2012 W Club registration starts now

Registration for Integrity Toys' 2012 W Club starts now and goes until Jan. 18.  I am THRILLED with the upgrade dolls this year ... the dolls you can order with your membership.  This year they are Poppy Parker and Natalia. ... two sculpts I love, and the face paint on each looks beautifully done.  Ordering the dolls is optional and you can actually just order the base membership without the dolls if you prefer.  To see more photos, you can see the W Club ordering information, here. (Click on "W Club 2012 Brochure" to see everything.)

Natalia ...

 and Poppy.

Happy holidays!

Hearts for Hearts dolls

Consuelo and Dell, right outa da box.

I don't mean to make my blog all about play dolls, but I had to post these here.  I learned that these Hearts for Hearts Girls dolls were on sale at Costco.com for only $10 each (regularly $29!), so I had to get two for my little girl.  I posted about the sale on one of the doll forums and of course the two most popular dolls they had -- these two in my photos - sold out that very day.  I was lucky I was able to grab two of them!




They are a line of 14-inch tall international dolls.  The two I got represent the United States and Mexico.  I'm very pleased with the quality of the hair, eyes, vinyl and clothing.  The hair is silky soft, and a better quality than the hair on the BFC Ink dolls I posted about below. 

Hearts for Hearts doll, left, poses next to a BFC Ink doll. 

The articulation is bad and very behind-the-times.  They can only sit in a splayed-leg position like old fashioned baby dolls, and their elbows and knees do not bend.  The clothing, on the other hand, is quite a good quality for a play-line doll, and uses better, nicer fabrics than most other play-line dollies I've seen.  Like the BFC Ink girls, they also have separate outfits available.

Despite being made by a different company, they actually make perfect little sisters for the 18-inch BFC Ink dolls.  I've pictured the two types of doll at right so you can see them together.  I think any little girl would LOVE to have these as sisters.

I've been eyeing these girls at Target for the past year ...

I've been eyeballing these BFC Ink. dolls by MGA Entertainment for a good while now.  I think they're just darling.  (Yes, it's spelled "Ink," not "Inc." I don't know why. ... It's not like they come with colored pens or anything!)

The quality is fairly good for a play-line doll, and unlike most child dolls, they have bending elbows, wrists, knees and ankles!  The high-priced American Girl dolls don't even have that. It was a selling point for me, because these dolls are meant to be played with by little girls, who like to pose and play with their dolls, not just stare at them.

So, I had to get two of them.  One is mine and one is my daughter's, but I have a feeling my doll is destined to live in my daughter's bedroom forever.  Transfer of ownership is inevitable!  That's the problem when both moms and kids like dolls.  Hee hee.

It turns out the company is right now in the process of coming out with five new ones. They are already for sale through Target.com and Amazon.com (when they aren't sold out). I expect they'll be in stores in a few months. The new BFC girls represent different countries, and are from England, Sweden, Mexico, France and South Africa.

My only beef with them is they are afflicted with the trendy "big-head syndrome."  Why is it you can't buy child dolls any more unless their heads are disproportionately large for their bodies?  People shopping for dolls for their daughters don't even have a choice any more. ... If they want a child doll, it's going to have a big head because that's all that's available.

With that said, though, these dolls really are quite cute and fun.  They even have a few separate outfits available.  Nice.  The red dress in my photos is actually one of the separate outfits I found for them.

Here's the official company promo pic of four of the new BFC Ink girls coming out.  Cuteness! 

Plastic cuteness

Plastic cuteness.  Aaahhh.

These domos are the 2" tall versions.  There are also plastic domos in 5.5" and 8" sizes; fuzzy plush domos in 6", 10" and 18" heights, domo T-shirts, domo backpacks, and domo bedroom slippers.   A search for "domo" on e-Bay brought up 66 pages of fun, crazy, Japanese-flavored domo goodness.

