Misty Copeland Doll

When the Misty Copeland doll first came out, there was a huge rush to buy it. The doll sold out on Mattel's website within an hour or so, from what I've heard. Happily, it's now been released to other stores. I preordered mine on Walmart's website, and the doll arrived on Saturday. However, for once, this doll is not for me! My youngest daughter is not a doll collector, but she does have a few dolls that she cherishes, that are related to ballet. This includes a Tonner doll from the Nutcracker ballet, called Marie's Special Gift. When I saw the Misty Copeland doll, I knew I had to get it for my daughter. Not only will it make a perfect gift for her last dance recital, held later in June, but she recently chose to read Misty Copeland's autobiography for her English class, and really identified with Copeland's struggles in the dance world.

Black Doll Collector had some problems with boxes being crushed in transit. Fortunately, mine arrived with a beautiful box, although that left side of the box could have gotten crushed.

Alas, this Misty doll had two of the feathers from her Firebird costume fly off in weird directions, so that they partially obscure her face. My daughter may want to debox her, though, so it might not be an issue. Or maybe the box can be carefully opened and the feathers fixed.

Her legs are in really strange positions, which is another reason I can see my daughter wanting to debox her. One of her legs looks to be completely twisted around to her right side, in what looks like a horribly unnatural way. I do like it that her shoes are realistic. Pointe shoe ribbons generally don't get tied all the way up the calf like you see on some dolls.

And here's a picture of my daughter in her pointe costume for her recital.

I can't wait to see her surprise when she unwraps the doll! If she takes her out of the box, I'll try to take more pictures. If my daughter will let me. :)

Only Hearts Club Dress on Barbie's Little Sister Stacie

A lot of my time and energy right now is going towards the Tonner convention, which starts on June 2nd! I've also cut out doll spending so I can save money to buy things at the convention, and at the doll show which is the last thing taking place, on June 5th. I'm planning on doing blogging from the convention, hopefully putting up something new every day, describing the events.

In the meantime, I decided to throw up this post, for which I took pictures ages ago, and never put up. I know several of you have Stacie dolls, so hopefully you will find this review interesting.

This outfit was made available to buy separately. It consisted of a dress, bolero jacket, shoes and purse. Because of where the waistline is on the dress, this dress does not suit the J-Doll, as some of these OHC outfits do. Stacie looks cute in it, although she has to wear her own shoes.

I think the purse which was supposed to come with this outfit was made in the same fabric as the bodice of the dress, but I got this purse instead. This purse came with another OHC dress, which I have reviewed previously. I totally missed my chance to put this outfit on eBay as: RARE ONLY HEARTS CLUB OUTFIT WITH MISTAKE PURSE!!! :)

Even without the jacket, the dress fits Stacie well and looks nice.

On a hunch, I tried the purple shoes, which came with this outfit, on one of my older Barbie dolls, and they fit! Of course, I don't think they suit Barbie's style very well. They're a bit clunky for a grown-up doll, I think.

One more thing to add. I tried going to the old Makies website to see if there was any new information there, and the site is no longer secure and safe to visit; I got a warning message. I'm hoping this simply means the company will be going with a new website once they open back up, but I don't think it's a good sign. :(

Makie Shoes

I read on someone's doll blog, I'm sorry to say I don't remember whose, that an eBay seller in the UK is selling off the last of the Makie items made by the company. I saw some shoes that are not available as a 3D printing design, and honestly, I'm afraid for the future of Makie dolls, and for getting more Makie items. I decided to pick up some shoes for Meg while the opportunity was there.

The first pair of shoes I bought was a pair of black high heels. They're not a shoe I would normally associate with the Makie doll, since she seems like more of an older girl type doll. However, I think they look pretty nice on Meg.

They were a very tight fit. I had to remove Meg's feet to get them on, because of the angle at which I had to push the shoes. As you'll see, they also left black marks on the backs of her feet.

I also picked out some pink flats that are the same style as the black ones that came with Meg. Again, these were rather tight. I'm not entirely sure I get the shoes on the feet all the way. On the other hand, the black shoes are relatively loose and fall off easily, which can be a pain when photographing a doll outside.

It was at this point of the photography that I noticed the black marks on the back of Meg's feet. I will probably be able to get the lines off with a Magic Eraser; I just haven't tried it yet.

Next, I moved on to Meg's regular shoes, just to compare them to the pink ones.

As you can see, these shoes are too low to have been the black line culprits. Meg's feet do fit farther down in this shoe than in the pink ones.

The last shoe I want to share was actually made for the Mattel We 3 Friends dolls line. I discovered that certain shoes and boots from this line will fit Meg, although not all of them. And then, I don't have all the shoes that came with those dolls, either, to test them all. Anyway, I thought these shoes would be great for Meg, if I had gotten the chance to take her into the waterpark with me. The flowered dress was not a good match for these shoes, so I put her in Curvy Barbie's dress instead. The high backs of these slip-on shoes helps them stay well on Meg's feet.

Lastly, something about Meg that I noticed the other day. I was looking at her face about eye level with mine, and realized that her pupils are slightly off from each other! I went back and looked at her de-boxing (de-tubing?) pictures and yes, they were just the same back then.

I'm not sure if it's worth messing around with them or not. I just noticed the other day, so how bad of an error is it really?

As I said above, I wonder if the Makie company will be able to achieve a comeback. They're certainly nice dolls. Perhaps the 3D technology is not quite cost effective enough yet? I would love to see what else the company might come up with.

Mother's Day Doll Gifts!

This year, my two daughters were kind enough to give me dolls for Mother's Day! I got the Ever After High School Spirit two pack of dolls, and a Mattel Belle doll with no real articulation, but lots of accessories. This won't be a real review, because all these dolls have been out for quite a while, but I did want to share some of the fun details of the dolls.

First I'll show pictures of Belle. The design choices they made for her ensemble were... interesting, as you'll see. She comes the way a lot of Mattel dolls seem to have been designed lately: no bending arms or legs, molded on top, detachable fabric skirt. Since she is a Disney Princess, her top has the addition of loads of glitter.

 

Her hair style has rolled bits on the sides to provide a good place to hide the ends of a tiara or headband. It's also nice and soft.

My daughter knew that Belle is my favorite Disney character, but she also knew enough to know that I would love all the accessories that came with this doll, which was sweet. She came with two tiaras, a hat headband, a necklace, three pairs of shoes and a little purse.

This little hat-on-a-headband looks strange with a ball gown.

I might add some paint touch-ups to these.

This necklace might look better on Apple White. It doesn't match this dress at all.

I think all the detailing on this pair makes them especially awesome.

This rose purse is cute, and appropriate to Belle's story, even if this color doesn't match Belle's dress.

However, not only is it small in height, it's not very wide. As you can see from my finger, Belle is shedding glitter

And that's Belle. I've put the Ever After High dolls below the fold, although I don't have as many pictures of them as I took of Belle, because they didn't come with as much stuff.