So random, October '24

It's easier to do these random posts by the month, so that's exactly what I'll do.  That said, glorious October has come and gone.  October, as I've stated countless times before, is my favorite month.  It's Skye Kitty's favorite month too; her birthday is tomorrow.

I promise this one won't be solely for the Cabbies, though they WILL be in this post.  So I'll start on...actually, I took this picture on September 30th.  Hallie was settling into her new home.

Hallie is a Hopscotch Hill School doll, just like Logan.  Spoiler alert, I own all four of these dolls and plan on reviewing them in the semi-distant future.  More spoilers, these dolls are looser than a hooker's legs, thus why Hallie is sitting.

That same evening Morgan and Beryl June decided to hang out for awhile. 

I think they're discussing their hair.  They both have dark, curly pigtails, and they both like wearing satin bows.  Piddling little stuff, but that's how friendships grow.  Morgan was also impatient to meet Vincent...and she'd end up having to wait another twenty-five hours.

October 1st.  Since October is breast cancer awareness month, I tried to gather my dolls in pink for a group picture.  It didn't go too well, so I broke the group up for separate pictures.  Here's my big girls, Alana (Mattel Saucy), Sabine (Saucy Walker clone), and Rose (Mattel Baby Won't Let Go).

The middle-sized group consists of Talia and Baby Needs-A-Name standing in the back, and Cara Raelean, Elsie, and Alice Helene seated in the front.

Carol Kasey, Whimzee,  Tallulah, and Bailey represent the little girls.

Whew, that was a lot more work than I expected!

Also, four of my Cabbies have birthdays on October 1st.  Yep, four.  From left, the birthday Kids were Cleopatra Chantale, Hugo Jack, Nathan Hunter, and Shelley Fred. 

As I've probably said before, the first days of September, October, and November are all common birthdays for Cabbage Patch Kids, especially these older ones.  Oddly, I don't own a Kid with a September 1st birthday. 

October 2nd.  Amanda Jane wanted to hang out by my tablet, but she was a little shy about having her picture taken.

October 4th.  Luna Macy wasn't about to let Amanda Jane show her up, and she has no reservations about being photographed.

Peek-a-boo!

October 7th.  Monday's theme was double day, referring to Cabbies who have pigtails or braids.  The yarnies are these four, Valencia Rose, Titania Rosalind, Alexandra Claire, and Elisabeth Clara.  

Leslie Emily, Beryl June, and Margot Madeline also have pigtails, but they're a little different from the above trio.  Leslie and Margot are Cornsilk Kids, and Beryl is an obvious popcorn.

October 7th was also the day that Isolde and Marlo arrived in the mail.  Margot Madeline wasted no time getting acquainted. 

If y'all reread my mishmash box post then you'll have know that Margot's size freaked Marlo out a bit.  Margot didn't let that slow her down!

October 9th.  Hurricane Milton was assaulting Florida and my leg was spider-bit.  I was readying Danica and River Song for their fall clothes, and they both took a shine to Ernest John. 

I kinda wondered if I'd missed the mark with River Song, as she's not exactly a dead ringer for her namesake.  But according to my friend from Newfoundland I did just fine.  I'm only now noticing that these three all have different eye colors, by the way.  Usually I end up with at least one duplicate.

October 10th.  I took this one as I was stumbling around, getting ready for work.  I was semi-in a hurry and didn't think to straighten everyone's hair bows.

Lulu, Marta Angela, and Lola.  I like to call these the tiny tufties, because they've got tufts of hair but they're smaller than Ernest John, Alice Helene, and Lina.  Marta didn't know it at the time, but I was shopping for an adoptive brother or sister for her.  Every so often I go shopping for those Cuddle On Delivery dolls...just for the heckuvit.  They have a LOT of personality, just like Cabbage Patch Kids and the later Magic Nursery dolls.

October 12th.  I was working on two different blog posts (this one and a future one), and I threw the three I had with me together.  

