Throwback Thursday review: Yummi-Land Betsy Bubblegum

Here's Moony, back for the new year, even though the new year isn't so new anymore.  I am not looking forward to 2020, as it is an election year and during election years everyone seems to collectively lose their minds.  Life at the Moon House has been less than pleasant; on January 6th Mama tripped over a parking stop at the library and measured herself, and she's only now getting back up to speed.  We never did find out exactly what she injured, but she apparently tore or pulled some muscles in her upper left leg and had to gimp around on a walker for quite awhile.  I had a nasty anxiety wave as a result, and I'm only now getting back up to speed myself.  Mama and I are very close, as some of y'all have noticed, and I had these horrors of her suddenly keeling over as the result of this fall, and that triggered the anxiety wave.  My heart pounded, my chest ached, my head spun, my stomach felt sick, my mouth was always dry, and I slept poorly...having an anxiety disorder is NOT fun, kids.  Indeed, waking up every morning on the verge of having a panic attack is pure hell, so thank God for Celexa (the medicine that I take), though at my lowest point it seemed like it wasn't working one iota.  Long story short, January was a depressing, worrisome month and I'm very glad it's over.  I never have liked January anyway, and this one was...probably the worst one I've had since my sister's dog had parvovirus back in 2011 (said dog is alive and well, by the way).  So far this has been the third wave I've had, but thankfully not my worst or my longest; my second wave, approximately four and a half years ago, involved some mild but very frightening hallucinations, and both waves lasted almost a month since I kept trying to tough it out without medicine.  But this time I was armed and I'm recovering nicely, and I'm thankful to our Heavenly Father, my loving and patient mother, and the creators of Celexa and Little Bear for getting me through.  LOL, whenever my life gets unpleasant I pray nonstop and binge-watch children's shows; last summer when it was so hot my program of choice was Boohbah, and another time it was Sailor Moon (my review of Sailor Mercury stemmed from that period).  This time it was Little Bear, a cartoon that I adored well into my teenage years and was thrilled to revisit.  My favorite episode is this one, with the individual segments (there are three per episode) entitled "Owl's Dilemma," "School for Otters," and "Spring Cleaning."  It turns out that I haven't been the only one who's having a hard time, by the way; Heather over at PennilessCaucasianRubbish did too.  I'm mostly over my crisis now, and I hope and pray that she'll recover too.

Now that I've completed another clumsy intro, great time to mix my fondness for dolls with my fondness for soda again!  Ewww...or not; when I have an anxiety fit I tend to lose my appetite completely, and the sweeter something sounds the worse my stomach hurts.  Oh well, I needed to lose weight anyway!  LOL, regarding my soda pop dolls, I have Cherry Fizz and Kleo Kola, and now I have today's child as well!  Her name is Betsy Bubblegum and she is a member of MGA Entertainment's Yummi-Land series.  Her critter's name is Susie Sprinkles Seal. 

Dang that camera flash!  Anyway, Yummi-Land was produced by MGA Entertainment, right at the height of the Bratz' popularity.  They apparently enjoyed several waves, but they didn't achieve anywhere near the success of the Bratz.  Indeed, I can't remember ever seeing Yummi-Land dolls in stores though Doll Reader did introduce them in their "For Young Collectors" page.  I thought the concept was cute, though:  the dolls are/were scented dolls that came stored in small bottles of "soda," and they often were accompanied with a pet of some sort, also ensconced in a soda bottle.  By the time of their release I was aware of the Liddle Kiddles and their bottles of soda and perfume, and I thought "Oh, it's nice that that idea's getting a rehash!"  But I never really thought anything more about it until now.  Anyway, Yummi-Land dolls came in a wide variety of "flavors," including quite a few that I never would want soda to come in, like the bubblegum flavor that Betsy is supposed to be!  Ewww, I find bubblegum-flavored items sickeningly sweet even when I'm NOT on an anxiety wave.  I love bubblegum itself, but I'll pass on candy and ice cream and soda flavored like it, thank y'all too much.  In truth Betsy is not really a soda-themed doll, if her box is to be believed.  Her box says "ice cream pop" rather than "soda pop."

However, "pop" is a Yankee slang for "soda," so I guess technically this is ice cream AND soda.  Mmmmm...that would mean an ice cream float.  I love those, especially when the ice cream is melted into the soda, though a bubblegum ice cream-and-soda combo would be WAAAAAAY too sweet!  Speaking of flavors, remember that I said these dolls were scented.  The box confirms this.

