And now for something different. - Stuff I bought this month.

 Yes I still have more Sindy stuff to get to, but i'm taking a break for christmas.

but that doesn't mean I don't have some things I want to ramble on about. 

I may not have energy for full box openings or massive amounts of historical research but I CAN buy bundles I shouldn't. Lol. 

So let's get into it

Usually I try to have a bit of a "buying stuff embargo" in December, what with christmas looming but it's a different matter when it comes to secondhand deals. A few bundles came to my attention that ended up being really reasonably priced (probably lots of other people on dolly embargo) and I kinda impulse splurged. 

ho hum. 

So, what'd I break out the wallet for? 

Well let's start with the Monster High stuff.

Seller photo

So this popped up on Vinted for a low BIN and I was intrigued. 

We have a Novi Star, A bratz doll and a lot of Monster High in various states. 

I've been on the lookout for Mouscedes for cheap, as well as ghouls night out Clawdeen and Ghoulia who i used to own and regret selling. Also Zombie Shake Meowlody, I liked the Zombie shake line and wouldn't mind the werecats. 

there was no real indication of the state of these dolls, I just had to study the few photos which didn't really tell me a lot. I knew a few were missing hands, but how many? Only time would tell. 

they arrived pretty promptly in a MASSIVE box thanks to the playsets. 

I learned that the DJ booth plays music if you attach an mp3 player or just your pc but the speakers SUCK and the sound is really tinny. To be fair it was more than I expected the thing to do but I feel like more playset would have been better than shit speakers. 

As a playset it's VERY minimal. There's a booth, some speakers (not present in this one) and a backdrop.

For how bulky the thing is it's really remarkably limited. 

still, middle kiddo stole it anyway. I loves playsets.

The pet playset is also incomplete but I don't really understand it anyway. It does have a fun little foot stool thing that does a magic drawer trick which is cool. Kiddo also stole that.

The CAM playset is also missing all the accessories and I have the full version somewhere anyway but eh. There were extra random clothes in the drawer so that's something.

the scooter is 1/4 scale and made for Our Generation dolls I think. It's really cute and very realistic. 

But the dolls are the real interesting bit.

These three are missing parts. 

Neighthan has lost a hand. 

Wheelin' Werecats Meowlody has lost both hands and one forearm along with her tail. 

Sweet 1600 (rerelease) Frankie has lost an arm. 

the girls both have glue head, ew. 

The Novi Star has also lost an arm. Their arms come off very very easily. 

Also the goo in her legs has dried out. 

That said, she'd work amazing as a hybrid on a new body. She matches Venus' skintone very well but I already have a Novi/MH Hybrid and don't really need another. 

I do love her little hair bow. 

Ghouls Night Out Venus is a doll I already own. She's a fun doll. 

Zombie Shake Rochelle I also already own. this one has lost her wings. 

Scaris Catrine needed a little glue head treatment but scrubbed up nicely. She's not complete but she does have her tail. 

 

13 Wishes Abbey did actually have her dress but I stole it for another doll. Ahem. I never liked this Abbey. The tinsel and the more yellow blonde hair coupled with the yellow eyeshadow and gold accessories never quite worked for me. The "ice" motif doesn't work when it's gold, her crown doesn't look like ice, it looks like dribbly gold. I know gold was a big thing with the 13 wishes line but as Abbey was a store exclusive and sold separate to the main line I do think they could have gotten away with silver to keep her theme. 

Deuce came with a different bundle, we'll get to that. He's the one who originally came with Gil in a two pack, which I can't remember the name of. 

Ghouls Rule Clawdeen is a doll i've always been a bit on the fence about. Parts of her design I think are really cool but other bits just feel muddled. She suffers badly from tinsel which frazzles and makes her hair look ratty. The way her makeup swirls into her eyebrows looks a bit odd too. 

In the case of this one, she's clearly been VERY played with. She's wearing Abbey's wrist cuffs here and all the blue foil has come off her dress. 

I cannot get her shoes off. They're far too tight. 

She only had one hand and it was that horrible little baby hand they used for a few Cleo dolls. A sculpt I HATE. She is however a very close match to Boo York Clawdeen so for now has her hands. 

But I don't know I want to keep this doll. I appreciate her very ott makeup and her wig inspired hair but she hasn't aged well.