As usual Ernest John is surrounded by girls.  This time in addition to River Song he's got Gillian Ida by his side.

October 14th's Monday theme was crew cuts and other boy haircuts.  Stuff that ISN'T the standard loopy 'do that most old Cabbies have.  The only original ones I can name are Gavin Andrew (who has a flat-top) and Kory Aryan, whose hair is slicked back.

All my other boys are loopy or bald.  Kory would make an adorable pirate for Halloween, by the way!  It just kinda hit me.

Also on the 14th, I paired two of Mattel's soft dolls from the eighties.

Vincent is a My Child doll, and Chelsea is a Hot Looks doll.  They don't have much in common, and indeed the two occupied different niches in the dolly world.  Vincent was a Cabbage Patch competitor, and Chelsea was a fashion doll. 

October 15th was the first truly cool day of the season, as evidenced by Rita Cheryl's jacket.

It was one of those "cuddle with a pet or a friend" days, and Rita Cheryl chose Ginger.  Rita Cheryl's Boston T-shirt and TARDIS leggings made quite a splash on Failbook, by the way; apparently I have more Boston fans among my friends than I thought.  Don't look back.

Later that same evening Lina joined Rita Cheryl. 

Nothing more to say about them two.  Just a couple'a friends hanging out on a chilly autumn's eve. 

October 20th, 3:05 a.m. local time.  My leg was aching and preventing me from sleeping, so I threw Yes up on YouTube (I selected "Time and a Word") and dragged out two of my shrinking violets.

I'm not sure what Isolde and Lady Doolli bonded over, but they seem to have hit it off.  I usually do not review dolls that I've received as gifts because it feels like looking a gift horse in the mouth, but I may have to eat my words with Lady Doolli.  Her posing is phenomenal, especially for such a small doll.

Speaking of posing, I'm a little embarrassed to admit that Isolde is only my second Made to Move Barbie. 

I also have Cassandra, one of the inaugural Made to Move dolls, but she's in storage.  I need to bust her out and talk a bit more about these bodies in detail.  Made to Move is nothing new by now, but...well, it'll give me something to do on another night when I can't sleep. 

October 21st.  Another Bae Day Monday, this one for single ponies.  For that I've got Candela Laura, Idalia Gale, and Allie Kathleen. 

Single braids were also an option, but that's not a style I own.  I don't own double braids either.

Later that same day my eyes were drawn to Booful Beans and how his coloration matches what Candela Laura is currently wearing. 

I love yellow and white!  I used to say that those would be my colors when I got married, but now I don't think too much about that sort of thing.  Still, I love the combo.

October 23rd.  Skye Kitty was my partner in crime that day.  Before we left the driveway she decided to strike a pose with a friend.

The hippie gnome's wire-rimmed glasses make me think of John Lennon, so I named him John.  He now resides at my workstation, along with the flag of Israel and a gnome that matches the flag.  I haven't named that gnome yet; he'll need a Hebrew name.

October 24th.  I had Ayame with me that day, and she wanted a picture in front of these trees.

Ayame is a doll based off of the figures in Walt Disney World's It's a Small World attraction, only she doesn't sing that stupid song.  She will be getting a review in the semi-distant future.  Oh yeah, and here's the trees.  They're on the nursing home campus, a stone's throw north of the library. 

October 25th.  Bonnie is about five inches tall, and she fancied a loftier vantage point.  She found it.

Why it was on Baby Needs-A-Name's head is anyone's guess. 

October 26th.  Candela Laura and Karen Sheila before preparing for Halloween...

...and after dressing up!

Unsurprisingly, Mama supplied these.  I had been sizing up Karen's witch outfit myself, but ultimately talked myself out of it due to cost.  Mama, however, had no such reservations and I'm very glad.

October 27th.  Chelsea chillaxes.

That evening I was trying to decide whether to add Zizi and Elkie to my Hot Looks mix to round out the three looks.  Chelsea was advertised as looking best in warm tones, Zizi preferred hot shades, and Elkie was all cool tones.  But ultimately I decided against it.  I already have three of these dolls, and they'll look good in anything. 

