Happy New Year

Normally this is the time where I'd beller "HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!" and pull the string on one of those loud party poppers (my grandpa HATED those), but 2024 is Election Year, and oh my Lordy, do I hate Election Year.  Both sides will be sniping back and forth at each other, and inevitably both parties will be throwing a lot of mud at their own candidates as well.  American politics is dirty, kids.  With this being a doll blog I'm gonna try to keep it as apolitical as possible.  Sure, I'll voice my opinions here and there, and y'all are welcome to as well provided you keep it civil, but for the most part I wanna just...stick my head in the sand.  Dollies are what we all like, right?  Right!  So lemme see...2024.  No milestone birthday for me or for anyone I love (I'll be 37 when that finally comes, and October is a long way off).  The legion of Whovians had their milestone last month, Girl of the Year 2024 is meh, no Barbie movie to look forward to (indeed, I haven't seen the first one)...oh yes, the eclipse!  There's a total solar eclipse in April, the path of totality is coming RIGHT OVER MALDEN, and I'm off work that day unless something strange happens.  I'm EXCITED!!!

Before I begin, I want to apologize to my blogging buddy Tam for sounding like such an ingrate for the gifts in the past two posts.  I griped so soundly about poor Velvet's new clothes not fitting that SHE apologized for sending Velvet nude.  I'M the one who's sorry for looking a gift horse in the mouth!  Velvet is awesome, as are the two Cloes and Mary or whoever that brunette doll is.  I'm particularly happy to have a Velvet with eyes that are clean and intact, as both my girls are sick with mold and have eyes that are now falling apart.  Oh, and Nekkid Cloe wants to send her love...and show off her new threads.  I got her the little hippie dress, since her long hair made me think of myself when I was a teenager and kinda hippie-ish.

I love ya, Tam, and I do thank you for the gift and the card.  I have something for you, but I've been incredibly lazy and haven't sent it yet.  It's small, but I know it's something you'll like.

Now...to ring in my least-favorite month and a year that I've been dreading, I present my Christmas haul.  I said that I only wanted a floor lamp, but that kinda, sorta turned out to be a lie.  And don't worry about storage, as all of them fit into a single box.

Kinda a motley bunch there, a mix of old and new.  In the back I've got two Fidgie Friends, Boba Bubbles and Fairie Garden, and Aurora is between them (Aurora is a Spectra and the Shimmerons knockoff, reviewed HERE).  Then in the front are Snap 'n' Play Barbie, a Creatable World doll, and on Snap's lap, Kelly's "li'l friend" Becky.

Boba Bubbles arrived on the twentieth, the same day that I griped about Velvet's tight jeans.  On that particular day a number of small but annoying things happened at work, and that made the day about as much fun as passing a kidney stone.  Fondling Boba's tail did indeed help me blow off some steam.

LOL, maybe "fondling" wasn't the best term, but it's what I did.  The dictionary says fondling need not be of a sexual nature (and since I'm ace it never is), so the term works.  By the way, I wonder if these water beads are similar in any way to the ones that are now banned from sale?  Okay, they're not all the way banned, but Amazon and Wally World are refraining from marketing water beads as toys.  Other sellers are dropping the brightly colored orbs altogether.  Hmmm...does that mean that Boba will soon be a black market entity too???  Time will tell, I s'pose.  

In other news, Barbie and Becky were a reminder of how much packaging has had to change in years past.  I deboxed them both without taking pictures...

...but take my word for it:  easiest box-openings ever.  The tops were lightly glued together, and the dolls themselves were lashed to their backings with three or four bits of plastic-coated wire.  Y'know, like those twisty ties on bags of bread, only nicer.  But y'all know damn good and well that nowadays that's not enuff to keep some thieving little brat from tearing the package open at the store and nicking Barbie's clothes or shoes or the whole stinkin' doll.  So now we have to contend with waaaaaay too much glue, waaaaaay too much tape, and those hateful little plastic tacks holding the dress and the accessories and the doll's very head to the backing.  Oh, how Barbie and Becky made me long for the simpler days!  Miss Emily says that Lustra and Spectra were easy to unbox too, but my Aurora was loose so I didn't have to contend with a box.

Spoiler alert:  Aurora loves to dance.  Now for the record, Boba and Fairie were NOT shackled to their boxes with every fastening available.  They were relatively easy to unbox, though not as much so as Barbie and Becky. 

The Creatable World doll (I've named them "Joie") was also relatively easy to debox.  Indeed, their box can be reused if need be.  Joie decided to use it as a chair.

Because I love asides, it was fun to read the tracking on all of these dolls and find out where they came from:
*Boba Bubbles came from Orlando, Florida
*Her friend Fairie Garden came from Canton, Mississippi
*Aurora is from St. Albans, Vermont and is my only Etsy purchase in the group
*Snap 'n' Play Barbie hails from Sterling, Colorado
*Joie is from Hatboro, Pennsylvania
*Becky is also from Pennsylvania, from Clairton

Aurora and Barbie had their pick from the lovely handbags that Setsu-P sent in October.

Joie looked them over too, but decided that they'd rather carry a backpack.

If I were choosing, I'd pick the raspberry one.

