Happy Easter!

Ah yes, it is Easter and Resurrection Day.  This day and Christmas are the reason followers of Christ have hope even after we're off this mortal coil.  And if you're not religious, Easter egg hunts are still a heckuva lotta fun.  I love watching the children prowl the grass for brightly-colored plastic eggs and have some innocent fun, and when I was young I always liked watching my friends at church dress up.  We almost always had something nice and new to wear if the weather wasn't too rough.  That said, I never have liked it when Easter comes early.  When I was little an early Easter usually meant a rainy and/or cold Easter.  That will not be the case today; it's cloudy, but the high is predicted to be around eighty.  Not that a little rain would've stopped Idalia Gale and Kory Aryan from having fun.  The muddy front yard kept them inside, but they still managed to have an Easter egg hunt.

Both dolls are wearing new clothes, of course.  Idalia's outfit came from crawford176 (an Etsy shop) and Kory's came from 77CabbagePatchLane (another Etsy shop).  LOL, I learned very quickly after discovering Etsy that Barbie and American Girls could be fun to dress, but I didn't really learn until last fall that Cabbage Patch Kids could be fun to dress too.  Since there are quite a few boy Cabbies out there it's a little easier to find nice options for boys.

This getup would've been good for St. Pat's, but I ordered it the day before St. Pat's so that's that.  It's got Oscar the Grouch on it!

Oscar the Grouch is my fellow!  He's delightfully blunt like I can be, and he's green like I like, AND he's a slob like I am.  I've always loved Oscar the Grouch.

Kory's getup is good for just about any part of the year except the dead of winter, but Idalia's clothes are strictly Easter.

The getup came with two little bows, but Idalia only has one thick ponytail so I...crammed both the bows over said ponytail.  I dread getting them out again.

As usual, Idalia is ready to stuff her face.  Cabbies with #11 heads are always ready to eat.

Idalia and I are two of a kind in that respect; I freaking love Easter candy.  Heck, I like candy, period.  The carrot contains one of my favorite candies, Reese's Pieces.

The plastic eggs are not candy, but rather poppers.

They're full of those little white things that you throw down and they make snapping sounds.  I loved those growing up.  One Independence Day I even threw them at my sister!  Interestingly, the backs of the eggs have...this.

Mmkay...I guess they mean that the egg can't be sold if it's opened?  Seems like a goofy thing for any label to say.  Maybe "DO NOT EAT" would've been better, since these little snappers can look like tiny, wrapped candies...at least to a dumb kid.  Smart kids know better, LOL.

Happy Easter,
RagingMoon1987

Sunday randomness: Adamsaurus Rex and Lucille Ball

It's been awhile since I did one of these random posts on a Sunday, so here's one for you.  Take it or leave it, LOL.  But seriously, here it is the day before Easter and we've had two nights in a row below freezing.  One of my favorite patrons calls it blackberry winter, and I have to agree with him.  I HATE blackberry winter as it usually kills off my tulips and Bader's peach blossoms, but it did give me a chance to bundle my little Adam up in his brand-new Gerber outfit!

Back when I was still in college, a fellow church member, a woman who had both a son and a daughter, stated her opinion that baby girls were more fun to dress than baby boys.  I'm not sure I agree!  Girls are certainly easier to dress, but with boys the search for That Perfect Outfit can be a lot of fun...or a lot of frustration, take your pick.  Finding cute things for boys is certainly rewarding, though!  Anyway, Mama says that Adam looks like a real baby in his new outfit.  Most of the babies I've known refuse to wear a hat, but other than that Adam does look pretty real.  I've been calling him Adamsaurus Rex!  And make note of him, because he's as close to a real baby as I'm gonna have...until a reborn doll moves in, LOL.  Those things are pretty stinkin' real!  Adam is realistic enough, but not as realistic as some reborns can be.

I can't thank Tam enough for selling this little chap to me.  He truly is a gem in my collection with his charismatic face and his lifelike size and weight.  Thank you, Tam!  And thank you to my dear mother for getting me this for Easter!

Mama spoils me so!  This particular doll ties in with a post I made a million years ago about another Lucille Ball doll, but unlike "Lucy Does a T.V. Commercial" I had no idea that "The Audition" even existed!  My modus operandi for in-box dolls is usually to debox them, and indeed I'm dying to see if this Lucy's tightly bent knees are jointed.  But I'm going to leave her as she is for now since she's so perfect.  Look what Wal-Mart was asking for her at one point!

Before all was said and done she got marked down twice.  

Almost half-price!  I wouldn't have complained about that back in the day!  Regardless of what she once cost she's mine now!  Thank you so much, Mama! 

Happy Easter,
RagingMoon1987 

Easter/Passover 2020

Easter 2020 has been a quiet, lonely affair thanks to this infernal virus.  I had plans to stuff plastic eggs and give 'em out to the kids like I did last year, but...no.  I find it surprising that in such a short time this virus went from being the butt of jokes on Facebook to scaring the living Jesus out of everyone.  Seriously, consult the list of the recently deceased on Wikipedia and try to count how many were felled by coronavirus in April alone.  This is a scary virus, kids...and my facemasks haven't come from Etsy yet, dammit.  I got matching ones for Mama and me, and they aren't here yet.

