Familiar faces

My recent musings about Sindy were brief and a bit in passing, but I got to thinking "Where's my Sindy?  Can I find her???"  Well, I found her.  She was chilaxing atop a pile of stuff.

I found some of her friends too.  Please ignore the fact that Sindy looks like she's patting Mariclare's rear.

I don't know how Mariclare's dress got so filthy, but it did.  She's currently in the buff while I find a new dress for her.  I don't know if she can wear Barbie clothes, but I'm willing to try it.

Shelley, on the other hand, has the same little outfit that I found her in.  She can wear Tammy's clothes, so finding new things for her won't be a problem. 

Shelley has popped into my blog twice, and both posts are titled some variation of family faces.  I never did review Shelley like I said I would, by the way.  Tam did it better.

Then there's Claudie, a member of my peanut gallery.  My peanut gallery was a gang of small dolls that I used to take to the library, though the gang disbanded after I stopped carrying them.

Oh yeah, there was also this in my mailbox.  It arrived around ten-thirty Saturday night, so it ended up staying in my mailbox during part of Columbus Day weekend. 

In Korea (South Korea, I presume) there exists a line of brightly colored dolls called Secret Jouju.  They're similar to (but not the same as) fellow Korean Mimi and Japan's Jenny...except that this one that I have is a little one.  She's about the same size as a Kelly doll, or one of Licca-chan's little sisters.  This Jouju has a birthday party theme and seats for two, so stick around because my new little coppertop may invite someone to a party.

In the meantime, I need to get on with finding an outfit for Mariclare.  I like her too much to leave her in the nude.

Love,

RagingMoon1987 

Throwback Thursday review: Little Miss Revlon clone

And the Moon Girl's fondness for clone dolls lands her another poppet that she needed like a hole in her head.  As y'all may or may not remember I'm a Little Miss Revlon fan.  I have one, my lovely little Wendy, who was the focus of a review a couple of years back.  In the time that's elapsed since then I...haven't done much with Wendy.  I clean her earrings and make sure her elastic is still holding strong, and of course I'm always on the lookout for new clothes, but other than that, nothing.  It was during one of these hunt-for-clothes-on-eBay sessions that I stumbled across this young lady.  I've chosen to name her "Belle," and she is a Circle P doll, or Little Miss Revlon clone.

Since Belle IS a Little Miss Revlon clone it should be no surprise that she and Wendy are the same height.

Just for grins and a reminder, here's how these dolls compare to the 11.5-inch height standard set by Barbie.  The Barbie in this case is my mother's #3 ponytail.

Brief tangent:  I found a nice old vintage dress for Barbie!  The dress in question is "Fancy Free."

Pardon the yellow cast in that picture; the sun was setting when I took it, on the same day that I took this picture of Annika.  LOL, I remember that day quite well; we'd had a lot of rain and I made the mistake of sitting on the ground in my late grandmother's yard.  Normally that wouldn't be a huge deal, except that Grandma's yard used to be the site of a sizeable frog pond, and to this day it still gets marshy when the rain comes.  My butt and knees were covered in mud, but Barbie and Annika came out alright.  LOL, there's a story for y'all!  Maybe Belle and Wendy can wear Barbie's new dress, though???  Sometimes Barbie dresses could fit on these Little Miss Revlon dolls, so I'll test that later.

Nitty gritty time now!  Some of the Circle P dolls are not as pretty in the face as Little Miss Revlon is, but Belle...Belle holds her own against Wendy.  See?

In fact, Belle outshines Wendy in one crucial way:  her eyes are clear.  Wendy's are not, and she looks a little DEAD as a result.  I wonder why Belle's eyes remained shiny while Wendy's did not?

Before we ponder eyes too closely let's move up to Belle's hair.  She wears her dark, curly hair short, as many women in the fifties did.

The fibers are wiry and have a mind of their own, more so than Wendy's do.  The plugs are of an average size but are well spaced; indeed I had to dig some in order to find a decent gap for photographing the roots.  The plugs are tight in there, and what scalp I could find was painted brown.   So...here's the hairline.

Belle has apparently spent a lot of time either lying down or leaning against something, as the back of her hair is pretty flat.

