What my news feed said...again

No pictures since this is a spur-of-the-moment post.  I'm in the Facebook hole again for another four-year-old post, this time for thirty days.  I doubt I'll go back this time, as running back to Mark Suckerburg is like running back to an abusive boyfriend.  My mother was so outraged by all this that she deleted her account entirely, giving me even less of an incentive to go back myself.  The good news is that this won't affect y'all!  Now that that's said, I'm sharing some more dolly stories that I found on my news feed...the one Google gives me, not the one Failbook gives me.  The first one concerns Barbie, and it's old news but I'm sharing it anyway.

ARTICLE #1:  Mattel releasing Day of the Dead Barbie

It's high friggin' time!  Yeah, I've got a sugar skull-themed doll already, but this Barbie is about as bad-a$$ as they come!  She's decked out in monarch butterflies and marigolds, and her face is done up like a sugar skull.  Oh...emm...GEE!!!  I've let Barbie dolls that I desperately wanted slip by in the past, but I absolutely MUST HAVE THIS ONE!!!  She's even got a butterfly on her ring finger, for crying out loud!  I'm in love, my artichokes!  She's supposed to be available at Wal-Mart, but I'll believe that when I see it!  Anyway, I don't plan on letting this one escape like yesterday.

Now that I'm through flipping out over the first story, here's the second one.  It'll make y'all want to hold your children closer and make sure your doors are locked.

ARTICLE #2:  Grandma forces way into teen's home for American Girl Doll

Yep, y'all read that right.  A seventeen-year-old girl and her mom are selling off the American Girl dolls that she's amassed over the years.  Rather sad, really; she has/had a Lanie Holland doll in pretty good shape.  But the girl feels that she has outgrown the dolls and is selling them off.  One of those buyers, an older lady, apparently decided that she didn't like the doll she got and wanted to choose again...and things got a little nutty!  The buyer returned to the seller's house thrice, knocking and calling and texting.  The child was frightened enough that she hid under a table!  Hmmm...I've heard of that type of nuttiness occurring on Black Friday, but rarely at any other time of the year and certainly not at someone's personal residence!   Hopefully all is normal again for the girl and her mom, and just 'tween you, me, and the coconut tree, I hope Lanie found a good home!  I'm not a Lanie fan, but Girls of the Year deserve a little extra respect in my book.  I would have been interested in buying her, but I didn't do Failbook's marketplace even when I was active on the site!

Ah well, hopefully all will go well for the girl and her dolls, and HOPEFULLY I can score a Day of the Dead Barbie.  I'll sleep outside the nearest Wally World if I have to!  Hey, if the Black Friday nuts can do it, why can't I.  In the meantime I'll scrounge up the dolls I need for the next review, which will be going much sooner than I planned!

See y'all soon,
RagingMoon1987

My Cinnamon girl

Ten silver saxes, a bass with a bow
The drummer relaxes and waits between shows
For his cinnamon girl

--Neil Young and Crazy Horse, "Cinnamon Girl"

Somehow I doubt that Neil Young was singing about Ideal dolls (or indeed any other doll) when he penned that ditty, but it fits pretty well in this case.  Say hello to Cinnamon, Velvet's little sister and the youngest/smallest member of the Crissy crew.

Oh, me and my Ideal dolls!  I've lost count of how many I've got now.  Regarding Cinnamon and how I got her, one could sort of call her a belated Christmas gift to myself.  My mother has proven quite fond of my other large hair-growing dolls (Velvet in particular), so I showed her a picture of Cinnamon.  I've always thought Cinnamon the cutest of Ideal's Crissy crew, and Mama apparently agreed because she all but begged me to buy one.  I did.  The seller says this doll dates from 1972, and if so then this particular doll's proper name is actually "Velvet's Little Sister"!  Ideal suggested on her box that the child give her a name of their own, similar to the idea that Mattel had for P.J. at the time.  To make things even more interesting, Ideal apparently toyed around with the name "Rusty" as the final name.  Thank God they went with "Cinnamon," as I think "Rusty" would've been a horrid name for such a cute doll, or at least a cute little girl doll.  If "Rusty" were meant to be a boy the name wouldn't have been so bad, but the doll is definitely NOT a boy.  If that weren't enough, "Rusty" had a completely different head and may not have been as cute as the final product!  Crissy and Beth relate the full story of "Rusty" here. 

With my usual spate of bloviating over, I've had Cinnamon around for about two thirds of a year now.   I ordered her on December 23rd, and she arrived a mere three days later on the 26th, extremely fast considering that she had to travel during a holiday.  As with Velvet I'm not going to give Cinnamon a full review since she's so similar to Crissy, but here's an idea of how she compares to her sister and cousin in size.  Crissy is 17.5 inches in height (most sources say eighteen inches, but I measured), Velvet is fifteen even, and Cinnamon is twelve inches.  Pardon the hideous lighting in the next two pics.

For those of y'all with a more modern mindset, here's how Cinnamon compares in size to an American Girl doll (Kirsten, left) and to my Hearts 4 Hearts Girl, Mosi.  American Girl dolls are eighteen inches like Crissy allegedly is, while Mosi is fourteen inches and thus between Cinnamon and Velvet in size.

Y'know, I've always wondered why Cinnamon has red hair like Crissy, but she's flaxen-haired Velvet's sister instead.  I know that siblings don't always have the same hair color, but most of the ones I've known do, and most dolly siblings do.  Doesn't matter much, I suppose, but I imagine a few children of the seventies might've gotten confused by this.  Cricket probably didn't help much; she too has red hair, and she's not related to Crissy OR Velvet and Cinnamon.  She's just a friend.  Cinnamon and Cricket sport a softer shade of red than Crissy does, but they still all have red hair!  Cinnamon's fall goes to her ankles, by the way.  I made a note of that the last time I talked about Velvet, but in Velvet's case her fall was ankle-length because the retracting mechanism is broken.  I'm not sure if Cinnamon's is or not, because I haven't tried it yet.  Yeah, I've had her almost a full year now, and I still haven't tried her hair-grow mech.  In keeping with my tradition of doing things the easy way, I braided Cinnamon's fall as soon as I got her, and I haven't touched it since.

