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.
So first up there's a big bundle of dolls I bought specifically for ONE doll in the bundle (A common event unfortunately lol)
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| Original Ebay photo (not mine) |
So now you're probably thinking "Oh obviously the Sindy doll"
but you'd be wrong.
She was NOT the main reason I was watching this count down wondering if anyone else would bid.
No, instead, the doll I really really wanted was the girl right at the other end of the line. Cherry Merry Muffin.
I believe i've mentioned Cherry Merry Muffin before in my blog but just in case let me explain.
Cherry Merry Muffin was a line of dolls made by Mattel waaaay back in 1988. I was but a wee kiddo back then, and I was gifted a Cherry doll by some friend for a birthday (I have no memory of who unfortunately)
She came with a little anthropormorphic cherry that doubled as a sugar shaker (I think) and a tray of muffins. She also smelled of artificial cherries.
Now, kid me wasn't big into dolls. I liked dinosaurs and rocks and bugs and stuff. But I liked Cherry enough that I wanted more of the line. I think it helped that she was perfectly scaled to the dollhouse my father had built me a couple of years earlier that was too small for the Barbies I inherited from my sister and generally got used as a shelf.
Now my father was NOT a handy kinda guy, he was good with electronics but woodwork wasn't his forte. So i've never been clear WHAT possessed him to build from scratch a dollhouse for his youngest child. But he did and it was a sturdy ol' thing. He just kinda... failed to scale it to any actual dolls. Whoops.
Cherry fitted it which was delightful, it meant I could actually PLAY with the dang dollhouse. As I got older it ended up being used as a bookshelf. I was kinda annoyed when my mother threw it out. Dad made that with his own two hands woman! Have some respect!
Anyway,
NZ tended to get toys a little later than the US, usually a year or so later in fact. It was around about 1990, maybe 91, making this first wave Cherry likely clearance old stock (perhaps why she was bought as a gift for a kid the gift giver barely knew lol)
This means that the ones I bought subsequently were all second wave dolls. Mattel released 5 dolls in the first wave and 5 in the second. The second set only had 2 characters make a return. Cherry and Chocolottie, all the rest were brand new.
Every month or so i'd have saved up enough pocket money to get another and slowly I bought 3 of the 4 I needed to complete the set. Sadly, the black doll, Greta Grape, was either flat out never actually available in NZ or was already sold out by the time I had the money to get her. I remember being so disappointed that I couldn't get the last one. I liked having COMPLETE collections damnit.
My Cherry Merry Muffin dolls were one of the many toys I lost in the "incident" which i've discussed before. (the whole, everything from my childhood being disposed of without our knowledge or permission thing)
Several years ago I started searching Ebay to see if I could replace those lost toys and was pissed off to learn that Cherry Merry Muffin is not only extremely rare to find in the UK, but insanely expensive on the second hand market anyway. Most of my dolls were complete and intact damnit! Replacing them would cost me hundreds of pounds.
this made me grumpy and kinda made the loss hurt all over again.
I found a nude Apple Amy (the black character from the first wave) for a decent price way back then and bought her just to appease that grief, and she's sat in a box in my cupboard ever since. I always said it was a somewhat bizarre irony that the only Cherry Merry Muffin doll I didn't have as a kid was the black one and now the only one I could get for love or money was her.
Sadly the nostelgia of obtaining these childhood things is tinged with a great deal of hurt and sorrow. People say "oh they're just things" but they weren't to me. I was a wierd kid who didn't have many friends, I spent countless hours alone in my room playing quietly. My toys were my companions, full of memories and sentimental value. Losing them was just another hurt added to the very large pile of pain my parent's decision to emigrate caused me. The pain of that loss can't be separated from the pain of losing my family, my friends and everything i'd ever known as well. It's all one and the same.
And Cherry is a big symbol of those complicated feelings. She's one of those toys I remember SO vividly. And she's the first doll line I ever felt the desire to actively collect.
So when I saw her in a bundle with a Sindy doll I knew I wanted her, but then as I waited for her to arrive I started to worry. What if she just made me feel sad and angry like I did when I finally got a hold of replacement copies of Scary Stories to tell in the dark? Was it a good idea to reopen that wound rather than let it go?
