So random, January/February '26

Another winter is almost behind us!  Winter is a part of God's natural cycle, but that's hard to appreciate when the cold makes one's joints ache.  I understand Daddy a little better now, as he was always cranky during winter.  Not mean, mind y'all, just grumpier than usual, and he'd always say "I'm not mad at y'all, I just hurt."  It sucks, and I'm glad it's almost over for another year.  Indeed, except for that bad cold snap in January it's been a pretty chill winter for the Bootheel.  That said, the ants aren't out yet.  They never come out until after the last freeze.

'Nuff chatter, let's get down to business.  On January 3rd I was able to get this lovely little trio together for a picture.

Y'all know how I like odd groupings, and these three are it.  The one in pink white is an obvious Li'l Miss doll, Li'l Miss Candi Stripes.  I'll be unoriginal and call her just "Candi," cutesy spelling and all.  I knew that she had stripey hair, but I had no idea that her clothes changed color too!!!

I know, I know, I said Li'l Miss Magic Hair was my favorite of the Li'l Miss dolls, but I ended up liking Candi's smiling eyes better.  I remember Treesa being surprised by teeth on a doll once, and I too was surprised to see that Candi has teeth showing.

Being an early nineties doll often means having big bangs, and this is what Candi looked like when I pulled her out of her box.  Thus why her bangs are currently bound with an elastic.

Interestingly, Candi didn't come with shoes.  I think she's the only Li'l Miss doll that didn't.  That's fine and dandy for summer and for the beachy clothes that Candi is wearing, but during a Midwestern winter it looks uncomfortable.  I can probably find some shoes somewhere, though.  Candi is probably used to it anyway, as she hails from a place in Kansas called Rossville.  Rossville's latitude is higher than Malden's is.  Not much, but enuff to make winters a smidge harsher.  Add to that the fact that the temperatures here in Malden wildly fluctuated during late December and early January.  On the 3rd it was cold and overcast, and by the 7th it was sixty degrees and threatening rain.  ANYWAY, the tall girl in the middle is Selene, and she's a Famosa doll.  Her city of origin is Scottsdale, Arizona.  Unlike Rossville, I've heard of Scottsdale.  With eyes like this, Selene LOOKS like she should be from Roswell, New Mexico.

NGL, I like Famosa dolls almost as much as I do Furga dolls.  Like Furga, Famosa dolls are proving to be quite diverse.  My Selene isn't wearing her original clothes, but she's unique enuff without 'em and she looks nice in white so I'll not worry about original clothes for now.  Selene is Nancy's friend, and she's...well, an alien of some stripe!  Her eyes once glowed green, just like Emerald the Enchanting Witch's eyes did.

I don't think they glow anymore, but they do sparkle.  I also love Selene's hair; it's this unusual silver blue color.

The last little doll is Italian, but is NOT a Furga doll.  She has just as much personality, but this one is from Italocremona.  I've chosen to call her "Cassandra," and her former home is Totowa, New Jersey.

Cass has some sass!  Here it's possible to see that, at least in Cassandra's case, Italocremona eyes are more realistic than Furga eyes.

On the evening of January 4th I took Candi outside to see if her color-change feature still worked.  Her instructions imply that she'll stop working over time, especially if she's exposed to extreme temperatures..  It was forty-one degrees outside that evening, so I crippled out with her.

Forty-one degrees...the weather we had not long after that made forty-one degrees look like a heat wave.  Anyway, the color change began before I even had the door shut.  As y'all can see, Candi's clothes and hair have turned pink and orange as they should.  Her lips also shifted; inside they were bubblegum pink, but when exposed to cool temps they turn fuchsia. 

I wonder how warm she'll have to be before her clothes turn white again.  Casa Pizarro is comfortably warm, but Candi's clothes remained pink and orange when I brought her inside, and they didn't change until I touched her.  I'll have to wait until summer, I guess!

January 10th.  Candela Laura pops in.