When I took my new domos out of their plastic wrapping, one of the arms on the snowflake guy fell off immediately.  Poor, sad domo.  An application of superglue later ... and the domo could rival a kitten wearing a hat for "cute."  I don't feel the need to buy any more of them, but I'm not sorry I got these.  Mostly they sit near my computer and look adorable in a --"Look at that hamster trying to bite me.  ... Isn't he precious?" --kind of way.

Another little cute plastic thing I keep near my computer are the mini Lalaloopsies.

There are so many new Mini Lalaloopsies coming out now, I can no longer keep track of them all.  I got a few of the new ones.  My 4-year-old absolutely loves them.  I love their simplistic but sweet faces.  These four are "Marina Anchors" (two of them in different outfits), "Sahara Mirage" (a genie), and "Swirly Figure Eight" (an ice skater).

More Monograms ... I'm now obsessed

Monogram Envied, redressed.

ML's Dolls has a buy 2, get 1 free sale on Monograms this week, and I couldn't resist it. I got the set of three in the checkered dresses.  I'd been wanting them all year, and couldn't resist the discounted price.

I love the dresses they come with, but I think I'd like to see the dresses on my Poppy Parkers even more.  Monograms and Poppy Parkers share the same torso and bust size, although Monograms are a bit longer in the leg.  As a result, they can wear most of the same clothing.  (I did come across some pants made for Poppy that were a bit too tight for the Monograms.)

Anyway, I when these girls arrived I had an immediate photo session in my backyard. They are SO MUCH PRETTIER than they'd seemed in their original promo pics. 

Monogram Bemused

Monogram Passionate

The girls in their original clothing.

The 2011 Holiday Monograms

I have a new love. I'd always avoided the FR: Monograms before because I didn't want to start collecting yet another doll line when I already have so many. I'd always liked them, though, and finally succumbed. ...

These girls are "Illumination" (blonde) and "Jubilation" from the 2011 holiday line by Integrity Toys. Total beauties, both of them.  There is a third doll in this series called "Fascination," which I didn't get.  I love these two so much I may save up money to get the third as well.  They've inspired me to start sewing again.

Yes, I took down "Jubilation's" hair.  Although her face paint is exactly like her promo pic, her hair ended up being twice as high as shown in the original promo photo and looked very Bride of Frankenstein.  I hate saying that, because she is such a beauty.  Her sculpt is lovely; her face paint is lovely; and her original clothing is so amazing it's absolutely sublime. (My photos show them redressed.)  I think the factory workers must have gotten carried away with doing her hair.  Anyway, I took her hair down with good results.  There was no bald spot, and her hair was pretty nicely rooted. Sorry I didn't get any pics of her original hairstyle. It was so crazy-high even my 4-year-old thought it looked weird. I couldn't wait to take it down.

"Illumination's" hair is perfect as-is. It's the perfect glam 'do.

Comparison pics

Classic Darla Daley, left, next to new Darla.

I thought I'd do some comparison pictures for everyone, because I always found comparison pics fascinating.  First up are pics showing the new Darla Daley sculpt next to the original sculpt. I noticed the new sculpt's chin juts out more than the old sculpt's. Other than that, they're actually pretty similar.

I also thought I'd show the new 2011 Adele sculpt (with a closed mouth) next to the previously-used open-mouthed Adele sculpt; the two 2011 Fashion Royalty Vanessas together; and the convention Poppy Parker "Simply Simpatico" next to the Poppy she looks the most like: "I Love How You Love Me."  Remember, you can click on the pictures to make them bigger.

Old and new Darla Daleys in profile.

The 2011 Vanessas next to each other.

New closed-mouth Adele sculpt, left, next to the previous Adele sculpt.

Simpatico Poppy Parker, left, shown with Love Me Poppy.

