wheeled suitcase and a large backpack to pick these things up. 

For context, it's an hour and a half journey there and another hour and a half back.

I made a day of it. Took a book, had lunch just off Oxford Street, enjoyed some time just to myself. It was a pleasant trip and nice to meet another Sindy collector. 

It turns out that her daughter was big into MH but the dolls have been sitting under her bed for about 7 years now unplayed with. Now that the daughter has gone off the university it's time to clear things out. They're just cluttering up the house. 

 

A whole suitcase full of goodies!

My backpack had playset bits and stands and also included was the High School playset. 

So.. much... stuff. 

LOL OMG Fierce

 LOL OMG have been out for quite a while now and judging by the massive slowdown of releases, i'm going to go out on a limb and assume that the franchise is winding down at last. They had a great run, but doll lines only have a limited life span. 

Released in 2019, the OMG line was a spinoff of the blind ball LOL tots, and since 2019 they've spawned quite a few MORE spinoffs including the B-Tweens and JK, and now we have a whole new spinoff. The OMG Fierce dolls. 

Are these going to be the new direction OMG go in to refresh the brand or are they kinda like Moxie Teenz, just a random deluxe aside that ultimately fades into obscurity? 

Let's take a look shall we?

Cry Babies BFF by IMC

 Amazon IT was pretty awesome about Meena's issues and gave me some vouchers, which I promptly used to purchase a new doll line that had me curious. 

Spanish company IMC's foray into fashion dolls is a spinoff of their wildly popular baby dolls

Which are definitely NOT my cup of tea but seem to be quite loved by kids. 

IMC in fact don't have many brands, Crybabies and VIP pets are the big ones. As far as I can tell, they've never actually made fashion dolls before so the BFFs are very much new territory for them. 

They're listed at £21 on Amazon UK but not currently in stock. Amazon It lists them at 32 euros which puts them in line with MGA's and Mattel's lines pricewise. 

Anyway, let's get a look at this new doll shall we? 

Rainbow High series 4 - Meena Fleur

 The UK is still being slow as all shit to get any new stuff in but thankfully we have all the european Amazons who ship to the UK for £5-6 which is more than reasonable thank you very much. 

So with the UK still not having the Rainbow High slumber party or rock star lines, how long we'd have to wait for the core series 4 to hit was anyone's guess. 

As it turned out, Amazon Italy got them in stock for immediate dispatch and the cost ended up being the same as i'd pay within the UK even after taxes and shipping which is honestly pretty ridiculous. It really shouldn't cost me less to import something from nearly 2000 miles away than from within my own country, that's nuts! 

I ordered a few things from Amazon Italy in two separate transactions. First I ordered Rock Star Vanessa and she arrived within 3 days in an amazon box covered in customs forms and amazon stickers in Italian which makes sense right?

So then I ordered series 4 Meena and Daphne and that's where things get odd. 

It took 9 days for them to turn up and when they did they had no customs labels, no italian stickers, instead they came in an English box with a return address for Amazon's warehouse in SCOTLAND and Royal Mail labels. This suggests that this parcel came from within the UK and never once got on a place. 

So why on earth are Amazon Italy selling dolls from a warehouse in the UK while Amazon UK still have no listings for these dolls yet? 

It's so wierd! I'm so confused! 

Anyway, dolls are here so let's take a look at Meena first. 

Monster High - Haunt Couture - Clawdeen Wolf

 It's been a while since we had any Monster High content to review huh? 

And though the line ended on a very sour note (good god those gappy reboot bodies were unforgivable) I still have a great deal of fondness for the franchise as a whole. It was the first doll brand I was an active collector for the release of rather than picking dolls up secondhand after the event. I have very happy memories of trawling every Argos across two cities to get the new releases (lol), the excitement of new argos catalogue day or new stock coming into Toys R Us, trips out to the nearest TRU for their latest exclusive. Oh so many doll hunts. 

I miss doll hunts actually. I mean yeah it was a bit frustrating when things didn't hit your region for ages but the thrill of going into a store and seeing all this NEW stuff was awesome. 

In the UK now we just don't get that so much. Argos doesn't do new catalogue days anymore, they just kinda... add stuff as and when to their website. TRU no longer exists. Smyths have no stores within 2 hours travel for me (wtf smyths? wtf?) and the past few years we've just been seeing less and less stuff hitting physical stores as everything goes online only.

and I miss physical stores. I miss sitting in the aisle going through all the boxes to find the "perfect" one. I miss the friendships I made with store workers who came to know me very very well (that one argos guy who would yell across the store "No new dolls today!" or "we have a new shipment! come see!" lol. 

But still, it's nice to see Monster High making a comeback. I'm just not totally sure I trust Mattel not to cock it up like they did last time. 

But when they annouced their collector Haunt Couture dolls I knew I needed to get Clawdeen. After all, I have a ridiculous number of Clawdeen dolls in my collection, she's like.. my girl you know? 

Now granted, the release was pretty shitty. Very short notice for both Frankie and Clawdeen, the price was OBSCENE especially compared with other "collector" dolls being produced and the line was only available from Mattel's online store. Thankfully they've fixed their international shipping. Last time they had a webstore exclusive their online shipping was asking an eye watering $60 to ship ONE freaking doll. I was relieved to see it's now a far more reasonable $15. 

But even so, at $75 each, plus shipping and whatever customs fees I may have to pay, I was pretty anxious about it all. But I didn't want to pass and regret it. I sold a bjd to get funds together. I was lucky to find a buyer quickly.