From hair to eyes now.  One of the interesting things about little Cinnamon is that she does not have inset eyes like most of the Crissy crew does.

I commented back in the Christmas post that the only dolls in Crissy's circle with painted eyes were Dina and Brandi, Crissy's sun-kissed California chums.  Poor Cinnamon, I think she's the cutest of the bunch and yet I completely forgot that she has painted eyes as well!  This is probably a good thing in the long run though, as she won't get mold in her eyes like poor Velvet did.  Velvet no longer has that crap in her eyes, by the way.  A Q-tip and some rubbing alcohol cleaned them up nicely.  See the before and after pics?  Here's how Velvet's eyes looked before I cleaned them...

...and after!  They still need a little work, but they're better than they were.

LOL, violet eyes!  Take a gander at Wild Hair Sindy's post for my story on that.  At least I don't have to giggle to hide my revulsion now, because the mold is gone for the most part.  Note to Crissy fans:  a bit of rubbing alcohol and a cotton ball are all you need.

Right then, where was I???  Finding extra clothes for Cinnamon may be tricky since she's a different size from both Crissy and Velvet.  That not such a huge deal now with the weather being as warm as it is, but back in January when Cinnamon was "new" it was a big deal.  Or rather, it was to me; bare arms and legs always make me shiver in the wintertime, even if it's just on a doll.  Anyway, the last time I looked Etsy had all of two outfits, one adorable and one ordinary, and the few things on eBay come from a shop that I flatly refuse to do further business with, so it looks like I'll have to bust out that sewing machine of mine and start in sewing.  If I go that route then I can make matching dresses for all three dolls.  Now to see if Crissy and Beth has any patterns for Cinnamon...<glances at the website>...bummer, there's NOTHING!!!  Good thing eBay had a pattern!  Of course I currently don't know where I placed the pattern (typical behavior for me), but there's enough in that pattern set to make sixteen (yes, sixteen) little dresses for Cinnamon.

There's also these, though I bought them with the intention of fitting them to Velvet or Crissy.

These are old coats from Premier, who made aftermarket items for dolls of various sizes, from Topper Dawn to Barbie to dolls Kissy's size.  These coats all came from the "Doll Togs" line.

Surprise, surprise, these coats all proved to be too small for Crissy and Velvet!  Guess who they ended up fitting?  So cute!

Now I need to find something that will cover Cinnamon's little legs, as they look funny sticking out from under a quilted coat.  And I'll have to do that pretty darn quick, as it'll be chilly again before we know it!

Let's also look briefly at shoes.  Remember how I made such a big deal about Velvet's shoes in her post?  Well...maybe you don't (that was eons ago), but I did.  I'm pleased to announce that Cinnamon came with shoes.

Cute little white shoes that match everything.  I suspect that these shoes are aftermarket shoes of some stripe since white Cinnamon-sized shoes only came from Spiegel catalogs (anyone remember those?), and as far as I can tell the Spiegel shoes didn't have little bows on the toes.  These do.

Further, the Spiegel shoes are T-straps and these aren't.  Oh well, no matter where these shoes came from.  Cinnamon has them, and shoes for Cinnamon are just as elusive as clothes, so I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

As a last little haw-haw, JoJo Bow alert!

Since Cinnamon is the least well-dressed of my Crissy crew I decided to give her a JoJo Bow to make up for it.  The JoJo Bows available at Malden's Wal-Mart are too small for my big head (yes, I wear JoJo Bows), but they're perfect for a little doll like Cinnamon!  They work well for other dolls too, dolls like American Girls and the My Life dolls and Kissy, any doll that's got a sizeable head.

With that I can pronounce my Crissy collection complete!  I've got Look Around Velvet, Look Around Crissy, and lovely little Cinnamon to gaze at when I first wake up of a morning.  Please ignore my box fan again; I've been needing it since my ceiling fan is on the blink and has been ever since this time LAST year.

I don't want a ton of these dolls since they all do the same thing and since they're all sizeable dolls, but having the main three is nice.  I've run into some dolly lovers that were NOT Crissy fans, but I can certainly see the appeal with their happy faces and their kid-friendly gimmick.  Heck, they're good playthings for little kids now, provided said little kid knows not to go at the hair with a pair of scissors!

Now...for the moment I'm free from Facebook jail...but for how long?  Given the admins' penchant for digging through my history for the slightest of slights, I figure it's just a matter of time before I'm blocked again.  Then...well, then it'll get busy here on the blog again!  Speculations are already starting to swirl around American Girl's next Girl of the Year, and about the mysterious Joss Kendrick, who's name has appeared in trademark info.  If I get more information on that then I'll discuss it when I finally review Z Yang. 

Much love,
RagingMoon1987

A not-so-brief look at Wild Hair Sindy

RagingMoon1987 again, and it's day five of my Facebook ban.  Only two more days to go, Moon Girl!  You can do it, you can do it!  LOL, it's also been a long, hot, humid summer, not as bad as summers before, but bad enough that I've been uncomfortable.  I tend to get dizzy and nauseous when I'm too hot for too long, and my AC never got repaired so the only respite I've had from the heat is at work, where the library's AC is alive and well (thank God).  I usually do most of my work for these posts during weekends, but with my brain having been about the consistency of half-set Jell-O I've wanted to do nothing but take cold showers, make sure the animals are alright, and binge-watch Boohbah on YouTube (that's one tripped-out program, y'all).  Now watch, after I've complained all summer about the heat, as soon as it gets cold I'll harp about that because I'm impossible to please!!!  One annoying summer is not enough to kill my lifelong hatred of winter, no matter how unwell excessive heat makes me feel.  I've been wondering if the bugs haven't agreed about the humidity, as I'm only now seeing cicada husks.  I usually start seeing these earlier in the month, and so far, this one is the only one I've seen.

