Throwback Thursday review: My Lickety Treats

I'm not going back very far for this one, just to 1997 and 1998.  Nicki and Isabel Hoffman might remember this poppet, LOL.  I personally was still heavily into Beanie Babies at the time, but my desire for an American Girl doll was alive and growing by 1998.  Yeah, after a childhood of eschewing dolls, I finally wanted one.  As I noted in February, those last few years before the new millennium were great years for budding dolly lovers like myself; in addition to the American Girls there were Amazing Maddie and her chums, and other cute stuff like Skateboard Shannon and Baby Go Boom.  While that was happening Barbie and her friends rocked cute, colorful outfits, performed simple, kid-friendly gimmicks, and puttered around in Volkswagen Beetles.  Indeed, Barbie's tagline at the time was "It's a great time to be a girl."  Yes, my dears, it was.  I hate being lumped in with the millennials now, but back around the actual turn of the millennium it was a heckuva good time.  Now...for some weird reason one of the dolls I tend to remember from this era is My Lickety Treats.  Ergo, this little girl, whom y'all met on June 29th and know as "Emily."  Emily was the most popular girls' name in Missouri during 1998, and it was a popular name all-around that year, so that's my poppet's pet name.

My Lickety Treats is a doll who...well, who licks her lollipop.  For info on this doll I turned to YouTube, both for the commercial and for Mike Mozart's opinions.  LOL, I love Mike Mozart's videos; he usually asks at the end of each video "win or fail?", and his opinions of My Lickety Treats sounded fairly "win."  Mike noted that if one lost Lickety's accessories then one still had a cute doll to play with, one that didn't require machinery or batteries or stupid attachments like Amazing Maddie has (I put in that last one, LOL).  Mike's got the cute factor right on the money, if you can get past the fact that this doll's tongue is protruding a little.

I don't think the gimmick is a fail so much, particularly since it's something we all do.  Everyone has probably licked or slurped on some sort of snack at some point in their lives, but the name of the doll is kinda stupid.  Maybe it's just me being dirty-minded, but "Lickety Treats" sounds just a hair...well, wrong.  Besides, I like pet names anyway; almost all of my Barbie dolls have 'em, for example.  Name notwithstanding, Emily is close in height to Cinnamon, the smallest of the Crissy dolls.  That would put her at about twelve inches from head to toe.  I also put in Barbie to further pound the point into the wood, since she's eleven and a half inches tall.

Since Emily was a member of the Heat Wave Club, here she is next to Rita Cheryl (before I corralled her broken ends) and Aimee...

...and next to my smallest Paola Reina doll, who joined the club late.  Mar is the same height as Emily, but their measurements will prevent them from sharing clothes. 

Like many dolls of her era Emily is blonde.  Her hair has a little curl in it, but not a ton.

She has teeny little pigtails that are decorated with purple bows.  As I've said before, hair bows make everything better.

Rooting is pretty good.  I had a tough time finding a place to part the hair, in fact.  Emily's scalp is painted blonde, so that hides the roots even more.

Emily's pigtails and bangs are a little longer all around than the rest of her hair, and I suspect they may be of a slightly different fiber as well.  Her pigtails are only slightly curly, while the rest of her hair is like...kinda like lambswool. 

Her bangs flop in her eyes a little, but in this doll's case I can brush 'em back.

Around to the face, now.  Emily has a generically cute face, even with that tongue sticking out.

Since Emily is a toy for fairly small kids she's got an all-vinyl face with painted eyes.  Like the majority of blonde dolls, she has <sigh> blue eyes, but at a distance they look violet due to a light pink ring around the pupils.  I can dig that; such a ring is unnatural, but it provides a nice break from the plain blue eyes that a lot of dolls have.  The eyebrows have three little hairs painted in, and...well, I'm kinda glad the hair covers them.  

Would those classify as kaleidoscope eyes?  LOL, I don't think so, but I appreciate the light clusters in those puplis.  Emily might look a little stoned without them.  Also notice that her eyelashes are dark blue.  I think it's so weird when dollmakers do that!  I love that she's got eyelids molded in, though!

Now here's Emily's funny little mouth.  She's got a flat nose and a pointy little chin, plus a little blush on the cheeks, but the mouth is the main focal point.  

Her lips are this pretty fuchsia shade that...maybe look a little too made-up???  I commented on made-up lips last week, so I may as well stay consistent.  In Emily's case I can pretend her lips are dyed a little from her lollipop.  Her little tongue is fabric, with a small magnet inside like so.

The magnet allows Emily to "lick" her lollipop.  It has a metal bob in it, like so.

The metal has aged, as metal inevitably will, so that's made the fabric on Emily's tongue look a little grubby.  Luckily that can be fixed with a Tide pen or a moistened toothbrush.  And that, ladies and germs, is what makes Emily who she is.  She probably wouldn't win any beautiful contests, but she's got a cute face.  The tongue is goofy, but it's not too bad.

The body review and the clothing review will be rolled into one, because Emily's clothes ARE her body!

Typical of a child's toy.  I lost count of the number of dolls my sister owned like this when we were little, but she owned plenty of 'em...and all of 'em ended up being thrown out of her crib at least once.  The dolls were mass-produced rag dolls, the kind that are soft and cute and nothing else, and their clothing was permanently attached.  So were their shoes, but Emily dodged that bullet.  She has cute purple vinyl slip-ons that fit tightly to her feet, but can be peeled off with some effort.

Yuck, I hate wearing tight shoes.  These have some nice molding on them, particularly at the laces, but no painted details. 

