Doll Show - Toledo, Ohio - April 27th, 2024

I see by one of Tam's latest posts that she was here too. We were hoping to bump into each other, but it was not to be this time. Fortunately for me, the photos that I took are almost completely different from hers, although I took a lot fewer.

This table near the front attracted me, because the dealer arranged some of her dolls in a holiday type theme. I took pictures of Easter and Independence Day displays. I know RagingMoon likes the red, white and blue, and I do as well.

 

 

This was technically a Doll and Bear Show (most of them are around here) and there were plenty of stuffed animals for sale. The adorable bunnies appear to mostly be Steiffs. I'm not sure who manufactured all of the cats, but I'm guessing that the Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood character Daniel Striped Tiger was a cousin of one of these felines. (By the way, Daniel's middle name is pronounced like bi-ped.) At least one seems to have the Steiff logo, so they may all be Steiff animals too.

When Mr. BTEG and I were in Hamburg for several weeks, one of our favorite places to visit was a local toy store. Mr. BTEG loved the LEGO and building toys, and I looked at all the dollhouses, but we each ended up with a Steiff animal too. The new ones at least are a lot cheaper there, although I suppose ours are vintage now, since they're over 30 years old. Yikes! I got a sweet stuffed lamb named Laemmchen, which literally means Little Lamb. Not very creative, I know, but it suits her. She measures around 7" inches long.

This dealer is building up her own Tammy army. Barbie, Midge and Ken are not very far behind, but no match for the wall of Tammy.

There were very few modern dolls compared to the vintage and antique dolls. There was one Ellowynne. I was tempted by the Mattel Teen Trends Gabby to the bottom right behind Ellowynne, but her white pants were badly yellowed.

I also saw my first Leeann doll in person. Leeann is a doll created by Canadian doll enthusiast and creative, Denis Bastien. He was mostly involved with doll sewing until he got the idea to create his own doll, a girl with endless energy and curiosity. Leeann was eventually joined by a whole group of friends. I have linked to his website, but there will be nothing on it until August 15th, as he has journeyed to France for the summer. Leeann is about 12" tall, if I remember correctly. Judging by her box, this particular doll was a UFDC convention souvenir.

I saw one My Child doll, a boy in a very pastel get-up.

I loved this doll, but also her outfit. When you get closer to her, you see that her jacket is a very tiny check pattern.

I took a few pictures of dolls to share with people. The Disney Fairies were for my youngest daughter, who loved the Disney Fairies series when she was a girl. I think these were Disney Store exclusives.

And the Terri Lee dolls photo is for RagingMoon, who shared pics of her own Terri Lee recently. My favorites here are the one in the blue velvet coat, and the one in plaid.

Unlike Tam, I did not buy any dolls. I don't have the money or proper storage space for antique or vintage dolls that I would consider right now, and antique and vintage were the huge majority of this show. I didn't see any newer dolls or clothes that I couldn't live without, either. I did buy three pieces of doll jewelry, though. Cecilia from Rainbow High will be my model, as she was handy and has appropriate clothes that won't detract from the baubles. I got a pair of blue teardrop earrings. Cecilia is merely holding one up to her ear. The posts are very long, and I'm not ready to trim them until I figure out which type of dolls will be wearing these.

 

The chain is also rather long on this necklace with the porcelain rose pendant. You can see it to Cecilia's right going down her back, if you look. This means a larger doll will probably get to wear this.

Lastly is this petit point pin. This is also a little bit large for a 1/6" scale doll, but I love petit point, so I had to get this. It will certainly look nice on a Tonner size doll. It's even about the same size as a petit point pin and earrings which are supposed to be for humans. My set is also vintage now.

Sadly, most of these dealers at this show seemed to be based out of Michigan or thereabouts, which is further west from me than Toledo, so I won't see many of these people in Strongsville at the next doll show there. It was an hour and a half drive from home, and I think any large area in Michigan might be a bit too far for a day drive. If I want to go to something badly enough, Mr. BTEG and I can always make a vacation out of it, I suppose. What would you most want to see/purchase at a doll show?