Speaking of Boo York Clawdeen, she had glue head and needed treating. I didn't bother going all out for the dolls I knew I wasn't keeping though, they just got a cursory destickification. 

I already own a boo york Clawdeen and this one has wonky eyes anyway. I don't like the simmery skintone they gave the dolls here because it washes Clawdeen out and makes her several shades paler than her usual dolls (Cleo suffers this too)

the seller photo didn't include Purrsephony so she was a surprise. 

Anyway, these are the tentative "keep" dolls along with a couple who were getting glue treatment at the time of this photo. 

Zombie Shake Venus is a doll that when she was released I didn't much like. I thought she was "too much" but over the years i've warmed to her. This one isn't complete and has marks on her face I can't get off but I don't mind too much. 

Zombie Shake Meowlody and Purrsephony have lost a few bits and pieces but are mostly complete which is cool. I have ONE tail but not the other. Go figure. 

Mouscedes has lost her tail and did come with her gala outfit but I hate her gala outfit a great deal so she's not wearing it. 

And 13 wishes (dj) Spectra who it turned out had her underdress as well as her overdress thing. 

I like the black accessories on her. I don't know what the boots are, I think they're Draculaura's, they have little hearts on them. 

Mouscedes is another doll I used to own but sold and kinda regretted. The thing is, I didn't much like either of her outfits and her mirrored eyes bugged the shit out of me. She always felt like a cute sculpt that was missing the opportunity to shine. 

My first task with this girl, after stripping her out of her unflattering gala dress, was to fix her eyes. She was designed with her eyes as mirror images of one another, meaning she was looking in two different directions. I assume this was an attempt to imitate the whole "rat/mouse eyes on the sides of their head" thing but she's anthropomorphic so that makes no sense anyway. 

So I repainted one eye to have the shines coming from the same direction which is HOW LIGHT SOURCES WORK MATTEL! It helps focus her eyes and makes her look significantly less derpy. 

then I repainted her eyebrows because her arched brows didn't work for me. 

Finally her lips being the same colour as her eyes, her nose and her ear inners meant it all kinda washed out and I wanted to give her slightly more downcast lips anyway so I painted them a slightly darker shade of pink. This makes her lips pop more I think, and really helps the buck teeth stand out.

She's adorable now. 

Finding her an outfit was a challenge. The little sister body is quite a bit shorter in the torso than regular monster high which means most mh stuff looks frumpy and sack-like. Bratz stuff is often too mature as well as being too short in the crotch/hips and I was running out of tiny clothes to try.

I settled on this Pinkie Cooper dress (with the massive disproportionate flower cut off) with Lagoona leggings underneath and a Bratz vest to pull it all together. 

The big sparkly bow felt appropriate too. 

I feel like she's got a bit of a young pop star thing going on now. 

But yeah, she's a difficult doll to style and dress.

 My final two "keep" dolls are Ghouls Night Out Clawdeen and Ghoulia. 

I used to own these two dolls. I can't remember when or why I sold them but i've always regretted letting Clawdeen go.

Both of them are beautiful. They're incomplete but I don't much care. Also the foil has come off Clawdeen's dress but again, whatever. 

I'm just pleased to have them back in my collection. 

Both needed quite a lot of degluing which took a while. Ghoulia's head was rock hard and Clawdeen's hair was very sticky. There's still a little tackiness to Ghoulia's scalp but it's only very slight and it's where her hair is pulled into the ponytail so helps keep it sleek anyway. 

I've removed so much glue at this point so i'll take slight tackiness. Degluing is really tedious and it hurts my hands squeezing that shit out of their heads. 

the last two dolls were a Bratz Yasmin and a Ever After High doll with horrific hair. 

The EAH doll is Holly O'Hair and I believe she's a hair play doll. But the amount of glue in there had turned her head into a sticky disgusting mess. It was horrible. It took days of repeat washing and cif treatments and scraping the inside of her head to make a dent in the disgustingness. 

As it stands, almost all of the visible glue is now gone, but her scalp is still tacky regardless. Unfortunately this also means her hair has nothing to grip now so she sheds badly and lost a couple of plugs during her final brush through. I had to reroot them which wasn't ideal. 

