Throwback Thursday review: Teeny Tiny Tumbles Surprise

Happy New Year, ladies and germs!  Granted the new year is already a week old, but oh well.  I owe a debt of gratitude to Treesa for alerting me to this line of simple, cute dolls.  Teeny Tiny Tumbles Surprise dolls are little dolls that...well, tumble!  They're easy to find in lots or singly on eBay, so that's what I did.

These remind me a little of Finger Dings with their big heads and floppy legs (one of Tam's Dings is a member of the Monkees, LOL).  Unlike the Finger Dings Teeny Tiny Tumbles Surprise are not finger puppets, but like the Finger Dings their gimmick is very simple and kid-friendly:  they tumble, no batteries required.  Sorry, Jordyn.

Sorry, kiddo, but you're kinda hard to play with without batteries!  Anyway, Toy Biz made these during the nineties, and they definitely have what I like to call the "90's cheap toy" look.  I don't mean that to hate on cheap 90's toys, by the way, as a lot of cheap 90's toys were ah-maz-ing.  I was obsessed with Magic Trolls and Li'l Secrets back then, for example.  The expressions on the Tumbles vary a fair amount, with my two looking a little like my Licca-chan dolls.

The fun thing about these "90's cheap toys" is that they actually offered a lot of bang for their buck.  Magic Trolls came with a dissolving pouch that had little goodies inside, while Li'l Secrets concealed similar bags of novelties in their hair.  The Tumbles tumbled, as I mentioned twice above, and while that may not sound as exciting as the surprise items, it probably kept many a child occupied on a slow morning when it was raining outside, Mom was at work, Dad was sleeping in, Muppet Babies and Tom and Jerry Kids were reruns.  Yeah, I speak from personal experience, LOL.  Now let's get this show on the road.  The Tumbles are small dolls, close to a mini-AG doll in height.  I also threw in Camilla and a random Chelsea doll into the mix.  Camilla is closest to the Tumbles in size, but her measurements are quite different.  Marie-Grace and Chelsea are quite obviously bigger.

These dolls can have a number of hair colors (Tam's doll is a little redhead), but as is often the case with me I got two little blondes.

Hey, if Roger Daltrey and Justin Hayward can rock blonde hair, then so can my dolls.  LOL, while hair color varied among these dolls, style did not...not much.  They all have two high-slung little pigtails, and it turns out that there's a good reason for that.  There's actually a larger version of this doll, and she has little pigtails!  The pigtails are rooted and the rest of the hair is painted, meaning that the larger Tumbles can only have one hairstyle.  So it would make sense that the small dolls would all have pigtails too.  There's a little bit of variation in placement, though; Lavender's pigtails are on the sides of her head, while Pinkie's pigtails are pushed back a little.

Both of them have molded, painted hairbands that "hold" their pigtails in place.  Interestingly, Pinkie's bands are (mostly) painted to match her onesie...

...but Lavender's are not.  They're blue.

Tam noted that since these dolls tumble and thus spend a lot of time on their heads, the paint on their heads is usually scuffed.  My two lucked out, as their paint is pretty decent, albeit a little groady in places.

Both dolls have molded bangs up front, but the paint doesn't cover Pinkie's bangs very well.  The molded hair looks a little strange as a result.

Though the hairstyles on these dolls did not vary much, the faces did.  As I noted above, my two dolls look quite a bit like my Licca Castle dolls, with one caught in a giggle and the other no less happy but a little more sedate.

As far as I can tell there's no molded features in these eye wells, meaning that either of these dolls could've had eyes open or shut.  There are also a few winking Tumbles out there, so that was also an option.  Both of my dolls have light brown, almost yellow eyebrows that would match either red or blonde hair nicely, and Lavender has big teal eyes with three little lashes per eye and some shadowing along the eyelid.

Eye position can vary on these dolls, but Lavender's are centered.  Pinkie's eye paint appears to be a little faded out, and it was already minimalist to begin with, just two lines for eyebrows and two lines for eyes.

Except for shape, the mouths and cheeks of these dolls are pretty much the same.  The paint on the lips is bright pink and looks a hair ridiculous, while the cheeks look a teeny bit more natural.  I thought that Pinkie might have a scuff on her left cheek, but that turned out to be just some more crud that washed off easily. 

Some of these open mouths have painted teeth, but Pinkie doesn't have that.

There's no variation or shading in the pink like there was inside Sachiko's mouth, but Pinkie makes up for that by having a molded tongue.

The heads are tied on with those plastic ties that now hold American Girl heads in place, and the ties are cinched super-tight so Pinkie and Lavender can't turn their heads.  The ties are concealed nicely by the fabric on the dolls' bodies, but the outline is visible. 

These dolls don't really have any joints to speak of, now that I think of it.  Their arms and legs are loosely attached so that they flop, but that's about it.  The bodies are stuffed and are sewn out of this slightly shiny knitted fabric.

Such a fabric can snag if put in the wrong environment, but my dolls are fine.  The colored fabric creates the illusion of the doll wearing a full bodysuit or a onesie, but the only decorations are these ribbons at the dolls' throats.

They're your standard sateen bows, a pink one for Lavender and a yellow one for Pinkie.  The rest of the body is plain, with only a few stitched gussets for hip and shoulder joints, some shaping at the feet, and felt hands.

I would've assumed that this felt would tear off easily, but I pulled pretty hard and they didn't budge.  I guess that if some destructive little brat was flat-out determined to tear these dolls apart they could, but I couldn't.  Anyway, these limbs don't hold a pose of any sort.  They're designed to flop as the doll tumbles, and they do that very well.  Indeed, it is tough to get decent pictures of these two, as they don't want to sit up!  On the other hand, they stand on their heads nicely.

Very simple, very cute, not much to these dolls.  Their gimmick is simple and kid-friendly, and they would've made good stocking stuffers back during the nineties.  I'm not sure how well they'd hold up now since more kids are destructive little sh!ts, but they make good props for the larger dolls if nothing else.  I also like their attached onesies that can double as snowsuits on a snowy day like today!  Yep, tornadoes in December, springlike weather on New Year's Day, snow today.  When I left the house to come to work Pinkie and Lavender were cuddled up with Courtney's stuffed animals, and that's how I plan for them to stay.  

Stay warm,
RagingMoon1987