Uh-oh.  I'm not a huge fan of scented dolls as they tend to smell too sweet (again) or overly like chemicals or both, but I'll try to keep an open mind with these.  Once upon a time scented dolls did smell very nice; Lime Chiffon, Beri Blue, and Cherry Merry Muffin all smelled very much like their namesake baked goods, without any chemical nastiness thrown in.  But before I go sniffing on this doll, let's take a look at the back of her box.

The box had a tag on it that proclaimed the ease of opening, and that turned out to be absolute bull crap as I had a devil of a time getting Betsy and Susie out of their packaging.  Anywho, this Ice Cream Pop wave apparently had six members, with Betsy being...quite frankly, I find her the most underwhelming of the bunch.  Mindy Mint Chocolate Chip and Pasha Pineapple are my favorites, though pineapple is a flavor I associate with sherbet rather than ice cream.  Mmmmm, pineapple sherbet...<drools like Homer Simpson>...now THAT actually does sound good.  Ahem, where was I???  Here's what Betsy's ice cream-themed friends looked like.

One of the advertisements on the back notes that Betsy's purse doubles as a lip balm pot, but I doubt I'll be fooling with that since novelty lip balm is rarely good for anything.  Indeed, I can remember a few times when novelty lip balm had to be recalled on the grounds that it made girls' lips and faces break out.  So that little gimmick fails to impress me.  The next advertisement, though...that attracted my attention.

Firstly, I think that little girl is cute, if a little too made-up.  I always wonder about the children on these old advertisements, who they were and where they went in life, and if they ever told anyone "That's me on that package."  Secondly these bottle caps apparently pop off of the top of the bottles and have some sort of cutesy little secret message.  At one time this also would've gotten the doll's owner a cute little perk on the Yummi-Land website, but alas, the website is no more.  Not a huge surprise since these dolls have been defunct for almost fifteen years now.  And as a last little haw-haw, here's Betsy's illustration on the front of the box.

EWWWW, that illustration is freaky!!!  Thank goodness the actual doll doesn't look that idiotic.  MGA has a bit of a track record with lousy illustrations of their products, by the way; their Bratz Li'l Angelz were adorable (if you like Bratz), but the illustrations on the box were horrid.  LOL, indeed, Miss Emily had PLENTY to say about the illustrations on the boxes of her Bratz Li'l Angelz.  The illustrations on the 2015 Bratz boxes weren't great either.

Alrighty, that's all I want to say about the box.  Here are Betsy and Susie deboxed but still in their bottles.

Wait a minute, Susie didn't have that yellowish cark on her when I took her and Betsy out of the package!

Dang it, how did that happen???  I hope that gom will come off!  Anywho, here's how she and Betsy look next to my other bottled dolls, Cherry Fizz and Kleo Cola.  Of course I also threw in my old Pepsi bottle for good measure.

I reiterate:  dang that camera flash!  Here's Betsy and Susie out of their bottles...

...and here's how Betsy compares to Cherry and Kleo out of their bottles.  Compared to them she looks very large...

...but that's only because Cherry and Kleo are among the smallest of my dolls.  In truth Betsy is about five inches tall, smaller than my Dawn friends Glori and Longlocks.

MGA made larger versions of these dolls, but I've only seen those out-of-box so I don't know if they came in cute little bottles or not, and for me part of the fun of getting this doll was getting that stupid bottle!  Yeah, I'm weird.  Anyway, Betsy is much smaller than the dolls she outwardly resembles, Moxie Girlz Sophina and Bratz Kidz Yasmin.

She is similar in height to Li'l Gumdrop and to my unreviewed Capsule Chix figure.

She'd also fit in nicely with the Peanut Gallery.  I've stopped taking these guys to the library with me, but they're still my Peanut Gallery.

Of particular note is Betsy's similarity to my Enchantimal, Jessa Jellyfish.

I was hoping that these two could share clothes, even though Jessa has a painted bodice, but upon seeing their difference in height I now have my doubts.  I'll discuss that in more detail next week, when Jessa gets her turn at a review.

