My Christmas gifts to me and other stuff

C'mon, y'all have probably done it in the past too, bought gifts for yourself.  LOL, I seeing as I buy myself dolls all the time anyway this one probably is a poor Christmas present, but I wanted a Velvet to go with my old Crissy, so I got one.

I won't be reviewing this doll fully since she's too similar to Crissy for that, but here she is!  Velvet came from Hatton, North Dakota, not as far from Malden as Wozzeck's former home in Massachusetts is, but certainly far enough.  My doll is the Look Around version, just like my Crissy is, but instead of her pretty plaid dress she came in this adorable yellow frock that I couldn't say no to.  The yellow getup looks like an official Ideal dress for Velvet, a 1972 ensemble called Lemon Hang-Up.  The plaid dress will be easy to replace (eBay has a trillion of them), so I'm not terribly bothered by it's absence.  Indeed, I love this bright shade of yellow, particularly during these bleak winter months.  The cute little vest is made of corduroy, one of my favorite fabrics.

Interestingly, my doll's vest is different from the vests on Crissy and Beth's site.  The vests had eye holes for brightly colored yarn ties to go through, but my doll's vest...does not.

Someone, I don't know who, but somewhere along the way someone sewed the front of the vest together with yarn.  It looked good while it lasted, but it also meant that I had to cut the ties to get the vest off, AND it means that it'll hang open from now on unless I can come up with some sort of way to tie it shut.

In fact, this dress doesn't match Lemon Hang-Up exactly either.  It has trim along the hem of the skirt, trim that Lemon Hang-Up does NOT have.

The skirt is a bit longer too, and the print on the vest's fabric does not match either variation on Crissy and Beth's site, and the sleeves of the dress are longer...I clearly got a very skilled recreation of Lemon Hang-Up rather than the real deal, but it sure is a nice recreation!  It certainly had a novice like me fooled, so if you're new at collecting Crissy and Velvet be sure to research carefully.

So Velvet may not be wearing an Ideal outfit (not that that's a huge deal), but she does have something that Crissy didn't have until here recently:  shoes.

Crissy has shoes NOW, but as I said they're a very recent acquisition.  Velvet came with hers, though I doubt these are her original shoes.  Look Around Velvet's white self came with red shoes most of the time, and even if this dress were the real Lemon Hang-Up it wouldn't have come with shoes.  Nevertheless, my Velvet came with shoes and I am glad of it.  And because I like doll feet, here's how both of my girls' feet look in their shoes.

I've always loved Crissy and Velvet shoes, and I'm thrilled to finally have a couple pair.  Moving up now, notice that Velvet's eyes need some cleaning.  They aren't as bad as they were in the eBay pictures, but they still could do with a touchup.

I hope that's not mold, but it looks like that is indeed mold.  I spoke of mold in Crissy's review, this nasty white crud that forms on the eyes of Crissy and her friends and is unfortunately contagious.  Looks like I'm going to need some rubbing alcohol, AND it also looks like I'll have to keep Velvet quarantined until I get those eyes cleaned.  Y'know, just in case that nastiness IS mold.  I only know of this mold spreading to other Crissy dolls and not to American Girls, but better to err on the side of caution and keep Velvet away from the AG crew for now.  Velvet's eyes are much prettier than Crissy's, by the way, with or without crusty white crap.  She has blue-gray (violet?) eyes rather than the vacant black eyes that Crissy has.  See?

I'm positive that Crissy's eyes are supposed to be brown rather than black, but they don't LOOK even the slightest bit brown.  Even though Velvet's eyes are a prettier color than Crissy's I still find them...well, I'll admit that I find them just an eensy bit creepy.  I've always thought that Velvet's friend Cricket and her sister Cinnamon are the best looking of Ideal's Crissy crew, and I think that Velvet's other friend Mia has the prettiest eyes.  Or...okay, it's a toss-up between Mia and Crissy's other cousin Kerry as to who has the prettiest eyes.  So why did I bother with Velvet and not get Cricket instead?  Because Cricket didn't come in a Look Around version that coordinates with my Crissy like Velvet did, and because I like for things to coordinate because I'm WEIRD!  Mama would blame it on my being a Libra (Libras supposedly like balance), but I think it's just because I'm weird.