When I dressed my dolls up for Easter I was expecting normal traffic in the library, children and all, but of course it hasn't been that way this year.  Oh well, can't be helped.  No one expected this danged virus to come up and throw a monkey wrench in everything.  But I can at least show my dolls to y'all, and I'll admit that I was going to show them to y'all anyway (LOL).  This time I'm just going to show my dolls to y'all and not include a basic review of each outfit (those are a bummer to write).  Here's Xenia:

Sadie:

Silver Bird, who has gone with a farm look rather than dressy attire, complete with a pig and a goat:

Z, who elected to go barefoot:

And Camille...Camille chose to wear her stock outfit.

I don't have a lot of new things for Camille yet, but she's not one to complain.  She'll soon have an outfit as colorful and varied as her bigger friends.

But wait, am I not forgetting someone?  Well, yes and no.  Easter has fallen during Passover this year (the two holidays don't always coincide), and Lindsey and Denise are decked out in their spring gear too.

Denise is wearing what she wore for St. Patrick's Day, but Lindsey's dress is all new.  Had Mama not kindly supplied the dolls with new things for summer, she'd be staying in that dress.  But alas, May will be for bugs...not bugs as in viruses, but bugs as in the yellow sting-y kind.  Y'all will see that in about two weeks or so.

Happy Easter and Happy Passover,
RagingMoon1987

Easter 2019

Happy Easter, ladies and germs!  Easter, as I may or may not have said in the past, is my all-time favorite holiday.  As with birthdays and Christmas Mama and Daddy would go out of the way to make sure my sister and I had a good time, planning Easter egg hunts and putting together baskets full of candy and small toys.  On one particularly nasty Easter they even hid eggs in the living room.

Of course I'm not a child anymore, so now it's my turn to stuff Easter eggs.  I've helped stuff and hide eggs in the past for church functions, but I'm sadly out of the habit of attending church.  I did have some extra bags of Easter eggs though; I'd intended them for doll props but they proved too big.  So instead of using them as props Coworker B and I loaded 'em up and passed 'em out to children that came into the library on Friday and Saturday.  Nothing like getting the kids high on sugar before Easter even begins!

We had Sixlets, those miniature Cadbury eggs (the ones that are all chocolate inside), and fun-size candy bars crammed into those eggs.  I ate the Cadbury eggs that didn't fit into the plastic eggs, LOL.  Those little goomers are maybe not as good as the legendary Cadbury Creme Eggs, but they satisfied my sweet tooth.

In dolly news, one of my superiors suggested that I bring in my seasonal dolls as the holidays change, and I thought that was a very good idea so I did just that.  The only problem is that I only have one doll that even closely represents Easter, and that representation is in appearances only.  She's Little Bo Peep.

Now that I think of it, Bo does fit in at the library better than I originally thought, since she's a nursery rhyme and Malden Library has a few books with nursery rhymes in them.  Bo is one of Ashton-Drake's porcelain creations, and she represents an emotion that precious few of my dolls show:  sadness.

I'd probably cry too if I'd lost my sheep...or I'd fly into a screaming, cursing rage, one or the other.  Indeed, I've seen Little Bo Peep show a great deal of emotions since I first learned of her back when I was about two.  Dolls done in her likeness are quite common, and I've seen them crying or looking frustrated or a little ticked.  Some of them, like this cute little poppet, even smile.  One thing remains constant, though:  most (but not all) artistic depictions show Bo shielding her eyes.  Indeed, my doll is supposed to be doing just that, but her arms are not flexible enough so she merely looks like she's wiping tears off her cheeks.

Cheer up, Bo!  One of your sheep is nearby, though she is definitely not wagging her tail behind her.

Bo's single sheep is made of flocked plastic and has a head that turns.  I frequently pose her slightly behind Bo's rather buoyant skirt, so that Bo remains eternally oblivious that her sheep is so close.

I don't know if we have any nursery rhyme themes planned for library events in the future, but I have a few of Bo Peep's friends who'd love to get in on the fun.  I'll share them if we ever do such a thing.  In the meantime, I bid everyone a happy, blessed Easter.  Keep in mind that while eggs and sheep and dolls are a lot of fun they are NOT the real meaning for Easter.  Someone above loves us all very, very much, so much that He died for us.  Since I usually give a nod to Jewish holidays as well, I also wish any Jewish readers a very happy and blessed Passover.  Some Christian denominations celebrate Passover as well, and I must say that it's a beautiful ceremony.

INRI,
RagingMoon1987

Another one bites the dust? Apparently so

Happy Easter and Happy Resurrection Day to you, my dear followers!  I don't know about y'all, but I've had a superb weekend.  There was much shopping and antique store-hopping, and my sister tied the knot with her fiancé on Saturday.  So now I have a brother-in-law and I'm very happy!