So that was my Christmas gift to meself.  As for other presents...well, I didn't get the floor lamp that I wanted, but I did get a full set of Percy Jackson books, plus three books on Joplin, Missouri's butterfly people.  Yes, the butterfly people.  After the 2011 tornado about eighty kids came forward, talking about how they'd been saved by these gloriously beautiful people with butterfly wings.  Y'all can do with that information what you like, but I believe very strongly that it was a fleet of angels sent to protect some of those kids.  Why some children died and some lived is anyone's guess; God had a reason for it.  But anyway, that was my Christmas.  Quiet, but nice for the most part.  Today we're sleeping in and doing next to nothing, and tomorrow it'll be back to the old grind, the holiday season over.  Nothing to look forward to for awhile, but I'll make do.  I always do, LOL.

Happy New Year,
RagingMoon1987

Barbie siblings, then and now

RagingMoon1987 here, and I've done a mini-shopping spree.  Hey, when's the last time I DIDN'T spend money???  I really need to grow up a little.  Anyway, I heeded the call of Barbie's Dreamhouse sisters and added a Skipper, a Stacie, and a Chelsea to my play group.  Let me tell you, they don't make these girls like they used to.  Check this out.

Skipper

From right, these dolls are an unidentified Skipper from the mid nineties, Totally Yo-Yo Skipper from 1998, and Barbie Sisters Fun Day Skipper, whom I bought a week ago.  I also have Tropical Splash Skipper somewhere in my room; she is the oldest of my Skipper dolls and comes from the big-headed, bug-eyed late-eighties/early nineties era.  I find it odd that Skipper appears to have grown up and then back down again; I'd have expected the newest doll to look...well, if we were to go with age progression then I'd expect her to look a lot like Barbie!  Fun Day Skipper looks a lot like her 1964 self, to tell the truth.  Heck, her chest is even flat!  The other Skipper dolls in that picture have some chest development, and 90's Skipper even has a bit of an hourglass figure going on!

Stacie

Happy Meal Stacie from 1993 (left) and Barbie Sisters Fun Day Stacie from this year (right).  Neither of them photographed well, but I think you get the drift.  The difference here makes a little more sense, with an obvious age progression showing here.  In 1993 Stacie was clearly a young girl, maybe six, seven, or eight.  Not a tiny child, but not necessarily a big one either.  Modern-day Stacie would fit into the "big kid" category; she looks like she should be about ten or eleven.  She's got a slimmer build than Happy Meal Stacie does, and her legs are longer.  In other words, Stacie's hit the gawky stage!  Poor child, I hope she weathers that stage better than I did (LOL).

Kelly/Chelsea

We've come to a part of Barbie's new life that I'm not very happy with.  In the nineties and the early part of the first millennial decade, Barbie had a toddler sister named Kelly.  She looked like the doll on the left, only blonde and blue-eyed.  Fast-forward to the current year, and Kelly is gone.  She's morphed into a little girl named Chelsea (right).  Again, there's an obvious age progression here.  Kelly's brunette friend looks like she might be about three or four, whereas Chelsea appears to be six or seven.  Her build is slimmer but shorter than that of Happy Meal Stacie, who looks like she'd be in Chelsea's age group.  Fine, fine, that's all fine by me.  I don't mind the fact that Chelsea has grown up.  But WHY did Mattel change her name???  What's wrong with Kelly???  When I saw these dolls in stores the first time I thought "Who the h**l is Chelsea?  What happened to Kelly?"  Yeah, I know it's just a name change, but darn it, I was so used to calling Barbie's youngest sister Kelly!  I'm having a rough time remembering to call her Chelsea now. 

By the way, if you like irony, catch this.  I thought Kelly's friend on the left was Lemonade Stand Nia.  WRONG!!!  My memory was so screwed up that I remembered a doll that never existed!  There was Lemonade Stand Tamika and Lemonade Stand Maria, but no Nia.  The doll on the left turned out to be an amusement park doll, and her name is...CHELSIE!!!  LOL, there's your irony!!!  Maybe Barbie disowned Kelly, dyed Chelsie's tresses blonde, changed the spelling of her name, and adopted her!  Okay, doubt that, but it really does make me wonder who is in charge of these names at Mattel.  I mean, Chelsie was the name of one of Barbie's Generation Girl friends back during the Millennium.  She was my favorite of the Generation Girls, in fact!  There were some other Chelsie/Chelsea dolls in the mix, but it would take all night to discuss those.

Where was I?  Oh yes, Barbie's sisters.  They sure as heck aren't the dolls my sister and I had!  Not that the new dolls are bad, but they're a far cry from Barbie's old siblings.  I daresay that of the four, Barbie has changed the least in the past twenty years.  Yeah, she got a body swap, but she's still clearly identifiable as Barbie.  When I saw these new, modernized versions of Skipper and Stacie, I had to read their packages to figure out who they were.  And as I mentioned above, I was VERY confused when I ran into Chelsea.  It made me miss the older dolls with their solidly built bodies and big, innocent eyes.  However, it was also a huge relief to see my childhood friends back on shelves.  I can't tell you how long it had been since I'd seen a Stacie doll, and there were whispers during my teenage years of Skipper's retirement.  So it's good to see those whispers silenced, even if these dolls are highly different from my old plastic companions.

As a last little tidbit, I want to address a question that one of our followers presented.  When I went over the Vi and Va dress a couple of weeks ago D7ana asked if the dress would fit any of Barbie's siblings.  I couldn't answer the question then, and I can't right now because I don't have the dress with me at the moment.  However, it's a very good question and I plan on addressing that very soon.  Sooooo...see you very soon!

Yours truly,

RagingMoon1987