In addition to cleaning Velvet's eyes, I'll also have to do something with her hair.  It's very dingy, and the fall is pretty tangled as well.

Nothing a good soak with some Downy and Dawn won't cure.  Velvet's crank doesn't work, by the way.  It's always fully out for this gal, and since the mechanism is broken my Velvet's fall is longer than a Velvet doll's fall should be.  Usually Velvet's fall goes to her waist, but mine is noticeably longer than that, falling to her knees (spoiler alert on the wardrobe change).

Normally only a first-issue Crissy has hair longer than waist-length, and since Cinnamon is a small doll she also has a floor-length fall.  Velvet and her like-sized friends only have a fall that length when their internal mechanism is broken or if it's been replaced.  My doll's fall has never been replaced that I know of, so that can only mean that her mech is broken!  No worries, I'll just keep it braided and the extra length will not be a problem.  I always keep Crissy's hair braided anyway, so why shouldn't Velvet follow suit?

Of course I had an ulterior motive for owning a Velvet, as I often do.  Another lady on one of my favorite Facebook groups put her Velvet in a Glitter Girls outfit, and she reports that the fit is a little tight but super-duper adorable.  I don't have any Glitter Girls clothes yet, but I do have that B.F.C. Ink outfit that looked so cute on Mosi, and Abigail's cute little space-themed dress.  If I recall correctly I vocalized a curiosity about Velvet sharing clothes with Mosi and Abigail during Abigail's review, so it's time to whet that curiosity.  Here's what Velvet looks like in Abigail's spacey dress, which is sized for a Wellie Wisher doll.

The good news?  Velvet looks super-cute in this dress, and once I get it on her it fits her almost perfectly.  The bad news?  Putting this dress ON Velvet was a living nightmare due to her widely spaced arms and big head, and I have no idea how I'm going to get it off her.  Looks like the B.F.C. Ink outfit will just have to wait for now...or not!

First and foremost, the Wellie Wisher dress came off much easier than it went on, and much, MUCH easier than I thought it would be.  That said, with the exception of shoes the B.F.C. Ink ensemble fits Velvet like it was custom-made for her.  It's an eensy bit tight around the waist where her hair knob and pull string are, but not prohibitively so.  I even daresay that the hood of the jacket might fit over Velvet's head if her hair were fully retracted.  It's good to know that Velvet can wear B.F.C. Ink clothes though, because they're a little too big for Mosi and way too big for Abigail.  As for Wellie Wisher clothes, I'd advise caution since my particular dress is tight, but looser garments and dresses might work.

In addition to Velvet I completed the murder of my bank account by purchasing these two, who won't get a review until sometime in the spring.

Their names are Claudie (left) and Gigi.  They're both clone dolls of various stripes, one of whom has something very important in common with Crissy and Velvet.  Y'all might be able to tell what that something is from looking at her, but if you can't...well, you'll have to wait until mid-March, because that's how far back I've got posts set due to my constant procrastinating.

In other news, here's my Christmas tree.  I took it to the library since I can't enjoy it at home (because CATS, that's why) and since the library doesn't have a tree of its own, not one that's easy to put up and take down, anyway.  My tree is about two feet tall and is thus easy to deal with. 

See what I mean?  Small, low-maintenance, easy to put up, easy to take down, everything that the old tree is not.  Seriously, I wanted to drag in my old radio and play "Hard to Handle" on a loop while wrestling with the old tree, rules of silence in the library be danged.  The top part weighed a ton, none of the lower boughs wanted to fit into their slots, and I couldn't get all the plugs put back into place so half the lights didn't work (the tree is allegedly pre-lit).  Not to mention the old tree always makes a huge mess with its cheaply made needles shedding everywhere.  So...my goofy little black and white and orange and pink tree it was.  Everyone seems to like it except for one obnoxious little dame who's always causing trouble anyway.  She informed me that I was lazy for refusing to put up the big tree...but strangely enough, when I suggested that she put up the big tree by herself she didn't go for that. 

