The return of Tokidoki Barbie

Can you believe that August is almost over already?  Usually the month seems to just crawl, but not this time!  Maybe having Mama home made it go a little faster; in years past she would have spent the early part of the month prepping for school, and the latter half teaching.  Again, not this time!  Anywho, it's been a quick month and Birthday Season is just around the corner for us.  And as in 2011, I have my eye on a certain very unusual Barbie doll.  Y'all remember this little gal, right?

I assume that you do remember her, but I could be wrong so it's time for a brief history lesson.  This is the first Tokidoki Barbie that Mattel released, and I fell in love with her as soon as the promos hit.  I loved her pink hair, I loved her Steffie face, I loved her tattoo, and I loved her Cactus Friend, Bastardino.  Then parents freaked out about her tattoo, the doll became a hot item, and she sold out before I could place an order.  Tokidoki was a Gold Label doll, meaning there were about 25,000 produced.  What galled me was the fact that most people who bought up this doll were not even collectors, but rather price gougers who thought legit collectors needed to pay more than the fifty dollars Mattel was asking for.  So I didn't get my Tokidoki Barbie then...but I may have a chance to get another one this year.  Look what Mattel's got now!

This is in honor of Tokidoki's tenth anniversary, and this time she's going to be a Black Label doll, meaning I have a chance of finding her at Wal-Mart, like I did with first-wave Katniss and several other items in my collection.  I'm going to be honest:  I don't like this doll quite as much as I did the first one.  She doesn't have a Steffie face (I'm a Steffie fan) and her dominant color is pink.  However, this doll DOES utilize a face sculpt that I don't yet have in my collection.  The sculpt is called the Karl sculpt, named after a doll that paid tribute to designer Karl Lagerfeld.  Tokidoki's spiny little comrade is also pink, and her name is Polpettina.  I liked Bastardino, but I like Polpettina better in spite of that pink.  She's not a sickeningly garish pink like most of the pink on the doll, but rather a soft, pale pink.  She reminds me of strawberry ice cream, one of my favorite treats.  Oh yes, as a final little touch, this Tokidoki Barbie also has a huge tattoo.  Pictures of the details can be seen here.

So basically this new Tokidoki Barbie is going to be just as flashy as her predecessor, but not as hard to come by.  That's good news for me, but not for those who enjoy the thrill of the chase.  For those of you who like a challenge, Mattel threw you another bone to chew on.

Apologies for the lousy quality of this picture; I had to make do with what few stock photos I could find.  Anywho, I like this sassy lassie a lot better, but guess what?  She's a Platinum Label doll, the hardest of the hard to find.  Mattel is offering her up in the form of a treasure hunt on the Barbie Collectors site, so if you want to find this doll, go to Terri Gold's page and follow her instructions (link to her post is here).  I wonder if her Cactus Friend has a special name like the other two?  His closest match on the Tokidoki website is Malandrino, but the two are far from a perfect match.  In fact, this Cactus Friend looks like he may be a cat!  I say this because Malandrino is very clearly a dog.  (UPDATE:  this black cat may be named Buddy; he looks strikingly similar to the black Cactus Cat in this video by Toy Genie Surprises.)

So there you have it.  I have another chance to own a Tokidoki Barbie, as do the other collectors out there who missed out on the first one.  Yeah, she's not the same as the old one, but beggars can't be choosers.  I'm very excited for this lovely lady's release, and as soon as I find one the rest of y'all will get a review.

Cheers,
RagingMoon1987

Time to gripe: Blonds Blond Barbie, Mattel's latest controversy

I'm going to be perfectly honest:  I have no idea what "The Blonds" is about, nor do I even know what it is.  I don't know if it's a television show like "Mad Men" or if it's a movie.  <hesitates to look it up so she won't look like a complete dunce>  Apparently it's an Argentinian movie about...hmm, the plotline is rather shoddily described on Wikipedia, and I'm in no mood to look up another more respectable site.  Do your own homework on this one.  LOL, can you tell I'm not in the best of moods right now?

Anyway, Mattel released a doll that is in the likeness of one of the characters.  Here she is:

Now, what do you see when you look at that???  Do you see a blonde doll in a sparkly dress and a fur coat?  Do you see a run-of-the-mill Barbie that's been a little more bimbo-ized than usual?  OR...do you see an object that glorifies animal cruelty and the wearing of fur?  If you answered yes to that third one, turn around and bend over so I can kick you around the block.

