Time to gripe followup: finally a boy?

Yep, it's Monday again!  I don't think I'll ever outgrow my hatred of Mondays, despite the fact that Monday is my day off.  Getting the day off takes the edge off of my Mondays, but there's still that...just that Monday taint over the whole day.  On the plus side, today is Memorial Day, and when a holiday falls on a Monday I get the next day off as well...so I get to stay home tomorrow!!!  Thus this Monday is a little less Monday than other Mondays...but it's still Monday.  Opener over, I'm gonna cut right to the chase with this post.  In the last post I said that I'd bought a mini Cabbage Patch Kid, and it came last Saturday (real quick, in other words).

I was surprised that eBay didn't have a lot of these.  Indeed, there were only two of the single dolls (mine and a cute little Oriental that would've cost forty bucks) plus a set of triplets that came with a bunch of extraneous crap that I didn't need.  Maybe these weren't that popular???  Miss Emily had several, but then again maybe the small size was off-putting for children.  Or maybe everyone who has one is holding on to them!  LOL, I dunno, but there aren't a lot of these running around, especially sealed in the box.

I didn't pay much attention to the images on eBay when I bought my doll, so though I knew s/he had brown eyes, I didn't see his/her hair.  Thus I was pleasantly surprised to see that I got a brunette with tan skin!

Ah yes, dark hair like my sister and I both had when we were first born.  It's weird, because she and I were both born with dark (almost black) hair, and then it turned blonde, and then it turned dark again.  Human physiology is weird innut?!  Indeed, my sister and I both had vaguely Oriental features when we arrived, except for the blue eyes!

Right then, back to my brown-eyed, dark-haired poppet.  By now the Baby Born Brigade is itching for a boy just as badly as I am.  But first...look how small this Cabbie is compared to them!

The Baby Born Surprises are close in size to an L.O.L. Surprise figure, while the mystery Cabbie is about the size of a Lalaloopsy Mini.  I love how the shape of this box mimics the shape of the full-sized boxes, by the way, with a slanted front.  Good ol' Cabbage Patch, always sticking with what works, no matter the holding company!  Now...did I finally, FINALLY get a boy???  Pop the box open.

Miss Emily's dolls all had white diapers that were a little TOO transparent, but my doll came with a green one that conceals the diaper pretty well.  The baby also came with a bib and a bottle that do a good job of further concealing the gender.  I love the combination of green and yellow, by the way.

The green cloth diaper does a good job of covering this doll's front, but it doesn't cover everything.  In the back the painted diaper is visible...and it's blue.

I GOT A BOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  A brown-eyed brunette boy named...

...Graham!  Very original!  Graham's birthday is June 12th, right around the corner.  According to the Zapf leaflets that would make him a Gemini like Riley.

Oops, I forgot to tell y'all that these dolls sit in front of their birth certificate, effectively concealing their names?  Yep, that's the way it went with these mini dolls.  Taniyah Yasmin also had a surprise name, but usually Cabbies have names that are visible without opening the box up, like Elsie Penelope here.  I wish Elsie Penelope was mine, by the way!  Wicked Cool Toys has some neat Cabbies available, but Elsie is my favorite because she has a cute face  Most Cabbies aren't that cute in the face, but Elsie is. 

Now that Graham is out of his box y'all can see a little more clearly how small this doll is.  The Zapf babies dwarf him...

...while the Quints are closer to him in size.  LOL, as fond as I am of my Quints I'd forgotten that I have two boys in that family!

These guys might be able to share clothes!  I'll have to try that out and let y'all know how it goes.

I really was certain that I'd get another girl, so Graham's presence here is truly a delightful surprise.  I also like that his skin tone is different from the Zapf crew and from my Quints set.  Quints only came in black or white.  The Zapf babies do come in a medium skin tone that's lighter than Addison's and darker than Quinn's and Peyton's and Riley's, but I haven't gotten one yet, and since the Zapf babies are almost thirteen bucks a pop I've been trying not to buy any more.  Now that I finally have a boy in my miniature nursery I can hold on to that promise a little better.

Warm regards and happy Memorial Day,
RagingMoon1987

Time to gripe: where have all the boys gone???

