I'm still waiting for my area to get the new Monster High dolls (not that I'm expecting much from the reboot). Every time I'm at Wal-Mart I look in the toy section, and every time I come up fruitless. However, yesterday I did run into this little gal, Rose.
Rose is a Sky Dancer. Yep, y'all read right: a Sky Dancer. For the uninitiated, Sky Dancers are these fairy/ballerina chimeras that would fly. In order to make them fly one had to set them in their launcher (a handheld hunk of plastic with a pull string) and pull the string until the doll flew. My sister and I owned several of these during our childhood! I owned Moon Shimmer and Crystal Rose, and she had the giftset with Primrose, Jade, and...one of the other Sparkle Hair dolls. When properly launched they could go as high as the tops of the telephone poles. The boxes contained clear warnings to tilt the dolls away from yourself and others when launching, but since when do kids ever follow directions??? Even when properly launched the dolls were pretty uncontrollable; indeed, I never knew whether my doll would land in our yard, or in our neighbor's yard, or on the roof! Because they were uncontrollable and unpredictable, the original Galoob/Hasbro Sky Dancers caused a fair amount of injuries ranging from scratched corneas to broken ribs, and by 2000 they were recalled and production had ceased. When I was a kid I never would've dreamed that Moon Shimmer and Crystal Rose could do such things, since their wings were foam and their bodies were lightweight. Learn something new every day, don't ya!
Sky Dancers saw a revival in 2005, and another in 2013, but as far as I know they weren't all that popular, AND they were still uncontrollable and unpredictable. As far as I can tell, Rose here is the same as the old dolls. Same flying gimmick, same pull-string launcher, same plastic body and foam wings, no way to control her. I didn't pick this box up to find a maker, but I reckon they may have another recall on their hands if Rose and her sisters sell.
Do y'all have fond or not-so-fond memories of Sky Dancers? Discuss.
Much Love,
RagingMoon1987
I remember Skydancers. I don't think I ever had one but I know one of my friends did and we got in trouble more than once for trying to use it in the house, though nobody ever got hurt in spite of intentionally trying to get fingers caught in the wings and such.
ReplyDeleteActually, I had one of the dolls I found second hand, but I didn't have her launcher so I'd either share my friend's launcher or just twirl her in my hands...I forgot about that.
Oh Lordy, kids will go out of their way to get hurt, won't they! Yeah, my sister and I liked spinning our dolls with our fingers too; like you, I had forgotten about that. We never got hurt either, but I do remember a couple of close calls!
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