Style Counsel

Holy freakin' crap.  I'm not sure whether I want to de-box this set, or build a shrine to it.  I've never had a really amazing two-doll gift set like this before (or ANY two-doll set of any kind).  It comes with the new 2011 Veronique sculpt and the new 2011 Adele sculpt from the Fashion Royalty line.  Scrumptious.  Drool.  Two amazing outfits, and one of them has TWO skirts instead of one.  Tons of jewelry.  Have I sold you on this set yet?  No?  Just wait.  FOUR pairs of shoes (two plastic, two fabric).  A hat like you'd see pictured in a European version of Vogue.  Two necklaces with two really nice earring-and-bracelet sets.  The outfits have separate tops and skirts so they can be mixed-and-matched.  Two pairs of sunglasses, stockings, extra hands and two pairs of panties in fucshia and blue.

I'd choose grumpy over the sickly-sweet Barbie grin you see in the cheapest playline Mattel dolls.  Still, I like a doll that doesn't look angry.  I think if this sculpt were painted differently, then Adele could be saved from looking crabby.  Perhaps it's just the way they painted the eyebrows?  I don't know.  Adele's expression makes me think someone just stepped on her foot. She's freakin' gorgeous, though.  I'll be thrilled to see future incarnations of her using this face sculpt.  I also love the new Veronique sculpt.  It's elegant and beautiful, and manages to have a surprising amount of expression in the face in all her incarnations so far.

My other, nit-picky, minor dislike:  Their fingernails are painted REALLY weirdly.  The nails are "nude" but with tiny dots of red or dark blue on the end of each fingernail.  Adele has red; Vero has blue.  It's really, really ugly and at first I thought it was a factory mistake until I saw that both dolls were painted like that.  I've never been tempted to re-paint doll fingernails before, but am considering it for the first time. Veronique has dark blue toenails. Ack!  I wish they'd just left fingers and toes unpainted.

I've already decided this set can't remain undeboxed for long.

For those who don't know, this was a gift set sold at Integrity Toys' 2011 "Jet Set" convention held two weeks ago. 

 

Convention Poppys!

2011 Workshop Poppy Parker, left, has the same face screening as "Youthquake" Poppy, right.

I was able to get some of the convention Poppy Parkers through a very nice lady who had gone to the Integrity Toys convention this year.  I loves me some Poppys! These are the workshop and table gift Poppy Parkers. I photographed them next to previous Poppys who share the same face screening.  2011 Workshop Poppy (black hair, green eyes) has "Youthquake's" screening, and "In The Air" Poppy (brown hair, purple eyes) has the same screening as the 2010 convention workshop Poppy.  I thought it would be interesting to see these photographed together.

Out of these four, the 2011 Workshop Poppy is my favorite.  I love the green eyes/black hair combo.  I think if I'd been designing her, I would have given her some lower lashes, though. That's OK.  She still rocks my boat.

"In The Air" Poppy, left, poses with the 2010 Workshop Poppy.

2011 Workshop Poppy wonders why SHE wasn't the table centerpiece.

New Darla Daley, new Adele ... new chance to spend money

I was forced to sit home recovering from surgery while people enjoyed Integrity's convention last week in Chicago. I did hear through the grapevine the Darla Daley character from their Poppy Parker line suffered a horrific tragedy at the factory.  Apparently the mold for her head sculpt was BROKEN at the factory, leaving Integrity to scramble to come up with a new Darla sculpt.  This makes 2011's "Twist n Shout" Darla (pictured left) to be the only Darla that will have the original head sculpt, unless I hear differently.  Ack!  I feel like a friend got hurt.  I loved the original sculpt.  I've since seen photos of the new Darla sculpt and she's nice, too.  I'm just glad I have the original.  You can see some Flickr pictures of the new Darla sculpt here, here and here. 

Integrity has confirmed that the upcoming "Hit Single" Darla, which was shown in promo pics with the original face, will indeed have the new sculpt and not the sculpt shown in the promos.