Silliness aside, those are legit presents under this new tree.  My little friend's L.O.L. Surprise is in the center, and the baggies are for Coworker B's grandchildren.  There's a light-up football for the littlest girl, a Spiderman figure for the boy, and matching Chelsea dolls for the two oldest girls.  I couldn't find any more like my Calypso, so I got them both this one instead, the one with exuberant orange curls that I myself like quite a bit.  It took some getting used to, but I've grown as fond of Chelsea as I was of Kelly back in the day.

In terms of other gifts, one of our patrons gave Coworker B and me this last Wednesday.

It turned out to be something that NEITHER of us needed...a huge box of chocolates.

But mmmmm, were they good!  The library is very blessed to have sweet, thoughtful patrons like that.

Of course not all of our gifts were for us humans.  Wozzeck got some new things too, barely visible underneath his huge coat.

His new wig arrived, and some clothes from Nubanded that are really too big for him arrived as well.  Wozzeck does not seem bothered by his PukiFee-sized clothes, so I guess I shouldn't be either!  If I get a wild hair I can take them in some.  All he needs now are his shoes.  Wozzeck and his Wishel brothers and sisters are unusual little beings, by the way.  They are too small for PukiFee clothes and WAY too big for PukiPuki clothes, but they can wear PukiPuki shoes...or I hope they can because that's what I ordered for Wozzeck!

In non-doll news, something new happened to us this holiday season, and NOT in a good way!  Mama ordered a push sweeper for me in the middle of the month, and the delivery date came and went...but no sweeper.  Mama waited a week and then started to do some sleuthing.  We both assumed that the mail had delivered our box to the wrong address, but unfortunately that proved not to be the case.  Apparently the box was delivered on the correct date to the correct house...and some scoundrel absconded with my box!!!!!!!!  So I didn't get my sweeper, though it made me grateful that Velvet wasn't stolen as well; one of our neighbors reported that she too had some things turn up missing.  Moral of the story?  Be extra-diligent about checking your mail, especially if you're expecting a package.  And to the jack wagon who stole my sweeper, sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.  While that whirlwind is ripening, I hope they have a bumper crop of goatheads in their yard and subsequently step on the seeds in their bare feet.  Seriously, stepping on Legos is not fun, but it's nothing compared to stepping on goathead seeds.

More minor bad news, but this at least segues into very, very GOOD news.  The bad news is that my sister and brother-in-law are moving to Vermont.  Right now they live in Lexington, Kentucky and that's far enough, but Vermont is...WAY FAR!!!  However, the good news is that my sister got accepted into a doctoral program up at Burlington after a long, frustrating search for a college that would accept her.  She's already visited Burlington once on a visit to said college, and she fell in love with the place.  As an added bonus, Brother-in-Law should have no trouble finding work since the demand for decent plumbers in Burlington is apparently pretty high.  So while we will undoubtedly spend another few years lonely for Sister's company, it'll be worth it if she can get the schooling she needs.  And this time she won't be alone; she spent the first half of the year in Edmonton, Alberta for more schooling, and Brother-in-Law had to stay at home due to his own schooling.  This time, thank God, the two will be together, AND they'll have their cat.  Mama and I got this news on the same day that we learned my package was stolen, and the news helped brighten the day quite a bit.  I can leave the theft of the sweeper in God's hands and praise Him for Sister's triumph.

In short, it was a quiet but enjoyable Christmas for Moon Girl and her family.  We talked and ate homemade soup and laughed like a bunch of fools.  In addition to some much-wanted corduroy slacks, a coffee machine, and some other nice wearables, I got this.