Nothing a nice dunk in some warm water won't cure, though I'll have to take care with those eyes.  I suspect that it may be moisture that causes doll eyes to fog up, though I may be full of crap.  Wouldn't be the first time, LOL!  I have based my assumption on circumstantial evidence though, in that Wendy's eyes didn't fog up until after I washed her hair.  I didn't shield her eyes in any way, and now I'm ruing that.

NOW let's talk about the paint.  I think Belle looks a little more mature than Wendy in the face.  Here's the same picture from above so y'all won't have to scroll up.

I think it may be those eyebrows that age Belle a little.  Belle's are wider and less arched, making her look more sure of herself and...less naive, I guess?  She just doesn't have Wendy's placid innocence.  Sort of like a geisha, in a way; the more senior the geisha, the wider her eyebrows.  I tend to place that rule on these two as well, even though Belle and Wendy are definitely NOT geisha.  On a more positive note, Belle's eyebrows are centered.  Wendy's are not, nor are the eyebrows of a great many Revlon dolls that I've seen.  I wonder why that is???  I'm not terribly bothered by this apparent Ideal idiosyncrasy, but I still wonder why so many Revlon dolls have off-kilter eyebrows.  Anywho, here's a better look at Belle's eyes, complete with her perfectly centered eyebrows, and her less-than-perfect eyelashes.  Notice that the lashes don't connect to the eye socket (Wendy's lashes do).

See how clear Belle's eyes are compared to Wendy's?  Poor Wendy is starting to look a little possessed, with those eyes fogging over.  Wendy has promised to slap the first person who calls her "Annabelle," by the way (LOL).  Both Belle and Wendy have sleep eyes, and this sleep motion is where Wendy evens the playing field.  Wendy's eyes slide shut with no problems, but more often than not when I recline Belle THIS happens.

In fact, both eyes can do this!

This is a common problem with sleep-eyed dolls of all ages, and it's not a huge deal.  All I have to do is shake Belle gently and her rogue eye pops shut.  Strangely, I find this effect rather charming, as it reminds me of a scene in a book I loved as a teenager, a child's book by Rebecca Caudill entitled The Best-Loved Doll.  In this book the best-loved doll in question has sleep eyes, but only one of them works (among other problems).  Cute read, one that I may have to find for Malden Library (they don't have a copy), or just for myself for old time's sake.

Lovely day for tangents, isn't it???  Belle has a slightly wider nose than Wendy does, and her lips are red but are not painted in as fully.

The corners of Belle's mouth turn down a little, giving her a more serious expression than Wendy, not unlike that of a Coty Girl.  Her cheeks are very subtly blushed, much less so than Wendy's, and much, MUCH less so than the clownish high-color Revlon dolls.  Strangely, Belle's ears are not pierced.  Wendy has pierced ears, as do most of the Revlon clone dolls that I've stumbled across, but Belle has no holes at all.

On the back of Belle's neck is her mark, and the reason why she is often called a "Circle P" doll.

Dolls with this mark tend to make the world of LMR clones confusing, at least for this little black duck.  The Circle P mark was used on knock-off dolls from the God-Knows-Who Company that Belle comes from, but Miss Coty, an Arranbee product, also uses the Circle P mark.  I can't tell if Belle is an Arranbee doll or not, but judging from her expression I'm leaning towards the positive; Belle looks ever so slightly sulky like the Coty Girls do.  Oh, and as an aside, when I was browsing through pictures of Miss Coty I stumbled across this girl wearing a very familiar frock.  It's been eons since I last discussed this dress, so here it is again, modeled on Tammy.

I still haven't identified this dress, by the way.  But I own one and one of my friends on Facebook owns one, and now I've seen it on a Coty Girl so I know it's mass-produced.  If anyone has any info on this dress and who made it, let me know.  It fits Little Miss Revlon and all like-sized dolls, Tammy, Tressy, and TNT Barbie, and I probably am missing a few others who can wear that dress.  Digression over, I have no idea who Belle is now, though I haven't ruled Miss Coty out definitively.  There are a lot of differences between Belle and Miss Coty, but those faces are so similar!

Down to the body we go now, and to the main reason why I chose this particular doll over the other Circle P dolls that eBay had to offer.  This body is...ONE PIECE!!!