Early Birthday Dolls

 

 

Technically, these aren't birthday gifts, since I bought them all myself. However, it was serendipitous that the Pullip doll arrived today. I would have preferred her to arrive earlier, since I pre-ordered her in March, but shipping has been an issue with Pullips for a while now. Avery and Natasha were on sale for good prices during Amazon Prime days. Natasha has been on my wishlist, but I only bought Avery for all the extra clothes and accessories. Once I sell Avery, I should make most of the money back that I spent on the set. I have a lot of new doll reviews to do now, and maybe more after my birthday tomorrow! :) I went through some difficult times recently, so I wasn't interested in doing any doll dioramas or crafting, but I find new doll reviews easier to do.

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

New Items

I'm interrupting my collection photos to show a few new things that I've picked up recently. Two of them are Mattel clothing packs, one from Amazon, and one from a Meijer store. The Amazon pack consists of a checked dress, a striped top, flowered shorts, a beaded hairband and a white bag. While I like the clothes, the waistband of the shorts is a little loose, and also tends to flip over. The legs of the shorts also hang a little bit strangely. But overall, the set is cute. One of my models for this outfit is a doll with the Model Muse body, which I picked up recently. I think she's getting a rebody, but I thought she would look cute here. Her left arm pose should look good, but her hand doesn't come close to touching her body, which doesn't make for a good pose, in my mind.

The next outfit I happened to see in store, and since I'm a Hello Kitty fan, I decided to pick it up, even though I'm not thrilled by all the accessories. The "watch" seems pointless. And I hate the way the glasses look.

However, if you like Hello Kitty, the top alone is adorable. The shorts are usable with other tops, and the hairband fits nicely. The purse with the stylized Hello Kitty, I could take or leave, and a fanny pack? Eh. The necklace also doesn't do much for me, but I've never been a fan of the big, statement necklaces Mattel has been releasing for several years.

I'm happy with these new clothing additions for my Barbie size dolls. Next time, I'll be sharing a new way I've come up with to store some of it. Do your dolls have a whole closet full of clothes, or just a few?

In the meantime, I know Xanadu has been looking for a new photoeditor, so I'd like to recommend one of the ones that I use, which is Paint.Net. It's free, and fairly easy to use for cropping and resizing photos, taking out red eye, and doing some other adjustments and effects.

TRU, Madame Alexander, EAH, Houses, Sparkle Girlz

About a month ago, I got a chance to go to the Toys R Us on the other side of town. This one is connected to a Babies R Us, which makes the store smaller, as Muff told me a while back her TRU is. However, this TRU often has different merchandise to the store closer to me, and as soon as I walked into the TRU on this day, I saw a doll line I've never seen before, and it was already on clearance.

Their story is that they are teenage princesses of the Planets of the Pentangle. When the EVIL Empress Geela takes over their planets, the girls disguise themselves as musicians and form a band called SpacePOP, because why not. Let's hit all of the tropes that we can! It bugs me that four of the five dolls have Greek and Roman mythological names (Athena, Hera, Rhea and Juno), but those goddesses don't seem to be linked in any way to the dolls or their stories. Indeed, Hera and Juno are the same goddess, one from Greece and one from Rome. The fifth doll is called Luna, but her character doesn't seem to be linked in any way to the moon, either. I was surprised to see that these dolls are produced by Madame Alexander. Honestly, I expect better from them. I was even more surprised to see that these dolls were at the MA booth at the 2017 NY Toy Fair, when this group was already on clearance at TRU in January. There was another set of the same doll wearing a uniform outfit, so maybe that's the next wave.

This doll reminds me of Draculaura.

At this TRU, Monster High and Ever After High were piled onto a square fixture with some other assorted toy items. I took a picture of the tall Madeline Hatter (17 in/43cm) and the super tall Madeline Hatter (over 2 ft/over 60cm), just to show you what they look like proportional to other dolls. I've never seen the super tall version in-store before.

I also saw a couple of houses that looked *not bad* for the price, considering they looked like they have some wood construction, and not just plastic. They also seem to come with some furniture that is not just plastic. My daughter would love the ballerina poster and dance barre in the modern house.