He's a kidney stone from Giant Microbes, and he was a gift from Sister and Brother-in-Law.  I'm going to call him "Dave" after Dave Mustaine, a well-read and somewhat handsome musician who suffers from kidney stones on occasion, just like I do.. 

Now...now that Christmas is for all intents and purposes over, I have New Years' Eve to look forward to, and then...well, the next holiday after that that means anything to me won't be until St. Pat's Day in March.  So I've got NOTHING to be excited about, and God only knows when I'll get to see Sister and Brother-in-Law again!  <cries wildly>  Actually the first part of 2019 looks to be rather busy for the blog, as I've got stuff backlogged until late March anyway, so stay tuned.

Merry Christmas and God bless,

RagingMoon1987

Under the cabbage leaf: Coleco preemie vs. Jakks Pacific newborn

I'm RagingMoon1987, and Christmas is just around the corner!!!  Both of the dolls I have today have been out of production awhile so they'll hardly do for Christmas gifts for some little kid, but they bring back some nice memories for me so I'm sharing them anyway.  Very late last August (the last day, actually) I got bitten by the Cabbage Patch bug, an occurrence that happens about once a year and usually involves at least one purchase of some item that I don't need.  I've spoken occasionally of my formerly three-member Patch in the past, but I haven't given them much thought in between posts.  From left, my girls' names are Valencia Rose ("Val"), Poppy Elizabeth, and Andrea Doria.

I never meant to be a hardcore Cabbage Patch Kid fan, but I wouldn't mind a little versatility in my own "patch."  Andrea and Valencia are both sixteen-inch Kids, while Poppy, being a soft-sculpture doll, is larger at twenty inches.  All white, all girls, all Kids, and that was all well and good until I got curious about the babies.  The babies come in three types:  preemie, newborn, and...well, BABY!!!  I was hoping to find a size comparison online, but...no.  Couldn't find one anywhere, though I admittedly didn't dig super-thoroughly, and indeed I'm not yet certain if there was even a size difference.  Hey, if you can't find what you're looking for, make it yourself, right?  I decided to make my own size comparison, and it...didn't really go the way I wanted it to.  It began when I stumbled across a cute Preemie during a search for a popcorn Cabbie.  She was well-dressed and reasonably priced I bought her.  Popcorns are proving extremely elusive, by the way...but never say never, right?  I've also been hoping for a bald doll, and my little Preemie is just that.

My new girl doesn't have her papers, so I renamed her Stella Rae.  Stella hails from the Coleco era, and her butt mark reveals the year she was made, 1985.  It's even blue like her clothes!  It looks purplish in the picture, but trust me on this!  It's blue.

Oh, this takes me back!  When we were kids my sister had a preemie Cabbie (a Christmas gift, wouldn't y'all know!), and I'll never forget marveling at how small he was next to my full-sized girl Honoria.  Of course I did not get pictures, and I'm saving the size comparison for last so y'all get no pictures either for the time being.  Sister's baby boy smelled like fresh talcum powder, one of my favorite smells, but since Stella has been out of the box awhile she doesn't smell like that anymore.  I can always change that if I wish, though there are some schools of thought that say this talcum powder smell had something to do with the formation of pox.  All Cabbies can get pox, but for some strange reason the scented babies seem to get it the worst.  But as usual, I digress.  Stella looks quite a bit like my sister's doll, being a bald baby like he was.  She is blue-eyed, gently loved, free of pox, with a #1 head (a head that I didn't yet own) and a tag that reads "OK."