Alrighty...I think that brings us to hair, yes?  No, first I'd better reveal what this doll and her critter smell like.  They smell...really nasty.  It's not a bubblegum scent or a soda scent or any sort of edible scent.  It smells vaguely sweet and bitter and chemical all in one, rather like cheap cough syrup with a splash of weed killer thrown in.  Worse still, the scent triggers my allergies and makes me sneeze mightily, which is saying quite a bit since I already sneeze a lot regardless of the season.  One would think that wintertime would give me a reprieve from allergies, but NOOOOOOOO!!!  Luckily I can only smell Betsy and Susie if I hold them right under my nose (which I don't plan on doing), which may mean the smell will wear off further with time.  Or at least I hope it will.  My Strawberry Shortcake knockoffs stunk up the box they're staying in (Li'l Gumdrop is the worst of the three), so I'm really, really, REALLY hoping Betsy won't stay smelly and make that box stink worse!  I find it surprising that Gumdrop proved to be the smelliest of the knockoff trio, by the way, as her smell was so faint when I deboxed her.  Maybe I need to let her air out some.

Don't be ashamed, Gumdrop.  Betsy is right there with you, and it's not your fault the company made you smell nasty.  Maybe a nice bath and a spritz with some Febreeze will help.  I guess I should be thankful that neither Betsy nor Gumdrop smell like cigarettes, because I kinda, sorta, really HATE the smell of cigarettes. 

NOW we can do Betsy's hair!  Yummi-Land was released during the heyday of Bratz, so hopefully that'll mean that Betsy has soft, smooth hair.  And...

...It's very long hair for a doll this size, but I'm happy to report that it is indeed smooth and soft.  Furthermore, MGA paired platinum hair with tan skin, an unorthodox combination that I love.  MGA revisited this combo years after Betsy's day with the Bratz (my example is Style It! Tessa, with fishing wire hair and that mysterious black smudge on her nose).

If I had any complaints about Betsy's hair it would be that it's too long for a doll her size.  Hair this length on a doll Tessa's size is no biggie, but since Betsy is a half-pint her hair likes to tangle around her arms and legs and get mussed.  It also makes storing her in her bottle a bit of a pain in the butt.  I have to wrap this hair around Betsy's legs to make sure it doesn't get caught in the bottom of the bottle.  Oh yeah, up front Betsy has bangs.  How could I forget that?  Straight blunt-cut bangs that cover her eyebrows.

Here's what her roots look like.  They're fairly widely spaced, but the plugs are thick.  Betsy's scalp is painted white, and the pink guidelines for her roots show, but they only show when I part the hair.

Too long or no, this is nice hair, similar to what MGA Entertainment used to use on their Bratz.  If I get tired of the length I can always whup out a razor comb and shorten it a little or a lot.

To the face now, that face which reminds me of so many other doll lines that have been here and gone.

Once again I happened to score a doll with face paint that I'm not in love with.  At a distance Betsy's lips seem to fade into her face.  Other dolls like Chelsea Cherry Lynn and Paris Peppermint Creme have better faces.  But color preference is largely an opinion more than a fact, so let's forget the color for a minute and discuss the paint itself.  In the past I've griped about blonde dolls having blue eyes all too often, and fortunately Betsy breaks that mold with brown eyes (with pink highlights, no less).

These are ever so slightly off kilter, and they lack that MGA sauce.  They don't have the attitude of Bratz eyes (top image) or the friendly spunk of Moxie Girlz eyes.

I always thought "Moxie Girlz" was a good name for Sophina and her little friends.  They aren't as vampy or made-up as the Bratz, but their angled eyes still convey some personality.  Not as much personality as the Bratz' eyes, mind y'all, but enough.  Betsy's eyes don't have much personality at all.  They're just round, blank, generically cute eyes like the eyes that the after-the-reboot Monster High dolls had.  The paint is nice though; Betsy's eyelids are decorated with light pink sparkle shadow (which I love) and her eyebrows don't fade into her vinyl like some other dolls' brows do.  They're also multi-stroke, impressive for a doll of Betsy's size.

I always have some sort of comment to make about eyebrows, don't I???  They're just so important to a doll's face, and unfortunately very easy to screw up.  Betsy avoids that problem with her delicate little brows that are dark enough to be seen but light enough to avoid looking harsh.  Sometimes I'm glad for bangs on a doll as they can hide bad eyebrows, but in Betsy's case I wish her bangs didn't cover her eyebrows.