Well, ladies and germs, it's hotter than hell in the Bootheel again (the storms on Tuesday fizzled out and did NOTHING to cool things down), and my AC is on the blink again, and waiting for the repairman to come is taking forever.  I'm thus hot and itchy and tired of watching leftist Missourians' heads explode over the new abortion laws, so being the escapist that I am I've thrown together a post for y'all's enjoyment...or eye-rolling, take your pick.  I haven't done a griping post in awhile, so that's what I'm going to do.  My post on the Baby Born blind bags was not a popular one, but I did comment on those fairly recently.  Here's my first girl, Riley.

If y'all bother to reread my post about that you'll see that I was desperately hoping for a boy.  I also was hoping for a boy when I deboxed my Cabbage Patch Surprise Newborn, but that one too turned out to be a girl, albeit an adorable little smirky girl named Taniyah Yasmin.

Miss Emily got one boy with her Surprise Newborn Twins, but she notes in a later post that Howard Edwin was the only boy she got in any of those blind bag/blind box things.  Cabbage Patch Kids are usually good at representing both genders, and yet with their blind bags they fall a little flat, producing a plethora of girls and very few boys.

As for me, I've bought a few more Baby Born Surprises since I think they're cute and since I'm still hoping for a boy, and guess what?

From left, their names are Peyton, Addison, and Quinn, and they're all GIRLS!!!  Every danged one of them!  They all look different and they all came wrapped in different snugglers (Quinn's is a bee!), but they're still all girls.  Boys are a little more prevalent among the still-popular L.O.L. Surprises, but again I've yet to get a boy in any of my pods.

I do tip my hat to MGA Entertainment for making a nice range of ethnicities though, and for not getting stuck in an eternal "dogs and cats only" rut for their pets.  I ended up with two dogs for my first two cracks at the pet pods, but there are other options too, like this horse.

Her name is...<pauses to read her leaflet>...Neigh Majesty.  Neigh?  Neigh???  That is arguably the most uninspired name for a horse I've ever heard!!!  Anywho, Neigh is one of those "fuzzy" pets available right now.  Here's what she looked like when sheathed in her fuzz.

I much prefer the fuzz to the jelly that the little extra outfits are still stored in.  But as usual, I digress.  Speaking of cats, dogs, and blind bag babies, here's a relic from my childhood.

Kitty Surprise!  Miss Emily reviewed a couple of these too, and if I recall correctly most of the babies she had were girls.  There WERE a few boys mixed in there, but not a lot.  I think I also read that if any twins happened to be born, they were always girls.  Sheesh, that's a lot of estrogen!  Anyway, I bought Toffee here as a complete set with three kittens, and...

...girls outnumbered boys here too!  I got two girl kittens and one boy, not counting the pink and purple "foster."  By luck of the draw, I managed to get a boy that time, though it did help that I could see the color of his ribbon; blue is for boys (of course) and pink is for girls.

The Magic Nursery dolls of the early nineties were also largely female.  Boys DO exist and they're plumb cute (this one reminds me a little of Leo Sayer with that mop top), but I've yet to see one opened up in any of the blog posts, or in any of the videos on YouTube.  I refer y'all once again to Miss Emily's series of posts (first one is HERE), and to this YouTube video, and this one, and this one.  The woman in that last video notes that she had a ton of Magic Nursery dolls during her childhood, and the only boys she ever got were in the miniature sets that were available.  No stuffed boys at all.  This collection does have a few, but the boys were probably hand-selected by the collector rather than unwrapped, and they're STILL outnumbered!  If the boy dolls were sentient, I wonder if they'd all feel like this little boy did when he learned he was getting a third sister?  I know I would've felt that way if I'd been surrounded by brothers!

What gives?  Some little girls happen to like boy dolls!  I liked boy dolls when they were given to me; indeed, one of my favorite dolls as a kid was a boy.  As a child I was not a dolly lover, as I've established ad nauseum, but one day after school (I was a first-grader at the time) Daddy hauled off and surprised me with a baby doll.  It was a little bald boy, clad in pajamas and a soft blue bathrobe.  He did everything that baby dolls of the mid-nineties did:  he drank, he wet, he went to sleep when I reclined him, he smelled like talcum powder, he had the sweetest little smile, and he was all-vinyl for bathing.  I was delighted with him and I wish I still had him.  I think I should point out that William, as I called him, was NOT a blind bag doll, but the fact that he existed at all pleased me.  I guess modern-day toy companies assume that little girls would prefer a doll that's a girl like them, and that makes sense.  However, blind bags and blind boxes that advertise boys ought to make boys a little more prevalent, just as boy babies are more prevalent in real life.  Indeed, baby boys seem to outnumber baby girls a little every year, and that appears to be a completely natural process...or it appears to be the natural thing in the British Isles.  Other parts of the world...well, let's just say that some countries do bad things to baby girls, because a lot of families want a boy to carry on the name.  But anyway, I hope that the doll companies will take note and start making more boys.  It's just...more fun to have that element of surprise, ESPECIALLY when the gender is supposed to be a surprise to begin with!