Time for another tangent, though I do have a point to this one.  "OK" stands for "Kader" and refers to Kader Industrial Toy Company, the company responsible for the manufacture of many Cabbage Patch Kids.  One of their factories burned to the ground and killed between 180 and 210 workers in 1993, and until very recently when I'd see a Cabbie marked "OK" I'd wonder if it was made at that factory.  I began to highly doubt it after I learned the circumstances surrounding Kader before the fire.   For starters, the ill-fated factory was located in Thailand and Kader's Thai branch did not receive their license until 1989, after the Cabbage Patch Kid craze had ebbed, after Coleco announced their bankruptcy, and in this particular case LONG after Stella Rae was manufactured.  Plus, Kader's Coleco Cabbies were made in China and Hong Kong (back before Hong Kong was part of China), so Stella Rae is almost assuredly NOT from the fire factory.  Why do I bring this up???  Because I'm weird, and because I like disaster history, and because the Kader fire is poorly known to folks outside of Thailand.  Seriously, the only source I can find about this disaster is a friggin' communist site, and even they largely ignore the gory details that I'm so fascinated with, choosing instead to politicize the disaster and slander capitalism.  Anywho, here's another glimpse of Stella's tag; if I'd looked more closely at the reverse side of the tag I'd have seen the famous last words:  MADE IN CHINA.  LOL, I can be a tremendous doofus at times.

Cabbies WERE made at the factory that burned, but they were from the Hasbro era rather than the Coleco era.  Regardless of which factory she came from Stella IS a Kader doll, and that pleases me since the dolls made by Kader seem to be a little nicer than the other Cabbies.  That is strictly my opinion of course, but for once I've backed my opinion up with evidence.  Kader dolls are known among collectors for their even skin tone, and while no vinyl-headed Cabbie is 100% immune to pox the vinyl used at Kader tends to resist the condition better than the vinyl used at other factories.  Popcorn girls from Kader had long hair and are held in high regard by collectors, and the dolls in general are well-stuffed, which I can confirm with Stella.  She's very firm, much more so than Poppy Elizabeth, who is a little understuffed and thus pleasantly squishy.  She's firm enough that she has relatively little trouble sitting on her own, even though she doesn't have a brick inside her like Andrea Doria does.  I do have to lean her forward to get her like this, but she makes up for it by not doing a face plant like Valencia Rose would've done.

Here's a closer look at Stella's face.  Aside from a few scuffs, her vinyl is clear and free of stains and pox.  Her right eyebrow is faded, but her eyes remain a vibrant shade of blue.

Stella's a nice doll.  Not that Val and Andrea and Poppy aren't, of course, but it pleases me to have a little more variety in my Patch (both Val and Andrea are KT dolls).  Speaking of KT, I mused a bit in my last CPK post about how Val is darker than Andrea.  See?

Not really a big deal since real people come in all shades, but at the time I conjectured that Val was just dirty.  Not so!  Well...okay, maybe that's part of it, but it turns out that KT dolls, manufactured at Kam Yeun Toy Factory, sometimes turn tan due to some sort of reaction in the vinyl.  The earlier dolls are more likely to discolor, thus explaining why Val is tan but Andrea is not (Val is the older doll).  This isn't that big a deal, really; to me it just looks like Val spent a little time in the sun.  I just thought it was interesting.  Note that I was able to get a binky for Val, by the way.

Thank you to Mountainaire Sundries for the binky AND for the ribbons!  Those were inside the package making everything nice and neat, but Val noticed that they also match her eyes perfectly.  To round things out Mountainaire Sundries also sent this cute little romper.

It's very small, too small for Val and Andrea and Poppy, so I'm hoping that either Stella or the other new baby can wear it.  Yes, the other new baby.  The newest member of my Patch also happens to be the youngest member...in terms of honest-to-God years, anyway.  Probably if these dolls were all real children they'd be fairly close in age.  Anywho, my most recent addition to the Patch is a Jakks Pacific Surprise Newborn, dating from 2012.  These mystery dolls come in singles or in twin sets, but I just need the one for comparison so I got a single.  He/she is out of the box, but all the surprises are intact.

Everything about this child is a surprise except for ethnicity and eye color.  Even though this doll is out of its box I don't know if it's a boy or a girl, if it has hair, when its birthday is, bellybutton shapes, nothing.  Oopie, I take that back:  the birthday IS visible, and it's an October birthday!!!