The other news was the introduction of a new, closed-mouthed sculpt for the Fashion Royalty line's Adele character.  The new sculpt is LOVELY.  I don't currently own the new sculpt (yet), but I'll link to a few pics here, here and here.  This sculpt change follows the revamps for the Fashion Royalty Veronique and Vanessa characters.  From what I understand, molds get old after a certain number of uses and start to lose their fine detail.  Integrity fans expect that Kyori will be the next to get a facelift; I can't wait to see what's in store.

Below is the last Adele made with the open-mouthed mold, 2011's "High Brow" Adele.

LittleMissMatched dolls and the new Tonner Toys

I'm kind of intrigued that the Tonner Doll Company has decided to branch off into doing play-line toys.  Their current main customers and fans are adult doll collectors.  They've recently announced there will be a branching of the company into a new division/company that'll offer lower-priced, play-line dolls.  This new entity will be called Tonner Toys.  (As I understand it.  I'm sure I'll get more details in the coming month.)

The very first offering will be the 15" tall (39cm) LittleMissMatched dolls, which at first will be sold through Toys"R"Us stores and through the Tonner Direct web site beginning October 2011, unless the timeline changes.  The dolls are vinyl/plastic with thickly-rooted hair, and bending elbows and knees as well as shoulder and hip joints.  The clothes are brightly-colored and based on real little girl clothing from the LittleMissMatched company, which partnered with Tonner Toys for the purposes of creating the doll line.

The photos I've included with this post are of the very first doll released from the new line.  This particular doll was released as a QVC exclusive gift set in September 2011 and is the only doll in the line available as of this writing.  The dresses you see here are not the clothes she came with; she was re-dressed for the photos.

My personal review:  Adore her.  I really like the expression on her face, among other things.  Her shoes are a good quality and fit well.  I'll look forward to seeing the next releases from this line. 

My only two whines:  The red dress the QVC doll came with stained her shoulder a little bit.  I've Photoshopped the red staining out of the pics, so no point in straining your eyes trying to see the staining there.  LOL.  Also, the sleeves on one of her extra shirts were a little too tight to fit over her hands.  These seem to be problems that can be corrected at the factory, so I remain hopeful that the quality of the main-line dolls will be good. Other than these flaws, I am very pleased and really look forward to seeing the rest of the line released.

My re-rooted "Pencil Me In" Eugenia

"Pencil Me In" Eugenia wasn't a huge hit at first, at least compared to the rest of the 2011 Fashion Royalty line.  It really took seeing owner pics for people to warm to her, and the main objection seemed to be her "love it or hate it" hairdo.  Personally, I loved her face paint.  For me, her original hair was only so-so.  Didn't love it; didn't totally hate it, either, but in my world I saw room for improvement.  So I changed her.

Her new hair is a 50/50 mix of raven black and very dark brown saran.  I also re-touched her lips.  Nothin' wrong with her original peachy lips ... I just wanted them a deep, bloody red.  I wanted to create my own personal dream Eugenia, since it seems like over the years every truly wonderful Eugenia that's been produced has somehow managed to NOT make it into my collection.  I miss getting them at retail, and then cry softly as I watch them being sold on the secondary market for TWICE retail.  Sigh. 

Her photoshoot friend is Fashion Royalty "Regal Solstice" Anja. 

Of course, I didn't bother to take "before" pics of Eugenia, so here's a link to the page about her on the Integrity Toys web site, where you can see her original hair.

You can click on the pictures to make them bigger.

Regal Solstice's eyes

"Regal Solstice" Anja has got to be one of the best looking wonky-eyed dolls I've ever seen.  Usually wonky eye paint on dolls drives me crazy.  For me, it's all about the eyes, baby.  ... And this Anja has one eye that's slightly bigger than the other, Sinead O'Connor-style.  I know it's not just my doll, too ... every RS Anja I've seen has this same flaw.  Usually that would drive me mad.   To me, the eyes are the best part of the doll and eyes that are painted/screened wrong spoil the doll.  Here's the weird part, though:  I'm totally in love with "Regal Solstice" and she's become one of my favorite Fashion Royalty dolls.  For some reason, the eyes work on her.

