Ahoy Patience by Wilde Imagination

I saw the words "non-removeable wig" on the description of Ahoy Patience, and I regarded it as my own personal challenge.  Hee hee!  Apparently, I'm not happy unless I'm devaluing my dolls.  I've been really intrigued by these Patience dolls by Wilde Imagination, and finally one is living at my house.  It was a close race between Ahoy and the Alice in Wonderland Patience.  Really, the only reason Ahoy won out is because she was wigged instead of rooted.  The wig was glued down, but that never stopped me before.  I peeled the wig up carefully from the back and ... now I have my own, totally unique Patience!

She's cute.  Super cute.  I won't do an entire review of her, since the Toy Box Philosopher already did a detailed review of Ahoy.  This is my first Patience, and I like her enough that I'd want a second.  She has this facial expression that makes her look so inquisitive!  

The blonde pics are Ahoy just out of her box.  The black hair is a size 8-9" wig I had lying around.  It's one of those annoying wigs where the hair is always hanging in the doll's face, thus the barrettes.  Might have to get another wig.

The striking feature about this doll is that her eyes are attached to the head via tiny hinges on the tops and bottoms.  You can alternate her eyes looking either right or left.  She doesn't look straight ahead all that well.  You CAN get her to look straight ahead, but she ends up with a bit of a surprised expression when you try it, for some reason.  (I'll include a pic later so you can see what I mean.)

The eyes are completely unlike Pullips and Blythe dolls, which people like to compare with Patience.  I have a Pullip, and the eyes on Pullips move back and forth via a switch on the backs of their heads.  (Like a light switch on its side.)  Patience doesn't have a switch.  Her eyes move independently from one another, so she can appear cross-eyed as well as side-glancing, or her eyes can bug out in opposite directions if you want them to.   Her eyes move when she moves, but they like to settle naturally into the right-glancing or left-glancing positions. 

The other thing I wanted to mention is that she can share clothes and shoes with Tonner's Marley Wentworth and his 12" Harry Potter dolls.  Yay!  Griffindor clothes for Patience!  I actually have a few Marley clothes in a drawer somewhere.  I'll have to get them out and play.

 

And now for a few more pictures. ...

 

This is what the eyes look like when she isn't glancing to the side.

 

 

Thanks for looking. 

Mini Mooshkas

I wasn't really planning on putting Mooshkas on the blog, but then I saw this review of the new Mooshka Fairy Tales Minis by Toy Box Philosopher.  I'd seen the cloth Mooshkas before, but didn't know there were 3.5" (9cm) tinies out there now.

Turns out I had to go to Target anyway this week, so I decided to check out the Mooshkas while waiting to fill a prescription.  Target had the Mooshka dolls on an endcap, with three hanging spots where the mini Mooshkas were supposed to be.  They were all sold out with the exception of two!   Just two left.  It seems these little things are popular in my area. 

I bought this pumpkin-haired one, thinking she'd look really cute for photography with other dolls.  This one is Casia the Ballerina.  She's obviously meant to mimic an old-fashioned wooden doll.  Her articulation is pretty much limited to the poses you see here.  She can raise her arms up and down and they'll stay in position, but she can't spread her arms outward.  She can raise her legs up and down (and they'll also stay in position), but you can't swing her legs outward.  Her head moves side-to-side.

I did a search online to see if I could find pictures of the rest of the set, since I couldn't see them in person.  I discovered there are a few on eBay, and the prices on eBay are insane!  Target had them for $8, and they're on eBay right now for $17 and $25?  Whaaaa???  I think it's because the online web stores for Toys R Us and Target don't sell them yet, so if you can't go in person to these stores to buy them, you might be out of luck.  If they start flying off the shelves, I'm sure the online TRU and Target web sites will start listing them eventually, and eBay prices will drop.  I don't even see them on Amazon yet.

 

 

What the heck is going on with the prices on eBay?

I like the side-glancing eyes.  She comes with the bunny.  It's super cute, but would be way too tiny to give to a toddler who puts things in his mouth.  I don't think these minis are intended for very young children in the same way the large cloth dolls are.  They're really cute collectibles for an older child, though, and would be SO CUTE as a doll for a doll.  I can imagine a child posing the Mooshka minis with an American Girl or Journey Girls doll.  

I posed Casia next to a Zelf (medium size), a mini Lalaloopsy and a My Little Pony mini so you can better judge her size.  Can you tell I like tiny cute things? 

Hanging out with Fluttershy.

As always, please click on the pictures to make them bigger. 