I have exactly two dolls with a vinyl body like this:  Eegee's Softina and Deluxe Reading's Psycho Cindy.  Oh yeah, I also have a Poison Ivy doll from Mattel, and her body is like this but it poses better, probably because she's much younger than Tina and Cindy.  Both Tina and Cindy sport a one-piece vinyl body that covers stuffing and a wire frame, and such a body works out well for large dolls like Softina and Cindy, though the vinyl does become immobile with age.  But I've never seen a similar body utilized for a doll Belle's size so this review should be interesting.  It LOOKS alright, but how does it move?  Well...her neck rotates...

...and that's the extent of Belle's movement, y'all!  I suspect that she has a wire frame inside her body and the vinyl was once soft enough to bend in a manner similar to Licca-chan, but the body hardened with time as objects made of vinyl will sometimes do, and thus I can't get Belle to hold a pose.  Both Softina and Psycho Cindy are this way, as I insinuated above.  This is just the way vinyl ages, but it's also a tremendous pain in the patootie in Belle's case since I can't seat her or move her arms around like I can with Wendy.  Wendy sits like a bimbo on Quaaludes, but at least she can sit!

Belle's lack of joints suggests very strongly that she is NOT an Arranbee doll, as all the Miss Coty dolls I've seen have joints.  Nor is she another Circle P doll that I've seen named Miss Marie, since Miss Marie also has joints.  She is also not the little cowgirl Sally Starr, since Sally was a blonde doll.  That leaves yet another Circle P doll named Little Miss Rose Mary (two words, yes), but I can't confirm that Belle is or isn't her.  Rose Mary's shoulders were covered in the two pictures I found, thus rendering it impossible to see if she has joints.  However, Doll Reference states that Rose Mary had pierced ears, and if that's the case then Belle is not her either, as her ears are definitely not pierced.

Okay, so Belle flunks the posing test with flying colors.  However, that stiff vinyl did take to a mold well, with her fingers and toes being free of big plastic tags and possessing all the requisite nails and creases.

Belle has painted nails just like Wendy does, but the paint is sloppy in places.  To be fair, Wendy's paint isn't 100% perfect either, especially on her toenails.

Belle's feet are large and highly arched like Wendy's are, and I think these two can share shoes, but we'll get to that when we come to it.

Good place to segue into clothes.  Belle is currently not wearing the outfit she came in, but rather one that I bought for Wendy, one that was a smidge tight on her curvy body.  Belle wears it well, but for the record it wasn't what she came in.  THIS is what she came in.

This is a full-skirted, strapless number that fits both Belle and Wendy very well, though being strapless means that the occasional nip slip is inevitable.  The bodice is not hemmed...

...nor are the skirt or the wrap that comes with it.

The back does fasten with a snap, though!

Being a fashion doll with high-heeled feet, Belle unsurprisingly has high-heeled shoes.  These are plain black shoes in flimsy plastic with a fair amount of cracks.

This is the worst of the cracks, in the sole of the left shoe.

I'm hoping desperately that Belle and Wendy can share shoes, because I find these beat up black pumps rather unsightly.  I'm optimistic, but similar dolls can have different shoe sizes.

As it turned out Belle and Wendy can share shoes quite nicely, and I am glad.  Belle may be stiff as a board and not good for anything but modelling Wendy's clothes, but she still deserves to have some nice shoes.

Regarding clothes sharing, Tammy and Tressy ensembles are at a premium in the Moon House, but I've got a lot of Barbie stuff, including the new dress that Barbie now has on.  Even though Barbie is a lot taller than Belle, I'm just itching to try "Fancy Free" on Belle to see how it does.  Barbie can in turn wear the Revlon set...if it fits her, that is.

Mmmm...I can live with that.  "Fancy Free" is a lot longer on Belle than it is on Barbie, and the bodice is baggy around her smaller chest.  Interestingly, despite having a bigger chest, Barbie can wear the Revlon set quite well, though I have to admit that the shirt hangs better on Belle.  Notice that Belle can put her hands in the rather ample pockets of "Fancy Free."  I haven't tried that with Barbie yet since her hands curve outward some.

I think that settles it!  Can't think of anything else I want to say!

BAD
*Lacks any ability to pose other than turning her head.
*Eyes stick, but that isn't a huge deal.
*Painting isn't as precise as it is on the brand-name dolls
*Hair is wiry, but again this isn't a huge deal since Wendy's hair is also wiry.