Thing is, she's not even a good doll so i'm not sure why I bothered. It became a bit of a stubborn thing at the end. Like "I WILL fix this doll" even though she's shit. 

She's on a body without articulated arms and a moulded on bodice which is really quite detailed but all just purple plastic. 

I dunno, she's boring. I don't much like the EAH head sculpts, I dislike budget bodies with moulded on clothing like this and her damn hair is SYILL slightly sticky. ARGHHHH. 

damnit Holly. 

She's in the "fuck off outta here" box now. 

 

Yasmin on the other hand needs help. She's a 2010 era Bratz which means she has awful hair. It's frizzy dry cheap nylon and while conditioning and boiling it helped a bit and it's now soft, it's still really frazzled looking.

She's Neon Runway Yasmin, with the white hair variant (the other one had purple hair). I like the white hair against her tanned skin, I think it's quite pretty.

She donated her vest to Mouscedes and really that vest is the only really cool part of her outfit. The silver dress is very thin and has holes in it from the packaging tabs and the leggings are just leggings. Boring pink leggings. Useful, but boring. 

I DO like the 2010 era faces though. I think those smokey eyes are really beautiful. So I will try to fix her hair. 

 

Seller photo

 Another bundle that caught my eye was this curious little collection of heads. 

We have FCA Lagoona, a doll i've always appreciated from afar because her glue head is notorious. There's a pair of fully white haired Frankies, several misrooted Operettas and perhaps most curious, a Loves Not Dead Ghoulia with her hair in the correct beehive style of her prototype rather than the silly tight rolled sausage her release doll got. 

Hmmmm. 

This Freaky Fusion Frankie is odd because her head is tiny and really hard. She's rooted with light blonde hair with no black streaks and her makeup is immaculate. But as I said, her head is HARD and small as if it's been acetone shrunk. But acetone shrinking would strip the face paint...

Alongside a regular Frankie head you can see how small her head is. It's about 2/3 of the size at most. It's super weird.

We also have signature Lagoona with fairly common slight eye wonk. A slightly wonky Getting Ghostly Twyla who's had her hair stripped (she has a tiny head too but I think Twyla just has a small head) and Frights Camera Action Viperine with her snakes removed. There's still glue residue at the back of her head so i'm assuming she had them at some point.

An unfinished Operetta with solidly black hair. Judging by her rooting pattern I think this is Black Carpet/FCA Operetta but they rooted the back black as well. Her hair is really soft and has a lovely curl to it. 

Abbey's lips have been carved for some reason. It's not a good job and it's left quite a lot of gouges and looks weird. What's interesting about this Abbey however is that her hair is almost entirely blonde with only ONE purple streak toward the back. 

I assume both these dolls are Ali Express/Tao Bao factory reject heads. 

Faceless Oppy replaces the Bloodgood head from the sales photo. Odd. She's substantially more interesting than Bloodgood.

Another presumed reject head is this Operetta. She has Frights Camera Action's makeup but her eyes are missing a layer of blue and her hair is all red.

Here she is alongside a regular Operetta to show what I mean about her eyes. Instead of blue she has yellow which makes her eyes look grey. I think it's quite pretty actually.

there's a lot of Operetta's in this bundle. 

First is Dot Dead Gorgeous. Her hair looks to be rooted correctly, but it's not styled. She should have a ponytail with a big rolled fringe.

Second doll is I think maybe Picture Day? Her hair is missing black streaks and I don't think the front is rooted correctly. Picture Day has a weird Something About Mary quiff going on. This one has a center part with shorter chunks at the front which frame her face. The rest looks to be rooted to be a ponytail which follows with Picture Day.

Third is signature Operetta. Again her hair looks to be rooted correctly but hasn't been styled. 

Then we have what I think is Diener Operetta from the store exclusive Diener playset with Draculaura. Her lips feel too small or narrow or something but her hair is correct. Despite the photo, she actually has quite dark brows. I don't know why they photograph yellow here.

Finally we have Freaky Fusion Operetta.She hasn't got her black streak down the middle and her hair is actually center parted. Again this doesn't feel correct. 

So we have two with incorrect hair and three with correct hair. I can't see any obvious defects in any of them either so if they're factory rejects I don't know why. 

I gave these three heads bodies. 

Ghoulia is using a very messy CAM body I need to remove the paint from. 