Review of Wonder Woman 52 by Tonner

This is the newest Wonder Woman by the Tonner Doll Company, and she's amazing.  She came out in 2013, and uses one of my favorite Tonner sculpts of all time:  the Tyler 2.0 face sculpt.  I actually had a raven basic Tyler once years ago with this same face, and stupidly sold it one year when I'd decided I didn't want to collect 16" girls any more.  Ha!  Boy, was I fooling myself.  At the time, I was thinking 16" dolls were taking up too much room in my modest home, so I decided I'd only get 12" dolls from then on.  LOL.  That resolve didn't last long.  So I ended up regretting selling such a lovely doll, and feel very fortunate that I was finally able to acquire another raven-haired lady with this face sculpt. 

I got her in a trade with a very nice lady in Texas.  Thanks, Jaye!

 

Anyway, I wanted this doll not only for the face sculpt, but also because she represents one of my favorite heroines.  I was a huge Wonder Woman fan growing up.  I think Tonner did a really nice job with the costume.  WW's costume has changed over the years, and this is its newest incarnation.  The traditional star-spangled panties now only have a single large star on each hip, and her boots are now dark blue instead of red.

This doll uses the busty "heroic" body.  I wanted to go into detail about how this body differs from other Tonner doll bodies, but I realize I don't know enough about the different Tonner fashion doll bodies to make a concrete statement about it.  I find all the different bodies confusing.  There's the starlet body, the pin-up body, the curvaceous body (may or may not be the same as the pin-up body), the athletic body and the Tyler body.  One day I'll learn the differences between all these bodies.  One day!  *Shakes fist into the air.* 

In any case, I love the arms on this body!  Doll arms don't always have to look like skinny sticks.  You can actually see some muscle definition, there.  Love that.

I was surprised to discover the corset and panties are all one piece!  I wish the corset had been separate, but oh, well.  No big deal.  The whole outfit fastens in the back with snaps, with a hook at the top.  I think the detail on the corset is wonderful.  It looks like it's made from a leather-look vinyl fabric.  The silver parts of her costume are made from a similar type of fabric, and actually work quite nicely.  Sure, real metal accessories (or plastic that looked like metal) would have been great, but this is the next best thing.

I discovered this doll has high-heel feet, which means she'll probably fit into regular Tyler Wentworth shoes.  The boots are not high heeled, but probably should have been.  I unzipped them to peek at her feet, and saw that the inside of the boot had a high heel-shaped insert to accomodate her arched feet inside the flat boot shape.  I'm not sure I love this, because it makes the boots look a little clunky and unflattering when you view them from the side, but otherwise, the boots are nice.  I think they would have looked better with an arch and a bit of a heel.

Her tiara is on an elastic band that goes around her head.  Her choker has a single snap in back so it can be taken off easily.

The only thing I found awkward about Wonder Woman 52's costume was the lariat/lasso.  On mine, the whole lariat sticks up at a hilarious angle when I don't have her arm pressing down on it.  Ack!  Yup.  The thing defies gravity.  I'm guessing they aren't all like this.  I may have to sew it down, or something. 

Her hair is thick and wavy, as you can tell.  It looks shorter than the hair on some of the other Tonner Wonder Woman dolls the company has produced in the past.  I think it looks amazing. I didn't style the hair for these pictures, by the way.  This is how it looked right out of the box.

I love her facial expression, too: intelligent and thoughtful.   The face paint is nicely applied. 

I think she is definitely an "A," if not an "A+".

Snow day! Plus, Kidz 'n' Cats news

I live in a part of Alabama where it only snows once a year.  Sometimes it will skip a year.  Anyway, we just got our once-yearly snowfall, so I of course had to take some snow pictures!

These are the Kidz 'n' Cats dolls "Galina" and "Henriette."  It's my first time photographing Henriette for the blog.  She was a special limited edition of 300, and was signed by artist Sonja Hartmann on the back of her neck.  The Henriettes came in three different eye colors and three different hair colors.  My girl has the "mid-brown" hair and the "grey-green" eyes (really more of a turquoise, but very pretty).

Henriette.

Speaking of Kidz 'n' Cats dolls, the artist has just released photos of her new 2014 collection.  You can find pictures of the 2014 dolls here.  The first seven on that page are all new for this year.  Gorgeous!  Jodie, Paulette and Julia all have the same face sculpt as my Henriette.

Galina.

On Feb. 8, Ms. Hartmann will be showing the first pictures of a brand new sculpt for the Kidz line!  The new sculpt will be another limited edition like Henriette.

So excited!  Can't wait to see the new sculpt.  You can find the Hartmanns' web site here.  EDIT: Sorry, it turned out to not be a new sculpt at all, but instead uses the Henriette sculpt.  She is still very cute, though!

By the way, Galina's hair looks redder now because I was trying out a new wig on her.  I love the color, but the quality of the wig is not quite as nice as her original.  It's a bit frizzy and dry.  I think I may put her original wig back on her.  :) 

I probably could have posed these girls better, but I was freezing my butt off and didn't want to stay outside any longer than I had to.  LOL!  So, they're looking in random directions, here.  I'm sure Galina was just wishing I'd had an extra pair of boots to put on her.


Later.