Bootleg!

As y'all may remember I'm fond of clone dolls, and that sentiment extends to the Cabbage Patch.  I want a Pumpkin doll so bad I can almost taste her, LOL.  The Pumpkins' faces fall soundly into the "comical" category, and...well, I just like them.  It was during a search for a Pumpkin that I ran into today's doll, which is not a clone but a full-tilt bootleg Cabbage Patch Kid...and also something of a mystery.  Meet the enigmatic Clio Teresa.

Clio resided in Athens, Greece before coming here.  Her seller conjectures that this doll was sold by El Greco, who later sold Cabbage Patch Kids in Greece.  Yep, El Greco, the same bunch that made a very pretty and hard-to-find Sindy clone.  I thought Jesmar covered all of Europe...but then Jesmar only made Cabbies for a short time.  El Greco apparently had a license to at least sell Cabbies in Greece, but I think Clio must predate that because the El Greco Cabbie I found is a legit Cabbie, made by Hasbro and sold by El Greco.  Either way Clio is definitely NOT a Jesmar, nor a Coleco, nor any real Cabbie.  Her neck isn't even marked, though one can see where the company info was scratched off the mold.  Not in this picture so much, but she's got an indentation there.

Clio's head looks like a copy of the Coleco #1 head.  She favors Kitrick Randolph Fergus quite heavily.

Since I have Randolph here now, here's how his hands compare to Clio's.  The difference is pretty obvious.

Clio's hands are vinyl, just like her head.  No soft-bodied Cabbie has those.  It's nice, semi-soft vinyl that I love to touch, but it smells kinda nasty, making me wonder what these bootleg dolls are made of.  The detailing is nice though, with cuticles and knuckles and creases on the palms visible.  Some sort of gom on Clio's knuckles is also visible.

I'm not sure what's up with this left wrist, but it looks like there's FUR molded in.  The right wrist doesn't look like that.

A quick perusal of the Pumpkins revealed that they have vinyl hands, so maybe that's why Clio appeared in a search directed at them.  I dunno.

While Clio isn't a Jesmar she clearly was meant to look like one.  Remember that many (but not all) Jesmar dolls have freckles, and just look at Clio's freckles!  Also note Clio's wonky left eye.  Quality control was asleep at the wheel when this doll was put together. 

Oh yes, and the hair.  Can't forget that, can we???  Clio's hair is yarn like a Cabbie's and like a Pumpkin's, but it's a color that Coleco, Jesmar, Tri-Ang, etc. never used.  It's cotton candy pink and doesn't match a stitch that Clio is wearing.  Not that that bothers me much.

I must say, Clio Teresa is an interesting doll.  She's lived at Casa Pizzaro about a month now and I haven't found a single doll that's like her.  I hopped on Google Images, I browsed eBay and Etsy, and I found nothing.  A friend on Failbook told me that in a way, this doll is more special even than a Jesmar because these bootlegged dolls were confiscated and destroyed for being illegal and are thus quite rare.  I found a newspaper source confirming this...but no one says anything in the article about pink hair.  Another source I found discussed a knockoff called a "Patch Kid" who had filling that burned and irritated skin, but again I could find no description of the dolls other than that they were fake Cabbage Patch Kids that looked like the real thing and cost about the same as the real thing.  That rules Clio out, because she looks different enuff from the real thing that one can tell her apart.

End of story, right?  Wrongo!!!  Indeed, the saga of Clio Teresa is about to take a very odd turn, as she is apparently one of the aforementioned bootlegs.  Did anyone notice that Clio's left foot has some brown stains???

When I want to clean stains out of fabric I use peroxide, and I promptly poured some on these stains to try to get them lightened up (it didn't work).  I rubbed the peroxide in with my thumb...and fifteen minutes later I noticed a minor burn on my right thumb.  See the patch of white skin?

The tip of my right index finger also got a little fried, but not enuff to show.  The burns didn't hurt or itch a bit, and they healed up before the day was over, but now I know a little more about what this doll can do to me if I ever get her wet!  Thank God I didn't toss her in the washing machine like I'd planned!  This mishap officially makes Clio Teresa my most dangerous doll.

I still like her, though.  I understand now why these fakies were confiscated due to them being a hazard, but I still like my pink-haired girl!  In the off chance that any of y'all run into a doll like this, don't handle her bare-handed when she's wet and you'll be fine.

Cheers,
RagingMoon1987