Now the lips.  Betsy's lipstick is darker pink than her eyeshadow, and it also has applied glitter.  It's also painted on askew.

I used to wear lip gloss like that when I was a young teen, and while the effect is pretty on a full-sized person it's not the most comfortable type of makeup to wear, as the glitter makes the gloss very scratchy.  The glitter grains also look out of scale on Betsy and obscure the shape of her otherwise cute little mouth.  This is not a problem that's unique to Betsy, by the way, as a great many MGA dolls of her time had this grainy glitter that looked hideously uncomfortable (doll shown is Miss Emily's Pink Winter Dream Meygan).

Initially I was going to give Betsy a "meh" rating in the face department and move on, but after doing some research I found a picture of her twelve-inch self.  Yeah...I don't care for the face on that larger doll at all.  The mouth is too low and too duck-lippy, and the eyes are even blanker than my smaller doll's eyes are.  So instead of saying "meh" to my Betsy I'll say that her paint is nicely applied and that I like the glitter on her lips (the big doll doesn't have that).  I just wish that her eyes had more personality, and I wish her lips were glossy instead of sparkly...or glossy AND sparkly!  Matte paint tends to look...well, like PAINT when it's just plopped on a doll without some sort of shine or gloss.  Luckily for me gloss is easy to add.

To the side, now, with ears.  Betsy's tiny little ears do not have earrings, nor would I have expected any, save for tiny little painted studs.  Even those would've been tricky on a head this size.

That shot will also give y'all an idea of what Betsy's profile is like.  Like a great many MGA dolls she has a nose that is all but nonexistent, and her profile overall is rather unusual.  Reminds me a bit of a landslide, the way it all slopes downward.

To the body we go!  Betsy has...well, she has a twig body.

Okay, it's not as twiglike as the bodies of some Barbie clones I've seen, but there isn't much here to discuss!  Betsy has five joints (neck, shoulder, shoulder, hip, hip), but they only have rotational movement.  Betsy can move her arms and neck...

...and do a front-to-back split...

...and she can sit.  That's all.

Luckily the joints, little though they are, do not feel flimsy.  Except for her ridiculously long hair Betsy is pretty kid-friendly so far.  As an addendum, Betsy has reasonably detailed hands and feet for such a small doll.  Her hands have indentations for fingers, something that even larger dolls don't always have...

Her feet have five little toes each, with small indentations for toenails.  Shame they're not painted, but as with the earrings above that would've been a tricky thing to do on this scale.

Like the majority of MGA dolls, Betsy sports high-heeled feet.  They're a little strange-looking in profile.

Betsy's twiggy little body is dressed in a simple but fairly conservative outfit, consisting of these pieces.

I'll start at the top with Betsy's headgear.  It's done up like an ice cream cone, with a bow molded onto it.  Ewww...I believe it was back during one of my Quints posts that I discussed the bad idea of combining bows with sweets.  Good thing this isn't REAL ice cream, because there's a piece of tulle sewn in.

The back is unpainted and mostly covered by the tulle.

Sometimes headpieces like this don't want to stay on the doll's head, but Betsy's headpiece stays in place pretty well.  It'll fall off if she gets jostled too much, but that's to be expected.

Now the dress.  It looks fancy, but as I said above it's pretty simply made. 

The bodice is white with sateen ribbon straps and a lace overlay that looks just a smidge sloppy when viewed up close, and a large black bow at the waist.

Okay, the bow's not that large, but it's big for a little doll like Betsy.  The black bow on the headpiece makes more sense now.

The skirt of the dress is made of sparkly pink woven fabric...the kind that snags on unkempt fingernails.  It has a nice hem, though.

The back of the dress opens and closes like most Licca-chan dresses do, with a single, long piece of Velcro.  The stitching that holds on the Velcro here is a little too obvious, but...it would've stuck out like a sore thumb no matter what color MGA used, so I won't gripe too loud.

Betsy's purse is shaped like an ice cream cone with a cherry on top, and it has a ribbon loop to drape over her shoulder.  This purse is what contains the lip gloss, but I haven't opened the purse to look at its contents.  It's likely pretty dry by now anyway.  Cute purse, though!  I can always pretend that the ice cream is strawberry rather than bubble gum.

Lastly, shoes.  I think these would classify as go-go boots, but I'm not 100% certain on that.  Either way these are simple white vinyl boots with high heels and slits down the back.