My phone's battery was too low for a flash, but I took the picture anyway.  Candela Laura looks the same regardless of the lighting.

January 11th.  These dolls are all standing on top of my great-grandfather's bookcase.  There's about thirty-five years worth of doll history in that lineup.

Okay.  The pink bunch consists of Alexis (Pretty Crazy Curls), Flower Magic Mary, Surprise Hat Susie, and Twist 'n' Style Tiffany.  Then there's Billie, Mosi, Dell, Zelia, and Camille.  Crystabella rounds out the bunch.  The black thing behind Tiffany and Billie is Grandpa's old globe, long out of date but still fascinating.  I think this bunch is interesting, by the way, as one YouTuber I ran into notes that dolls this size were at one time kinda unique.  They weren't American Girls, and they weren't Barbie, and in the nineties dolls didn't come in this size unless they were glitzy toddler dolls.  Note that my four glitzy toddler dolls do vary in size a bit; Alexis is the tallest and Tiffany is the shortest.  Please forgive the dust and the terrible angle; the bookshelf is six feet tall, and I'm both five-seven and standing slumped.

I haven't yet thrown Candi into the mix (there's no more room on the top of the bookcase), and I haven't thrown in my other two new fourteen-inchers either for the same reason.  January 16th.  Kenya is on the left, and Philly girl Olivia is on the right.  Olivia is an I'm a Wow doll, the smaller counterpart to the I'm a Girly dolls.

Bet y'all forgot I had an I'm a Girly, LOL!  Robyn is still around, but Olivia is not analogous to her, not in appearance, anyway.  She's got blue hair like I like, plus highlights that change color in the sun.  As for Kenya, she's cute.  I'll be reviewing her...someday.  I've had zero energy lately.

January 22nd.  One of my favorite YouTubers had dropped a new video, and I was about to share a soda pop with Rubia Emilia. 

Swengle Studios and pineapple Fanta for the win!  Swengle Studios specializes in tornadoes, but he does other odd meteorological phenomena too, and he dumbs it down for idjit galoots like me.  For the record, I've since changed Rubia's first name to "Joyita."  That sticks with my old shipwreck theme, and I never really liked the name "Rubia."  So Joyita Emilia she is.

January 25th.  It was bitterly cold outside by then, I was recovering from the other type of cold, and Cotton Candy Mia wanted to show off her new hair bow.

We wear hair bows in Casa Pizarro.  Hair bows are cool.  LOL, this one was a freebie; it accompanied two larger bows that Mama got for me.

January 30th.  Random pic of Joyita Emilia. 

Joyita had her new pacifier by then, as well as an outfit change, but I was still waiting for the shoes.

February 4th.  A tale of two Sindy dolls.

Crimp and Style Sindy is on the left, and the wary brunette on the right is the late-model Pedigree that y'all met on Valentine's Day, before I put her in the pink dress.

February 6th.  Bella (one of my dogs) took five years off my life when she got her head caught in the bars of the dog kennel, and Uncle Man-Child didn't help when he told me Bella wasn't moving.  She ended up being fine.  This lovely young lady then turned up in the mail.

She's a chimera, a 2025 Barbie Basics head on what appears to be a Shani body.  These Basics are supposed to have Made to Move bodies.  Still, whoever rebodied this doll took the time to match a head to a body, because both parts are very pale.  "Amy" will be this doll's name, for reasons that might be obvious to some of y'all.

February 11th.  It was unseasonably warm after that cold snap, and I had spring fever.  Ayla Diamond thus fell victim to an early spring redress.

Etsy shop is MiniMediMo.  I'm with Miss Emily, by the way; these little babies need to be made with open eyes!  I'd hoped the Valentine's Day wave would have some awake and alert little ones, but no dice.

February 14th.  It was cool and rainy, perfect for cuddling dollies.  Enter Sandy Eden. 

