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| 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.
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