It took me a while to figure out WHY they work.
It's because she has such a wonderful facial expression.  She has just a hint of a smile, and she actually looks like she's thinking.  When a doll's eyes are painted so that it actually looks like it has an intelligence, that's the hallmark of a very talented doll artist.  In this case, Anja was a factory-made doll and therefore the eyes were done by a screening process, which means it was a darn good screening despite the flaw.  There's something about the eyes that's kind of sultry and self-confident, yet gentle.  She doesn't have that blank-faced look that some dolls have.  Don't get me started on blank-faced dolls; I can't stand them.  Dolls have to have some personality to interest me, and Anja does.

I was doing searches for other incarnations of the Anja sculpt ... The Dark Hunter "Simi" doll, the Carol Roth doll, and the Integrity convention exclusive "Provocatice" Anja ... and only "Provocatrice" shared the wonky eye screening.  All of this sculpt's incarnations showed a great deal of character.  It just proves to me that it's a sculpt Integrity needs to use more often  ... although perhaps they can tweak the screening a bit on the left-glancing dolls like "Solstice."

The angle on the last pic best shows the subtle difference in eye sizes.  It's not her best angle, but she's still a nice-looking doll. Click on the picture to see it larger.

"Regal Solstice" Anja was a W Club exclusive from Integrity Toys from 2010.

My love-hate relationship with "Color Therapy" Vanessa

OK, when I first saw this doll, I have to admit I didn't like her.  My main objection was the green eyeshadow, but I wasn't a fan of her super-pale skin color, either, or the fact that her violet eyes actually looked paler than her eyeshadow.  I LOVED her sexy green dress. (Not the dress in the photos. ... She's been re-dressed into an outfit I made, here.)   I still think her original dress was the best thing about her. I also loved her dark red hair color, and I liked that her eyes were violet, even though they were a little light for my taste.  I adored her face sculpt, which was the original Fashion Royalty Vanessa sculpt.

She grew on me.  I ended up seeing some owner photos on Flickr of "Color Therapy," and decided I liked her after all.  (Doncha love how owner pics will change your mind sometimes?)  Although she came out in 2008, a couple of online doll shops still had her for sale for her original price.  I got her.  I figured if I hated her in person, I could still keep the wonderful dress and re-sell the doll nude (maybe). 

Well, she's still with me, so far.  I just saw a photo online of a slightly customized CT. The doll's owner had re-painted her lips a lighter, more natural shade of creamy peach that really toned down her look, and had boil-straightened her hair.  I LOVED the results.  Kudos to the artist.  Maybe I'll end up doing something similar with my Vanessa.  The lighter lip color, in particular was an improvement. 

More later on this one.  It looks like a little bit of customizing is in order.

Mini Lalaloopsy-Palooza!

Yes, I've gotten addicted to these cute, cheap little things.  Most of the dolls in the photos belong to my daughter, but some of them are mine, too.  They are just so dang CUTE.  Some of them don't sit very well, and the original Mini Pillow Featherbed (yes, this is the name of one of the characters) had a problem with her legs falling off.  LOL.  But, by and large, Mini Lalaloopsies are a charming little bunch. 



My daughter -- who is not quite 4 -- was the one who set up all these Loopsies neatly for the photos.  Didn't she do a good job?   I think so.

Beginning this year in 2011, MGA Entertainment has begun putting out "season exclusives."  The pic with the bunny and the witch are the first two, which debuted for Easter and Halloween, obviously.  Squeee!  The little witch came with a black cat, and the bunny came with a yellow chick.  Right now the exclusives are only being sold at Target stores, but I suspect this will change with time.

I'm betting they'll do a Christmas one as well.  (What about Hanukkah?  Don't know.  Doubt it. For that matter, I wonder if they'll do Thanksgiving or New Year's Loopsies?)

That black-haired, odd-eyed one is a custom I did a while ago.  She was originally a Mini Bea.  Now she's apparently one of those button-eyed people from "Coraline."  LOL.