Talolili and I have soundly agreed several times in the past that October birthdays rock!  Fall birthdays are nice in general, but being an October baby myself I'm a little biased towards that month.  Everything else about this doll is a big mystery, though.  Even the little outfits are a mystery, though having seen Miss Emily's dolls I figure there will be at least one T-shirt in that box.  One can't have too many T-shirts!

I must say that I'm just a teensy bit tempted to leave him/her eternally dressed as a Brussels sprout.  As I said above, that cabbage snuggler is adorable!  Unfortunately, it also renders this baby unable to sit up.

Tempting as it may be to leave this doll clad in green velour, I'm dying to know if it'll be a girl or a boy and if it'll have hair.  I think I already know the answer to that second one, though.  It's easy to tell if the baby has hair or not before the hood of the romper is removed.  All you've gotta do is feel for lumps...and I don't see or feel any!

And sure enough...

...my mystery baby is bald as a cue ball, just like Stella is!  I said above that I'd been wanting a bald doll, and now I have two.  As a brief digression, I find it interesting that the commercial and the box art show these dolls with fiber hair, and yet every single doll I've seen with hair has had yarn tresses.  Not that I mind since Cabbies traditionally have yarn hair anyway, but it does make one wonder why Jakks Pacific changed their minds so late in the game...unless they didn't and there are fiber-haired dolls that I just haven't seen.  Anyway, hood off, bottom still on.  Under the bottom half of the green snuggler will be a diaper, and the color of the diaper will reveal what gender the doll is.

It's your stereotypical "pink for girls, blue for boys" thing, and the included accessories give no hints whatsoever.  The bottle is rendered in gender-neutral yellow, one of the few times gender neutrality comes in handy.

Oh, I hope my doll is a boy!  Girl dolls are usually the norm, and I don't have any boys in my Patch yet, so I really, really hope this is a little boy.  Both boy dolls and girl dolls can be bald, so the hairstyle (or lack thereof) gave away nothing.  The bottom half of the snuggler is cable-tied in place and also gives away nothing.

I'll need nail scissors to clip that, as tight as it is.  I don't want to risk cutting a hole in the doll's body, as holes would mean runs in this case.  When I cut the ties the doll was able to sit up straighter, and the snuggler continued to cover the lower half of its body.

I closed my eyes, slipped the rest of the snuggler down, opened my eyes, and found...

...a pink diaper.  It's a girl, Mrs. Walker, it's a girl.  A girl with a cute little outie bellybutton and a VERY cute lopsided grin.

It would've been nice to get a boy, but I won't cry over little girls.  The Cabbage Patch has plenty of little boys out there that need a home.  Plus, I won't have to brainstorm to come up with a name for this little gal, because unlike my other dolls she still has her papers.  Her name is...

...Taniyah Yasmin!  That's an interesting combo with a nice flow, not like some of the OTHER names that I've seen for Cabbage Patch Kids.  Anyway, little Taniyah has one last surprise up her sleeve...or she would if she had sleeves (LOL).  Luckily, she's about to!

Actually this was more of a surprise than I expected, as instead of T-shirts I got two little onesies.  Again, I can live with that since babies practically live in onesies for the first year or two of their lives.  I wonder what color these would've been if I'd gotten a boy, though?  Would they have been blue?  Yellow?  Green?  Anyway, these two onesies are the stereotypical colors for girls, pink and lavender.  I'm in a lavender mood right now (purple makes me think of my sister, whom I haven't seen since LAST Christmas and who should be home this weekend), so that's what Taniyah will be wearing, and since it's cooler outside I also tossed her back into the cabbage snuggler.  Notice that she can sit up much better now that those plastic ties have been released.