GOOD
*Eyes are not fogged over...yet.
*NOT BLONDE!!!  Too many of the dolls from this era are blonde.
*Sturdy.  This is one of the few dolls who'd survive my "throw her across the yard and see what happens" test.
*Can share dresses with Barbie, albeit imperfectly.  Can also wear Little Miss Revlon stuff, though that's probably fairly obvious.

Hmmm...looks like I got suckered by a novelty again!  Oh, don't get me wrong, Belle is a nice doll.  She'd still make a nice plaything for a modern-day kid, tough as she is.  But that inability to do more than stand there probably would get annoying for a child of today, so accustomed are they to having dolls that can sit at least a little.  Belle probably could've sat when she was a younger doll and her vinyl was softer, but NOT ANYMORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I think I'll try to avoid all-vinyl dolls of this age from now on, as they either stiffen like Belle and Softina and Psycho Cindy, or they wear out like Tutti, Todd, and the Liddle Kiddles.  As she stands Belle is only an attractive mannequin, rather like Mattel's Stardolls...but maybe she can take a rebody.  If I can find some Little Miss Revlon parts I'll try that out and get back to y'all.  But right now Belle is just Wendy's stiff second banana.  I like her enough to use her as a dress model, and I like her face, but she's not much for playing with.  She does look nice with a group of vintage dollies though, and her eyes aren't clouded over like poor Wendy's are.  Hopefully I can keep it that way.

Joy to the world,
RagingMoon1987

POSTSCRIPT:  I think I've identified Belle!  Doll Reference's Jolly Toys/Nasco page has absolutely nothing about Claudie, my little Tressy/Crissy wannabe, but at the bottom of the list of products it mentions a Little Miss Revlon-clone.  Jolly Toys's clone doll was marked "Circle P," was jointed only at the neck, had a hollow one-piece body, and was named Jean.  Thus I'm almost certain now that Belle is actually "Jean."  This creates potential for more confusion, as Nasco also had a little girl doll named "Jean," one that bears a passing resemblance to Claudie.  Does this mean that Belle and Claudie are sisters?  LOL, as to the name, I like the name "Belle" a lot, much more so than "Jean," so maybe my dolly can have two names.  Belle-Jean?  Jean-Belle?  I kinda like Jean-Belle, LOL! 

Throwback Thursday review: Nasco Claudie

Spring has sprung here in the Bootheel, and I'm hoping that it won't last two weeks like LAST spring did.  Seriously, last year it snowed in early April, was nice for two weeks, and then it got hot.  Anyway, my trees are in full bloom, and did I mention that I have a redbud tree?  I'm intensely fond of redbud trees, and mine is putting on a show this year!

One of my other trees also is worthy of note.  I don't know what kind of tree it is, but on Saturday night it had big, fat buds on its branches.  By Sunday morning the buds had opened into soft little leaves.

I like to call this tree "Horus," because it has a knothole that looks a lot like the Eye of Horus.

Maybe y'all can help me identify this tree.  In early spring it grows these soft buds that look like the flowers on pussy willows, but then the buds grow into catkins.  After the catkins fall off the leaves start to grow, and then my tree is pretty all season long.  It also drops these infernal seed pods that my dogs try to eat, and I don't like those a bit.  Not only did the dumber of my two dogs (Sonic) almost choke on one, but they're a stumbling block for me as well.  Hey, I've tripped over smaller things!  The balls look like sweet gum pods, but the leaves and bark don't match.

I would also show y'all a picture of this awesome anthill that I've got in my front yard, but this is a doll blog, not a nature blog.  Just trust me:  it's a work of art.  NOW let's get this review underway.  As Ideal Velvet's debut commercial attests, hair was the thing during the sixties and seventies.  I've always found that commercial comical, by the way; all the little girls had at least a foot of hair, and they were all sharing a hairbrush.  Lovely way to get cooties, kiddies.  Anyway, all the big doll companies had at least one doll with hair that grew, as did plenty of more obscure companies.  Moony's doll for today is...sort of a Crissy competitor, a very small chica named Claudie.  Claudie dates from 1967 and was made by Nasco.  To my surprise very little information is available about the company.  Doll Reference, my favorite go-to for dolly info, had only a short list of products, and Claudie wasn't even mentioned on that list.  I had to turn to Crissy and Beth for a description of the doll.  Here's what my Claudie looks like (her appearance varied).