Ah well, can't have everything, I guess.  I suppose I should cheer up and be pleased that the Hairdorables are releasing a line of boys.  The Hairdorables are the absolute LAST line that I would've predicted to have boys, but they appear to be doing just that.  They're going to be named the HairDUDEables, which is almost as stupid a name as "Neigh" is, but they look like they're going to be a lot of fun like the girls are, complete with real rooted hair and real fabric clothes in bright, splashy colors.  I haven't bought as many Hairdorables as I have Zapf babies and L.O.L. Surprises, but I still am quite fond of them and I hope the boys are as popular as the girls.

As a last little addendum, I found a Jakks Pacific Cabbage Patch Kid Babyland Mini on eBay.  I have a sneaking suspicion that it too will be a girl, but...we'll see.  When s/he arrives there'll likely be a postscript put in.

Cheers,
RagingMoon1987

On UglyDolls and Baby Born Surprises

Ah yes, May 11th.  If you're a tornado buff like I am it's a date that will live in semi-infamy (Waco and Lubbock, Texas both got hit on this date, but in different years).  If you reside in Minnesota, it's Statehood Day; Minnesota was admitted to the Union in 1858, which helps explain American Girl Kirsten Larson's backstory a bit more.  Now, if you belong to neither of those groups, then it's...Saturday!  Bloviating over, I should probably inform y'all that this is one of my more disjointed posts.  It starts off with an enthusiastic endorsement of one product and ends with an enthusiastic endorsement of a completely different product.  You've been warned.

Now then, on a recent foray into the local Wal-Mart I saw this poster, just inside the door.

Heckyeah, it's the UglyDolls!  I first got acquainted with these guys in Doll Reader, first with a brief blurb in the For Young Collectors section, and then a couple of months later when someone got a picture of Nicole Richie and Tray together.  I never was a big fan of Nicole Richie or her famous father, but I thought "If UglyDolls are good enough for her they're good enough for me."  I found Wage at Hastings and made him my BFF during my first semester at SEMO campus.  Here's how he compares to the current Wage.

The new Wage has decal eyes and a slight smile on his face, and his fabric is this soft, fuzzy stuff that I love to touch.  By contrast, my old Wage is made out of distressed fleece in a more faded shade of orange, and he wears a blank expression with stitched-on eyes.  He and his cronies all had a card that listed a personality, and the personalities...well, let me just say that I wish I could've been a fly on the wall when these personalities were being written out.  For example, Tray has three brains (one for each eye) and loves blueberry pie, OX loves to give hugs and kisses and is also something of a thief, Babo is dumb, loving, curious, and mischievous, and Wage is a friendly workaholic who hides a happy spirit behind his empty expression.  The new dolls come with envelopes, as y'all probably saw in the new Wage's lap, but I have no idea what that's all about.  The new dolls also come in several different sizes (as did the old ones), and these two here can talk.

I thought Ugly Dog used to be orange!  Either way, I'm pleased as punch that the UglyDolls are back in town.  Maybe they never went away and I just didn't realize it, LOL.  Anyway, these guys are apparently so popular now that they even made it onto some clothes for little kids.  See?

I wish that set came in Kissy's size!  Anyway, the surge in UglyDoll popularity appears to be related to a movie that's coming out soon, so I think now would be a good time to say...THAT I LIKED THE UGLYDOLLS BEFORE THEY WERE COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  LOL, gotta get my hipster moment in there somewhere!  LOL, these guys were probably more popular than I realized, because they have popped in and out of other media in the past.  Ice Bat appears to be particularly popular, as he had cameos in The Smurfs and a couple of other movies that I know nothing about.  There's even a blog, entitled Adventures in Uglyworld, which I'm going to have to read a little closer.  But just the same, I hadn't been seeing the UglyDolls anywhere and thus seeing their appearance in Wal-Mart came as a pleasant surprise.  I was so tickled about this that I bought one of the blind bags.

