Everyone Mattel's got joints except Kenzo

"Barbie, you won't believe how much hair conditioner I go through."
"Yes, I will. I so will."

These two girls are my Hula Hair (1997) Teresa and Barbie. Teresa was a find at a going-out-of-business antique shop in Coarsegold: I had to have her because (a) she is articulated by 1990s standards (elbows and knees) and (b) she has blue eyes, which is very unusual for Teresa. Of course, she has the 1990 Teresa head mold that's my favorite.

Hula Hair Barbie honestly wasn't a doll I was going to seek out. Dad and I had both been sick of adult responsibilities, so we went to estate sales on Saturday instead of hauling ourselves through the downtown farmers' market. My first pick for an estate sale was the one that billed itself as mostly tools. And it was! Except there was one box on the patio that had a couple ratty toys in it. One of them was Hula Hair Barbie, with her hair all ratted, topless in a pair of snagged hot-pink jogging pants.

The nice man at the checkout table charged me $1 for her. My logic was that, depending on how much I liked her, either I keep her, I resell her for a profit (because at $1, it's easy to make a profit), or if her hair was unfixable, I would body-farm her. 

Her hair proved eminently fixable! She's cute!

Back when the Superstar head mold replaced the Mod head mold, I decided I was officially Too Old for Barbies in protest. It has taken quite a while to grow on me.

So Hula Hair Barbie is staying. Hula Hair is an odd line. The schtick is obviously hairplay, and of course the dolls came out in an era when nobody side-eyed putting a white woman in a grass skirt. (The girls will not be getting replacement grass skirts). Barbie, Teresa, and AA Barbie were the only characters released in this line. Where is Kira? Her first appearance, back in the early 1980s, was as Hawaiian "Miko." She was one of Barbie's friends until 2001. Wouldn't she have been the obvious friend to join a Hula-themed line?

Speaking of Barbie's friends and relations, let's do the family portrait of my Mattel dolls. The collection has been through various upheavals since last we spoke, much less since when this blog was new.

"Teresa, does your brother seem a little... stiff?"

From left:

Cool Sitter Teen Skipper (1998) wearing the "Blueberry Muffin" Glam Squad fashion pack from Five Below. I remember being baffled by the phenomenon of Skipper Almost As Tall as Barbie in the 1990s, and I love the calm of her face. This model is the doll that has elbow articulation as well as click knees.

Teen Looks Jazzie (1988). Although she's Barbie's "cool cousin," she looks awkward next to the serenity of Teen Skipper. Jazzie is so tall and gawky because her body was based on the Melinda Young Sweethearts (1975) body, but without the limb articulation. It is a cruel trick that Mattel could have done extensively articulated dolls as early as the mid-1970s but chose not to. I chose this Jazzie because she has brown eyes instead of blue. 

I love Jazzie because she's such an obvious canon-weld into the Barbie family; she was supposed to have her own little social circle as a rad 1980s teen doll with her own boyfriend (named Dude) and friends. A decade before that, her head mold (if not her identity) belonged to a different beside-line built around fun high school student Starr. 

Skipper: "Is Jazzie short for Jasmine?"
Jazzie: "Girl, I'm a creature of the 1980s. It's short for Jazzercize."

Hula Hair Teresa and Hula Hair Barbie, as aforementioned.

Creatable World DC-965, now named Jamie. This one was the collection game-changer, because Jamie's articulation is so expressive. I'd veered away from my pre-2018 preference for articulated dolls, in favor of 1980s and 1990s vintage analogue lines, and Jamie was my wake-up call on how much I like articulation. I'd dropped in at the Really Bad Goodwill on a whim, and there hey were in a baggie with a straight-back-to-donation Barbie and an old-school Sparkle Girlz that I'll talk about some other time.

Cactus Cooler Ken, aka Skinny Manbun Ken, usually referred to as Kenzo (an overhang from my brief Ken period in 2021). Tracking down Skinny Manbun Ken was my obsession way back when Toys R Us went out of business. Every now and again, I think about articulating him, as while the different body types were a great idea, they are so, so stiff. Turns out that with his short-necked head and pale complexion, I don't have a lot of alternatives other than maybe shelling out for a YMY 25. Maybe for Christmas?