Yep, that's what some folks are saying.  Animal rights activists and the anti-fur lobbyists are all up in arms over this doll's fur coat.  Some are swearing up and down that the fur is real (never mind that they probably don't own this doll themselves), most are saying that this "glorifies animal cruelty," and some are even saying that this doll is telling children that it's okay to wear fur and abuse animals.  Check out some of the comments folks have been leaving on The Blonds' Facebook site; some of 'em are downright nasty!  Not all of the animal rights activists I know are up in arms about this doll; they are the ones who actually bother to use their heads.  But a lot of folks are and it's insane!

News flash, sheeple:  this doll is NOT for children!!!  She is intended for adult collectors, like me.  If you don't want to expose your kids to this, then DON'T BUY THE DOLL.  Show some common sense...oh wait, most animal rights activists have no common sense.  They've never even heard of it, probably.  Furthermore, Mattel doesn't normally use animal products in their wares, and they haven't in some years.  Oh sure, there was a time when Barbie and Ken probably wore real leather jackets or belts, but not anymore (thanks again to animal rights activists for that little hit in quality).  But I'm willing to bet that in this case the doll is wearing faux fur.  Some lobbyists will tell you that faux fur is real fur from dogs and cats, but I don't believe that nonsense either; I believe that's just another lie that the lobbyists made up to try and prove their point...and they have done that in the past.

But then again folks seem to like throwing darts at Barbie.  This is the fourth big controversy that I can name in the past two years.  In the summer of 2011 there was a campaign done by the idiots at Greenpeace, called the "Barbie, It's Over" movement.  Basically they took Ken hostage, claimed that he broke up with Babs because she destroyed rainforests in Borneo, and refused to get back with her until she stopped utilizing Indonesian lumber.  It prompted a huge protest and a boycott, and lo and behold Mattel actually stopped using Indonesian lumber!  Never mind that Indonesian lumberjacks are now out of a job.  Never mind that Ken was packaged in the same kind of box as Barbie.  Never mind that Barbie sales actually went up, thanks in part to devoted collectors like me who saw through Greedypeace's evil little agenda.  As long as tree-huggers have their ugly old orangutangs to fawn over, then never mind anything else.

Yep, Ken left Barbie for this.  What a looker!

Then in the fall there was Tokidoki Barbie.  This is her:

Tokidoki Barbie was a stunningly beautiful Steffie-faced doll with pink hair, a Japanese-inspired outfit, a cactus dog, and a full-sleeve tattoo that stretched across her chest and back.  She was a work of art...and thousands of mommies and daddies flipped the heck out.  I assumed that the source of controversy would be over the dog (his name is "Bastardino"), but no.  It was over that tattoo.  This surprised me since just about all parents are against swearing in front of children, but not all of them are against tattoos and body mods.  Heavens, one of the best mothers I know has a full sleeve tattoo, just like Tokidoki Barbie!  But the criticisms flew fast and furious anyway.  Barbie promotes risky lifestyles.  Barbie advocates deviant behavior.  Barbie encourages kids to get tattoos at an early age.  It was unbelievably stupid, and this did have some adverse effects, not for the company, but for collectors.  Tokidoki Barbie had been advertised for half a year before finally being released in October of 2011 (just in time for my twenty-fourth birthday).  And then, two days before she was to be released...BOOM!  All the flack hit and the doll sold out in two days.  Most of the dolls were snapped up by jack wagons who don't collect dolls at all; they just wanted to pay fifty dollars for a doll and then jack the price up on Ebay.  I saw some morons advertising their Tokidoki dolls for SIX HUNDRED BUCKS!!!  That's a pretty far cry from the fifty she originally was going for.  Meanwhile, hardcore collectors were left with nothing, and one of those collectors was me.  I set aside fifty dollars to buy and pay for that doll myself, and she sold out before I could get my hands on her.  No Tokidoki Barbie for Moony's twenty-fourth birthday.  I got the Japanese DOTW couple instead (and they're a great pair of dolls...I owe y'all a review on them).

Needless to say I was not eager to repeat the Tokidoki debacle with the next doll that I wanted from BarbieCollector.com.  As luck would have it, the next doll that I absolutely had to have was the Katniss Everdeen doll.  

My lovely Katniss.

