Doll Time !

Isn’t this Anna cute ? With her hair and freckles, I keep thinking she’s a ‘lost’ character from the Disney Tinkerbell lines. I thought, back when I first put them on wish-list, that I only wanted their clothes, I’d donate the dolls. . . turns out, I like them both ! So, yeah, I now have 3 Annas and Elsas, just in fashion-doll scale. Since I already like the Hasbro versions, there’s sure to be more ! My ‘Disney’ doll shelf is gonna be a Frozen doll shelf, at this rate.

Interesting news – due to popular demand, American Girl dolls now have the option of obtaining their own diabetes care kit. Seriously. It comes with a pretend pump, pens for those not using the pump, a glucose meter, travel bag, and stickers. Signs of the times, huh ?

I'm sittin' in style all next year !

Oh, is my new chair the most fantastic seating ever ? Yeaaaaaaahhh ! Even Luna likes it ! Beloved Hubby’s new compressor arrived, too, and that thing made my chair feel flyweight. But he’s happy, and Dearest Son has decided that he wants one just like mine, but in black fox-leather (faux leather, honey !) instead.

Some bad news – we got a warning parking ticket today, for blocking the sidewalk. Kinda can’t help it, with three cars on a two-car driveway. At least it was just a warning, so there’s no fine to pay. I’m hoping we can return the truck to Boss this weekend, so it won’t be an issue much longer.

Maybe he's Prince of the Rock Trolls ?

Well, roads were a bit slick this morning, but the sun’s out, and the road out front is actually dry. So I guess we really are back to normal. Beloved Hubby’s back to work, and I have an epically messy kitchen to clean up. I was raised with a superstition over taking down Christmas decorations before New Year’s, so I’m really looking forward to Saturday !

Meanwhile, I’m spacing out the fun a bit by deboxing a doll every day ‘til I’m out of new dolls. Which will be on Thursday. Six new dolls for Christmas is a pretty big haul ! Especially considering that wasn’t all I got – my new office chair is scheduled to arrive tomorrow, too. Hmm. . . .think I’ll substitute the chair for tomorrow’s debox, so I can space out doll deboxings through Friday. I feel so rich !

While Elsa and Anna were on my Amazon wish list, Beloved went off-menu with Kristoff. He told me he looked at all of them and liked Disney Store Exclusive Kristoff best, for his pensive expression. I have to agree. At first I thought he had a Leno-level chin, but it actually works for this doll. While his box simply reads ‘Kristoff’ on the front – with photos of Elsa, Anna, and Olaf on the back – the box liner reads ‘Prince Kristoff’ ! Wonder if that’s a spoiler. . .

You actually have to untie his gloves to get them off, and they fit neatly into his hat. I’m impressed with the hat’s details. While I wish his coat and turtleneck were separate, they look nice together, and the sewn-on ribbon belt looks great. The separate pants are full length - they actually go to his ankles ! He has painted on blue underwear, hinge-style elbow joints on rotating shoulders, and click-type knee joints with standard hips and a yes/no neck joint. With his heavy winter clothes, all of that is hard to tell ! I’m not terribly fond of the grey splotches in his hair, but they’ll probably grow on me. While I didn’t think I wanted a Kristoff – much less a Prince Kristoff ! – I love the one I have. I’m sure Anna will, when I debox her Thursday !

Happy Monday !

The sky and the ceiling of the house across the street are very nearly the same color. So is the lawn, thanks to sleet that looks like snow. That makes for some interesting visual illusions ! We had a light, pretty snowfall that lasted a good fifteen minutes, but didn’t stick. Still, roads are a mess, so I prevailed on Beloved Hubby to stay home. It didn’t take a lot of convincing !

He proclaimed the bookcase dry and ready for use, so I had some fun moving things and dolls around. My original plan was to move the Barbie / sixth-scale dolls to the bookcase, but I re-thought it now that all the Animators dolls were de-boxed. All of them fit standing on the top shelf, and the DP & M girls sit beneath. They’re a bit crowded, so I may leave whoever just got the latest outfit on the stand.

That freed up two shelves in the old bookcase, so Elphie got her own shelf, temporarily. She’ll share with FT Frankie and any other larger scale dolls that come along. I divided the fashion dolls into Barbie and Movie / Anime / Disney dolls, then I then realized that, once I open the Frozen trio Beloved and Dearest Son got me for Christmas, I’ll once again have severe crowding on the fashion doll shelves. Plus I still have an empty shelf, so I changed it to Barbie, Movie/Anime, and Disney. This can always be shuffled later, and may have to be, if those Hasbro dolls look as good as the photos I’m seeing. Since I already have six Frozen dolls alone, I may end up with one shelf just for them later !