Oh yeah, I also got a Baby Born Surprise.  I saw a review for one of those...uh, somewhere and thought "Yep, gotta have one!"  But let's look at the UglyDoll first, since that blind bag is a lot simpler and since I made such a hooplah about them.  I see my old buddy Wage in there!

I like this package, as it appears to have been modelled like a paper bag.  The front has a perforation across it, like so.

What the heck, let's tear this open!  When one opens blind bags one usually finds the item wrapped in another bag, but not this time!

I got Wage's best friend, loyal and not-so-bright Babo, whom I also saw in stuffed form at Wal-Mart.  He was one of the biggest ones, about my Wage's size.  I also got a collector's sheet and a couple of other little paper bobs.  The slip with Babo's image on it shows what happens when Babo eats certain foods.

Notice that he's rainbow-colored at the end.  THAT would make a cute limited edition figure, if Hasbro decides to go that direction.  Now this other little bob, according to the collector's sheet, can also vary from character to character.  I happened to get a blue envelope with what appears to be a chocolate cookie on the tag.

My other options look like this.

Included inside that envelope is...I guess some sort of sticker with a foodstuff?  That's what the collector's sheet appears to imply.

If y'all looked closely at the image of Babo above then you'll know I got the milk carton.  The milk carton with...I guess that's supposed to be Ugly Cow on the front.

Mmmm, looks like it's chocolate milk too!  I do wonder though, what exactly the point of that sticker is.  Am I supposed to stick it to Babo and make it look like he's holding the milk carton?

That works okay, and Babo looks like he's pleased with the idea, but the sticker is already wanting to peel off.  Frankly I think the sticker could've been left out, but I like the figure.  Babo has a nice weight to him, instead of just being HOLLOW like some blind bag figures are, and he's got a cute expression.  I'm also glad I got a character I'm not so familiar with, though I could've done that with any of the figures.  Look very closely at the available characters.

Wage got left out!  He's on the front of the package, but he's not included in this first wave of figures.  That's kind of a bummer, because I'll always have a soft spot for my goofy-looking orange comrade.  I do like Babo, though!  He'll fit in nicely with my collection of other blind bag bobbles.

I think Babo could get along pretty well with Chalkboard Clawdeen and Pointyfrost 2-30, as odd as they all are.  But then again I reckon he'll make fast friends with Sonny Angel too, as Sonny's main goal in life is to make people happy.  And what makes someone happier than making a nice new friend?

Right then, on to the Baby Born Surprise pod.  I'm particularly excited about this doll because boys and girls are both an option.

HOWEVER, I'll bet y'all twenty bucks American that I've got a girl.  Dolls like this are almost always girls.  All of Miss Emily's Magic Nursery dolls were girls, for example (posts are visible HERE and HERE), as was her Sweet e.Baby.  She did get one boy in her Cabbage Patch Kids Surprise Newborn set though, so maybe I'll get lucky.  I do like boy dolls, as they're not the easiest to find.  I also retain a soft spot for boy baby dolls because my father surprised me with one when I was little.  He was all-vinyl and came dressed in a diaper and a bathrobe, PERFECT for bathing.  He smelled of talcum powder and had an adorable little face, and I just loved him.  I wish I knew what kind of doll he was, because I wouldn't mind having one.  He MIGHT have been a Zapf doll, as he was highly similar to the current dolls in the My Little Baby Born line.

Anywho, let's get this baby born.  I'm not looking forward to this because the package is one of those that you have to cut open and possibly cut yourself on sharp plastic.  Dammit.

*****

Alright, there's that part done, and I'll add that I managed to do this without cutting myself.  Remove that blankety-blank plastic shell, and you've got a pink bundle.

Nuts, if both boys and girls are supposed to be in there then why didn't Zapf pick yellow or green for this blanket?  I still am solidly a member of the "blue for boys, pink for girls" camp, even though I myself grew weary of pink when I was small.  Anyway, the top of the bundle is held closed with a blue satin ribbon, and the ribbon is in turn held in place with...a danged plastic tack!

I know why that's there, but it still annoys me some.  Luckily the tack wasn't too tight, and one snip was all it took to undo that bow.  The blanket then unwraps (notice that it's quite cute)...