So, was Haunt Couture worth the inflated price tag? Let's take a look shall we?

Rainbow High Pacific Coast Simone Summers

 Another day, another Rainbow High doll. 

What can I say, they are currently the most interesting doll line on the market. 

I've been eying the Pacific Coast line for a while but at £35 for a bloody SWIMSUIT line, the price made my eyes water. (for reference, the regular dolls are between £30 and £35 with two full outfits so... yeah)

However, Simone was just too gorgeous for me to keep putting off getting. I had some amazon vouchers and she kept popping in and out of stock so I took the chance to grab the last one they had with the reasoning of "I don't want to miss out completely, she seems to be selling the best of the lot"

Rainbow Junior High - Poppy

 MGA continue to saturate the market with more and more and more dolls. 

So now we have "junior high" rainbow high dolls too. 

Somewhat oddly, they elected to make these younger versions of the same characters rather than say, younger siblings. Which I find an unusual choice. I suppose it's also what they did with a lot of the Bratz kidz but at the same time, surely the "going back in time" element should mean their clothing styles are outdated fashions from several years ago then? lol. 

Also, isn't it a bit wierd to have the same character as a tween and also as an older teen?

Whatever, let's look at the doll. 

Ebay and other finds.

 The UK has some major supply chain issues right now, which means not a lot of new stock and what new stock there IS is either really overpriced or keeps selling out. Amazon particularly seems to be really struggling to keep their dolls in stock and it's starting to get a bit irritating honestly. 

As it stands, there's several lines the US has gotten that we're yet to see here. We haven't gotten the Rainbow High rockstars, or the slumber party dolls. We haven't gotten ANY Mermaid High which is now on wave 2 in the USA! We've not gotten Barbie Rewind either. And it's not clear if we WILL get any of these or if they're gonna end up missing us entirely.

I'd order stuff from amazon us but the rainbow high dolls are both store exclusives from stores who don't do international shipping and what Amazon DOES have is rather screwed over by the extremely high shipping and customs fees i'd have to pay on top. 

And so it means that right now i've been back to my ol' mainstay, shopping for older stuff on Ebay and various marketplaces. 

Which in itself has been slim pickings because everyone else is doing the same so prices are going up and up and up! 

bah.

BAH I SAY.

Still, got some fun stuff recently so let's take a look. 

Big ol bundle of bjds

 now this is a different one. 

See, i've mentioned before how big job lots of dolls are a weakness for me right? Especially tlc job lots. but usually that means playline dolls, cheap old toys that are only like ten to twenty quid for the lot.

Buuuut... well... 

I stumbled upon someone in the UK selling a big lot of Dollmore bjds for a really good price. She'd inherited them and wanted them to just go together for simplicities sake, which isn't an easy ask when selling high ticket items like bjds. I mean even selling ONE bjd can take forever.  As a result that "quick sale" ended up taking several months to happen. 

So along I came all "oo dolls?" 

And I fell in love with one of the sculpts which I then learned was discontinued. So then I was like "WANT!"

I also had been eyeing one of the other sculpts  for a while because she was dang adorable. 

Anyway, 

It took weeks to organise. 5 msd sized dolls aren't a simple thing to package up and post and the seller had just had a baby which of course meant she was exhausted and distracted and I didn't want to nag her because damn, let the poor thing sleep when she can! Babies are hard work. 

But we eventually worked stuff out and I arranged a courier for her to collect. She was very nice and packaged them up beautifully for me. 

And after weeks of discussion and planning, suddenly I had a courier going to pick up these dolls and a lump sum to send to the seller and it all stopped being an "if" but "it's happening" and panic set in. 

"Did I really just spend that much money in one go?" I thought.

But you know... YOLO or whatever. 

Barbie Empress of the Aliens - A long overdue Patreon review

 I'll be honest here, this is WAY beyond overdue. I'm so sorry. 

The truth is, every time I thought about doing this review I got kinda overwhelmed. This is a gold label doll, one of only 4800 in existance and she's worth a fair chunk of change so a combination of "do I dare open this" and "Someone SENT THIS TO ME!?? I'm not worthy!" kicked in and paralysed me. 

But i'm forcing myself to get over it and do this. Deep breaths okay? Deep deep breaths. 

Here we go.

LOL OMG World Travel - Sunset

 

LOL OMG are a line that just keeps on sucking me in. I can't help it. Despite their basic cartoonish face, they have such a variety of hair styles, makeup and interesting outfits that I cannot resist them. 

Barbie Looks Model #2

 This is a very very belated review. I bought this girl back in September!?? but then I got distracted and didn't open her. So she's sat on my desk for months, making me feel bad. 

well she's open now!

Honestly i'm a little behind in reviews so i'm going to try to write up a few to queue. I've been really distractable lately. Sorry about that. 

Anyway, 

Barbie Looks is an interesting line from Mattel. So let's get a look at it. 

Rainbow High - Emi Vanda

Okay yes, I know, it's been months. The end of the year is chaotic for me and this year it was just a mess. I had no motivation to do doll stuff. 

But i'm back now, i'm actually alive and all that. 

And i've FINALLY gotten a hold of Rainbow High Emi Vanda. 

Why has it taken me so long? Well 1: I'm cheap so I didn't want to buy all of the wave 3 ones I wanted at once (because it's ouch expensive) and 2: She kept going out of stock. 

Let's get into this.