Ever After High - Duchess Swan

I've had a lot of dolls lying about unopened for months. A combination of general apathy and lack of display space has made me reluctant to open them, and in the case of the MH and EAH stuff, those blood thirsty boxes have been a HUGE offputting factor.

But today my pc crashed and wouldn't load back up for several hours, so I did some deboxing.

Duchess had been preying on my mind a lot recently, i'd seen some gorgeous shots of other people's doll with her hair restyled and in a more modern outfit and I started getting the itch to try my own restyle.
I always felt the doll was gorgeous, but her outfit was not at all to my taste.

Anyway, I finally got her deboxed so here we go!

Update and more rambling

Yeah i've been kinda slacking lately. Honestly I haven't really bought any non Makie dolls in a while.

Mattel are suuuuper slow to release stuff here and I already bought Haunted and Exchange and that's all I really wanted. None of the other lines grab me and say "buy meeee". Sure a few are pretty, but the price is prohibitive and i'm seriously losing interest.

I'm kinda excited about Boo York and Freak Du Chiq, even though I only really want Luna and Gooliope (maybe Elle but her colourscheme is so like sooo many other dolls in the line, she doesn't stand out so much for me). But on the whole, i'm kinda going off the recent Mattel products with their shitty thinly rooted hair, lack of detailing and massive price tags. Also those boxes... I cannot forgive boxes that demand blood.

And there's not much else on the market really. I mean... the shelves are pretty sparse around here. There's Barbie sure, but i'm not a huge Barbie fan.
There are still some Moxie Girlz trickling into the country but we aren't getting every line, we only seem to get about 1/3 if not less of the stuff the US is seeing... and they're still over priced.

There's just not really anything new or exciting out right now. No competition to Mattel, no rival dolls on the shelves. It's pretty damn depressingly barren. Maybe it'll get more exciting toward the end of the year.

So what HAVE I been buying? uh... makies... lots of Makies lol. I'm up to 12 now with another on the way and even more on my wishlist.
they are awfully addictive. I'm really enjoying them, both designing them and coming up with characters for them all heh.

I also got a hold of some zelfs. I bought a few each wave since they were released, but I only seem to ever want 3 or 4 from each line, which isn't enough to send off for the LE one heh. I should have, I liked the cat one but by the time I worked out that I should just buy a few more zelfs I "kinda liked" to have adequate reciepts the time had almost run out. I'm pretty sure they must have run out by now. maybe next wave...

Ain't they cute?

Oh dear, it's more Makies

I... I am addicted. This is terrible, but also awesome.

See, I have this thought that when it comes to toys, if they bring you joy and make you smile, then buy em!

Sadly a lot of mass produced stuff isn't giving me that buzz these days, and i'm not sure if it's just burnout because i've collected them for so long or if it's a combination of price hikes and quality cuts. Certainly Monster High just isn't giving me that same "eeee excited" feeling. I find I buy a doll, then it sits for months till I work up the motivation to open it.
Now part of this is fear of the new packaging, after slicing my hand open on one of the boxes I couldn't stand to touch the others for weeks. When I finally did I yet again hurt myself.
Now every time I touch the empty boxes (I keep empty boxes ok?) to move them they stab me with their sharp bits and I get mad.

So that's definitely a factor. When physical pain is involved with deboxing, you are less inclined to debox. I mean, I still haven't opened Duchess because i'm scared of her box!

It's plastic and stabby looking.

But while Mattel really aren't keeping my interest with their releases, Makies unique selling point continues to impress.

Amazon boycott

Not a review of a doll so much as a scathing and damning review of a company.

Amazon.co.uk.

Wow eee.. what a bunch of crooks.

Monster High - Scarisian Vacation - Garrott DuRoque and Rochelle Goyle

new dolls! (Mattel's photo from sdcc)

These still haven't hit the uk so I had someone in the US send them over. It does however mean they came without their box which is a shame but eh.
you'll have to live without box photos.

Also my camera hates sunlight so taking pictures during the day left me with a lot of shots I couldn't use. Go figure. So this may be a bit picture light and i'm sorry for that.

Still, let's dig in

Novi stars - 2015 - Frostina Sprinkles and Carmela Sweet

INVASION!

Yes, these two new Novis are part of the Invasion line like Ina Ferna and Anne Arctic. But while they were elemental themed, this time we have um... sweet/candy themed ones?
Sweet Screams, novi style.

Novi Stars - 2015 - Doe a Deer, Justina Hour

New Novis!

Yes, so The Entertainer here in the UK randomly got these in. And then after a few days having them listed at £20 each, put them on sale with all the other Novis for £5.
Naturally, I had to order all four of them because a fiver each? that's too good a deal!

From what I understand of it, Novi Stars as a franchise is dead. but before they died MGA produced these four characters. They then made them only available in Russia, of all places and the rest of the world wailed and expected they'd never see them.
But apparently the EU is, awesome!

So, let's dive in and have a good look at these new Novi Stars.