...and inside the blanket is...what appears to be a thin plastic egg.  Zapf took ZERO chances with this kid, keeping the identity hidden to the bitter end.

The back of this egg-thing slips off easily, and there within is my new baby and his/her extras.

I'm getting strong girl vibes with this little poppet, but let's take a look at her collector's sheet first.  The first side shows the twelve swaddle options that are available (I got the berry ice cream cone), the options on the diapers (which change color in water), the boy and girl bottles, and the various hairstyles that are all super-cute.

The back has the birth certificate, a list of gender-neutral names that are determined by eye and hair color, and the ways to determine the doll's birthday and favorite food. 

Alrighty, so eye color and hair color determine what this child's name will be.  S/he has a...somewhat boyish 'do, sort of like the topknot hair on a Kewpie doll.

I'll have to wash that cark off this doll's eyes to get the eye color, but first let's look at that bottle.  I said above that I was getting strong girl vibes with this doll, and...

...indeed it is a little girl.  A little girl with light brown hair and eyes that are still covered.  MGA Entertainment did this secret eye thing once before with their Bratz Li'l Angelz Secret Surprises, and even though the gimmick had a few problems then I'm glad to see it revived.

The main issue with this stuff is that if left in place for too long it leaves the eyes muddy in appearance, as was the case with Miss Emily's Secret Surprises doll.  In fact, some of the current Zapf dolls already have this problem.  I think this baby's eyes look a little strange like this anyway, so let's get that gom off of there.  This is a one time thing, by the way; once the eyes are open they stay open.

*****

Now!  Now she looks okay!  She's got pretty amber eyes and dainty little lips with pretty translucent pink paint.

 Light brown hair and light brown eyes equals the name...

...Riley!!!  I can dig that!  Washing the stuff off Riley's eyes was a cinch, by the way.  I didn't even have to rub hard.  Wetting Riley's face also meant that I got her diaper wet, and that in turn revealed her favorite food.

I thought that those were little grapes, but they turned out to be purple flowers that look like grapes.  Either way that proved to be fitting, because purple flowers on Riley's diaper mean that her favorite food is...

...grapes!  I can dig that too since I love grapes.  The temperature of the water doesn't affect the color change, by the way.  Sometimes things change color with warm or cold water, but in Riley's case it doesn't appear to matter.  The only thing left to do now is determine when this child's birthday, and I get to help choose that.  Recall that Riley came swaddled in the ice cream cone, which dictates that she is a June baby.

The day, now...I get to choose that.  The slip suggests that I use my favorite number.  The number four symbolizes completeness in my life, so June fourth it shall be.  This in turn means that Riley is...

...the first person to start singing "Gemini Dream" dies, plain and simple.  John Lodge was not on his A-game when he wrote that one.  Musical jokes aside, my Riley is a Gemini.  I was kind of hoping she'd be a Libra like her "mommy," but can't have everything!  For the record, though, October babies always come swaddled in a UNICORN!!!  Unicorns rule.  I like ice cream cones, I like rabbits, I like bumblebees and flowers and hot dogs, but that unicorn swaddler is my favorite of the bunch.

Regarding size, Riley is a good size for a blind bag doll, being quite a bit bigger than Sonny Angel.

Sonny isn't letting this size difference stop him from making another new friend, though!

Final thoughts???  Well, despite the fit that I threw about the return of the UglyDolls I think the Zapf package is the winner here.  Unless the next wave of UglyDolls has Wage involved I probably won't bother with any more of those.  Babo himself is a fine little figure, but the two other surprises that come with him are mere slips of paper that could do to be left out.  I think I'll stick to the plushies from now on, because they're what I'm familiar with.  Riley, though?  Oh my, I like her and her tiny Zapf friends better than L.O.L. Surprises, and that's saying something because I'm quite fond of those.  I'll probably get a few more of these, partly because I'd like to have a boy and partly because they're just cute.  They're also of decent quality, maybe not as nice as Sonny Angel is, but decent enough that they won't come apart during playtime.  Apparently there's already a second wave of these surprise babies out, so hopefully Zapf has another hit on their hands.

The next couple'a weeks look to be quite busy here at the blog, so y'all keep your eyes peeled!

Peace, love, and cherry bombs,
RagingMoon1987