I used to collect these husks, believe it or not.  I called 'em shellbugs and I'd fill whole coffee cans with them, much to my parents' chagrin.  Won't be much longer 'til I start seeing woolly worms!

Now...after multiple delays today's doll is finally getting her moment in the sun.  This post was inspired by one done by Purple Monkfish back in February, in which she discusses some of her Sindy dolls.  Monkfish is British, and thus good ol' Sindy is a smidge easier to find for her than it is for me.  That plus she's been actively collecting Sindy for quite some time and I...haven't.  Anywho, I reviewed my own little Sindy...oh gosh, when was that???  <pauses to look>  Lordy, it's been two years since I reviewed my Sindy doll, AND I never updated the admittedly sucky pictures!  Today's Sindy is quite different from the Pedigree and Marx Sindy dolls that I'm more familiar with, at least in overall appearance.  She's yet another Hasbro doll, just like Jem and Maxie and Whimzee and Aster and God knows who else, and she's from the Wild Hair line.  Here she is in her box.

I was hoping I could find a brunette like Monkfish's Wild Hair doll, but alas, there were none to be found.  Indeed, the blondes aren't the easiest to find either, not at a price I could handle, leastways.  I obviously DID find an affordable one, but it was no easy feat!  Anywho, the back of the box shows off a full picture of the doll and the various combinations that her hair extensions can be worn in.

Since I always point out store stickers on packages, check out THIS relic!

I've never once seen a Zellers IRL, partially because they were a Canadian entity and I've never been to Canada.  I thought Sindy was exclusively a British doll during her Hasbro days, but maybe I'm just full of malarkey.  Maybe Zellers wasn't exclusively a Canadian entity after all, or maybe Sindy was available in Canada during her time spent with Hasbro?  I dunno.  Anyway, I call attention to this sticker because Zellers went the way of Kmart back in 2013.  As far as I know there are no more, though some internet sources might tell y'all that the chain is on its way back.  Back in 2016 there were all of two Zellers stores open in the whole country, and I have no idea if either of those still exist now. 

Now that that's out of the way, here's Sindy out of her box.  Doesn't look like Marx Sindy, does she?  She looks a lot like BARBIE!!!

Indeed, Mattel did slap Hasbro with a lawsuit over this new Sindy face, and they WON!!!  Normally I'd have been rooting for Hasbro since Mattel has a track record of getting butt-hurt about shenanigans pulled by other toy companies, but in this case I can see their point.  Some of the Hasbro-era dolls also have what Monkfish likes to call a "pig face," with a nose that turns up a little too much, but my Sindy appears to have dodged that bullet (I quite like my doll's face, in fact).  She didn't dodge this though, the plastic strip that got sewn into the hair.

Oh puke, I positively HATE this way of securing hair!  Thankfully this method of securing hair is growing more and more endangered; indeed I can't remember the last time I bought a modern doll with their hair sewn into one of those hateful strips.  Luckily for me this one came out without much fuss, but this is still a horrid way to secure doll hair and I'm glad it hasn't made too many appearances lately.  There was also a massively tangled hank of hair in that mix, and I had to cut that out.  I failed to photograph that, but it looked like it got caught in some bit of machinery and twisted until it couldn't untwist.

As y'all might be able to tell, Wild Hair Sindy is all about hair, and indeed that was another incentive for me to get her.  It's been years since I had my own hair dyed, and I NEVER got to dye it blue like I wanted to, so I live out my fantasies through my dolls.  Wild Hair Sindy fits the "wild" bill pretty well, though no one could tell it at first glance.  Her base hair is your typical crimped platinum blonde saran, not terribly unlike her Hasbro sister/cousin/friend Maxie's hair, or like Butterfly Art Barbie's hair, but she also has THESE!!!

Heckyeah, extensions!  Two hot pink, one purple, and one orange, plus a blue clip.  The orange one is very curly, the pink ones are crimped, and the purple one is fairly straight.  The pink and purple extensions have tinsel strands mixed in with the hair.

I...actually have never been a fan of tinsel like this!  My Hula Hair Christie and Teresa have skirts made of this stuff, and I don't have pictures but the tinsel looks a little tortured after twenty-plus years of being combed and manipulated.  Some Monster High dolls are the same way.  Sindy's extensions are in better shape since they've been NRFB all these years, but I'll be treating them with respect anyway so they'll stay halfway decent.

Sometimes the hair extensions that accompany dolls are too long, too short, too thin, or too cumbersome to play with effectively, but Sindy's extensions are a rare item that would please Goldilocks and her "just right" sensibilities.  They're thick enough to look nice when hanging loose, and they're just the right length to not look stupid.

I'm particularly partial to the purple extension, as it's topped with a gold bow.  I'm particularly fond of topping my own ponytail with big goofy-looking bows and thus I like seeing this bow perched in Sindy's hair (I'm thankful to Psycho JoJo Siwa for making hair bows trendy again, by the way).

The orange extension also has a bow, one that I added myself, and to my delight it matches a skirt that Sindy will be modeling later. 

Let's look at the means of attachment briefly.  One of the things that I usually hate about doll hair extensions is that they don't usually attach very well.  They usually attach with combs or clips that want to fall out, but again Sindy avoided this.  See the attachment site???

That, folks, is a plug.  Not a comb, not a clip, not a piddling little loop of plastic like Featherageous Jade's extensions had/have, but a plug that clicks into a hole in the doll's head like the hair on the Cutie Pops.  Indeed, the box called these "'pop-in' ponytails."  I never would've dreamed that I'd see hair plugging into a doll head of this size, but it does.  See the hole?  Sort of reminds me of that huge crater on the Saturnian moon Mimas, for those of y'all that like astronomy.