October 28th.

Woooooo, Bonnie's a ghoooooooost!!!  Bonnie will be popping into the blog a lot in the coming months.

October 29th is a Failbook memory from six years ago.

Mama and I took a trip to Poplar Bluff that day.  I picked up some pastel eye pencils for Freya (and never used them), and then we ate at Colton's.  Those who are familiar with Colton's will know that they keep small buckets of peanuts on their tables, and in this case Freya decided that she wanted to play in them.

Now we're to today, October 30th.  Some of my dolls here at Casa Pizarro are getting ready for Halloween.  Camille and Jettivee will be joining Candela Laura and Karen Sheila for trick-or-treating...

...while Elisabeth Clara and Shelley Fred will be staying in.

Idalia Gale wore Elisabeth Clara's dress last year, but the two bows work better with Elisabeth's simple pigtails.  Remember that Idalia has a single, very thick updo.

It's actually predicted to rain a lot tomorrow, so I doubt there will be much trick-or-treating.  I don't need the sugar anyway...BUT I WANT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!  Rain means it'll be a nice night for a warm drink and a YouTube binge, so I'll do that instead.

Cheers, 
RagingMoon1987

Hello, baby brother or sister!

I never have seen any of those The Land Before Time movies all the way through, but I do remember that scene in the second flick where Ducky talks to her "baby brother or sister" who was, at that moment, still unhatched (it ended up being Chomper).  I loved and still love Ducky, by the way; she's so innocent and genuine.  Anyway, there's not much to the Cuddle On Delivery dolls, other than their charismatic faces.  All Marta Angela has to her name are her diaper, her hair bow, her name bracelet, and her keyring.

Indeed, I usually just leave Marta in Olivia Reese's care.  Neither of them seem to mind terribly.

Every so often I decide to browse eBay for other variants of this doll, and this month I decided to try again for a boy.  This little doll is white and teal-eyed, as apposed to the dark, butterscotch-eyed Marta, but that matters naught to them.

This one's funny.  He/she is derping, kinda like Idalia Gale does.  They kinda look like they're gonna lick the window, like I did when I was a kid.

Now...remember how I said that these Cuddle On Delivery dolls gave Cabbage Patch Kids some serious competition?  I even see the similarities in their names!  Both lines have a first name and a middle name.  The original Cabbies were usually named old-fashioned names (or stuff that didn't really fit a child doll, like Cleopatra Chantale), and C.O.D. followed that trend as well.  I saw a little boy on eBay named Lucas Angus, and girls named Raphaela Celine and Victoria Anastasia.  Lordy, more big names for little dolls!  I'm glad that Marta got saddled with something easy to remember.  So let's bust this baby out of its box.  Remember that pink stamps on the diaper mean a girl, and blue stamps mean a boy.  And...

...yay, I got a boy!  The eBay seller admitted that this little guy had been lightly used, but I couldn't see his stamps on the listing.  However, I did see them through the plastic window, so I knew before opening that he was a boy.  I couldn't see his name, though.  It is...

...wait a minute, what???  That's definitely not a boy's name.  This doll IS secondhand, so maybe someone threw her in the wrong diaper before boxing her up...or someone threw HIM in the wrong bracelet.  I doubt that though, since those ID bracelets fit tightly and are hard to undo.  Anyway, Athena Roberta has head mold D, and that head is christened "So Silly" by PrillyCharmin.  Athena's Baby Face counterpart would thus be the hard-to-find So Silly Sally.  Good thing I'm not planning on pairing either Marta or Athena with their analogous Baby Face dolls, LOL!  So I got another girl, albeit one in a boy's diaper.  Of course that matters naught to Athena and Marta.  They're already plotting all sorts of mischief.  Olivia Reese is gonna have her hands full!