Now to the size comparison.  Miss Emily advised that the Surprise Newborns were smaller than your ordinary Cabbage Patch Kid, but I'm not sure if she was referring to her full-sized Kids or another baby of some stripe.  To complicate matters, sizes vary widely among the various makers.  2001's Toys R Us dolls were a little bigger than average, while Jakks Pacific's dolls tended to run smaller.  Even Coleco's preemies can vary in size, with early dolls like Stella Rae being fourteen inches and later preemies being smaller at twelve inches.  So Stella and Taniyah may haul off and surprise us by being the same size, or Stella might even be the bigger of the two!  Let's see.

Stella IS bigger than Taniyah by quite a hair, even though Stella is supposed to be a Preemie and Taniyah is supposed to be a full-term Newborn.  I knew that the Jakks Pacific dolls ran on the small side, but I never dreamed that Taniyah would be THIS small.  There have been a few other small changes made over the years, most noticeably in the way the hands are shaped.  Both Stella and Taniyah have wrist shaping, but Coleco hands are shaped around the palm.  Jakks Pacific hands are shaped around the wrist.  Call me a traitor to Coleco if you wish (LOL), but I like Taniyah's shaping better.

Fun fact:  both of these dolls came from Wisconsin.  Stella came from Burlington, and Taniyah came from Saukville.  The two towns are a little over an hour apart, on opposite sides of Milwaukee.  Just thought I'd throw that out there. 

So that size comparison didn't go so hot!  I guess it was silly of me to assume that these dolls would stay the same size as time passed, since other dolls like Licca-chan did not.  Y'all do know what this means though, don't you???  It means that I need to find a vintage baby now, so I can show y'all how Coleco dolls compare in size!  That's what I wanted to do in the first place!!!  However, I'm pleased to report that my personal little Patch has increased to five, and new friendships have grown.  Stella insisted on sitting next to Val, and Andrea and Taniyah share a fondness for the color purple so they wanted to sit together.  This will also give y'all an idea of how my crew compares to one another in size.

Five is a good number to stay at for now, and my Patch is...well, it's a teensy bit more diverse, with new heads and new factories and a new ethnicity joining the crew.  I still don't have a little boy though, and I'd love to have one.  For now my obsession with these dolls has worn off (I take it in fits and starts), but I guarantee y'all that I WILL be bitten by the Cabbage Patch bug again, and when I do y'all will likely get another blog post.  I'm still keeping my eyes open for grails, some elusive and some not, and some of them happen to be boys.  Just for the fun of it, here's my wish list; it's grown a little since my last Cabbie post.
*A popcorn.  These are popular among Cabbie fans.  They are also unfortunately fairly elusive and don't usually go for under a hundred bucks, but I might get lucky at a junk shop somewhere.  My Poppy is supposedly a popcorn, but she doesn't look a thing like the other popcorns I've seen.  Popcorns are always girls.
*A fuzzy red boy.  These are tricky to find for some reason or another, and they tend to be cute.  Plus, BOY DOLL!!!
*A Tri-Ang Pedigree gaudy yellow.  That will likely be a VERY hard one to find since Tri-Ang is a South African crowd and gaudy yellow is the rarest color they used, but never say never.  Gaudy yellows can be boys or girls.
*A Jesmar.  These were made in Spain and tend to be darker in complexion than those from other factories.  Most of the ones I've seen have freckles, and...well, I just like Jesmars.  They come in both genders as well.
*A bean-butt baby.  Babies were introduced in 1986 and have "beans" in their rears, hence the nickname "bean-butt."   Like little Taniyah Yasmin, bean-butts are smaller than the original Preemies, at twelve inches in length.  They are particularly bad about getting pox, but I won't let that bother me since pox can sometimes be mended or concealed.  Both boys and girls can be bean-butts, and since most of the bean-butt dolls I've seen are bald I can make them either male or female!  Bean-butts are not that different from Stella Rae in appearance...but oh well.
*A Snacktime Kid, due to their bizarre history.  I didn't think those would be that hard to find, but to my shock eBay only rarely has Snacktime Kids.  Accessories, yes.  The dolls themselves?  Not so much.  Both boys and girls were Snacktime Kids, but most of the ones I've seen have been little girl dolls.  I did see one little boy at that antique mart that I'm always talking about, but of course I didn't get him and I wish now that I had.
*A Twinkle Toes Kid.  They have light-up shoes and colorful outfits that make my inner child squeal with delight.  All girls, but oh, so cute!
*An Oriental.  That will be easy, since dolls of all colors are available for "adoption" at the Kids' official site.  Etsy and eBay also occasionally have Oriental dolls, and wouldn't y'all know the one that I have my eye on is another girl.  She's adorable though, and she's affordable.  Always a plus.
*A #30 head.  Probably my all-time favorite head, and wouldn't y'all know it's another one that's tricky to find.  All of the #30 dolls I've seen have been female, and strangely most of them are little redheads like the ones in the link.