This method begs a comparison not only to the Cutie Pops, but also to another Hasbro hair-play doll, the long-defunct Aimee, who had hair extensions that plugged into holes in her head.  Aimee's hairpieces did not attach well from what I've been told, but Hasbro apparently learned from their mistakes with her because Sindy's hairpieces stay put.

Two of these ponytails match and two don't, meaning that I can go hog-wild with these!  I can make Sindy look semi-coordinated with the two matching tails...

...or I can use just one on one side or the other...

...OR I can put drastically different tails on each side.

I can even leave the hair unadorned.  As big as those holes are, they're still easily concealed by Sindy's base hair.

As a final outrageous touch I can use the clips on these.  The clips are supposed to attach these extensions to a child's head, but that's a little above my level of silliness so I just clip them to Sindy's hair, when I bother with them at all.

The backside of this clip has a clip of its own for attaching to the hairpiece.

Wild Hair Sindy is a good name for this doll, because one really can go wild with her hair!  

I lied when I said that this is going to be a full-blown review, since there's not a lot to talk about regarding Sindy's face paint or body.  Her body is a lot like a nineties-era Barbie's, with the addition of a little bone structure around the ribcage...

...and her face is free of missing paint.  Some Sindy dolls have baby blue or mint green eyes, but my doll has lilac eyes, plus light brown brows and some decidedly unusual lip paint!

The lilac eyes are unnatural, as only albinos come with this eye color, but as I've said before dolls are not subject to the restrictions of reality.  These eyes do make me giggle though, for a rather unusual reason, one that could only have cropped up (ironically) on a Facebook group.  C'mon, where else do I find inspirations for tangents???  In addition to multiple doll groups I belong to a rather active group of Moody Blues fans, and we like to share articles and photos and videos of the band.  The article in question, a vintage article from the 1970s, stated that lead vocalist Justin Hayward had brown eyes, but all of us (myself included) were bound and determined that he had blue eyes.  It took a rather lengthy discussion to determine...that Justin's eyes are actually VIOLET, a point proven if one looks at a decent picture of Justin, rather than at the blurry music video that I used as my evidence (Justin is the blonde one, for those of y'all unfamiliar with the band).  I stand by my statement that Handsome Hayward's eyes look blue in the video in question, but...well, they are and they're not.  Not the shade of blue that I'm used to, anyway; I have pale blue eyes and thus am used to seeing those on people, famous or no.  Thus seeing Elizabeth Taylor eyes on Justin Hayward threw me for quite the loop!  Anyway, every time I find a doll with violet eyes now I giggle, as it took seventy people a solid week and somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand comments to determine the eye color of one person that we all supposedly know so much about.  Only on Facebook would a group of people do that.  And that, kids, is why I keep running back to Facebook even though they piss me off big time.  Silly, humorous situations like that make the worries and the fights worth it.

Sigh...I apologize for that tangent, kiddies.  I think genetics are interesting, especially when they deal with eye color, and I also love trivia about celebrities, but I'm ready to leave that tangent alone.  I want to look briefly at Sindy's lip paint.  Looks like there's a hair stuck to the paint in there.

Thank God she doesn't have bubblegum lips!  For the most part this paint is okay, but that pale crescent on Sindy's lower lip drives me nuts.  I think it's supposed to represent a layer of gloss, but instead it looks like another row of teeth!  I wish Hasbro had added real gloss instead of that weird tooth-colored crescent.

Dig these earrings!

Fashion dolls of the eighties and nineties had earrings that ran from tame to outrageous, and while Sindy falls on the tamer end of that continuum she still has some neat bangles.  They're big, garish, orange lightning bolts, not terribly unlike the goofy bangles that I sometimes wear.  Seriously, I've got jack o'lanterns, spiders, jellyfish, tornadoes, elephants, shamrocks, Pete the Cat, stuff that one might picture Ms. Frizzle wearing.  The only criteria is that the earrings have to be lightweight; none of that heavy crap for my dainty little lobes, thank you too much!  Anyway, I always get a kick out of doll earrings like the ones Sindy's got.  Goofy earrings occasionally make appearances on Barbie dolls today, but nowhere near as often as they used to!  And as a last little haw-haw, these earrings can be removed.  This is a good thing, as I sometimes have to untangle Sindy's thick hair from these baubles.  Needless to say, removing the earrings makes resolving that problem a lot easier.

Okay, so we've looked briefly at Sindy and her trippy little hair extensions and her trippy eyes and her trippy earrings...let's face it, this is a pretty tripped out doll.  Now what?  Oh right, clothes.  Sindy's clothes are...well, trippy!  In past reviews I've derided eighties and early nineties fashion as repulsive, but I have to admit that some of these styles have grown on me.  Fashion dolls of the era could be colorful and stick to the latest trends, and they managed to do so without being too trashy.  Gaudy, yes, but I'd rather have gaudy than trashy.  That being said, Sindy does show a fair amount of skin.  She's not as scantily clad as some of the Bratz were, but this outfit would never have passed my high school dress codes, or probably y'all's either, for that matter.  I love how unabashedly everything clashes though, and I mean EVERYTHING.  I'm just going to glance over these and look for quality issues.

The vest-top-thingy snaps shut, which I love.  I vastly prefer snaps to Velcro.

The skirt is short and very buoyant, but luckily Sindy has a pair of bright yellow skivvies on underneath.  These are not permanently attached, unlike Maggie's (WANT HER TO BE SMOOF!!!).

When I said above that nothing matches, I meant it.  Sindy's outfit is done in orange, yellow, pink, black, white, and gold, but the shoes are BLUE.

That's pushing this clashing thing just a little.  I love blue and I love blue shoes, but this shade of blue doesn't match anything Sindy has, hair or clothes or eyes or anything...oh wait, there IS the hair clip, but Sindy doesn't wear that.  The shades do match, though.

