Big haul

A friend of mine from church (hereafter referred to as Ms. P, her first initial) wanted to off-load a ton of her daughter's Barbie stuff, and due to my Failbook posts the first person she thought of was Yours Truly.  She said it was one box, but it ended up being FIVE boxes of stuff.  Two cars, a disassembled house, a ton of furniture, several Ziploc bags of clothes, and a box of nineties-era Barbies.  Wait until y'all see how diverse and well-kept this bunch is.  First things first:  this is Barbie.  I don't know which, but she's a pretty one.

This is also Barbie, one of the Little Debbie dolls.  Her accessories are presumably mixed in with the rest of the clothes.

This is Bridesmaid Barbie, from Midge's wedding party.

And of course, this is Barbie, one of the pioneers.  I actually have this one already, and I'll probably redress her.

Hi, Barbie!  Hi, Barbie!  Hi, Barbie!  Hi, Barbie!  Four of 'em are Barbie!  Now...let's see who's NOT Barbie.  The oldest one of the bunch is definitely not Barbie.

I have a reproduction Midge, but this gal is the real McCoy.  Ms. P told me that this is her childhood Midge.  Apparently back in the day Ms. P and her friends were allowed to take their dolls to school and play with them during free time, so that's exactly what they did.  Ms. P says that she had (and still has) one bubblecut Barbie, one Midge, a Fashion Queen Midge with the wigs, one Scooter, one Francie, and one or two Ken dolls (no Allan!).  She may have had Skipper too, but I can't remember; I asked to see these dolls and she'll hopefully bring them to me one day.  ANYWAY, Christmas rolled around, and the children got to play Secret Santa, giving each other something worth no more than a dollar.  When the gift exchange occurred a little boy handed Ms. P this Midge doll...an item worth more than the one dollar limit.  Ms. P said she accepted it, but she felt bad that the little boy had spent so much.

Time passed, Midge got her head taken off at least once, and she's developed a neck split as a result.

I know such damage is repairable, and it doesn't usually show so it's NBD.  I was so touched to receive one of Ms. P's personal dolls that I could only gasp and then splutter "Thank you."  I didn't think to ask her if Midge's hair once curled up (like a straight-leg) or under (like a bendleg).

Now, here's another Midge.  She's more what I'd have grown up with, with the Diva head and the sandy strawberry blonde hair.

I don't think I need to rehash my love for Midge.  She's always been Barbie's less-glamorous, more approachable sidekick, and like P.J. and Teresa, I just relate to her more.  The baseball earrings give this one away as All-Star Midge, from 1989.

I think this was the first Midge produced with the Diva head; the first two had the Steffie head.  I presume that they switched Midge's head up because Teresa used the Steffie head a lot during the eighties, but I don't KNOW that.  I do know that All-Star Teresa was a Steffie, and a very pretty one.

Speaking of Teresa, she's here.  She's not a Steffie Teresa, but again, NBD.  This is the Teresa I knew growing up.

Teresa has holes for earrings, but they're gone.  Luckily she does still have her ring.

<browses Google, eBay, and Etsy>  Somehow I knew there'd be a doll from the Rollerblade line in this collection, and this Teresa is the one.  I vaguely remember these from when I was a little kid; the rollerblades threw sparks, and did y'all know that sparks are a fire hazard???  I never would've guessed!  I don't know if the sparking rollerblades prompted a recall or not, but in this day and age a toy like this never would've flown.  Or the skates would've had to have had a redesign to be not a fire risk.  Edit, 12/14/24:  a little research would've done me good here, but I was completing this post kinda on the fly and didn't look it up like I should've.  Setsu-P informed me that Rollerblade Barbie and company were indeed recalled due to the aforementioned sparks causing problems.  The sources I'm citing are here and here, and thank you Setsu-P for filling me in!  Note that the doll in the YouTube link is Teresa, like mine.

Another of my childhood favorites was/is Kira.  I hinted at this doll's presence yesterday.

