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?

Correction on Madame Alexander Dolls

After looking at several people's shots of the Madame Alexander booth at Toy Fair, I didn't see any of the 7" size dolls like the Travel Friends, and so I thought the line was over. But the Princess line that I saw last year has actually been produced for this year, it would seem. The face mold looks different from the Travel Friends in the promo website pics, except for the Starry Princess, who really looks a lot like the Italy doll, except with a new eye color and a princess outfit. I might pick up a couple; I might not. I'm glad I was wrong about these, anyway.

Mini Mooshka Fairytale Dolls

Sunday evening Mr. BTEG and I had to take a run to Target, despite the bad weather. On the way there, we got the expected robocall from my daughter's school, saying that they were closed on Monday. Woo hoo! Since I was going to have a cozy snow day at home, I felt like it would be nice to have a couple of new dollies to play with.

I've been looking at the Mini Mooshka dolls for a while. I'm not into the bigger cloth dolls, but the minis look like homemade wooden toys. Between their appearance and the Russian-sounding names, they remind me of matryoshka dolls. They're made by MGA Entertainment, which also makes Lalaloopsy, among other dolls, and seems to own Little Tykes as well.

Meet Palia and Casia.