I love these shoes though, regardless of whether they match or not.  Wish I had a pair in my size!  Again, this brings Pete the Cat to mind, and his white shoes that briefly turned several different colors, including blue.  Can y'all tell that I'm just a little fond of Pete the Cat?  So many children's books push a veiled (or not-so-veiled) political agenda nowadays, so seeing harmless, colorful books like James Dean's work pleases me greatly.  Anyway, Sindy's shoes are vinyl and are quite soft to the touch, with no huge molding gaffes or anything like that.  They've even got little treads, which was fairly commonplace for doll shoes back in the nineties.

And that's it, right?  Well...not quite.  Hasbro released some other hair extensions for tinkering around with, and while I don't have them yet, I do plan on getting them in the future.  They're strange extensions, y'all!  Far stranger than the orange curly fall.  But even without the extra falls I can still have fun with Sindy here, as she is able to wear older Barbie clothes and vice versa.  Here she is with Maggie; Sindy's top is tight on Maggie, but I got it fastened.

To my great surprise some of the more modern Barbie outfits fit too, mostly loose-fitting stuff like the yellow Despicable Me dress (left) and the Supergirl set with the aforementioned striped skirt that matches Sindy's new bow.

I've got a Care Bears dress somewhere too, a loosely cut frock with Grumpy Bear on it.  Sindy could probably wear it too, but it's in storage somewhere, probably mixed in with the things I have reserved for Momoko, who wore the Grumpy Bear dress first and looked darn good in it.  But basically anything modern that's sized for a curvy Barbie is worth a try on a Hasbro Sindy doll.  One thing that Sindy CAN'T manage is Barbie shoes.  She's got unusual feet, rather large but not as large as those of a Monster High doll or Tuesday Taylor.

Now that I think of it, the only thing different about these feet is the shape; Sindy's arches are shaped differently from Midge's.  As a result Sindy can't shove her plates into most of the Barbie shoes I've got, and her blue shoes are roomy on Maggie's dainty little nub-feet.

I'll have to stick to the shoes Sindy's got or find some other outfit for her to wear if I want her to have new shoes.  Luckily the handful of Hasbro Sindy outfits that I saw on eBay have shoes included...unlike most of the clothes that Mattel makes now!!!  Wait a minute...take that back, I did see a fashion pack with ONE pair of shoes.  One pair of shoes for two dresses, but that's still a step in the right direction.  As I've said before, I hate having a fully dressed doll with all the accessories but nothing for her feet.

Ahem...don't get me started on THAT soapbox again!  LOL, this particular Sindy is a fun doll with eye-catching colors and a simple, kid-friendly concept.  I especially love how her hair resists tangling, which I DIDN'T note above.  Since the hair is crimped it resists tangling, and when it does tangle it combs out with relatively little fuss.  Now I will concede that this doll is not the old Pedigree doll that I've been hoping to scrounge up, but she IS Sindy and she's kept me busy for several afternoons so I'm not going to complain.  I'm pleased as punch that she can share some clothes with Barbie, and I'm positive that I can find some other shoes for her somewhere.  If any of y'all are into nineties-era Barbies and Barbie wannabes, or if you don't care what era your Sindy dolls come from, then this particular Sindy should fit in just fine.

I should have one more post up before the week is over; it's an Ideal doll in the Crissy family, so the post should be fairly brief.  But as I said on Saturday, she's worth sharing anyway.

Cordially yours,
RagingMoon1987

Blume: a new take on blind bags

Oh Moon Girl, you've been blocked from Facebook for exhibiting your First Amendment rights again!  Oh yes, I forgot that the First Amendment only applies to the shameless leftists who run Facebook.  Sometimes I'd give anything to just haul off and slug Mark Zuckerberg for making his product so shamelessly biased and so addictive at the same time.  Seriously...I'm blocked for a week now, over something that I posted weeks or months or YEARS AGO???  So with a thunderstorm raging outside and John Lydon blaring on the radio I threw this review together.  I got officially blocked on the 22nd (it was a Wednesday, but that doesn't matter), and today is...the 24th?  <glances at calendar> Yes, it's the glorious 24th, so I've killed all of two days, but but on the bright side it's the end of a long dry spell here at the blog, one that I'll discuss further with Monday's post.  Now that my spleen is vented, <puts on happy face> this fall looks to be an interesting time for dolls.  On the same Wednesday that I learned of Facebook's nonsense I saw these in Malden's Wal-Mart.

These are two members of the much-anticipated Wild Hearts Crew, and oh, was I tempted!  The two pictured are Jacy Masters (left) and Cori Cruize.  They've got nice, thick bodies, extra clothes, and two of them have BLUE HAIR!!!  Of course my favorite one (Kenna Roswell) wasn't there, but as over-the-top as Cori is I may pick her instead!  I really wanted one of these dolls, and I may ask for one for my birthday.  But today I'm going to go the blind bag route again, and before y'all run screaming into the night let me say that blind bag dolls are getting steadily more interesting.  Indeed, the three dolls that have caught my eye this summer/early fall (besides Barbie) have all been blind bag-themed.  There have been the Capsule Chix and a spin-off of the L.O.L. Surprises called O.M.G., and then there's these creatures called Blume.

"Where Outrageous Grows" is the tagline.  Rather cute!  Blume dolls come in little plastic pots instead of boxes or bags, and when watered they "grow" out of the pots.  They have squishy hair that can be mixed and matched, plus a few accessories that also serve as blind bag surprises.  The pot also doubles as a house for the doll, a much better house than the round pods that the earliest L.O.L. Surprises came in.  As an aside, I'm noticing that fewer and fewer L.O.L. Surprises come in those pods.  Their abodes are more commonly reusable, like the Confetti Pop pod and the Under Wraps pod.  Indeed, I'd seen a few comments and complaints that L.O.L. pods were terribly likely to end up in the trash heap, meaning a lot of waste for one little toy.  Blume appears to be attempting to combat that with her reusable home, which is more than I can say for the O.M.G. dolls.