Kira has no earrings to aid me in identification, but her paint is distinctive:  yellow-green eyeshadow and orange lips.

Sun Jewel Kira, my childhood friend?  No, she has purple makeup and straight hair and big earrings.  This may be Wet 'n' Wild Kira, from 1990.  Cool, I love the Wet 'n' Wild line.  It kinda looks like Ms. P's daughter restyled Kira's hair, which is okay.  I'll tidy it up a bit and then put it back in that style!

The box wasn't a "girls only" affair, of course.  Before I move down an age bracket I'll run over the boys.  Here's a very dapper Ken.  I thought he mightve been from Midge's wedding party as well, but his suit is the wrong color for that.

This head is an eighties head, so I need to do a little digging for this handsome chap's identity and get back to y'all. 

For now, per the movie, he's just Ken.

Here's another Ken, and I like him even better than the first one.

He has a head that Alan utilized, but that blonde hair is definitely Ken's.

He really is a hunk.  I've always preferred Allan/Alan to Ken anyway, LOL.

I like Steven too.  He is (presumably) Christie's fellow.

This Steven is wearing Wet 'n' Wild Ken's swim trunks, meaning that the first Ken I showed has to be Wet 'n' Wild Ken.  Here's a better look at Steven's face; he's cute.

Now I need to grub up my Christie doll and reunite the lovebirds.

To my delight there are several younger dolls in the mix, including...holy crap is that Jazzie??? 

It is!  It's Hawaiian Fun Jazzie!  Jazzie is Barbie's nineties teenage cousin...possibly the then-modern equivalent of Francie?  Anyway, collectors hypothesize that teenaged Jazzie was created to compete with Hasbro's Maxie, which would explain why Jazzie was here and gone before one could blink.  Maxie didn't last three years, you see.  So here's a better look at Jazzie; she's almost as glamorous in the face as Barbie is.

By the way, I didn't learn until the eleventh hour that Jazzie was here.  She was buried under the ample skirts of Pioneer Barbie and Bridesmaid Barbie. 

The box also has two big-eyed Skippers.  I'll start with this one, since she's the first one I met who's broken.

She looks okay now, but...

...yeah, a couple'a my childhood Skippers ended up that way too.  Nothing a little Gorilla Glue won't fix.  Judging from that bathing suit I'm gonna guess that this is Wet 'n' Wild Skipper...except that that's Kira's bathing suit, LOL!

Nevertheless, this doll's tawny, dewy complexion and very blue eyes give her away as Wet 'n' Wild Skipper.  I repeat:  I love the Wet 'n' Wild line.  Barbie's whole friend group got in on the action, including Skipper, Ken, and Steven.

The other Skipper was easy to identify since she's got her swimsuit on and is wearing a very distinctive necklace.

I admit that it took awhile to track her name down, though.  I do have a collector's guide to all Barbie dolls before a certain date...but big surprise, I can't get at it!  A semi-quick Google scour turned up the doll's name, Sun Sensation.    Oh yeah, and all four girls were a visually striking bunch in their metallic swimsuits.  As an aside, Ms. P's daughter took the time to put Skipper's hair into a herringbone braid.

I'm not good at this type of braid, LOL.

Two of Skipper's friends are here too.  I own a Courtney doll, but not one like this!  Yep, Courtney had dark hair at one time, and then her hair turned red as she aged because why the heck not.  Her neck is broken too.

What is with these nineties Skipper dolls losing their heads???  If any of my dolls were gonna lose their heads, one of my Skippers was gonna be the one.  Anywho, my Courtney is from the Babysitter wave, complete with a tie-dyed shirt and skirt, and a big eighties/nineties bangle that I think belongs to Kira.  

I love it!

The other teenage doll is one that I actually hated as a kid.  He's Pet Pals Kevin, Skipper's boyfriend.