Sandy is a bean-butt baby, my second.  Mama told me that she'd ordered a cute outfit for a bean-butt girl, but I didn't have a girl...or so I thought.  I forgot that Taniyah Yasmin can wear bean-butt clothes too.

February 17th.  I had my Baby Alive dolls (numbering four by then) on the couch, and Lily took a liking to them. 

Lily likes my dolls for some reason.  Doesn't matter who I've got scattered about.  She rubs them and purrs, like she's marking them as her own.  Maybe she likes them because they smell like me.  I dunno. 

February 18th.  My new dolls of the day struck a pose.  Better Now Bella is on the left, and her friend Ingrid Jessica is a Hasbro-era bean-butt baby. 

They're both Hasbro, come to think of it!

February 22nd.  Two of the Philadelphia bunch get acquainted. 

Treesa sent me both of these, albeit in different packages.  Alexandria Florida is the Cabbie, and Lina is the Magic Nursery baby.  They don't have much in common, but they're cute, and deeply appreciated gifts.  Indeed, I have several Magic Nursery dolls, but Lina remains my favorite.

February 24th, another sitting down image, since that's about all I can do nowadays.  These two are Gary Collier and Autumn Leah, and apologies for our unkempt bed.  Mama and I both hit the sack not long after I took this picture.

Mama isn't Gary Collier's biggest fan, but she likes Autumn Leah okay.  When she saw Gary from a more flattering angle she warmed to him.  He'd fallen backwards when she first saw him, see, and since Gary's mouth is a little open he looks kinda, sorta, really DEAD when his head lolls back.  

February 25th.  This is literally a spur-of-the-moment picture, caught when I was riding to work.

Shelley is the blonde and Sindy is the aforementioned brunette.  The blue expanse behind them is my knee, sheathed in its usual denim.  Seriously, I live in blue jeans, practically.  Sindy has already been redressed, by the way, but I won't show that until mid-March.

Same day, different dolls.  I was inspired by this image to pair up my matching two dolls.  

I've got two Magic Nursery babies and like 'em both, but I was piddle-pooting around with Lina around then, so she and Pineberry got to sit together.

That rings down the curtain on another winter, for the most part.  I know some of y'all are still dealing with snow and I don't envy you in the slightest, but for me it's time to shake out my T-shirts and make sure my flashlight has batteries when severe storms come to call.  No more sandals because my ankles need some support, but that's life, and my doll kids can wear sandals.

An interesting take on toddler dolls of the nineties

Several weeks ago (May 15th, to be exact) I watched this video by Don't Call Me Doll.  LOL, I love that handle name!  Makes me think of how I'm always telling Uncle Man-Child not to call me stupid nicknames.  Mama is the only one allowed to call me "hun," thank you too much.  Her and anyone lucky (unlucky?) enuff to marry me, and the nice lady at our local Taco Bell, but then she calls EVERYONE "hun."  Back to the point, Don't Call Me Doll released that video that skimmed the history of an unusual doll trend, one that lasted from 1989 to 1996, and had an unusual reason for coming to an end.  I thought it would make a good blog post, so I'm ripping the video off.  I'm doing it because while I knew the objectifying of children was an issue, I didn't know these dolls (some of whom I like) may have had a role in it.  Oh, and spoilers, I will be discussing some of these dolls further in future posts.  Or I've done them already, as is the case with P.J. Sparkles (1989).

P.J. isn't really what I'd call a toddler fashion doll since she didn't rely heavily on clothes, makeup, or looks to sell herself, but she does sparkle.  Don't Call Me Doll lists her as the first of what I call the glitzy toddler dolls, so named because some of 'em look like they could compete in a glitz beauty pageant.  Coexisting with P.J. Sparkles were the Make Me Up Darlings, which were significantly smaller than P.J., but have a makeup theme and a toddler-like build.  Cookin' Cathy here is mine.  Again, they relied on a heavy dose of fantasy, but still!  They wore makeup!