I figured that since there hadn't been a big fuss over the last line of dolls based on books and movies (that being the Twilight line) that Katniss would not cause a huge fuss either.  WRONG!!!  Folks had a fit again, claiming that the doll glorified killing and violence and war, and it didn't help that the Katniss doll carries a bow and some arrows.  Uh, no...that couldn't be further from the truth.  If you read the books then you know that they DO NOT glorify killing; in fact, the books are downright grim and glory is about the last thing you think of when you read them.  Furthermore, the Katniss doll is not intended for children.  She, like Tokidoki Barbie and Blonds' Blond Barbie, are for adult collectors and shouldn't be allowed within a mile of destructive little kids.  And frankly, I originally thought that some of the Barbie-haters out there would be pleased with Katniss, since she's about as far a cry from uber-feminine Barbie as a doll can get and still be an appealing product.  But noooo, we have to have a stupid fuss anyway.  Ignore the positive, magnify the negative, vilify the whole thing.  At least this time I didn't miss out; the picture above is of my Katniss doll (apologies for recycling a pic from a prior post), and my review on Katniss can be found here.

Oh yes, there is another one I forgot!  Earlier this year a bunch of parents got a bee in their bonnets about a bald Barbie for kids with cancer.  Barbie's Facebook page got inundated with posts like this:

And this:

Name her Hope, and she ceases to be Barbie.  Sort of defeats the purpose.

In truth about 99% of the bleeding hearts who saw this DID repost this.  It quickly got to the point where I wasn't sure whether the page was about Barbie or about kids with cancer!  Some even went as far as to boycott Barbie until Mattel complied with their orders, which I think is ridiculous.  Mattel STILL hasn't complied, so there are some poor schmoes out there who are boycotting Barbie to this day.  Don't get me wrong, I support this idea.  I love it, in fact; I'd own one of these in a New York second if they were produced.  It just got extremely annoying...I'd jump on Barbie's page hoping to see pictures of other folks' beautiful dolls, and instead I got the images above.  Some folks were so obnoxious with their posts that I even reported them for spam!  I wanted to hunt up the people who started the movement, shake them, and scream "YOU are the parents!  It's YOUR job to build your children's self-esteem, not Barbie's!"  It was all too much.  

Frankly, as long as Barbie isn't too risque I'll always support her.  If I were to draw lines I'd draw them at Porn Star Barbie or Junkie Barbie (LOL, hopefully those will never come to be).   Blonds Blond Barbie is neither a junkie nor a porn star so I support her.  I don't find her particularly attractive; in fact she looks to me like a glammed-up version of Nancy Spungen.  Imagine Nancy, below, with permed hair, a diamond-studded dress, and a white fur coat, and you've got Blonds Blond Barbie.  <chuckles>  I can hear thousands of punk fans demanding my head on a silver platter for that analogy!  

No offense, Nancy!  No need to malign the dead!

It's just the principle of the thing.  Blonds Blond is a doll, meant for the pleasure and joy of collectors like me.  She does not glamorize animal cruelty.  She does not glamorize the wearing of fur.  She is not supposed to be a political symbol.  She is merely something rich and decadent, pimped out with all the luxuries of life.  And what says luxury more than FUR???  If being luxurious is a crime then ninety percent of modern day collectors' Barbies would be behind bars, with their diamonds and furs and gold and such.  If you are dim-witted enough to think that a Barbie doll would wear real fur, then YOUR LOSS!!!  Instead of protesting Barbie and insisting that she be pulled from shelves, stick to your normal modes of lunacy by stripping down naked and throwing red paint on the rich folks in Manhattan (which, by the way, can be considered vandalism).  You will be making your point that way...and I'll have my Blonds Blond Barbie.  Everybody wins.

Unfortunately Blonds Blond Barbie will probably be one that I'll never have.  She costs $125, which is pretty steep for a doll, especially one the size of Barbie.  I DO have that money, but as I've said before that money is probably going to pay for schoolbooks...or for that infernal dental exam that I have to have this coming Friday.  So Blondie may get away from me...but I still support her and Mattel and will continue to do so.  Oh, and if she does get to come home with me, you know the drill.  I just hope she's as awesome in real life as she is in her publicity pics; Mattel sometimes likes to fool around with images of their items to make them more appealing.

Check out those eyelashes!!!

As a final note, I'd like to point out that not all animal rights activists, vegans, and PETA-pushers are dumb enough to boycott this Barbie.  In fact, some of them actually like Blonds Blond Barbie.  A vegan friend of mine recently mentioned a desire for this doll, and was shocked when I told her of the controversy.  When I told her why, she said "it's just fake fur."  Well said.

Courage!

RagingMoon1987

UPDATE:  According to a couple of my collector friends who somehow have already obtained this doll, the dress is plastic and snaps on and off!  How chintzy can a toy company get???  Especially since she's supposed to be so luxurious!  <sigh>