Unlike Barbie, who has remained true to Ken for almost her whole existence, Skip has had several boyfriends.  Ricky was...well, he was a friend, though his official description does list him as a "special friend."  LOL, I had a guy friend like that!  We were too young for love, but we were close.  Then in the seventies there was Scott, and he legit WAS Skipper's boyfriend.  I freaking love Scott!  He was so...well, so seventies!  Kevin came along in the nineties and I wasn't enamored with his bug eyes, but he's grown on me with time.  I'm just glad that my Skipper dolls have some friends that AREN'T Skipper.

Now, the REALLY little kids!  Yep, I've got more, LOL, and these three are the ones that really impress me, so complete and well-cared for are they.  First, the one and only Stacie!  This is her debut self, almost complete.  She only lacks shoes...and a sock that went AWOL.  I swear she had both of them yesterday. 

Stacie never really caught on like Skipper did; by the time I was in high school Stacie was all but gone, while Skip was still being produced sporadically.  Indeed, I felt like Mattel kinda treated Stacie as an afterthought, especially during the mid-nineties when Fashion Avenue ensembles came out.  Barbie and Ken had stuff coming out their ears, Kelly and Skipper had a few things, and...I stand corrected.  Stacie did get a few things, in a line of clothes called Feeling Fun.  I guess I just had my head up my butt back then.  

In addition to clothes Stacie did have a couple'a friends, just like Skipper did.  There was Whitney, whose hair color segued from brunette to red like Courtney's did, and there was Janet.  Behold, Janet.  She has everything, including her shoes.

I wonder why Janet is the dominantly pink one?  Pink is Barbie's color, and Stacie is Barbie's sister, not Janet.  But it looks nice on Janet's dark plastic.  I didn't own either Janet or Whitney before this, so I'm very happy to have Janet now.  EDIT, 12/15/24:  This is actually the black version of Party 'n' Play Stacie!  Now the pink makes sense.  Thank you Treesa, for pointing this out.  Stacie or Janet, she's welcome to stay.

But if Janet was impressive, then Todd is a showstopper.  This is Party 'n' Play Todd, clad in his play clothes and his party jacket.

Once upon a time (once when you were mine), Barbie had a tiny twin sister and brother set, Tutti and Todd.  Tutti, Todd, and their buddy Chris were constructed like the Liddle Kiddles and didn't make it past 1971 due to safety concerns, but older collectors remember them.  By the time the nineties rolled around Todd was Stacie's twin brother, making me wonder if she's not really Tutti revamped.  Hey, Allan/Alan and Midge made a comeback in the nineties too!  Indeed, it was at their wedding that Todd made his debut, as the ringbearer.  Remember, once the ringbearer is selected, YOU.  ARE.  COMMITTED!!!  As far as I know Todd was only around for the Wedding Day, Party 'n' Play, and Happy Meal lines, and after that I don't think he was around.  I never thought I'd want the little guy, but he's welcome now!  Look at that hair!

He really is a cutie.

To top it all off, I ended up with most of a Wet 'n' Wild Barbie lifeguard station, what I think is a Magical Motorhome, an eighties-era Ferrari (yes, a FERRARI!!!), and a disassembled but very large house with a boatload of furniture.  The Ferrari makes me giggle because when I was a little girl I told Mama and Daddy that I would own a Ferrari myself when I grew up.  They laughed and gently told me how expensive such a car was, but I was undaunted...until I saw how fast the damn things can go!  Speed and I are not great friends, y'all, especially when it's excessive, and the Ferrari in the link was traveling at just under EF5 wind speeds!  I'm perfectly happy with the family's Pontiac Vibe, thank y'all.  But still, I can live out this little bit of childhood with a secondhand Mattel Ferrari.  

As for the house, I think it's this huge thing, three stories.

Or it's something similar.  It's got columns and cardboard backdrops kinda like what this house does.  I don't know if I'll be able to put it together, but if I ever get the space I'll give it the old college try.  I've never, repeat, EVER owned a Barbie house before.  A car, yes, but never a house.  Didn't have the room, didn't need one, didn't really want one, but if I can get this puppy put together I'll keep it.  Truth be told, my favorite Barbie house is this one, an A-frame from 1978.