Lastly, since a lot of you like Sparkle Girlz outfits as good bargain outfits for your dolls, I took a couple of pictures of the ones that I saw at Walmart a few days ago. To me at least, the pink top outfit, workout outfit, and pink and black sparkle dress seemed new, but I don't keep up very well with these.

Speaking of Toy Fair 2017, what I saw looked pretty boring. Have you seen anything that you are looking forward to adding to your collection?

Plans for 2017

I looked over my New Year's dollie resolutions from 2016, to see how I did, and what I wanted to change or continue this year. Last year, I managed to post four times a month for the first half of the year. The second half of the year got really crazy, and there is still some chaos and stress at Casa BTEG, so I don't feel too awfully about meeting my posting goal for the whole year. I'm going to shoot for four posts a month again anyway. I like to keep this blog active.

I was planning to photograph my 10" Georgia doll, but she needed a wig, which I never bought. I also have a Patsy that I need to re-wig. I've never bought a doll wig before, and I keep second guessing which wigs would look best. There are also a *lot* of choices out there! I ought to make the wig thing a higher priority this year, so these dolls can be complete.

Of course, I wasn't sure last January that I would be buying much, and then I went crazy about Ever After High, as you'll see when I blog about one of my Christmas presents. It didn't hurt that most of the EAH dolls I bought were marked down, being older releases. I was thinking seriously about getting another Makie, but that didn't happen, after the company suddenly disappeared.

At least Meg has a lot of doll friends to play with.

Other than Ever After High dolls, I bought one curvy Barbie, one petite Barbie, two Star Darling dolls, and a discontinued LIV set that I bought mostly for the display window. Unless I fall in love with another doll line this year, my doll purchases will probably be down. However, I've also purchased some furniture, and a LOT of accessories like Re-Ment. That will probably continue in 2017.

I've found making time to sew doll clothes difficult. This is probably partially because of my depression issues, and partially because of a schedule which changes every day. I keep trying for big blocks of time to get sewing (or knitting) done; what I need is to do a little at time when I have the opportunity. For some reason, I don't feel motivated to go to my sewing table unless I can get a huge amount done at once. That's just holding me back.

I have a couple of construction projects that I want to begin, but we don't have space for me to take on a big project right now. Likewise, I've been trying to paint doll accessories in my sewing area, which involves a lot of moving things around. I'd like to set up a dedicated space for painting (which I will probably share with my husband and daughter, who paint gaming miniatures.) That crafting space won't be free until later in the year.

Lastly, I've been thinking about starting a running storyline here featuring my dolls! I have an idea that I'm trying to develop into a working plot; hopefully I'll get it started within the next month.

Lots of New Stuff at TRU, Including Made to Move Barbie with Fashions!

I had to drop off my daughter off near my local TRU today, which meant, of course, that I had to stop in to TRU. I was totally stoked when I saw that there was a new Made to Move Barbie, wearing a dress and with other clothes and shoes! I'm going to save her picture for last, though, and start with Monster High. I'm not into the line, but I know that some of you are.

Are these fashion packs new? I don't remember seeing them in stores, but that doesn't mean they're new. If they are, dare I hope for EAH fashion packs? At $4.99, I'd probably buy every different one.

This is the first time that I've seen Welcome to Monster High Draculaura and Frankie. I think they're cute, and they're still articulated. Not a lot of accessories though, besides the photo booth masks.

It seems like Mattel is going for packs of items with Barbie. I suppose they're doing it with Christmas gifts in mind. There are two large fashion packs.

There's also a 5-pack of Fashionista dolls, most of which have already come and gone in stores. This might be a fun pack for a girl, if you didn't have any of the dolls already.

I also saw two dolls with extra fashions/accessories, in what seems to be a new line, Malibu Avenue. The smaller fashion pack above is also Malibu Avenue. Is it too much to hope for some packs with a single outfit and pair of shoes, like Fashion Avenue? I mean, if I had a nearby doll friend, I might be able to split out one of these large packs with her, but I don't like enough of what's in each pack, to buy it just for myself. Same goes for the dolls below.

