2016 Tonner Convention Day One

Meg was eager to take her first long trip with me. She had to settle for sitting in the front passenger's seat after I explained I needed to be the one to be doing the steering.

I didn't get to Columbus in time for the afternoon registration, so the first event was the dessert event at 7:00 PM. The doll featured here was the DeDe Denton doll. There was a DeDe Denton doll centerpiece which one person at a table could win a chance to buy. Each attendee also received a basic DeDe. Half of the dolls were blond, half were brunette. Interestingly, the doll's name is spelled DeDe everywhere, except on the box we received the doll in, where it is spelled DeeDee. DeDe comes on Tonner's 17" athletic body. She is the granddaughter of DeeAnna Denton, whose story was that she was the socialite heiress daughter of a man who'd made his fortune selling Denton chewing gum. I'll be taking pictures of the doll I received soon; she's going on eBay, as I don't want her. Nobody at our table wanted the centerpiece doll either. Actually, my table is interesting. Everyone at my table is attending her first Tonner convention, except for our hostess. There is also one guy who seems to have been to other events. The person to my left used to be a dealer, apparently, back in the days of Betsy McCall and Magic Attic. She also collects American Girl, but misses Pleasant Rowland's passion for the line. The person to the right is a fan of Tonner's Wilde Imagination products, and doesn't really know much about his Tonner doll range. The grandmommy, I mentioned to the former dealer, and another woman at my table, your adventure of finding a Magic Attic doll in your backyard!

The centerpiece doll was very nice. Just not anyone at my table's cup of tea.

The theme for the evening was "sparkling white." I wore a white tee, and dressed my Tyler in white. When people saw me taking my Tyler out of my bag, they were confused and thought she was the event doll. One of the things I like about Meg, who also came along as my travel doll, is how so many Mattel Barbie and family clothing pieces fit her, so she's easy to find clothes for. She wore a Teen Skipper camisole and blouse, with the denim pants she's worn before.

Here's a couple of pictures of the room where we had dessert. I assume we'll be having all of our meals in here.

The last event of the evening were a couple of videos, and a slide show. We got to see Robert as the anchor of DNN, the Doll News Network. He talked about the new Barbie bodies, merely presenting the pros and cons. He also talked about the Lammily doll line. Some of the attendees were surprised when I assured them that the more, um, controversial accessories of the doll line are real.

Tonight was also the night Robert gave an overview of his 25 years as a doll maker. Here's one of his first displays at Toy Fair.

Here's what I believe he said was the first vinyl doll he produced.

He also talked about how well dolls with a famous story, such as Alice in Wonderland sell, and talked about his various licensing deals.

I only have one quibble, which is the way we got dessert. Tables went to the dessert line, in a group, one by one. We were one of the last tables to go up, if not the last. By the time we got to the dessert table, most of the plates of desserts were completely cleaned out. Robert also started the door prize portion of the evening while we were in line.

The best things about the night, from my point of view? Each child under 12 got a doll as a door prize. I'm not sure what doll they got, though. Either it was not announced, or I missed hearing about it in the hubbub. In a not related to children category, they were not stingy with the champagne which was served with the dessert. I'm not a champagne drinker, but I think it speaks well of an event when food and drink are plentiful. At least in this case, the drink was. One advantage of our table was also that we were right next to one of the stations serving ice water.

I already picked up a few things in the sales rooms, and we got a few nice things with the registration materials. I'll probably do a post showing my total "loot" when I get back from the event. I'm looking forward to seeing what tomorrow's events bring.

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.

Furniture and Food

Tonight I'm going to focus on some of the furniture purchases I've made recently, and the real cool Re-ment food that I found. By furniture, I mean chairs, at least as far as this post goes. Chairs are vital to a good doll diorama, no matter what room you're in. Well, maybe not the bathroom. I was looking for some more kitchen chairs, and really like this style. Found two for a good price, so I picked them up. Today Barbie will only be modeling with one. It really does look like a style of human sized chair currently on the market.

You won't catch me sitting down on the job! Mostly because I can't sit.

The next chair purchase was kind of a impulse buy. These were given out at the latest Barbie convention, and then of course, eBay was flooded with them. I looked at a lot of auctions to make sure I was getting a decent price. I've seen this style of chair a lot on various websites, mostly painted gold. The last place I saw them was in pictures of a Barbie exhibition in Paris. The chairs from the convention had plain satin cushions on them, with enormous tags attached. I ripped the cushions off completely. Since I have plenty of fabric and batting, I can make my own cushions. I can even make several in different colors and fabrics and change them around.

Lastly, I happened to see an armchair, still in bag, from the 8" Madeline doll line. It was a fantastic price, so I picked that up as well. I already have one, but as you'll see, this chair can look good for the 1/6 crowd as well. Plus, what looks cozier on a cold winter night than two matching armchairs before the fire?

Here Madeline models. She and her fellow 8" crowd are going to make sure they keep at least one of these.

See how nicely I fit in this chair? It's mine.

But really, this chair is not any shorter than a chair made specifically for Barbie.

So then I had Holly step in and take a seat.

So much more comfortable than sitting on plastic!

That's the last of the furniture for now. What do you think of the green armchair for taller dolls?

One of the things I look for very often is deals on Re-ment packs of mini food. Admittedly, they are a little small for 1/6 size, but so nicely made that the size issue can be looked past. I also love seeing them in dioramas people set up without dolls. It's amazing how with the right lighting and perspective, a doll diorama can look very close to real. I'm not anywhere near that skill level myself, but my dolls like to have something to eat and drink while they're sitting around on all these chairs.

Here is the bulk of three Re-ment sets that I picked up recently. The watermelon set I bought because it was a great deal. The whole watermelon is, I think, too small for 1/6. The watermelon pieces could be used, possibly. I'm not sure what that dessert looking thing in the white dish is, but I'm pretty sure those are pieces of watermelon in there. The dessert piece comes out of the bowl, so the brown plate, white bowl and spoon will be useful even by themselves. I actually bought two paella/sangria sets. I loooove sangria! Each set only comes with one glass, and really, who wants to drink alone? So two dolls can now nosh on paella and sangria while sunning themselves on the Costa del Sol. Heck, they can have a pitcher apiece!

Again, the sangria glasses are pretty small for drinking wine, to my eyes. Still, they've got that whole pitcher to keep the refills coming. I really like that you can see tasty slices of citrus all the way down into the pitcher.

And the good thing about the paella is that all the pieces come apart, for more play options. Those shelled items in the paella don't look much like the mussels I've seen in pictures of actual paella. However, if my dolls want to have a clam bake in September, these might work.

Buying furniture and accessories for dolls, speaking for myself, does not give me the same joy as opening a new doll. But after all, we only have so much space to display our dolls, or even to store them. And only so much money to buy them! So it's enjoyable to create dioramas for the dolls to pose in while on display, at least for me. Dioramas can always be changed to keep your doll display looking fresher, too. Win win!