'Nuff stalling, let's make my Blume doll bloom.  Opening these dolls is a little more complicated than just popping open a box or ripping open a bag, though it's no more difficult.  Yes, complicated and difficult are different things.  Anywho, here's a list of the surprises (sort of), plus the instruction to "just add water!" to make Blume grow.

The back of the plastic had this to be seen...

...plus these two, with "wild hair that WOWS!"  Well...the blue-haired one isn't THAT wild, but the gal with the crystallized hair is another story!  I dig that!

The packaging attests that this watering can is one of the surprises, but it isn't much of a surprise when I can see it through the plastic on the top.

Just for the heck of it, here's the sticker on the bottom, with the company's logo and some of the trademark info.  Can't say that I'm all that familiar with Skyrocket, but it's a fitting name for these little toys since their hair shoots up like rockets.

Remove the exterior plastic and that cute heart-shaped cap on the top, and I've got the collector's guide.  One side shows the characters and their rarity (super rares Cleo and Skye are my favorites)...

...and thank goodness, the other side has opening instructions.

Right then, step 1.  Peel off this foil, just like opening a cup of yoghurt.  The foil has some vague illustrations that (I assume) warn the user not to add water to this part or to try opening the pot.

Peeling off the foil reveals a sheet of stickers that cover the paper layer.  These are for decorating the inside of the pot...or the outside, take your pick.

Remove these stickers and you've got your "dirt," made out of the paper.  This is where the blooming fun will transpire.  The process is a little messy and will definitely require the assistance of an adult, largely because our old friend water is involved.  Yep, you've actually got to water this top here...

...with the tiny watering can provided.  The can itself is made of soft, squishy vinyl and can be filled with water via full immersion.  Filling this can counts as step 2, and actually watering the "dirt" counts as step 3.

Step 4:  watch your doll blume, and if you're nuts like I am then you may try to sing as well.  I wish you'd open up for me, 'cause I wanna know you...Amaryllis!!!  LOL, Brent Smith I am not, but my Blume doll sprouted with no fuss and only a little amount of water.  I suspect that her springy hair is what allowed her to bust through the moistened paper.

Ooooo, blue hair!  I like the looks of this, y'all.  She's not Cleo or Noni, but I do like what I see so far!  Judging from the colors and the shape of this hair I'm assuming I've got either May or Nori.  As an aside, the protruding hair reminds me of the tiniest Zelfs, which were concealed in tiny flower pots like the Blume dolls are.  Y'all remember Zelfs???  Moose Toys made them, before they moved on to Shopkins and Capsule Chix.  I've got a Zelf myself, but her review was so long ago that I've even forgotten it!

LOL, I admit that I'd forgotten what a cute little goomer Elfa was, and I was the one who reviewed her!  I thought the Zelfs were adorable and would've liked to have had more of them, but after I saw Elfa and her first-wave friends I never saw any more Zelfs in this area.  Rather sad, especially considering one of the later Zelfs was a red panda Zelf.  If y'all hearken back to my Calico Critters post you'll recall that I love red pandas.  Oh well, Elfa can be on the welcoming committee for whoever is in that pot.  Step 5:  remove the doll all the way.

Good grief, she's wearing a cone of shame!  Unlike being banned from Facebook, a doll in an Elizabethan collar is a new one for me, though I suspect this is supposed to protect the doll from any drips...I guess?  I didn't use enough water to make the paper drip, so go figure there.  Having matched the colors, I've discovered that my doll is indeed May.

May falls under the "adorable" category, meaning that she's not rare.  Also notice that in the illustration May is dressed, but my doll is not.  Never fear, for I still have to crack this pot open (crack pot, LOL).  Here's what you're left with after bluming your doll.

Step 6:  Push in and turn.  This pot has a little indention on the seam that makes pushing easier.

Inside is the doll's "home," so to speak, plus the mechanism that allows the doll to blume.  It looks a little like a robotic cow's udder.  Removing that thing is step 7.

The "udder" is spring-loaded, like so.  These springs, along with May's hair, allow her to "blume."

Now, at first I thought this was meant to be thrown away, and I started railing about how wasteful that is.  This mechanism is next to impossible to dismantle for recycling (not that I usually bother with that), but luckily it is reusable.  It can come apart and more paper can be loaded, so the bluming process can be done all over again if one knows what they're doing.  So so far there's not a lot of waste here.  I pulled out the paper, the foil, and the plastic and pitched that, but so far that's all.

And if y'all can believe it, I've completed the listed steps!  I've still got items concealed, but those were the steps!  LOL, not as hard as I thought it would be!  Anywho, one side of May's pot has a closet and a basket that conceal her outfit and pet...

...and the other side has her mirror.  This is taped in place because it detaches and doubles as a stand for the doll.

I undid the paper covering the closet, revealing May's jumpsuit and shoes (having seen her illustration, these weren't much of a surprise anymore).

The basket contains this little chap.  He is...a scallop with arms and legs???  Mmmkay...that's not biologically accurate.  He's cute, though.  I wonder what his name is?

When I undid the tape holding the stand in place I found a little purse concealed in there.  That WAS a surprise!

Alrighty, here's May all put together!

Time to review her now!  Blume dolls are not terribly big.  I thought they'd be roughly the height of a Shopkins Shoppie or a Strawberry Shortcake doll or a Hairdorables doll (notice that I've added Psycho JoJo Siwa to my Hairdorables collection), but they're actually quite a bit smaller.  May's hair makes her look taller than she really is, just like Lime Chiffon's hat does.

She's quite a bit taller than Elfa, hair and all, and she's quite a bit shorter than the long-defunct Novi Starz (Malie Tasker is shown).