As it was, I think it helped that she is NOT my childhood Cherry. Oh she looks almost exactly the same, but my childhood doll had a broken arm from where a friend of mine accidentally tore it out of the socket and snapped the connector. Mine also still had her bow and her accessories and still smelled of cherry.
Replacement cherry has none of those things. She smells like dust and attic. She has intact arms but messed up hair. She has no accessories.
She isn't "MY" Cherry, and that's okay.
She was also absolutely FILTHY.
The poor girl, like all the dolls in the bundle was coated in a layer of grime. Her legs had frozen in position, her arms were stiff and her hair was decaying, with substantial chunks of it already breaking off at the root.
Everything needed a good wash including her clothing.
Cherry Merry Muffin outfits are made with this wierd crispy feeling shimmery fabric that feels like plastic. I'm actually quite impressed it's survived all these years intact.
Her apron is distorted but otherwise her outfit is in pretty decent condition.
The same cannot be said of her hair. It's dry, it felt disgusting till i washed it several times, and huge chunks have rotted out and broken away. It's also lost all of the original curl.
I got her arms and legs moving again with a little force, and a scary memory of my original Cherry's broken arm as I did so. YIKES.
Poor girl has really quite wretched hair. I remember as a kid the hair being quite light and flyaway but the decades haven't been kind. Boil washing it didn't help much, so I resorted to braiding it.
I also came across a listing for some playset pieces. Oh the nostelgia hit. I had several of the furniture pieces and they're things I remember fondly as being bloody wierd. In fact, a lot of the Shopkins Shoppies stuff reminds me a LOT of them.
The set contained the refridgerator, the oven and the erm... very.. big.. mixing bowl..
The oven is ridiculous. It should have little shelves inside but this one is missing those. The little stumpy arms and legs make me laugh. They actually rotate around so you can pose them kinda.
And the face is an oven timer. I don't think it ever worked as one, but you can turn it around like a clock and it makes a click noise each time.
Unlike the oven, the fridge is more what I remember with the furniture mostly being shaped like food packaging (the table is a box of muffin mix for example). The fridge is a milk carton with a face and arms and legs. Why? I don't know. I wonder how many drugs were involved in the making of these playset pieces.
The door opens but there's nothing inside. Originally this would have also had little shelves and came with food/ingredients.
The legs are, like with the oven, too stumpy for them to actually be used to stand. Poor wierd fridge. It looks happy though.
The mixing bowl is more baffling. The other furniture pieces are all in scale with the doll, kinda. And make up a kitchen with a stove, a fridge, a table. The big mixing bowl LOOKS to have been intended as a sink? But... yeah.. what?
This thing has a gimmick too. It can swish side to side on its feet. I assume because if you put water in it you might... want to swish the water? I don't know.
Like the other bits this is missing a lot of the bits that came with it including the piece that slots over the top to turn the bowl into a sink (well they SAY sink but really? REALLY?)
What I find really funny about the Cherry Merry Muffin playsets, you know, aside from their goofly little faces and stumpy limbs, is that she never got any CHAIRS. She got a table, but no chairs. I dunno, that makes me laugh for some reason. Why no chairs mattel? In fact, she got TWO tables. One in the second wave too. But NOT A SINGLE CHAIR TO SIT IN.
Poor Cherry.
I suppose maybe you don't want to sit in a chair that can walk around and has a face and presumably sentience.
still.
wiiiierd.
I still need the muffin mix table but the playset pieces are even more annoying to locate in the UK than the dolls! ARGH.
Anyway, back to the bundle of dirty dolls.
The rest of the bundle was equally as filthy.
Sindy herself has mildew stains down her leg, badly chewed up feet and very very dry frazzled hair. She's either Holiday girl, Party Girl or Pop star, I lean toward Holiday or Party because her face is slightly narrower. Either way, her hair is SUPPOSED to be this short.
Her lips have lost most of their original pink colour and she has scuffs to her eye paint too. But she has all her lashes. Go figure.
Anna Moore has lost an arm and under all that filth I also discovered she's missing a chunk out of her nose. poor girl.
Barbie's hair is dry and brittle with broken off bits. The fiber Mattel was using in the 80s doesn't seem to age well at all, it rots and breaks apart. Gross.