Daddy said that A-frames were full of wasted space, but the whole family still loved them.  Too bad for me this house is cray-expensive, but then aren't all vintage things?

And that's my dolly haul!  I thank Ms. P tenfold, and I commend her daughter for taking such good care of her things!

Love,
RagingMoon1987

A random post about head molds

This could've been a post for Sunday since this is a random post and I like posting random stuff on Sunday.  But I like for Sunday posts to have just one picture and a brief blip of commentary (Gerda's post was an exception), and this post became more labor-intensive than I had planned.  I was farting around with my Barbie boxes this afternoon (I have five of them), trying to pick out favorite head molds, when it occurred to me that most of my favorites have something very crucial in common.  Barbie is known nowadays for having a smile with teeth showing, right?  Something like this:

I'm extremely fond of Mara, who has the new Teresa sculpt, but a lot of Barbie dolls look like that.  They have big, infectious smiles that convey excitement or unbridled joy, and that's fine.  But if y'all know me by now then you know that I love to be the oddball, and a lot of my favorite heads have closed smiles that show no teeth.  The pictures are all poorly lit; I promise to rectify that in the near future.

KAYLA/LEA

DOLL PICTURED:  Palm Beach Lea
DOLL'S NAME:  Lea
I own several dolls with this face, including one (Keiko) who has made several appearances here in the past.  The face was initially used for two friends of Barbie named Kayla and Lea, but other characters use it as well.  The doll above, a member of the Palm Beach Barbie line, is the first one I owned with this head.  This particular doll is obviously supposed to look Asian, but the Kayla/Lea head can be any race one chooses.  She makes a good black doll, and a good Latina, and good white chick.  The Fashionistas line appears to be fond of this head; I've seen several with it, and I even own one.  This is Fashionistas #19 Ruby Red Floral, but I just call her Junko.

The Fashion Fever line liked it too, as can be seen with the un-renamed Kayla (left) and Keiko.

And lastly, my beautiful Shakira doll uses this head.  I never was a big Shakira fan during my adolescence, but this lovely doll was too much to pass up.

This head was also used in the Dolls of the World series, usually for Latina or Oriental characters.

KIRA/MARINA

DOLL PICTURED:  Western Fun Nia
DOLL'S NAME:  Imelda
Imelda's hair has seen better days, but her facepaint is intact so here she is.  Unlike the Kayla/Lea head, this one is almost exclusively for Oriental dolls.  She had two names: Kira for North America, and Marina for Europe.  I like the name Marina better, but regardless of the name this has always been one of my favorite heads.  I only owned one Kira as a child (Sun Jewel Kira), and I still only have a few, two of which happen to be the same doll.  Yep, I own two Very Velvet Kira dolls, one with shorn hair and one that's almost all-original.

Go figure on how that happened.  Anyway, I always loved Kira's sweet face.  I liked her friends, but in my child's eyes Kira was always more approachable with her closed-lipped smile that didn't look like Miss America's toothy grin.  Kira is unfortunately a rare breed now; she saw heavy usage during the early Dolls of the World run appearing in Latina, Oriental, and Native American form, but since then this head has slowly dropped off the map.  The last Kira I saw was the relatively recent Mutya Barbie...and she has teeth showing!!!  What a beauty Mutya is, though!  This head needs a playline revival in the Fashionistas line.

MACKIE

DOLL PICTURED:  Butterfly Art Barbie

DOLL'S NAME:  Madeline, or "Maddie"

First of all...FIRST WAVE DOLL!!!  She has the tattoo on her tummy and everything.  That being said, I started seeing Mackie dolls when I was about eight.  The head got its start on those crazy-expensive dolls that Bob Mackie designed, but later started popping up on playline dolls as well.  Bead Blast Barbie is my personal favorite of these, but it's hard to pick just one when there are so many nice Mackie-headed dolls out there.  The Mackie head was used heavily during the Fashion Fever years, and during the Barbie Basics era, and it still appears on the more affordable collector dolls, like the Christmas dolls.  I only have four Mackie dolls in my collection, and of those four I could only find and photograph Maddie (above) and Cherry, a rebodied Christmas doll. 