The larger L.O.L. Surprises are of a comparable height to May, but their measurements render clothes sharing out.  The L.O.L.'s in question are Spice and Li'l Babydoll.

My mini Shopkins (Coco Cookie and Sunny Meadows) are also fairly close to May in height and scale...

 ...as is Peppa Mint's pet, Minty Paws.

These Blume dolls also remind me a bit of Li'l Secrets, a blind bag doll that I was once very fond of.  Their body positions and their towering hairstyles are similar, and both lines rely on bright colors and a surprise element.  However, May doesn't store her surprises in her hair like the Li'l Secrets did.  No, as I noted above, this hair can come off, leaving this cute blue bun underneath.

 

Paint job looks good!  Now...time to delve into another of Moony's idiosyncrasies, though I know for a fact that I'm not alone with this one.  I've never mentioned this before, but I love squishies.  I probably would have a collection of these, but I need another collection of stuff "like I need another butt tacked on," as my mother would say.  Nevertheless I love squishies, and I'm delighted that May's hair doubles as a squishy.  When I took off her hair I was surprised to find that it's lined with a small strip of paper.

 Here's a better look at the hair from the front and the back.

May's hair is made out of dense foam rubber.  It's soft, but not as squishy as I had thought it would be.  I was expecting something along the lines of a Smooshy Mushy, but this hair falls between a stress ball and Little Apple Red in terms of softness (remember I said that Little Apple Red was pretty firm).  This hair is not as fun to squeeze as I thought it would be, but it's still soft and smooth and fairly pleasant to touch.  Plus, with the hair being this firm it'll be harder for some destructive little brat to pinch plugs out of it.  I voiced that concern back when the foam-headed Lala-Oopsies were a thing back in 2012 (posts are here and here).  Even though this foam is firm, I can still squeeze it pretty well.

Y'know, it's fun to go back and reread some of my old posts, just to see how the toy market has changed over the years, and to see how my writing style has evolved/devolved.  Anywho, May has an ocean/beach theme and her hair shows that.  It's sky blue and curls at the top like a wave, and it has some seaweed and a starfish molded and painted on the front.

I wish there were a little more seaweed molded all the way around, because...well...just because!  I like the way this shade of green looks with this watery blue.  I like how sandy the starfish looks too, though in truth I think this texture may be imperfections in the foam or in the paint itself, but I love how this makes the starfish look more real.  In real life starfish are spiny and rough (hence why they're classed as echinoderms like sea urchins are), and this paint does a pretty good job of showing that.  Oh, I probably should add that the wig cap is not foam at all, but rather firm, blue vinyl.

Now...I'm fairly pleased with this hair, though it's not as soft as I'd like, but unfortunately softness and firmness are not the main problem with the hair.  It's heavy...or at least it's heavy for a doll May's size.  Oh sure, May came with a stand...

...and the stand fits into the holes in her shoes just fine...

...but the fit is not a tight one, and when May is wearing her hair she just tips out of her stand like so.

I can't really think of a way for Skyrocket to remedy this except to make the foam hair a little lighter, but doing that might make it harder for these dolls to blume.  Indeed, it was largely this stiff hair that allowed May to bust through that paper in the first place!  So Skyrocket may need to think that one over a bit.  Either the stand needs to be heavier or the doll herself needs to be heavier...garn, that's a tricky one to solve.  It doesn't help that May's neck joint is wobbly, making it nearly impossible for me to get her hair properly balanced.  May's neck is a ball joint, but it largely just turns.

 The larger L.O.L. Surprises have better motion in their necks than Blume dolls do...or at least that's the case with Spice and May.

May is also jointed at the shoulders and hips, and just look at how delicate her arms and hands are!  They're not fragile, but they ARE little.

And yet her right hand is molded in a grasping position so she can hold that cute purse.

Not solidly; it doesn't take a lot of jarring to knock that purse free, but May CAN hold it.  That's more than I can say for Peppa Mint, who just dangles her purse over her stiff little arm like this.

Yeah...Shoppies have gotten better since Peppa was available, but I wasn't impressed enough by Peppa to buy any more of them.  However, I will note that Peppa's stand keeps her on her feet.

But then again, Peppa's hair isn't as heavy as May's is.  Oh well, I'm supposed to be talking about joints, not Shoppies.  May's dainty little arms have rotational movement, meaning that she can wave them around a little.  She cannot move them out to the side, nor would I expect her to with arms this little.

Look at these fingers!  When's the last time y'all saw fingers on a doll hand this tiny?

May's hips are a bit more robustly constructed, and I was hoping that they would have some side-to-side motion, but they don't.  May can do splits and sit, but only when she's in her skivvies.  Her clothes restrict her leg movement.  She DOES have joints there, though.  See?

Dig these feet!  At least those dinky little hands have individual fingers!

I reckon those would classify as nubbin feet, just like the Lalaloopsy dolls used to have!  No nail polish or anything to even suggest toes!

Y'all know what?  I forgot to do May's face!  Here's a closeup of what she looks like in the face.  Her features are a little catlike.

Everything is rather simply painted, devoid of the layers of color that other toys have, but simple does not mean boring.  Dig these eyes!

I would've expected deep blue eyes, but May's eyes and eyeshadow are mint green.  Her eyelashes are very heavy and very black, and her pupils are huge with three little light clusters that thankfully face in the same direction.  Her eyeshadow is leafy, but because it's a different shade from the leaves in her hair it looks more like celery tops (yucko, I hate celery) than seaweed.  Her rather crude eyebrows are brown which is a hair disappointing.  I wish they were blue or dark green like her hair.  I make that complaint a lot, and I know that blue eyebrows are a bit bizarre-sounding, but look how cohesive Peppa and Rayne are with their exotic eyebrows.