Claudie is/was one of a series of hair play dolls that Nasco apparently made to compete with Crissy and her Ideal cronies.  They came in a wide range of sizes and names, with several hair colors that all had a grow gimmick similar (but not identical) to that possessed by Tressy, Crissy, and Velvet.  Claudie is the smallest of the lot, at six inches.  She would be small enough to be a child for Tressy, were the two dolls' scales not so different.

Actually that difference in size isn't so bad, though I still have to seat Tressy in order to get the two to look at each other.

Technically one could argue that Claudie is more of a Tressy clone than a Crissy clone given the small size of both Tressy and Claudie, but Tressy got discontinued in 1966, a year before Claudie started popping up in stores.  Still, given their similar gimmick AND their coordinating dresses, I can't help wondering if Tressy was the one Nasco wanted to imitate rather than Crissy.  Perhaps Claudie was just there to fill in the gap that Tressy left, since Crissy didn't come along until 1969, AFTER Claudie saw her brief peep of sunlight.

I thought Claudie might be close in size to my Vogue and Lesney Ginny dolls, but they are both quite a bit taller than Claudie is.  I think Claudie and Lesney Ginny could become close friends if I left them alone long enough.

Last time y'all will ever see Lesney Ginny with hair that long, by the way.  I got sick of the tangles and cut it.  Now she has a chop bob, as I like to call it.

Digression over, Whimzee and Tea Blossom are closer to Claudie in height, though these three could never share clothes.

Penny Brite and Jan aren't the right size for clothes sharing either, but these three do look adorable as a group.

Alrighty, now that my customary fooling around is over, Claudie dolls come in several hair colors, with my doll possessing very dark brown, almost black hair.

Like all good hair-growing dolls Claudie has a head full of rooted or "base" hair, plus one long fall at the crown of the head.  Her base hair is parted on the right (verses the left for Crissy and the center for Velvet), and it falls to just above her ear.  The texture is smooth and quite coarse, which I'm used to seeing with clone dolls (both Jennifer and Cherry Fizz have hair like this).  The rooting is average-good; the plugs have some gaps between them, but they're not huge gaps and for the most part the plugs are rooted thickly enough to hide the gaps.  For the most part, that is.  Dig this.

Claudie's roots do show in the back, and they show enough that I've been asked a couple of times why my dolly is going bald.  The truth is that Claudie is not going bald, but rather suffering from a nasty case of box hair, one I have not yet been able to fix.  If she didn't have elastic in her head I'd boil-wash her hair and be done with it, but she does have aging elastic in her head so I don't dare.

Why does Claudie have elastic in her head, you ask?  According to Crissy and Beth, these Nasco dolls had/have an "ingenious" hair mech.  One would turn the doll's head to the left, pull the fall out to the length one wanted, and turn the head facing front again.  In order to do this the fall had to be attached with elastic, and since elastic grows brittle as it ages I have to be careful with the fall.  Indeed, I don't monkey much with the fall at all.  I just braid it, like I do the falls on my Crissy dolls.

Time for a spapeggy and meatballs moment:  I like to add a bit of flair to my dolls' rope braids by adding a smaller rope braid in with the larger strands.  Just something I like to do.  Feel free to copy, since I copied it myself from someone else's Crissy doll.  See how my Crissy's hair is braided?

Unfortunately I wasn't able to pull the style off with Claudie since she doesn't have enough hair for me to grasp.  She wears her fall in a simple braid to keep it from getting too messy.  I added the little green clips and the hemp string for...well, just for the heckuvit.  The clips came with Wozzeck's new wig back in December, but he has no use for them so Claudie got them.  They don't match a thing Claudie is wearing, but...oh well.

I also braided a strand of hemp into Claudie's hair, for reasons I didn't know then and don't know now.  It makes a cute bow at the end, though.