Sally Secrets came next, meaning that Penni Secrets wasn't far behind.  I guess I'll count Li'l Secrets too, though they're built more like little girls than full-tilt toddlers.  Again, that Li'l Secrets doll is mine; she's just like one I owned when I was little.

Sally, Penni, and the little dolls didn't go as hard with the beauty factor as later glitzy toddler dolls did, though Sally's clothes could be decorated with stickers.  But for the most part these dolls focused on hidden little surprises, stuff like pens and stamps, stickers, stencils, and In the case of the Li'l Secrets, pencil toppers and charms for a bracelet.  Sally and Penni do look a little like they're wearing makeup, but that wasn't the focus of their gimmicks.

The Li'l Miss crowd...oh my, these put the "G" in glitzy toddler dolls!  This line started in 1989 with Li'l Miss Makeup, whose gimmick was just like that of the Make Me Up Darlings.  Her eyeshadow, lips, and cheeks would change color with hot or cold water, as would her nails and earlobes.  The commercial shows it better.

Li'l Miss Magic Hair focused on hair.  She developed rainbow streaks...or shapes, if that's what you wanted.  Her face doesn't change color, but she's pretty made up, with pink lips and a heart on her cheek.  This one is my favorite of the bunch; I've had to exert a lot of self control with her.

Triple Change Li'l Miss Makeup had the makeup gimmick, but also had multiple outfit pieces that one could change around.  She could thus qualify for both glitz and natural pageants.  Yep, there are beauty pageants for kids that don't rely on a ton of makeup and a fancy dress to win the grand prize.  Triple could easily do both.

The last Li'l Miss doll of 1989 was Li'l Miss Dress Up.  This one had the makeup gimmick, the hair color gimmick, and the multiple-piece outfit, and pieces of her clothing also changed color.  This one was about as pimped out as it got.

The Li'l Miss line didn't really pick up again until 1991, with Li'l Miss Singing Mermaid.  Despite her commercials, Miss Mermaid wasn't supposed to be completely submerged, as doing so would fry her singing mech.  The other Li'l Miss that year was one of my favorites, Li'l Miss Magic Jewels.

Both of these dolls had ample hair and at least some sparkle to their name, and Magic Jewels threw in a fancy ballgown to sweeten the deal.  Oh, and Miss Mermaid's stripes and seashells changed color in the water.  They both have some eyeshadow and hearts on their cheeks, so they're fairly made up, though not so much as Li'l Miss Makeup.

The final new doll in the Li'l Miss lineup came in 1993, with Li'l Miss Candi Stripes.  She has/had Li'l Miss Magic Hair's gimmick, but her hair was striped in shades of orange and pink...mmmm, like sherbet.  Or like the sunset, take your pick.

Don't Call Me Doll only touched on the Wee Li'l Miss bunch, but they too were a thing during the reign of the larger Li'l Miss dolls, kinda like Li'l Secrets.  These dolls were also a lot like Make Me Up Darlings, in that they could be one thing or another and had at least one color change feature.  Wee Li'l Miss Roller-Skater is my favorite of these because she had very dark hair and could go from roller skater to girl rocker.  Her dress would change from rainbow to black and back again with various temperatures of water.

Both Li'l Miss and Wee Li'l Miss had extra fashions too, so these dolls had pretty much everything that made them fun.  But as fond as I am of these dolls, especially Wee Li'l Miss Roller-Skater, they're enuff to make some folks uncomfortable.  We'll get to that.

Hasbro also had glitzy toddler dolls; Don't Call Me Doll lists their first one as this one, Starla.  She came out around 1990 and was in production for a couple'a years.

Starla had a small microphone for herself and a bigger one for her owner, and when the owner talked or sang into the big mike Starla would sing along in her own voice.  Her lips would even move.  Despite Starla's focus on music rather than beauty, she's pretty pimped out, with a shiny skirt and stars on her bodice, and tinsel in her bangs (kinda like P.J. Sparkles).