There's not a lot of molded detail, but the soles do have holes in them.  As with Dawn in the 1970's, these holes accommodate a stand.

I forgot to tell y'all that the base of Betsy's bottle doubles as a stand.  See the pegs?

It works pretty well, way better than the stand that accompanied Sila Clops, one of my Novi Stars.  Sila's feet never did fit properly into her stand, but Betsy's do.

Oopsie, I also forgot to show y'all the bottle caps!  The top of Betsy's cap looks like this, with a polka-dotted ice cream cone on the top.

The underside of the bottle cap has a paper tab that directs the owner to the website, which as I have established is no longer functioning.

Yucko, looks like the glue that holds the tab on has moldered some.  But I got the tab off anyway and got...

...a bad pun.  I like bad puns, so that suits me just fine.  I also like how this particular pun is suited perfectly for Betsy's bubble gum-flavored self.

Susie's cap is a little simpler.  It has a vanilla ice cream cone with sprinkles on top (mmmm, now vanilla, I do like)...

...and the underside has a picture of Susie. 

That's a bit of a disappointment, as I was hoping for another bad pun.  These caps are okay though, not as exciting as the package would have one think, but they are cute.  They screw on and off the tops of the bottles (just like real bottle caps), and they could easily be choked on, so keep these away from pets and small kids.

Speaking of Susie Sprinkles Seal, let's take a very brief look at her.  Notice that the crud did NOT come off her face.

She's got a cute little face, though.  She's not terribly different from the pets that came with some of the Bratz Li'l Angelz sets (here's the link to Miss Emily's post again, for those of y'all who don't want to scroll up).  There isn't really much to say about Susie except that she's cute and well-painted, and her head bobbles...and the back of her head has more of that crap on it.

Dern it, I wish I knew what that crap was!  Maybe if I did I'd know how to treat it.  I can always PAINT Susie's head, but I don't want to have to do that!

Betsy came with one other accessory, this cute but worthless hairbrush.

If I bothered to use plastic brushes on doll hair then this brush would be fine...but I don't use plastic brushes on doll hair anymore.  This would make a cute prop though, if there were any way for Betsy to hold it.

Time to sum it up, I believe!

BAD
*STINKS!!!  Not too bad, mind y'all, but bad enough that I want to keep this doll out of my face.
*Expression is pretty bland when compared to the spunky, sometimes saucy faces of other MGA dolls.
*Hair is too long for my taste, but that's more of my preference than anything.
*Susie is stained with some sort of cark, and it didn't wash off.  And for that matter, was Susie really necessary???  Do all dolls need some sort of pet???
*Can't share clothes with any of my other dolls.
*Small parts; not for children under a certain age.

GOOD
*Smell wears off with time, as long as one doesn't keep her holed up in a box.
*Hair is soft and smooth, not fishing-line nylon crap.
*Face and clothes are a bit more appropriate for kids, especially when compared to the Bratz.
*DOLL IN A BOTTLE!  Can't beat that!
*Came with a stand (the bottle's base) that works pretty well.

Long story short, Betsy is a cute doll with a cute gimmick, but I can see why Yummi-Land flopped.  There's just not much to them that sets them apart from other doll lines of the time.  The Yummi-Land dolls lacked the sass of their Bratz cousins, their jointing wasn't anything special, and they didn't come with anything to compliment the line.  No outfits or playsets that I'm aware of, no cutesy little houses for them to live in.  They're just dolls that come in bottles and happen to be scented, and as I mentioned above the scented factor isn't all that it's cracked up to be.  The bottle cap gimmick is sadly outdated due to the collapse of the Yummi-Land website, and I usually avoid novelty lip gloss altogether.  Betsy herself is well-constructed and well-dressed and well-painted, but her posing isn't great and her expression is bland.  Poor Susie is stained with God-knows-what that likely won't be coming off, and like the Monster High and Novi Starz pets she serves no real purpose other than looking cute.  So if you like small dolls for your dollhouses Betsy will fit the bill, but there are plenty of other dolls that fit the bill better.  Best to just stick with the old dollhouse dolls like what Tam has got; I just love her dollhouse dolls!  One of the newest little girls is a real pill and I'm excited to see what the rest of her housemates do about that. 

Bye for now,
RagingMoon1987