I do tripped-out crap like that to all my dolls that grow hair, by the way.  I make up for my inability to style by adding in any sort of outrageous accessory I can find.  Anywho, for a doll from the sixties Claudie has fairly nice hair.  Hair play dolls usually take a beating since little kids love to play with doll hair, but Claudie's stiff fibers have stood the test of time well.  I can tolerate the fact that Claudie's gimmick doesn't work much since her ponytail is at least in place (sometimes they fall out), and since she doesn't have a chop job to her base hair like my Crissy does.  I also love the color, as it provides a nice contrast from pale blonde Velvet, honey blonde Tressy, and red-haired Crissy.  I just wish it didn't look so thin in back!

Now to the face.  Most of Crissy's friends had inset sleep eyes, with only Dina and Brandi having painted eyes, while Nasco's hair-growing dolls could have either inset eyes or painted eyes.  I personally prefer the painted eyes on these dolls since Velvet's eyes can look buggy and Crissy's eyes can look lifeless.  Wait a minute, can?  Crissy's eyes just look lifeless, PERIOD, no ifs, ands, or buts.  As for the Nasco dolls, Claudie comes from the painted eye camp, as her cute little face shows.

No joke, I love this doll's face.  For some weird reason those eyes remind me of Penny Brite's eyes, even though they're not Mickey Mouse-style pie eyes.  Maybe it's the way they're painted, being side-glancing eyes with indistinct borders.

Not very precise paint, not terribly surprising for a knockoff.  The eyebrows are cute, though.  Sometimes super-dark eyebrows bug the snot out of me, but Claudie's eyebrows aren't super-dark.  Even if they were they'd match Claudie's hair, so I'm not going to gripe.  I will complain that Claudie's lips are too light, though.

I don't know if these were deliberately painted like this or if the paint has faded over time, but these lips look very washed out in pictures.  If I were better at painting faces I'd add a little color to these lips, but I'm no good at painting faces so that's that.  Since she's a little girl I figure Claudie's makeup is supposed to be pretty sparse; indeed, she has no eyeshadow or blush, so these light lips may be deliberate.  I do wish they were a little darker though, so they'd show up in pictures.  Not paint to write home about overall, but there aren't any screw-ups anywhere, no off-center eyes or lips on foreheads or anything like that.  I'd grade this paint a C+, on the good end of average.  Average or no, Claudie packs a lot of personality into this little face, and that's always worth something for a doll, no matter how cheap the paint is.  Plus there's no glaring foibles or mistakes with this paint.  I can't say that for all of my clone dolls (see Jennifer and Mariclare for examples).  Since I brought Jennifer into the fray, let's see what she and Claudie look like together.  I also threw in Cherry Fizz, since I named her Jennifer's "sister."

I think Jennifer and Cherry have a new "sister"!

On to the body we go.  Since this is a clone doll I'm not expecting anything wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am, and indeed Claudie has a little girl's body, devoid of any development.

She has naught but a bellybutton and a gluteal cleft molded on her torso, plus her copyright info on her upper back.  Like a handful of my other vintage dolls, Claudie was made in Hong Kong.

Interestingly, Claudie's body is all hard, hollow plastic...except for her arms.  They're vinyl like her head, and they took to a mold fairly well.  It is possible to see small seams of plastic between her little fingers, though.

Claudie's legs are straight, slightly tapered columns with three little dimples at each knee...and no other definition.  Being hard plastic it probably goes without saying that these knees do not bend.

Claudie's feet are cruder than her hands, being short, boxy little things with only the merest suggestion of toes.  The seams here are quite rough.

As with the majority of dolls this era (clone or no) Claudie has only rotational movement in her joints.  She can sit in a bimbo-on-Quaaludes pose, and she can do splits and wave.

Her head can turn from side to side but cannot turn all the way around.

About what I've grown to expect from knockoff dolls.  Not high, not low, definitely better than some clone dolls that I own, but not as good as some others.

As I noted above, Claudie's dress coordinates nicely with her larger friend Tressy's, being red and white and relatively short.  Not all Claudie dolls were dressed this way, but a few were.  My particular doll is wearing a red pleather micro-minidress and white plastic go-go boots.  With a dress that short she'll also need drawers.

Yes, pleather.  The dress is made of pleather, or a vinyl material that looks and feels like pleather.  It is devoid of the scuffs and tears that pleather and vinyl sometimes encounter.  The surface is embossed with squarish little shapes that are of a different texture from the rest of the dress.

