Throwback Thursday review: Kenner Glamour Gals

Casa Pizarro's money woes continue.  On Monday the battery on Mama's car went blooey, and since the car had a few other issues Mama had them all fixed at once, which wasn't cheap.  We all (Mama, Uncle Man-Child, and me) chipped in to pay so we're all strapped for cash.  Good thing I've got reviews scheduled until August, yes?  These little dolls are two more that Treesa sent, but not in the same box as Violet.  Shara is the blonde, Loni is the brunette, and they are Kenner's Glamour Gals.  I was pretty tickled by these, as I'd never heard of the Glamour Gals before.  I can already tell y'all that they'll be great dollhouse fodder.

The earliest Glamour Gals date to 1980, the year of Mount St. Helens, the Night of the Twisters, and a ridiculously hot summer.  That year another Kenner doll was also finding her footing, a sweet-smelling redhead named Strawberry Shortcake.  I bring Strawberry (or rather Orange Blossom) into the mix because she and the Glamour Gals were both Kenner products, but the two dolls couldn't be more different.  Strawberry saw tremendous success, while as far as I know the Glamour Gals did not.

Glamour Gals stuck around until 1983, which is actually a pretty good run for a doll line that wasn't considered a huge success.  Kenner certainly gave the line the ol' college try, supplying these little dolls with playsets, small habitats to live in, and even a Firebird.  There were eight boys and eight girls of varying races, hair colors, eye colors, and outfits.  So Kenner did try with this bunch, and no doubt there were children who liked these dolls, but apparently not a lot of 'em.  Anyway...I'm gonna largely focus on Loni during this review since she and Shara are so much alike, and because typing "Glamour Gals" over and over again gets redundant.  Loni and her girlfriends are 4.5 inches tall, meaning that they're smaller than Dawn (Topper Angie, left and Checkerboard Shannon, right) and smaller than the Rock Flowers, but a smidge bigger than the Fashion Teeners, who tried and failed to compete with Dawn.

Behold, I found a doll that makes Dawn look big!  I may have to do a follow-up to this blog post, discussing the differences between Dawn's Topper and Checkerboard selves.  Shannon is identifiable as a Dawn doll, but she and Angie have a few differences. 

I had no idea that Shannon was the same size as Angie, by the way.  When Treesa sent her to me I hadn't handled my other Dawn dolls in quite awhile, and thus Shannon was bigger than I remembered.  So Topper and Checkerboard are the same size, but I don't know yet if they can share clothes.  I bet they do, but it's always best to make sure.

Getting back to the Glamour Gals, Loni's hair is rooted, and sources claim that she's a redhead, but she doesn't look any more red-haired than I do...yeah she does in some lights.

Loni sports a center part with bangs up front, and the rest of it hangs to her rear like so.  It curls under and sticks out a bit...hmmm, looks kinda like Jessie from Team Rocket.

Prepare for trouble, and make it double!  LOL, now that I look at Jessie I realize that her hair is actually purple, albeit a different shade from her partner James's hair.  It sure looked red when I was a kid!  Anyway, the rooting is pretty good for a doll this size.  Loni has a bald patch showing, but I had to dig to root it up.

Shara's hair is blonde and parted on the left, and it has a bit more volume than Loni's hair, but the length and the rooting are the same.

The fibers are soft enuff, and because these dolls are little there's not a lot of hair to get ratted up, but because they're over forty now the hair isn't as smooth and shiny as it was.  That's to be expected; doll hair ages, 'nuff said.  I can still comb it and make it look nice.

Tiny dolls have tiny heads with tiny faces, and tiny faces are often landmines for paint gaffes, but let's look closer at Loni.  She's a devious-looking little cuss!

I dunno, those eyes look kinda handpainted!  Loni's eyes are green, shadows and all, with light clusters but no pupils.

Loni's mouth is your stereotypical fashion doll mouth, with teeth showing like Superstar Barbie's.  The paint is pretty good for a doll this tiny, though her lips are a little narrow.

Blick, I need to wash Loni's face.

Shara's eyebrows are a little less devious, and she has blue eyes and darker lips, but otherwise the paint job and the head mold are the same.  Her face is even dustier than Loni's is.

Neither of these dolls have earrings, which was probably a smart move.  I don't think their teeny-weeny little ears could handle piercings, and painted earrings would've been way hard on a scale like this.

These little faces remind me a bit of Farrah Fawcett, who was a big name in 1980.  Charlie's Angels was winding down by the end of the Me Decade, but ol' Farrah was a star nonetheless.  Regarding these heads...I haven't seen Erin, the blue-eyed brunette character, up close, but I think she may have a different head from Shara and Loni.  She's got a lot of teeth showing, kinda like Starr's friend Tracy does.

The clothing review and the body review will be one and the same, as both of my dolls have their threads molded on.

One interesting thing about these dolls is that their clothes are often both molded and fabric.  My two are poor examples of this since they're both wearing painted and molded clothes, but more often than not these dolls wore a combination of molded and cloth duds.  Each "outfit" was named, with Loni's getup being christened Totally Tangerine.  According to online sources, this outfit was produced in 1981.

Hmmm, that color looks more Basically Blush to me, or maybe Groovy Grapefruit.  Tangerine is more orange than pink, or it is if the skin of the fruit is any indication.  But either way the name is Totally Tangerine, and the shades are a touch different where the plastic type changes.  Loni's vinyl legs are a smidge lighter than her plastic body.  The difference is subtle, but it's there.