The other two dolls are clone dolls of some sort. The brunette has wretched hair and a hole in her boob (ouch) with a flimsy hollow body. The redhead is badly rooted but has much better quality hair and a hollow body that's not quite as... flimsy as the brunette and bending legs. I think she's a Fashion Corner doll by Lucky Inc. A cheap Barbie alternative like Steffie Love or whatever. I don't actually know much about Fashion Corner or Lucky Inc beyond they seemed to be pretty prolific and turn up a LOT in random bundles from the 80s and 90s.
Anna Moore is such a strange looking little doll. I have never been able to decide if I like her funny little gnome face or not.
The 80s Barbie was nostelgic. I rooted in some extra hair to fill the chunk of broken off hair at the front. It's not the same blonde as you can see, but it's fine. Better than a bald patch.
These are the sort of dolls my sister had that I inherited, sparkly star filled eyes, fixed forced grin, horrible bent arms and rubbery legs that made dressing them an absolute chore.
Man I don't miss old Barbie bodies. They were SHIT. There i've said it. Controversal perhaps, but I think they're incredibly ugly with those extremely wide shoulders and teensy hoof feet and very difficult to dress with those posed arms.
I always associate Barbies of this era with the dolls I inherited in a big ugly brown suitcase and thought were really unattractive lol.
Sindy's hair still needs more work in this picture. The mildew sunk deep into her vinyl parts so she got disinfected and bleached and all sorts of kill that shit. She could do with destaining but i'm lazy.
What's interesting about this sort of Sindy, who are generally referred to as "Diana Sindy dolls" thanks to their Princess Di inspired hairdo, is that some of them survive with beautiful hair and others end up with what looks like wool. I've never been able to work out whether they used different hair for some that just aged better or what, but at least half of the Dianas i've ever seen have had wooly as hell hair.
(insert more photos of Sindy done up)
Another thing I stumbled upon on Ebay peaked my curiosity. I'd never heard of Happy to be Me, but I looked it up and learned that they were a sort of proto Lammily from the early 90s. A "body positive" doll marketed mostly to mothers rather than kids, who's whole schtick was that she was "more realisticly proportioned than Barbie" blah blah etc etc.
Now, looking at the dolls, their bodies aren't bad. They remind me of Darcy or Jem or something, but they had truly UGLY faces with more rictus grins than Barbie herself. YIKES. (also the dolls were anatomically correct, meaning yep, no molded on panties here. I find that quite funny, these days people would be having an absolute meltdown over that level of realism hahahah)
This is something I notice a lot with an awful lot of "Barbie competitors" over the years, ESPECIALLY the ones that claim to be "more approachable" and "more realistic". they always screw up the faces. They never look approachable or friendly, they either look borderline psychotic or unhappy.
I don't get it. Why is making a doll head attractive so hard? Like seriously, close her goddamn mouth and give her a coy smile or something. (Have I mentioned before how much I HATE open mouthed smiles on dolls?)
Anyway,
Though the dolls were, imo, ugly as all sin, their outfits looked to be fairly decent little snapshots of early 90s fashion. And I love me some brightly coloured vintage fashions.
Happy to be Me apparently was seen on "national tv" which I assume means the USA, not the UK. Also isn't it interesting that a whole toy line can have tv appearances and a huge hype (there was definite hype put behind this line) and still sink into obscurity extremely quickly.
The back of the box is same ol' same ol' with the whole "our doll is realistically proportioned, UNLIKE "other" dolls out there!"
My big problem with these sorts of lines is that too often the creators focus ONLY on that aspect and forget that it also has to be a TOY and appeal to the kids it's being given to. Lammily suffered not only from really poor and old fashioned engineering, she also had outfits that weren't exactly fashionable and were definitely not at all flattering to her body shape, making her look frumpy which is something no kid wants from a "fashion" doll.
In a way it's kinda nice to see on the back here that they mention the poseability of the doll and how it would enhance play, meaning these designers actually considered how the doll might be played with beyond being some supposed role model.
Now I could talk for hours about the stupidity of expecting a toy to be a role model to a child, but that's a whoooole other discussion and we're here to talk about this fashion pack.
But you know, you can read yourself the spiel. "She can read a book". Wow, I didn't realise Barbie was illiterate. Pretty impressive she had all those careers then. <_<
She can wave goodbye, not hello, just goodbye. A portent of her short lived time on toy shelves perhaps?