The cloth part of Emily's body is made of that smooth stuff that doll bodies sometimes come in.  I would presume that it's polyester, but don't quote me on that.  Her chest/blouse is mostly yellow, with white puffed sleeves that have pink polka dots.  I think those are cute; I like puff sleeves and I like polka dots.  The ends of the sleeves are ringed with purple gingham, which I also love.

Gingham ties the whole outfit together, in fact.  There's a band of that around Emily's neck, like so.

There's also a "belt" around Emily's waist, complete with a rosette.  Both of these are made of the same gingham.

Brief look at the stitching on the rosette before moving downwards.  It's a little thing, about the size of my fingertip, but it's well-executed. 

The rest of Emily's little bloomer-style shorts have gingham cuffs and gingham stripes mixed in with bands of pink and yellow and swirly polka dots.  I presume that the polka dots are supposed to look like the lollipop Emily carries.

Since Emily's body is made of cloth, she's got a tag sticking out of her butt.  One side of the tag identifies the doll and her maker.

The other side has all the laundering information.  To my considerable chagrin, I can't toss Emily in the washing machine like I was able to do with Bedsie Beans. 

Regarding the rest of the body, Emily's posing is about as crummy as they come.  One would think a soft doll could flop and sit with the best of 'em, but Emily is too tightly stuffed for that.  But at the same time she's not stiff enuff to stand without support.  She can turn her head though, so that's something.

The arms...oh, I'd say that these arms are three-quarter arms since the vinyl extends into the sleeve about an inch.  The vinyl is smooth and mostly rigid.  Her right hand is cupped slightly, with five separate fingers.

On the left hand the fingers are more hooked and there's more creases molded onto the palm.  I presume this was done to help Emily hold her accessories.

In a similar manner to the arms, Emily's legs are three-quarter length with an extra inch up inside the fabric.  She's got cute little rounded knees and a minor case of cankles.

Aren't these feet cute!  She's got rounded little nails on each toe.

Since I made a big to-do about the soles of Shifra's and Katherine's feet, here's what Emily's soles look like.  They lack definition entirely, except for those toes.  And yes, that's Rita Cheryl that Emily is sprawling upon.

Since I mentioned accessories, Emily...actually comes with two.  Y'all have only seen her lollipop, but she also has a sippy cup buried somewhere in storage.  Here's another glimpse of Emily holding it; it actually fits better in her right hand.

It's shaped like a bunch of grapes, and it has pretend grape juice in it.  Squeeze the grapes and Emily can "drink" from the sippy cup.  It's not a new gimmick by a long shot, but it's an easy and entertaining one for Emily's target group.  But more important is Emily's lollipop, because this is what she actually "licks."  It's your basic red plastic all-day sucker (yeesh, I hate all-day suckers) with one of those safety loops at the bottom and the aforementioned metal bob at the top.

I have to hold Emily's arm in the right position, but she can indeed "lick" her sucker.  See how her little tongue stretches out?

Pretty cute!  Not a gimmick I'd have thought of for a doll, but hey, it works.  I wish I could've heard the sales pitch for her, though!

Since Emily has permanent clothes she doesn't really need to be redressed, but...well, y'all know me.  I tried it anyway with some of the items I had lying around.  I was hoping that Cinnamon's winter coat might work, but Emily's hands proved to be too big.

To quote Amazing Maddie, bummeroo!  If it's one thing that all my dolls have to have, it's something warm to wear for winter.  I know they're dolls and can't feel, but I hate looking at bare arms and legs when it's cold outside.

Maybe the next outfit will work better.  I bought this for a beat-up pair of Lazy Dazy dolls, but now I'm curious about how it'll do for Emily.  Etsy shop is MamaPsCrafts.

Well, the fit isn't perfect, but she looks nice and toasty!  This particular set is sized for a twelve-inch baby doll and fits Lazy Dazy as well as My Lickety Treats.  Probably there are plenty of other dolls that could wear these too, but Emily and the Lazy Dazy twins are the ones I've got on hand now.  I will be doing a post on the Dazy girls, by the way.  That'll happen some time in the future, but right now I'm gonna wrap this up!

BAD
*Sheesh, what a funny face!  True, I've seen funnier, but some folks might not like this doll's tongue sticking out.
*No posing whatsoever.  She's not floppy enuff to sit and not rigid enuff to stand.
*Can't wear too many other dolls' clothes, though I was able to find some stuff on Etsy.

GOOD
*I personally like her funny face, LOL!
*Sturdy.  Some of the dolls I review are not fit to be toys for the modern generation, but Emily could stand up to a fair amount of punishment.
*Can't lose her clothes!  No nekkid doll here!
*Some Etsy clothes can fit, if you really, really want to change it up a bit.

Emily is cute and has lent herself to plenty of amusing situations in the Moon House, but I would not say she's for a hardcore collector.  This is a toy, plain and simple.  You hug her, you make her lick her lollipop, and that's that.  I like to hug and play with my dolls like an overgrown child from time to time, but I know not all collectors go that route.  While I wouldn't recommend this doll for collectors, I would recommend her for modern children.  As far as I can tell there's nothing that can break, choke, or poison a child, and she's got a cute (if slightly goofy) face.  Her gimmick is easy to use, and her clothes can't come off and get lost.  Her shoes CAN come off if a child has enuff hand strength, but they're unlikely to randomly fall off and get lost...ugh, I HATE doll shoes like that.  So My Lickety Treats isn't a collector's item (unless you're insane like me), but she's still a solid toy, and a character!

Hugs and lollipops,
RagingMoon1987