My Collection Part Nineteen: Madame Alexander Travel Friends

There aren't going to be any new pictures of these dolls. I bought them back in 2015, so even if you saw the posts when I reviewed the dolls, you've probably forgotten about them, and what they looked like. I reviewed them in great detail; unfortunately, there were a lot of flaws in the dolls, clothes, and box art. If you're interested, check out Germany and Ireland here, and Italy, Kenya and Russia here.

Here are the five dolls together.

Top from left to right: Italy, Russia, Kenya

Bottom from left to right: Germany, Ireland

The Germany doll, who I named Gretel, is wearing mini AG Felicity's dress, because her own outfit is just horrible. The shirt was too short, and the lederhosen were too baggy, and the straps were too tight when I tried to sit Gretel down. Plus her shoes were huge on her, as opposed to the other dolls. I guess that's because she came wearing stockings, which none of the other dolls did.

So ein Pech

The girls' clothes also had huge tags in them, that could stick out from the outfit.

 

When I re-read my reviews, I didn't remember how much I had really savaged some of the aspects of these dolls. However, I only paid $10 or so for each doll, and overall they *are* cute. They kind of remind of dolls like the Kruselings, only about 2" or 5cm shorter. I think I like my dolls' overall look better, actually. It's just too bad that Madame Alexander, a doll manufacturer name associated with quality, produced dolls with so many issues. This type of doll, which they also tried to use for a princess line, and a NASCAR line (so odd!) didn't sell very well, and few doll styles made it to stores.

Total dolls: 82

Madame Alexander Travel Friends Dolls Germany and Ireland

Yes, everyone and their aunt have been reviewing these dolls lately, or so it seems. However, I haven't seen a review yet of Germany! And Germany surprised me by having quite a bit to talk about that was different from the reviews that I've seen. Yes, I went with my own heritage and picked the Germany and Ireland dolls, although Ireland's red hair was a bonus. Let's get a little info about these dolls first. They are 7" tall, and made of vinyl. They are part of Madame Alexander's Play line. A visit to MA's website showed me that they are currently dividing their dolls up into three categories: Baby, Play, and Collector. They have quite a variety of baby dolls. Play dolls are mostly represented by their 18" lines. And the Collector line includes their Wendy and Cissette dolls, among others.

This is going to be a very picture heavy review. Actually, since I haven't seen MA's Germany Travel Friend doll reviewed, this post is the first one I'm going to treat like a "real" review and not just an overview. Before the break, I'll show you pictures of the dolls in their boxes. Let me give my standard disclaimer here: the in-the-box pics are poorly lit because I often don't get the mail from the group mail box down the street until later in the day. Thus, the natural lighting is poor, and I'm eager to break the girls free, therefore poorly lit pics.