Lagoona has a body I had in my box who is missing a hand. 

Frankie stole sweet 1600's body and gained a Draculaura arm.

I think this is Ghoul Spirit Frankie. What's interesting there is I always HATED Ghoul Spirit Frankie and I always assumed it was her pink makeup making her look like she had an eye infection but I think it's actually the horrible grey bangs they gave her. 

I did alter this one's paint. I added a little pale blue to the underneath of her eye to break up the pinkness. 

Her hair is pale blonde with some occasional darker blonde streaks. It's also quite short and unevenly cut. 

I need to add some more plugs to thicken it up at the scalp but I really love this doll's look.

Damn 1st wave Lagoona is a pain in the arse to photograph. She almost always has wonky eyes which aren't so noticable in real life but are painfully clear in photographs. 

That said, this Frights Camera Action Lagoona has quite nice hair. It's tacky at the scalp yes, but the curls are beautiful and the rest of her hair is nice and soft. 

Her eyeshadow looks to be more orange than a lot of images I can find of this doll so uh... I dunno. 

I'm gonna have to see if I can find her outfit pieces.

Loves Not Dead Ghoulia is a pretty doll. I have one with her hair rinsed out. Her factory style was an abomination, seriously. 

Look at this shit! This was an ebay seller photo I found. Look at that fucking MESS! 

that's not a beehive, that's a sausage!

This particular head has had her hair relaxed a little and pulled into a proper beehive style. it's FULL of product but this style would need a ton of gel to keep it up. There's no hairbands or anything, it's just gel. 

the little red splotches in her eyes coupled with her dark blue hair make this doll a particularly distinctive one. 

I'm not sure I can justify keeping this one, but i'm going to try to clean this body up for her at the very least. 

So that's the Monster High dolls... for now. 

the next lot were a little more random.

the poor boy dolls were, with the exception of one bratz boy in this image, listed on ebay with the description "I don't like boy dolls". 

well thankfully I do. 

so cheers seller for the bargain.

I recognized this one immediately. He's Modern Circle Ken.

Modern Circle was an interesting line, released in 2003. Mattel used old Barbie sculpts from the 60s and 70s for this line but gave them modern looks and funky coloured hair. 

Ken is honestly the least interesting of the lot but he's still interesting. He uses the repro 60s Ken sculpt and has a vintage-esk faceup with lopsided brows, simple blue eyes and very geometric freckles. I think his lips are too dark, they look like lipstick. 

His hair is mostly black with yellow streaks and rooted in that way a lot of Ken dolls of this era were, that is, in a manner that makes their hair stand up like a troll doll. 

He uses the 1970s Young Sweethearts body which Mattel used a fair bit any time they wanted an articulated Ken. I think the My Scene boys use this body even. It's lanky and tall and is jointed at the waist, the elbows and the knees. 

The Young Sweethearts body is awkward to dress because the waist is quite skinny while the shoulders are broad. He's a bit oddly shaped really. But I did what I could with my limited Ken clothing supply.

the other boy is also a Ken, though he uses the Max Steel body (a totally different toy line lol). This is Jude Deveraux "The Raider" Ken from a two pack with Barbie. The set was based on a romance novel by Jude Deveraux and from what i can establish, she wrote a lot of historical romance stories. 

My boy came nude and because he uses this buff action figure body he's not easy to find clothing for. I should imagine Action Man stuff would fit, but that's pretty limited. In fact, that's the jacket he has on here while the shirt is from some generic similar soldier doll. 

I'm yet to find him pants (lol)

He's a really interesting doll with an intense smoulder and unusual features like stubble and long rooted hair. 

I'm quite impressed by him actually. He's not a doll I knew existed previously. 

Also in the bundle were the Monster High Deuce who I pictured earlier, and a few Bratz Boyz. 

Two were damaged, one was a boy I already own. The other two however were boyz I didn't happen to have already. 

I love Bratz boyz so i'm always happy to add more to my collection. 

So I happily added Step Out Koby and Winter Wonderland Cade to my crew. 

The final boy to join was Rodeo Wayne, who a friend from the US sent me alongside repro Sasha. 

I have a Rodeo Wayne, but mine is still in his box. It's cool to have a deboxed one to play with without feeling heavy guilt about opening a rare doll.