Loni's ensemble may be all vinyl, but her body does have some nice molded details to suggest clothes, stuff like creases on her sleeves and buttons and lapels on her blouse...

...and folds in the legs of her slacks.

Loni's shoes appear to be slip-ons of some stripe, with closed toes and flat heels.  Oh, and they're pink like the rest of her clothes.

Notice that Loni's ankles are painted to look like skin, by the way.  Her hands are too.  I guess it was easier to paint those features than to mold them in a fleshtone.  As we'll soon see, Shara's body took a different approach. 

Rounding out Loni's ensemble is a brown vinyl hat.

In truth the hat is just a ring of vinyl that slips down over Loni's hair.  See?  You can see the crown of her head poking through (and something that I need to scrape off the vinyl).

Still, the hat serves its purpose well, and it throws some dramatic shadows.

Shara's clothes look more tangerine to me, but her ensemble is entitled Bronze Beauty.  This outfit also dates from 1981.

Heck yeah, swimwear, just in time for pool weather...or not.  This May has been kinda cool thus far, but then so was the May two years ago, right before it got blisteringly hot!  Whatever the weather, Shara also comes with a little yellow towel, kinda like Malibu Barbie initially did.  Shara gives me Malibu Barbie vibes all over, but that may just be because I love Malibu Barbie. 

Malibu Barbie was still a thing in 1980, by the way.  So!  Being a swimsuit doll Shara is much more simplistic all over than Loni.  She has few molded details on her body and could easily wear the cloth ensembles that some of the other Glamour Gals wore.  The only molding I see is along Shara's bosom, like so.

Indeed, when I first opened Shara's package I thought she was nekkid, so dim was the light in the front room at the time!  Like Loni Shara also wears a vinyl hat that squeezes over her ample hair (this one is red with scalloped edges)...

...and she wears a pair of tangerine-colored wedge heels on her feet.  These are permanently attached, just like Loni's shoes are.

I used to like wedge heels, back in the day when I could wear high-heeled shoes.  I was never adept at wearing stilettos, but I wore the heck out of wedges and platforms.

Y'all probably saw this in some of the above pictures, but both Shara and Loni came with clear plastic X-style stands.  I've seen Barbie and some of her clones utilize stands like this, where the X bit in the center supports the legs, but these stands also have tiny pegs that fit into the dolls' feet, kinda like Dawn doll stands do.  They work pretty well.

Pretty well, mind y'all.  Shara and Loni can't balance in every pose I try to stand them in, and that takes us to joints.  For such tiny dolls the Glamour Gals are pretty well-endowed, sporting a neck joint...

...a waist joint...

...and shoulders and hips.  All of these joints rotate only but that's really good for a doll this little.

In addition, the dolls legs are wired, so I can bend their knees.  I don't do this too often because I don't want to stress those wires, but I do it every so often.

They can run, though this is one of those poses where the stand won't hold them.

They can dance, though this also requires careful balancing.

They can even...I'm not sure what Loni's trying to do here, unless she was trying to outshine my new Dawn dolls.

I took that picture on May seventh, the day I received one new Dawn doll in the mail, plus a beautiful head for that floating body that Treesa sent.  I was fussing over the two of them a bit, and I guess Loni saw the need to strut her stuff. 

I believe that covers it!

BAD
*These dolls are very small, which might be problematic if you're a fumble-fingers.
*I'm not in love with Loni's face, but that's my opinion.  Some of y'all might like Loni better than Shara.
*Uh...long discontinued?  There's not a lot bad about these dolls!

GOOD
*Few small parts to lose.  These dolls have hats, and I think Loni had a purse at one time, but they're not going to lose their clothes or shoes.
*Teeny-weeny faces have a surprising amount of personality.  Loni looks kinda snarky, and Shara looks friendly and approachable.
*I love when dolls come with stands!  The stands aren't perfect, but they're better than nothing.
*Since these dolls are small they're easily stored.  That's becoming increasingly important in Casa Pizarro.
*Surprisingly poseable!  Little dolls like this are usually pretty stiff.

I must say, Treesa had a penchant for picking out the more interesting and obscure dolls that the eighties had to offer.  There were the Blooming Dolls, and now here's these Glamour Girls.  I like the Glamour Gals quite a bit!  I've never owned a Fashion Teener, but their main flaws were their easily lost shoes and their outfits that were both tiny and frayed easily.  Glamour Gals avoid both those problems with painted shoes and outfits that are at least partially (or wholly in my dolls' cases) molded on.  Do the molded clothes cut down on these dolls' versatility?  Maybe a little, but I didn't gripe about that with my other dollhouse dolls.  Keep in mind that most of them have permanently attached clothes too.  Anyway, in addition to being small and unobtrusive the Glamour Gals had accessories, stuff like cars and dancing hovels, things that hadn't been seen since Dawn's time, so I'm surprised that these little dolls weren't a bigger hit.  Maybe they, like the Blooming Dolls, got outshone by Strawberry Shortcake and the Cabbage Patch Kids.  Still, Glamour Gals are cute examples of early eighties toys and fashion, and they'd make great little dollhouse inhabitants.  Despite my money woes, I've been casually shopping for more of these dolls on eBay, I admit it!  Camping Cutie Blair, Fancy Dancer Loni, and Golden Glitter Erin are my favorites.  And maybe Jungle Jade Jessie, since she's blonde and brown-eyed and wearing green.  Long story short, the Glamour Gals get a passing grade from me; if I were giving out letter grades I'd give 'em a B+.

Hugs,
RagingMoon1987