For some reason Cherry has a Stardoll body.  Remember those, the ones that had no joints at the hips?  Yeah...I'm going to have to fix this somehow.  eBay might have a spare Made to Move body somewhere. 

MBILI

DOLL PICTURED:  So In Style Baby Phat Grace

DOLL'S NAME:  Grace

This face is used almost exclusively for black dolls, though I have seen one Latina with this face.  I didn't like the first doll with this face, but it's since grown on me and become one of my favorites.  The Mbili face can look approachable and fun-loving like Grace, or focused and ambitious like Chandra...

...or innocent like Trichelle...

...or edgy and fierce like China. 

I like the detail in this face as well; if you look closely it's possible to see laugh lines and other contours that a real face has.  I've heard collectors complain that the Mbili head is overused, and this may be a valid claim since I see it in every major Barbie line that Mattel creates.  Basics, LOOK, and Fashionistas all use this face heavily, and I have so many in my collection that I can't show them all here without making this post crazy-long.  I do love the face, though.  It's very versatile, which may explain why Mattel uses it so heavily.

RAQUELLE

DOLL PICTURED:  Life in the Dreamhouse Raquelle

DOLL'S NAME:  Raquelle

I'm pretty sure that this one is a one-off; after the Dreamhouse line ended I never saw it again.  I can understand why since it's pretty character-specific, but I still think it's a shame to only use it once or twice.  Dolls with lopsided smiles are not particularly common inside or outside the Barbie world; Raquelle and her Dreamhouse compadre Teresa both had cockeyed grins, but that's it!  I love the goofy snarkiness of this face, by the way.  It's perfect for Raquelle's role as the show's "antagonist," of sorts.

STEFFIE

DOLL PICTURED:  Cool Times Midge

DOLL'S NAME:  None yet; I tend to call all my Midge dolls "Midge" for some strange reason.

The Steffie head goes back quite a way; I think 1971 was the year that the first doll was released.  The character herself didn't live too long, only seeing three incarnations (Busy Steffie, Talking Busy Steffie, and Walk Lively Steffie).  The head though...it's been around a lot.  Midge has used it twice so far, first in the late eighties (seen above) and again in the Dreamhouse line.  Christie, Teresa and P.J. used this face, as did a long list of short-lived characters and Barbie herself.  Pilar, below, is an All-American Teresa.

It saw usage in the Barbie Basics line, and the entire Birthstone Beauties line was comprised of Steffie dolls.  Like the Kayla/Lea head this head is very versatile, lending itself to all the main races at will.  Given the wide array of head molds used in the Fashionistas line, I'm surprised that no Steffie has cropped up there yet.  Maybe I just need to be more patient.  Either way I'm extremely fond of this head and I never pass up an opportunity to add another one to my collection. 

???????

DOLL PICTURED:  Fashionistas #57 Zig and Zag, curvy

DOLL'S NAME:  Deborah, usually shortened to "Deb."

This is apparently a newly introduced head, so new that I don't know the name of it, or even if it IS named.  As with the Mbili headI didn't like it at first, but as you can see it grew on me.  It's the lip color that I don't love, and I apparently am not alone in thinking that.  I lack the ability to repaint doll faces, so my doll is stuck with that pink crap for now.  I'm looking forward to seeing what else Mattel may do with this head, though. 

And there is your random load of dolly blather!  LOL, sometimes I get the mood to post something for the sheer pleasure of it, and this is one of those posts.  I make no guarantee that you'll learn anything, but I do hope you'll enjoy my pictures...even if they are poorly lit.

Cordially yours,

RagingMoon1987