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.