It should probably not surprise any of y'all that I am now looking for a red-haired Cuddle On Delivery doll.  Doesn't look like there's too many of 'em, but one can look, right?  Maybe I'll find a red-haired boy.

Love,
RagingMoon1987 

What Mattel did to Tyco

Well, maybe things will be quiet around here and maybe they won't.  True, I won't be reviewing stuff left and right like I did, but that makes room for more "just for the helluvit" posts.  This post concerns a random picture I recently took, of these three.

From left, Marta Angela, Shelley Fred, and Olivia Reese.  These three are staying at Casa del Luna unless I say different, and as far as I know they're disinfected and ready to move to Rent House.  Disinfecting consisted of dumping rubbing alcohol on both Marta and Olivia, and as a result they're still damp to the touch and slightly smelling of chemicals, but then I happen to like the smell of rubbing alcohol.  I don't know if dousing my dolls with it will keep mold from spreading or even if these two were moldy; the mold in my house is pretty fickle.  It only wants...IT ONLY WANTS MY VINTAGE DOLLS, DAMMIT!!!  Why, why, WHYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!

Ahem, where was I?  Oh yeah, the bulk of this post will concern the unusual relationship (or lack thereof) between the Cabbage Patch Kids and Cuddle On Delivery, but Mel Birnkrant-designed dolls are like Christmas lights.  When one goes out they all go out.  Photo op!

Dammit, Moon Girl, get to the point!  Ardent followers of this blog probably know a little history of the Cabbage Patch Kids by now.  Initially produced by Coleco, became ridiculously popular in 1983, stayed popular throughout the eighties, Coleco went under in 1988, Hasbro took over production of the Cabbies, all that jazz.  I'd estimate that about half of my Patch is from the Coleco era, largely because they're the easiest to find at a reasonable price!  LOL, people were killing each other to get just ONE of these dolls in 1983, and now they're pretty much everywhere.  Shelley Fred, Cara Raelean, and Hugo Jack are just three of mine!

Hmmm...there's them three, then there's Idalia Gale, Andrea Doria, Valencia Rose, and Stella Rae.  Seven Coleco Kids, in a Patch that will soon number twenty-one.  So a third of my Cabbies are Coleco, not half.  As I've said before, I'm not particularly picky with my Cabbies.  I will admit though that I prefer the ones with yarn hair...or with short hair, like Leslie Emily and Kory Aryan have.  Short hair is easy to maintain, as is yarn hair.  Just ask Olivia Reese.

Not that I hate Cornsilk Kids, of course!  They're just a little higher maintenance. 

Back on topic, Cuddle On Delivery didn't pop out of their magic mailboxes until 1997.  <pauses to think>  I think I was in third grade by then, but I don't s'pose that matters much, LOL.  Anyway, Tyco was the toymaker who took on the Cuddle On Delivery gang.  They had a lot of similarities to the Cabbage Patch Kids, being soft dolls with vinyl heads that came from some magical, far-off venue, but they weren't dead ringers.  See?  It's easy to tell them apart.

Expression is kinda a big deal for me, so I'll note that both Cabbies and C.O.D.s had plenty of that.  I think Marta's brothers and sisters had...eleven or twelve different heads.  I counted twelve, but two of the heads are the same, and two of the heads were prototypes so I guess technically there were ten heads.  And I don't know how many heads Mattel had for the Cabbies, but they also varied a lot.  None of them were ever sad, though.  Some Cuddle On Delivery dolls had sad little pouts.  Or they lolled their tongues out like Idalia Gale does, OR they have their first tooth, like Hugo Jack does.  Marta Olivia is one of those last ones.  

Like Cabbies, Cuddle On Delivery had codes assigned to their varying head molds, though they utilized letters instead of numbers.  Hugo Jack has a #4 head, while Marta's head is Cuddles Mold A.  PrillyCharmin says this mold is called So Innocent, though I think she may have done that to tie Cuddle On Delivery in with their Baby Face cousins.