Hmmm...that list turned out to be longer than I intended, and Tri-Ang gaudy yellows are as hard to find as weapons of mass destruction.  Maybe I should just quit while I'm ahead and just have fun with the dolls I've got.  Maybe I should kick my eccentricities up a few notches and take one of these dolls to the nearest playground.  Hey, that actually doesn't sound like a bad idea, to do that and take a few pictures.  Too bad it's WINTER!!!  Not that that would stop my Kids; like most of my other dolls they're up for anything.  I, on the other hand...I don't really fancy standing outside in twenty-degree weather with wind whipping my nose and hands raw just so I can take one goofy picture.  Fortunately for me this winter has been pretty mild so far, with only one brief patch of bitterly cold weather that I hated taking my dogs out in.  I can't say that I'd cry too loudly if the whole winter were mild.

Merry Christmas,
RagingMoon1987

Early Christmas crap

It seems like every year I post something for Christmas even though it's early.  In past years my Christmas-themed posts have been a month early, but in this case it's two and a half weeks.  I'll start with what I've received.  Yes, it's two and a half weeks away from Christmas, and I've already received my doll for the year.  Meet Matilda.

Matilda is a gift from First Uncle, and she came from the junk shop in House Springs, Missouri, just like my birthday trio did.  She came complete with her box, but all her box read was..."porcelain doll" in fancy script.  No word on a name or a maker, none of that.  Thus Matilda will join my legion of porcelain dolls of ambiguous ancestry, dolls that are derided by some collectors as junk but remain special to me because they were gifts.  Once upon a time my grandmother performed this duty, but now that she's gone I guess First Uncle has decided to step in.  See what a pretty face Matilda has?

From receiving to giving now.  There has to be a first time for everything, and last week was the first time I got a duplicate Li'l Outrageous Little.  I ordered a Glam Glitter pod off eBay and got a metallic version of It Baby, and then when the Glam Glitter series FINALLY started showing up at the local Wal-Mart I...ended up with another It Baby.  Both It Babies have all their pieces unlike my poor little Spice does, but I digress.  I was considering going the customization route with my spare It Baby until I ran into a young patron at the library who LOVES these Li'l Outrageous Littles.  Her winter coat is covered with them, and she has asked her grandparents for one of the big pods (one of the ones that I've been tempted by but can't afford).  So fairly long story short, this little girl is getting my spare It Baby.  It Baby has thus been hanging out at the library with me, waiting for her new owner to come.

I love these Glam Glitter dolls!  They're sparkly, but they're not drowning in glitter like the Glitter Series was.  At the same time the chance for duplicates is higher since there are fewer characters available, and there's also unfortunately that chance that pieces may be missing.  And since I've started complaining...have y'all seen the new dollhouse for the Littles???  It appears to be a nice dollhouse, full of surprise furniture and two exclusive characters, and the house itself appears to be made of wood...but it's two hundred bucks!!!!!!!!!!!  Heck, I could make my own dollhouse for half that price with scraps of plywood or a cardboard box!  It wouldn't last as long, but one could play the same kinds of games in it.  Good grief.

That's my random commentary for the day.  See y'all very soon!

Much love,
RagingMoon1987