Don't Call Me Doll lists the Li'l Miss's competition as this doll:  Makeup Beauty, dating to 1993.

Killecrankie, this little gal could be gussied up!  Hair streaks, makeup, jewelry, nail polish...are those temporary tattoos???  Like Li'l Miss Makeup this doll reacted to hot and cold water, and her tools were held in a skirt-tray that went around her waist.  As far as I know she came with no clothes, just her painted on...underwear?  Bikini?  That's...kinda grown up for a little doll, but then little girls do wear two-piece swimsuits sometimes.  Mine was orange and pink with little frills at the legs!

Tyco's Kenya wasn't as glitzy as the Li'l Miss bunch, but she did go pretty hard on hair play and fashion so I'm including her here.

There was...I guess Flower Magic Mary counts as a glitzy toddler doll.  She kinda delves into fantasy, but she does involve gussying up an otherwise simple little doll, and her flowers are sparkly.  As with several of these, I'm VERY fond of Flower Magic Mary and I'll be discussing her in a future "dolls I like but don't need" post.

Another of my favorite dolls from the glitzy toddler doll era is Twist 'n' Style Tiffany, who had hair that one could style in infinite styles.  Again, I'll be discussing this doll in a future "random doll" post, and I may break my own rule, because I think this doll is super-cute.  Occupying the same timeline was My Pretty Topsy Tail, also a hair play doll that could be beautified.  Tiffany is on the left and Topsy is on the right.  Tiffany dates from 1994 and is a Hasbro doll, while Topsy is a year older and is a Tyco product.

Notice that Topsy's dress is even glitzy, with that foil-looking stuff that was...actually kinda popular on dolls of the nineties.  I didn't like it much, myself, because it was crinkly and stiff and held wrinkles like mad.  As for Tiffany, Don't Call Me Doll noted that her commercial (seen here) was the first one to give the black doll and the white doll equal billing.  The others largely focused on the white doll, though there were black variants in many cases.

Okay, what year is it...I forgot to date the ones above <goes back and does this>.  Oh right, 1995.  Chloe Charms debuted that year.  She had little silver baubles that could decorate her (or your) hair and clothes.  She's got the beauty pageant smile, I must say!

As with Twist 'n' Style Tiffany, I like the black doll better.  Her smile is bigger.

Tyco's entry in 1995 was Surprise Hat Susie...another Susie!  Susie's hair was concealed under her hat, like so.

According to Ghost of the Doll Susie's highlights could be one of four different color combinations, so there was a little bit of blind-boxing going on.  Her hat doubled as a purse and could carry Susie's hair do-dads when they weren't being used.

The last of the glitzy toddler dolls came in 1997, with this pet, Pretty Crazy Curls.  Don't Call Me Doll says that she did not sell well.  My doll is used and is thus a little frowsy, but I'm working on giving her her glitz back.  Her pet name is Alexis.  Look at her eyes!

Pretty Crazy Curls was yet another hair play doll, and she came with rollers that allegedly could give her boingy-sproingy curls with a spritz of...water?  Of something that was in her spray bottle.  My doll came with her very beat-up box, and I don't think her box self is as cute as her real self.

Oh, by the way, dig this price tag.  I remember when Wally World did these green stickers, AND I remember when a good-sized doll like this was a Jackson...or less.

Pretty Crazy Curls may be worth a closer look in the future.

Now...is there anything wrong with any of the dolls above?  Not really.  Yes, it's kinda weird that a little doll would be wearing full makeup, but I always saw it as a little kid wearing Mommy's makeup, which I myself did as a child.  Harmless, right?  So why did the glitzy toddler doll trend end so abruptly in 1997, you ask?  Don't Call Me Doll opines that this young lady may have been the reason.