The Cuddle On Delivery dolls were ridiculously popular.  As far as I know parents weren't getting into fights in stores over these, but they WERE good sellers.  Mattel didn't like that.  By 1997 they had the rights to the Cabbage Patch Kids, and while people weren't fighting each other in the isles for Cabbies by then the chipmunk-cheeked poppets were still pretty darn popular.  But mystery names and genders were unheard of for Cabbies; indeed, it would be another twelve years before dolls like Taniyah Yasmin popped out of Mother Cabbage.  Cuddle On Delivery dolls, on the other hand...their gender was a secret when they were in their box, and so was their name.  If you reread my review of Marta Angela, then you will know that the stamps on C.O.D.s' diapers were what determined gender.  Blue was for boys, and pink was for girls.

On the doll's wrist is a...well, it's kinda like a hospital bracelet, but I don't remember any of mine having that long of a tag.  Either way the name had opaque tape on it, and one had to peel the tape off to reveal the doll's name.

The name "Marta Angela" pleased me greatly, by the way.  I have a good friend named Marta, and I once had a good friend named Angela.  I don't know where the hell Angela is now, but I certainly wish her the best.  We were both about twenty when we saw each other last.  ANYWAY, the doll also came with a little baby book that could be decorated with stickers, and I don't know if the stickers varied from character to character, but it was still a cute touch.  

So that was all stuff that Cuddle On Delivery had and the Cabbage Patch didn't, and Mattel didn't like that.  Not one little bit.  Soooooo, 1997 rolls around, Mel Birnkrant and Tyco have some awesome things planned for Cuddle On Delivery...and then Mattel took Tyco over.  They bought Tyco, laid off a good portion of Tyco's original employees, and put an end to the Cuddle On Delivery bunch.  Keep in mind that Tyco was the third largest toy company in the U.S. at the time!  They were by no means crashing and burning, the way ValuJet (literally) was when they merged.  Oh, they still exist...as a branch of Mattel.  But Cuddle On Delivery can only be found on the secondary market now.  In-box examples aren't too hard to find, as my review of Marta showed.  Suddenly those Cabbie eyes look kinda sinister...

Or not.  LOL, I don't think Cabbie eyes can ever look sinister.  But yeah, the hypothesis is that Mattel dropped the axe on Cuddle On Delivery because they HAD outsold the Cabbage Patch Kids.  I don't know if that's true or not, but the timing is kinda convenient.  We all know that Mattel just HAS to be on top, after all!  If they're not they find some way to make trouble, as they did with MGA Entertainment and the Bratz.

Alright, alright, I'm positive that Cuddle On Delivery's success wasn't the only reason why Mattel bought out Tyco.  Oh nooooo, far from it!  I suspect that Tickle Me Elmo might've also been a factor.  Tickle Me Elmo was THE TOY for Christmas of 1996, just as Cabbage Patch Kids were for Christmas of '83.  Guess who produced Tickle Me Elmo?  Tyco.  Tickle Me Elmo DID survive to see the 1997 Christmas season, and...yeah.  I remember Daddy laughing that year because the stores were full of Tickle Me Elmos, but the hype had died down.  Neither my sister nor I ever wanted a stinkin' Tickle Me Elmo, by the way.  That was the year that Daddy moved Heaven and Earth to find my sister a stuffed Wishbone.  It took him the better part of the Christmas season, but by jove, my sister got that Wishbone!

Interestingly, Play Along found room in their roster for both the Cabbage Patch Kids AND the Play Along Club!  The Play Along Club didn't sell anywhere near as well as Cuddle On Delivery did, but the coexistence of the two lines shows what Mattel COULD have done.

Seriously, if Mattel had let Cuddle On Delivery survive they could've made a killing.  But nooooo, I guess they were expecting to make a killing with just the Cabbies.  I don't really know if Mattel DID make a killing with the Cabbies, but they had the license for 'em for a good chunk of time.  Regardless, the world of dolls and toys can be a bizarre and fickle place.  

Love,

RagingMoon1987