Unfortunately, the dolly news that I bear is not good.  It's likely also old to some of you, but it's new to me so here goes.  I hope you're in the mood to read!  Six days ago (heavens, doesn't seem like it was that long!) I put up a post regarding the demise of the La Dee Da and Pinkie Cooper lines.  At the end of that post I made some comments about the future of the Cutie Pops series, wondering if they would be discontinued as well.  You remember those, right?  These dolls?

I own and have reviewed Candi, in the center, and Miss Emily reviewed Cookie, on the right.  The Cutie Pops are not perfect, but they are creative enough that Miss Emily and I both rated them fairly high.  Like Pinkie Cooper, I originally thought that these dolls would be cute and original enough to stand up to the test of time, but after Pinkie and the La Dee Da dolls were both axed I began to doubt the longevity of the Cutie Pops.

I had my reasons for this doubt, of course:
*There was a complete absence of Cutie Pops in stores.
*Nothing new had been released in some months.  Last fall there were three new lines available simultaneously, but since then, nothing.
*The Cutie Pops' last Facebook post was on New Years' Day which isn't good, particularly when compared to more successful dolls like Barbie, the Bratz, and Lalaloopsy, each of whom have very active Facebook pages.  Keep in mind that these days social media can make you or break you; if you get a lot of coverage on Facebook or Twitter, voila!  Instant success (or shame, if the news happens to be bad).  But as always, I digress.

Intrigued by these clues, I dug around on Google tonight and a post on Tumblr which contained some disturbing news.  Doll News had this very brief but very telling conversation which attests that the Cutie Pops are indeed being discontinued.  One of the participants of the conversation , a person named Cutie Club, insists that she/he heard the news from a reliable source and even posted directly on her page about it (look very closely at the top of her screen).

So that's not a good sign!  However, I've learned from bitter experience not to believe everything one reads on the internet (yes, I admit that I did at one time), so I dug deeper and found a post from paperdollmom here on Blogspot.  She apparently has heard the same thing that I did, and she reveals that this is apparently old news because her post regarding the Cutie Pops is from April first!  She also reveals a possible reason for the discontinuation:  while her daughter has and loves her Cutie Pops doll, paperdollmom herself finds the doll mildly creepy, particularly when the eyes are removed.  Miss Emily echoed that sentiment, though she herself is a fan of these dolls (she has five separate posts, one for five of the six waves released).

I also found a conversation on Monster High Arena (big forum for Monster High fans), that not only adds further confirms the Cutie Pops discontinuation, but also offers up some ideas as to why they and Pinkie Cooper are no more.  One person suggested that they may have been shouted down by Monster High, Barbie, and the semi-new Ever After High line, all three of which are constantly putting something new out and keeping the image alive.  I think this idea makes perfect sense, because in the two years that Cutie Pops were in existence Jada Toys released six waves, with three being released at the same time.  So if one wanted to really nitpick that COULD count as only four waves.  Compare that to Monster High and Lalaloopsy.  The initial MH release had six characters...

...and the first wave of Lalaloopsy dolls had eight.

This means that Mattel and MGA Entertainment released more dolls in one single wave than Jada Toys did during one doll's entire run.

So I still haven't seen anything official, but that's the buzz online among doll circles.  The discontinuation of Cutie Pops, Pinkie Cooper, and La Dee Da dolls, and the Bratz dolls' hiatus suggests a very dark year for those of us who like playline dolls.  Sure, we have Barbie, Lalaloopsy, and the revival of Moxie Girlz (some of which are downright freaky) but dang it, I was looking forward to seeing where these doll lines would go!  Looks like it's back to browsing the internet for what information on the Novi Stars.  No, I STILL have not figured out if they're going to be gone for good or not.  I've seen multiple sources with multiple responses (yeses, nos, and maybes), but my last trip to Wal-Mart turned up exactly ONE Novi Star:  a lone Sila Clops in the discount isle.  Perhaps they will be getting a mass revamp and being rereleased in the fall alongside the Bratz...but I doubt it somehow.

And before I sign off, I think I should mention yet ANOTHER tidbit of nasty news.  Remember this gal?

Bratzillaz Meygana Broomstix, whom I have reviewed.  My source is Wikipedia, not the most reliable source.  They heard from Bratz Boulevard (a much better source) that while there was information available about international Bratz releases for 2014, NOTHING was said about the Bratzillaz.  This could mean that either they will not be released internationally, or they have just been done away with entirely.  This possibility surprises me because I think the Bratzillaz are a better product than the Bratz.  They have joints and inset eyes, and while the early ones did not have the best hair that problem has since been rectified.  Just more testament to the dynamics and the fickleness of the doll world.

Oh well, life goes on, yes?  All this reminds me that one cannot live through material possessions, even though they are a lot of fun.  Besides, these spaces on shelves will make room for more new creations.  Who knows?  Maybe some obscure little toy company out there will create the impossible:  a doll that purges Barbie from her role as Queen of the Dolls.  When and if that does happen, Yours Truly will be there to see it, munching popcorn, drinking Snapple, and trying to stop her head from spinning.  LOL

Happy Easter/Resurrection Day,
RagingMoon1987