Read three articles on the much-maligned Star Wars Holiday Special, that incredible mess that aired before Thanksgiving 1978. About all I remember was being upset at how just plain ugly everyone looked like in the cartoon (sorry, Nelvana !), and wondering what the heck Maude had to do with it. I don’t remember Carrie Fisher singing, because I’d probably wandered away by then. Well, I was twelve. Hard to believe that it won’t just go away, George Lucas himself said he’d smash every master and home-recorded tape of it he could, given enough time and funds. One thing I found interesting – all the Wookiees in it, except possibly Chewbacca, wore slightly modified Don Post full-head Chewbacca masks, available in late 1977, if my memory of old ads in Starlog magazine can be trusted. I shouldn’t be surprised, it was over-budget by the time the first set, the Wookiee home, was built. But even I knew the kid-Wookiee was walking in front of  a painted exterior, even at twelve !

Not bad, Hasbro. Not bad at all.

I'm gonna end up with a dozen Elsa and Anna dolls. . . 

Massive storms – nick - named ‘Goliath’ – have roared through our part of Heaven since last night. We had to blanket the windows, and even then, the sleet against them sounded like wrapping paper crumpled inches from drowsy ears. Lightning still showed through, and rolling, echoing thunder woke me several times. But we’re lucky, it’s all been high winds and rain, little sleet stuck, and the roads are slightly flooded, but not frozen. Still, I was glad we were well stocked with darn near everything any of us might need or even want, and didn’t have to go anywhere.

Beloved Hubby thought that it’d be a good idea to have a propane cylinder for emergency heat, just in case, so he trundled out and came back with one, and cappuccino. Police and meteorologists are telling everyone to get where they wanna be before dark, and blinkin’ well stay there. We intend to.

Since he was home all day, Beloved painted my Christmas bookcase / doll habitat with the glossy ice white he used on some doors for work a few days ago. That stuff makes me dizzy, so I took a nap. It’s almost dry, but I’m gonna give it another day, not play with it ‘til Tuesday. So excited !

Oh, and I almost fell for a scam yesterday. Right after we ordered the elastic to re-string Dearest Son’s Anna doll, I got an e-mail saying my PayPal payment was rejected. Just needed some more information. Umm… I’ve already given PPal that info, months ago. I deleted the e-mail, dumped out of the window it brought up, and went to PayPal by typing in their address myself. Nope. All our payments have gone through, no problems. Just to be safe, I changed my password. Since I know you’re not so dim as to fall for that, just pass the word to your more gullible friends, would ya ? Ya never know.

The Facebook MH groups are all flustered at some photos and video of the ‘new, improved’ dolls coming out soon. Frankly, they look more like rejected MLP Equestria Girls than MH. Frankie’s face scar is barely visible, and everybody has round anime-style eyes and much simpler hairstyles and clothes. It’s kind of like MH for your little sisters – or younger kids. I’m not terribly thrilled, but we all sort of knew this was coming when the ‘star’ position shifted from Frankie to DracuLaura, and the one non-SDCC collector doll was of DLaura – Mattel’s going for the younger set, staying with safe, bland pink, and trying to stimulate more sales by bowing to hyper-mom pressure. I’m not as upset as most, I haven’t bought anything truly new MH in months, just a few guy dolls and a taller remake of Frankie. Many believe Mattel’s trying to regain finances lost when Disney (wisely, IMhO) didn’t renew their contract and went to Hasbro for the lucrative Princess market, but this has probably been in the catacombs pipeline for months.

What bothers me is, the much- appreciated tagline doesn’t seem to be ‘Be you, that’s enough’ anymore, it’s now ‘Get a makeover so you’ll look like everyone else and fit in’. If I fuzz my eyes a bit, it’s hard to tell ‘new’ Frankie from ‘new’ DLaura by just face paint, like most shojo manga volumes I’ve seen (I’m lookin’ at you, Sailor Moon ! ), many characters are nearly identical but for hair styles and skin tones. And if that’s what Mattel wants to do with the line, well, at least it’s not getting cancelled outright. If it’s true, hey, I had five years of fun with a line I wasn’t sure would make it to Year Three. Whatever The Big M does or doesn’t do with MH doesn’t change the dolls on my shelves. Much less in my mind or heart.

There’s online petitions and claims that the photos and videos are fakes, but either way, it doesn’t bug me much. Yeah, it ranks that Mattel’s pulling this, if they are, but they’re not in business to please me, that’s fer darn sure, right Barbie ? I can picket their offices ‘til I’m as blue as a Smurf, and they’ll keep right on doin’ what they’re gonna do. Compared to the more devoted fans most upset on FBook, who got dozens for gifts or sale purchases after, I didn’t get one MH doll for the holidays, nor did I want one. And I rather like the new Hasbro DPrincess dolls. The days of me getting all righteously bent out of shape by Mattel or George Lucas are over. Maybe that makes me old, maybe that means I have less energy for the fight.

 

Or maybe I’m just really not eager to give up my hard-won ‘happy with what I got’ anytime soon.