Oh yeah, I also added Rayne (Rayne Coat, to be exact) to my Hairdorables collection.  I'm patiently waiting for the boys to start appearing around here, as they're mega-cute.  Anyway, the lower half of May's face is pretty sparse, with just this mouth.

Coral lips with a black line to suggest the mouth itself.  While I wouldn't have picked this color (I probably would've gone for something a little louder, LOL), the paint edges are very clean here and do a good job of suggesting lips.  And also, that soft pink flatters May's skin pretty well (she's fairly pale) and doesn't look washed out like the lips of some of my other dolls do.  So this face is pretty good, but it unfortunately doesn't convey a lot of personality.  May's eyes convey a little sauciness, but her mouth and eyebrows don't follow that.  Furthermore, I've already run into a couple of comments deriding the heavily made-up eyes as creepy, though they're probably the ones that think ALL dolls have the Annabelle factor.

Clothes now.  It probably should be obvious that May can't wear a thing that I've got on hand, so I'm thankful that she had something hidden in her flowerpot home.  In addition to the purse, May wears a dusty rose-colored jumpsuit and neon yellow shoes.

I love how unabashedly these items clash, but I wish May had a necklace or something to tie the shoes in with the jumpsuit.  That's one of the few things I CAN do for this tiny doll (sewing is out of the question for that dinky little body).  Anyway, all of these items are made of soft, flexible vinyl.  They have no painted details, kind of a bummer, but they fit May well and cover her painted little undies.  Unfortunately the jumpsuit is too stiff for May to sit.  If I do try to seat her in these, this happens.

Yep, these gap open, just like the clothes on L.O.L. Surprises.  I don't like this method of putting clothes on the dolls, but I can see no other easy way on a body this little.  Plus, May does have painted skivvies.  Most of my L.O.L.'s do not, and their bare butt cheeks show when their clothes gap open, so May and her Blume cronies have that much on them.  The shoes are cute little strappy numbers that fit a little loosely but do not fall off at the drop of a hat.

The purse does fall off easily, but again I can't think of a proper way to remedy this, and I'm just glad that May can hold something with that tiny hand.  I'm still pretty impressed with that.  I usually gripe about molding, by the way, and I'm pleased to say that everything here is well molded, with no big plastic tags anywhere.  The jumpsuit has a tie molded on the neck, plus little branches all over.

Mmmm, looks like something I'd like to wear on a hot summer day.  I do wish some of those details were painted, but I can always drag out my own paint and do that myself.  I may do that in the future with some neon yellow paint.  I may do that with the purse too, since it's got little stars molded on.  Everyone knows that stars should be yellow!

Let's look briefly at May's home before we wrap things up.  I'm sorry to report that there's no sleeping space or chair (that would've been cute to at least look at), but she does have her closet and her basket for Mr. Scallop.

I thought it might be cute for Mr. Scallop or whatever his danged name is to sit in his basket and peep out, but alas, the basket is too deep for this.

The other side, where the stand goes, is hollow.  I put the mirror inside there, but I probably should've put that on the OUTSIDE...y'know, where mirrors actually go???

Way to go, Moony (LOL).  The rest of the stickers I placed on the top, where there's a bit of a lip that simulates a shelf.

And...that's really all I can think of to say.  Good stuff/bad stuff time.

BAD
*Hair is heavy.  I make a big deal about this since Blume focuses pretty heavily on hair.  The provided stand is very little help here.
*Blind bag component is a little complicated and a smidge messy.  If you have kids, you'll want to supervise them during the bluming process.
*Doll itself is rather simple, though she does have some nice movement in a few places (see below).
*Clothes are stiff and unpainted; my particular doll can't sit down while dressed.  Clothes sharing is impossible given May's small size. 
*Surprises aren't really too surprising, though I doubt that'll bother a child terribly.
*NOT FOR SMALL CHILDREN!!!!  The package says three years and up, but I'd extend that to six years and up.  May's shoes, purse, and pet can all easily be swallowed or choked on.  And for that matter, why bother with a pet in the first place???  Monster High pets were at least substantial little figurines, while May's pet is not.

GOOD
*New spin on the blind bag thing, and a cute one!  Admittedly the smallest Zelfs also came in flowerpots, but they didn't "grow."
*Package can be reused, provided someone knows how to put it back together (that part is tricky).
*Hair is soft enough to make a nice plaything in its own right, but not so soft that some little kid could easily destroy it.
*Hair and clothes can be switched around among the dolls, making for some decent mix-and-match opportunities.
*May is surprisingly well-articulated for such a small doll, though her clothes make her hips immobile.  She can even grip her purse.
*Paint on the face is smooth, even, and colorful, and I love those eyes.
*Shoes don't fall off easily.  I hate doll shoes that fall off!

Overall I think these Blume dolls are pretty average.  A lot of the fun comes out of "bluming" them and seeing what character is inside, not terribly unlike the surprises that Li'l Secrets contained.  I remember being fond of Li'l Secrets when I was small, but after their hair was opened I didn't do much with them.  They just...stood on my nightstand and looked cute.  I can do more with May than I could have with the Li'l Secrets because May has joints, meaning that I could take her out and try to pose her in a tree or among some flowers.  But unfortunately her stiff clothes and heavy hair make that very difficult as well.  Yeah, I'm aware that I can just prop her up against the tree, but there's only so many poses that look good that way.  So at the moment May is nestled in her pot making my nightstand look cute, just as my Li'l Secrets did some twenty years ago.  Blume dolls are fine for children over the age of six, but I don't think I'll bother getting another one unless they do some tripped out gimmick like glow-in-the-dark hair.  Hey, you never know!

Since I now have nothing to do on Facebook I'll be hitting the blog pretty hard, so keep your eyes peeled for a couple more posts over the coming week.  They're old things that I bought months ago, and indeed I had rudimentary reviews cobbled together already, but they're still worth a looksie.  Sooooo...stay tuned!

Love,
RagingMoon1987