For those of y'all who don't know, that is JonBenet Ramsey, a six-year-old beauty pageant veteran who was found beaten, molested, and strangled in her own home on Christmas Day of 1996.  Her murder was never solved.  I hypothesize that her brother killed her and her parents covered it up, but that's both conjecture and straying from the subject.  The murder was extremely high-profile, and most of the publicity pictures used were like the one above, showing JonBenet with professionally styled hair and a fair amount of makeup, both must-haves for a glitz beauty pageant.  As such she bears an eerie resemblance to the glitzy toddler dolls, especially Li'l Miss Makeup.  I guess that gave parents (potential buyers of glitzy toddler dolls) the heebie-jeebies, and I can't say as I blame them.  The first segment of this video, showing JonBenet in big hair and a full skirt, dancing and singing into a microphone, makes me think of Wee Li'l Miss Roller-Skater, who transformed into a singer with big hair and a poofy skirt.

Of course it's conjecture that JonBenet's murder tied in with the fall of the glitzy toddler doll, but the timing of the fall speaks volumes, as does the rest of the doll market.  Coincidentally, American Girl's Just Like You line was beginning to gather steam in 1997 (they were American Girl of Today then), so that might've also been a factor.  I dunno.  Either way, regular baby dolls, the ones that could be nurtured instead of beautified, continued to sell normally, and as far as I know Barbie did too.  But glitzy toddler dolls never recovered, and they're not ubiquitous anymore.  That said, every so often we do see a revival of made-up, slightly (or very) vampy baby and toddler dolls, as Bratz Babyz (left) and L.O.L. Surprise's "Look, I'm So Big" line show.

I'll go as far as to include the Jaggets, even though they're not wearing makeup like the Bratz and L.O.L. dolls are.  Indeed, the only thing super-edgy about the Jaggets are their clothes.

But these are...kinda the exception to the rule.  Kinda.  The L.O.L. Surprises are ridiculously popular in small form, and I think they count as glitzy toddler dolls even though they're small, but for the most part the dolls we find in stores nowadays are stuff like Barbie, American Girl imitators, and baby dolls, with something unusual finding its way in every so often, stuff like #FailFix and Fidgie Friends, or like Pinkie Cooper and Cutie Pops, if you remember that far back.  The Disney toddler dolls are sometimes sparkly, but then they're...well, they're Disney!  Disney dolls always have a little magic and a lot of fantasy thrown in.

I did find one exception, dating from 2000.  This is another Hasbro doll, Makeup Mindy, and she's a fairly obvious toddler doll.

She came with a Play-Doh beauty mask!  Okay, I don't know if it's brand-name Play-Doh, but it was something similar.  The rest of her reacted to temperature as far as I know, and I didn't find any evidence that this doll was popular.  eBay has a few of 'em for cheap, and YouTube has a commercial, but as far as I know this doll is pretty obscure.  I love obscure.  And hey, at least this one has clothes!  Poor ol' Makeup Beauty only had that stupid bikini.

I have to admit, I didn't think of this too much!  The dolls with heavy eye makeup did make me lift an eyebrow a little, but then I remembered how little girls often like to play with Mama's/Auntie's/Grandma's makeup (I was one of them, as I said above).  Another way to play make-believe, basically.  But...butbutbutbut, there's a big difference between a little kid playing with Mama's makeup and putting said little kid in a glitz pageant to strut around in front of God knows who.  I can definitely see why adults got the heebie-jeebies from glitzy toddler dolls, especially after JonBenet was murdered, since a lot of these dolls look...well, like they're going to compete in some sort of pageant.

What say y'all?  Are glitzy toddler dolls harmless toys that rely on make-believe, or do they give you the ick all over?  Or do you not give a crap?  Discuss.  As for me...sigh, I admit that Twist 'n' Style Tiffany is on her way to Casa Pizarro, and I already own Pretty Crazy Curls.  I think the objectification of children is definitely an issue, but...well, these are dolls.  I just see them as a way to play make-believe.  But as always, I welcome respectful dissent in the comments!

Glitzy love
RagingMoon1987