Ringing Claudie's stubby little waist is this belt, made from a stiffer strip of vinyl.  This does not continue all the way around the dress.

Also present is this white velour collar.  It lies flat and I'm thankful for that, but being velour it catches dirt and dust and looks groady.  I'll have to do something about that.

The back of the dress is completely open, just like a hospital gown, and it is held closed with one.  single.  snap.  Yeah, a single one.

Good thing Claudie has those britches!  They're just plain little white panties with an elastic waist and a few loose threads hanging off.

The boots are cute, but nothing super special.  The molding is crude on these as well, and the seams are splitting badly.  The boot on the left has a split in front, and the boot on the left has a split in back.  These splits are a great help in getting these shoes off Claudie's feet, but I wish they'd chosen to split in the same place!!!

Claudie can stand up when she's wearing these, by the way.  When I tried to stand her in her bare feet she tumbled over.  All in all this is again what I'd expect for a clone, though the quality of these items are a lot better than some of the falling-apart-at-the-seams items I've seen at Dollar General here lately!  The biggest problem with this outfit are those splitting boots, and I can probably mend those.  Probably.  My track record with mending broken shoes has been a bit iffy here lately, but I can still try.

Regarding other clothes, Claudie has a rather unique size and shape and thus I have my doubts about clothes sharing.  After a copious amount of digging I discovered that Nasco did make extra outfits for their dolls, one of which can be seen here, but I really do not need to be spending money right now.  Of the dolls I currently own, I think Cherry Merry Muffin and Li'l Gumdrop may be my best candidates for sharing.  Again, I think Claudie may be making a new friend!

'Nuff chatter, you two, let's get down to business.  Cherry is taller than Claudie, but their builds are similar.  Let's see how this goes.

Hmmm...not bad from an aesthetic standpoint.  Cherry's pink shoes don't match, but there's nothing I can do about that since they're molded on.  The dress fits.  As for Claudie, she fits into Cherry's stuff, but the Velcro in the back won't fasten and the sleeves are tight.  I don't think I'll risk the well-being of Cherry's dress by forcing this on Claudie again.

Gumdrop, now...well, having looked at the two of them I have my doubts now, since Gumdrop's shoulders are so narrow.  But she's out of storage so I may as well try it.

On a lark, I tried this Lati Yellow-sized dress on Claudie.

It fits, but that skirt is VERY short.  We're talking Sailor Moon-short, folks!  Still, I'm now curious about the fit of other Lati Yellow clothes.  I may have to revisit this in the future, maybe with a pair of pants or culottes to go under this dress.

I do believe that covers Claudie.  What do I and don't I like about her?

BAD
*Hair is not the easiest to style, which is important for a hair-play doll.  I'd say this is Claudie's biggest problem.
*Face paint a little indistinct
*Posing sucks, especially seated positions.
*Boots are splitting and the dress only has one snap (I can probably fix both those problems)
*Can't wear many other dolls' clothes

GOOD
*That face!!!  I love that expression!
*I also love this doll's overall style.  She's a go-go girl, for crying out loud!
*Sturdy, though I suspect age may have rendered her gimmick unusable.  A modern child could play with this doll with few problems, though.
*Makes a good companion for my other dolls.  Some of my dolls are hard to place into a group, but not Claudie!
*May be able to wear Lati Yellow clothes.  I intend to tinker with that some.

Well, once again I've sunk a bit of money on a clone doll that's...pretty average.  Claudie has an adorable face and would probably still make a good plaything for a younger child, but I wouldn't call her collectible unless you're a clone enthusiast (like I am) or if you're into the history of hair-play dolls like Beth from Crissy and Beth is.  Even in that category Claudie falls a little flat, as she doesn't have a lot of hair to play with.  Even Tressy has enough hair to make a decent beehive, and her head isn't any bigger than Claudie's is.  I'd say that the hair is Claudie's biggest problem, since she IS supposed to be a hair-play doll.  I wish her fall were thicker, and I wish her base hair were a little easier to restyle, so I could hide her plugs better.  Still, I do love Claudie's little face, and I love the possibility that she can wear Lati Yellow clothes.  As I said above, I'll have to experiment with that a bit and get back to y'all.

Cordially yours,
RagingMoon1987