Of course, some of this stuff might find its way to somewhere like a Tuesday Morning eventually. I bought a set much like Malibu Barbie above, recently. Here's a couple of pictures of her. As you can see, I wasn't getting good photos through the plastic, so I gave up on it.

And finally, the new Made to Move Barbie! She wears a dress and this outfit comes with a microphone. She also has a scientist's white coat over a simple dress, and a soccer uniform. There is also a toy microscope, and a soccer ball. I was disappointed that only Barbie was on the shelf, but judging from the pictures on the box, I'm hoping at least the other three out of the first four MtM Barbies will come out in this type of set. I'm looking forward to seeing what type of clothes will come with the other dolls.

Will any of these items be on your Christmas list?

Childhood Dolls

I know basements, or cellars, aren't common in many areas of the world, but here in Northeast Ohio, they are extremely common. They usually have the washing machine and dryer, and the utility tubs, large tubs for cleaning things that would be impractical in the other sinks in the house. Before showers were common, utility tubs were apparently even used for washing hair, which is what my mother taught my sisters and I to do when we were old enough to reach over to the faucet. It wasn't until we got a little older that we realized that we *did* have a shower, and we could use that to wash our hair, like our friends did!

Moving on from that bit of history and nostalgia, basements are also used to store things that are wanted, but aren't used often enough to have them take up space in the living areas of the house. Holiday decorations or camping supplies are a common example. However, my mom's basement needs some serious waterproofing, and it was largely for that reason that my sisters and I needed to clean out what was unnecessary in the basement, either throwing things away, donating things to charity, or taking what was precious up to the first floor now that my mom has the whole house to herself to store things.

We found some interesting things down there. A few newspapers headlining the end of WWII in Europe, or the first moon landing. My mother's high school diploma, tassel, and class picture. But my mother had also stashed lots of old toys belonging to my sisters and I down there, and I want to show two of my old dolls today.

The first one is probably my very first doll. I received her from my grandparents for my first Christmas when I was six months old. She's dirty, her rooted hair is matted and dried out, and her dress is dirty. Her hollow torso is of a cheaper plastic than the limbs. Her only marking is U11 on the back of her head at the hairline. Here she is after years of play, and a few extra decades spent in a basement.

Here I am as a baby, sitting on my grandmother's lap, with the doll on my lap. My mother's hands are also in the picture. Please excuse the poor quality photo; this is a screen shot from an old Super 8 home movie, converted to DVD.

The other doll I discovered who was worth taking away, was my Rub-a-Dub Dolly, made by Ideal. Her main characteristic was that she was supposedly waterproof, so she could be played with in the bathtub. Her initial release date was 1973, so if I got her that year, I would have been five. I don't think I have any old photos of her, but I found a website where a girl put up a picture of herself having just received her Rub-a-Dub Dolly. Click here to check that out.

As you can see, she came with a hooded towel, and underpants which probably should have been a diaper except that would be impractical for water play. My mother sewed a bathrobe for my dolly as well. Based on some other items found down the basement, it looks like my mother used one of our old baby receiving blankets to make the bathrobe. Here is Rub-a-Dub Dolly showing every bit of her forty-two years, poor thing.

I think my mother would have preferred us to play with dolls like this for our entire childhood, although I'm not sure of her exact reasoning. One Christmas, though, my aunt gave my sisters and I Malibu Barbie and Skipper, with the really cool tan lines, and the damage was done. In my case, it launched me to a lifetime of both doll collecting and sewing, for dolls and otherwise. (I enjoyed hand sewing clothes for my Barbie dolls.)

The question is now, what do I do with these dolls? If they were to be given away, they'd have to be cleaned, rerooted, and get new clothes. I don't do rerooting, and I'm not inspired to sew for dolls this old. Would it be terrible just to throw them out? I have a bad habit of anthropomorphizing things like old dolls and stuffed animals, when sometimes they are just too worn out, or there isn't a need for them anymore. Once they were given away, I wouldn't know what eventually became of them, and that might even bother me, silly though I am. Know if any old dolls like this have been successfully given new lives?