The box shows some of the other outfits but the photos are so tiny you can't really see any detail which I think says a lot about the company's priorities here. Instead of devoting a lot of space to "also available" products, instead most of the back of the package is a long winded "not like other dolls/girls" speech.
It looks like as well as the outfit I have here, there was a two toned swimsuit, a sort of long party dress, some frumpy mom jeans and some pedal pushers?
I really wish they'd shown the other products better.
I wonder what became of Cathy Meredig. I can't find anything more about her beyond the articles about this doll line. I wonder if she went on to do anything else in the toy industry you know?
Anyway,
after spending 30 years in a box, this outfit can finally be free.
This outfit doesn't seem to have any kind of name, but it comprises a little tank top with lace trim around the collar, a yellow cotton overshirt... thin jumper thing? and a blue skirt with elasticated waist.
there's also a pair of black court shoes. They're HUGE, I didn't have any dolls they could fit on but I wonder if they'd fit Jem or something.
Sideburns Sindy (more about that in a moment) couldn't wear the shoes but the rest mostly fits. It's a little large in just about every dimension though and the elastic waist on the skirt isn't exactly flattering, puckering around the doll's waist a lot. Someone didn't explain scaling to whoever designed this skirt did they? What works at human scale won't neccisarily work at doll scale and elastic is one such thing that just doesn't translate well. Least not elastic done this way.
All the pieces are fairly nicely made, but nicely made more in a "home made by your mother" sort of way than factory made. The fabric of the yellow jacket thing is very thin, every stitch is very visible and the trim of the red shirt isn't quite scaled correctly. It looks like it came from a craft store haberdashery which really adds to that "home made" look and feel.
it's a VERY simple outfit with no snaps or elastic. Everything is designed to be pulled on like human clothing, which can present a bit of a challenge if your doll isn't like Sindy can can't just remove her head.
It's quite clearly an outfit made by a VERY small factory working with whatever they could find and is in no way comparable to the much more detailed clothing of Barbies of the same era.
that said, i think it does have a certain charm. I like the bold colours and I think the slouchy bagginess kinda works for Sindy.
So now you're probably asking "why is she Sideburns Sindy?" right?
well, she's a wierd doll alright.
This girl came from Oxfam and I knew as soon as I saw her that I needed her in my collection. I couldn't stop laughing at the poor unfortunate thing.
You see, for some reason known only to Pedigree, some "bunches" (read: pigtail) Sindy dolls came with their hair rooted in this er... rather novel manner.
I asked and as it turned out this girl wasn't the only one like this. Several collectors came forward to tell me they had one as well. All of them had the same story, they were secondhand, purchased nude. One person had purchased theirs as simply a head with the factory bows still present but beyond that, nobody seems to know which sindy this was or been able to find a single boxed example.
Was she just a wierd short lived variation of the bunches Sindy? Was she some sort of budget release sold in little baggies instead of boxes like the "Cindy" trendy girls?
No idea.
But what we do know is that this odd style of doing bunches isn't unique to just this Sindy doll. Some other 70s dolls use this method as well, the hair in front of the ear serves to hold the pigtail in position and make the hair look fuller vs the skinny pigtails of doing it the traditional behind the ear way.
As you can see from these photos, Sideburns Sindy is mostly bald at the sides of her head to ensure her pigtails stay flat against her scalp.
Such a wierd doll.
I also picked up this gorgeous 70s Ballerina from someone selling their childhood dolls. Her face is particularly unusual with really long lashes and bright cheeks. She has no hands right now, the 70s ballerinas tend to lose their hands but there's a person on Etsy who sells replacements so i'll order some at some point.
Now this... this is NOT a Sindy.
We're not actually sure WHO she is. She was listed as a Sindy doll but I knew she wasn't one from the photos. Oh she looks a lot like one, but her lack of rooted lashes is a big tell.
She came just as a head, so I put her onto a spare body I had.
However, her neck hole is actually too small for most Sindy bodies. I suspect she was on a body more like Petra's, which is a Barbie-like body with a Sindy-like head on top. she only fits this Sindy body because it's a Sleepy Sindy body with a smaller and shallower neck knob.
I thought she might be another Rachel, a clone doll from the 70s but she isn't the same. She's unmarked and a proper mystery clone, but very interesting all the same.
Pedigree don't seem to have been hugely fussed about Sindy knockoffs, which means there were a LOT of them in the 60s and 70s, but the scarcity of this doll and the similar looking Rachel makes me wonder if Pedigree had a line and these two crossed it and were cease and desisted out of the marketplace. Certainly Rachel was later sold with a different face mold that's not a direct copy, so perhaps the same happened to this girl?
Unfortunately with clones the only way to identify them is if someone is lucky enough to come upon one in their original packaging. And even then, so many clones didn't even HAVE names anyway.
All I know is that this girl isn't Rachel and she isn't Petra, and she sure as heck ain't Sindy. Beyond that, not a clue.
now, a while ago I got a couple of vintage Barbie parts. One came with an upper torso but no butt or legs. One was just a head.
I more recently obtained a large bundle that included a few clone dolls I didn't feel bad hacking up for pieces.
The original head for the busted body colour matched a more modern Barbie body so she got put on that, while Ballerina head here, who you may remember from my big impulse buy bundle of random heads, matched the torso really well so got that.
She still needed a lower body and legs though. Which is where a clone doll came in. Her body was a pretty good copy of the Barbie body, even down to the angled waist joint so I hacked her open, pilfered her lower torso and rammed the vintage body onto the more modern lower.
It took a lot of force and several large cuts to get the torso to splay wide enough, but we got there in the end.
Now it's not pretty but this body already had these holes drilled into it, adding vents to them wasn't really much more. And the connection is good and solid now, she can twist and everything. Heck yeah!
Then she got a reroot in mahogany saran.
Ballerina Barbie has a huge hole in the top of her head where her crown thing went, but thankfully I managed to style her hair around it rather than trying to fill it in.
I also filled in the holes of her body with millput to make everything a bit neater.
She's a proper frankendolly but she looks fantastic dressed, you'd never know she was cobbled together from three different dolls hahaha.
I also stumbled upon these fine ladies on my random Ebay browsing. They were all nude and aside from the central girl, bald.
The extra head is the same as the middle doll, which is baffling.
Annoyingly you don't seem to be able to buy replacement Pullip eye mechs or eyelids. Wierd.
Anyway, these three girls are:
Dal Ende - She would have originally had a long blonde wig and a fancy royal gown.
Pullip Midnight Velvet - She would have originally come dressed like an evil queen. This is her original wig, it's a very dark burgandy.
Pullip Rozen Maiden Barasuishou - She's wearing the eye mech from the extra Midnight Velvet head. Her original eyes would have been yellow. I don't know anything about Rozen Maiden, it's an anime I think? But the doll has cool eyeliner.
Ende and Velvet are both a very strange greyish tone while Barasuishou is a more normal pale peach.
It always gets me how lightweight and fragile Pullip bodies feel. Their heads are so heavy and their outfits such high quality but their bodies feel like they'll snap if you breathe too heavily on them. I find it a bit anxiety inducing honestly.
I know people tend to rebody the dolls onto more sturdy bodies but the wierd pale tone of Ende and Velvet aren't gonna make that easy, so i'll just deal with them being flimsy feeling.
all three are in good condition anyway.
I'm not sure if Ende should have a long wig. I think she looks cute with red hair but maybe something a little longer would be nice. I dunno.
I don't tend to keep a supply of 8-9 sized wigs, pullip have HUGE heads.
In terms of clothing I have learned the following:
Dal can fit Bratz tops and LOL OMG stuff seems to fit, though can be a little short in the body. She will fit stretchy monster high clothing but only the stretchy stuff.
Pullip can fit into Bratz Boyz/Monster High boy stuff and SOME rainbow high tops/jackets but the trousers are too wide in the hips. Pullip is really really skinny.
I haven't found any shoes to fit Pullip yet. Her feet are too long for Barbie and too narrow for any other playline dolls. It's kinda annoying actually.
I did ponder how a Pullip head would look on a Rainbow High body but the neck of the Rainbow High dolls is a lot thicker so you'd need to mod the head I think. A pity, as I feel like the rainbow high body would work really well aesthetically.
they're also very very top heavy so keep falling over and their body design means they don't sit well either. So hmmm. Chunky boots for everyone maybe?
But anyway, that's a little rundown of some of the stuff I bought over the past month or two and wouldn't fit a whole review.
Sorry this ending is abrupt, I don't know how to end this.
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