The Maine Cottage

 

My project for the past month or so has been finishing up (more or less) the 1:24 Maine Cottage that I started in the fall of 2020. (It had a long hiatus from early 2022 to early 2024.) The base is a Melissa and Doug portable cottage that I'd been eyeing intermittently since the early 2000s. It showed up at the Savers on Boston Post Road for $4, missing one of its dormer roofs (since replaced by Dad's cutting me a new piece).

Since I'd just been to artist-colony Ogunquit, my plan at the time was to paint it blue-gray and make it an artist's retreat. This winter, I ended up picking a new shade of blue that's more in line with the vintage Marx furniture chosen for the house.

The resident, Augusta, is a vintage Tweakie Toy made by J. Chein for a single year, 1969. Her workers and repair people are Playskool Lil Playmates from 1978-84. As you can probably guess, I'm not aiming for realism.

Part of the appeal with this house is having space for a dining room. 

The corridor kitchen is highly efficient. The "Milk Raw" sign is from an antique shop in Massachusetts. The astronaut just dropped in.

Upstairs. the bath is barely visible. On next year's to-do list for this house is figuring out how to hang a bathroom mirror on a sloped wall.

One of the decorating challenges was that, if I put the bathroom and bedroom walls in reasonable spots, I was left with a large upper hall for the stairway. So I turned it into a little library.

The blue room is the bedroom of Augusta's adult son, Stanley. During the week, he lives in Boston, where he's a businessman. His hobby is photography.

Here's Augusta's room. Long-term plan is to put a portrait of Augusta as a young woman over the fireplace, but nothing I try for that goes quite right.

Here's Augusta's studio. The brown desk has always been one of my favorite vintage Marx playset pieces, so it was one of the first things I hunted down. The easel is an improvisation, as the one I bought somewhere in late 2020 was in pieces and I could not figure out how to fix it.

Having a third bedroom was the triumph of this floorplan. My closest prior approach to a 3-bedroom house was Mom's Arrow Dream Dollhouse that I'd furnished with vintage Renwal, but I sold it instead of wallpapering and accessorizing it. Please note Augusta's cat, Kittery.

Here's Stanley himself, showing off his toys in the garage. The birchbark canoe was another Massachusetts gift-shop find. The ATV is from one of the dollar stores.

Barely glimpsed behind the vehicles is the laundry room. After taking pics, I finally realized I had the right tile for the laundry room floor, but otherwise, it's on next year's improvement list.

With this "done," my major uncompleted dollhouse project is the little birdhouse village. Next up, it's time to sew clothes for the Kid Kore Katie Krew!

Family portrait, February 2024

While I was tidying the cabinet where I keep fashion dolls, I posed the entire gang for a family portrait.

Back row, L to R.

1. Kid Kore Kelsey with titian hair. Fully intended to be my only original-flava Kelsey ever, since IMHO she's the best Kelsey.
2. Kid Kore "Legends of Ancient Lands" blond gladiator, now named Sylvester, with the widest hips ever. I'm not looking forward to fitting pants on him; maybe he'd like to wear kilts.
3. Manbun Ken, a.k.a. Kenzo. 
4. Kid Kore "Chief White Eagle" in his Philadelphia Eagles sweatshirt, called Brodie by most friends outside his tribe. His hips are not quite as wide as Sylvester's.
5. Kid Kore Kelsey with inset eyes, now named Kenzie. This is a late 1990s iteration of the Kelsey idea.
6. Remco Babysitter's Club Kristy, younger sister of Kenzie. Kristy creates the dilemma that I now kind of want a Claudia (the Asian one), but their bodies are so meh and there's not a good substitute that keeps them young and short.

Center row, L to R.

1. Dollar Tree knee-jointed Black fashion doll with replacement Monique wig, named Delilah.
2. Dollar Tree knee-jointed Black fashion with darker skin, straight ponytail, and excellent shades, now named Joy. Second daughter of Delilah.
3. Elspeth, consisting of a white-label clone head, an AliExpress jointed pregnancy body, and a Monique wig. Wife of Kenzo.
4. Fashionista Teresa from 2012. Half-sister of Kenzo.
5. Totsy Teen Fun Lacey from 1990s. Sister of Sylvester.
6. Cool Sitter Teen Skipper from 1998, girlfriend of Lacey.
7. Kid Kore Baby Allison. Daughter of Sylvester, niece of Lacey.
8. Creata Today's Girl Hilary. Younger sister of both Kenzie and Kristy. Grateful to have a name that doesn't start with K. When I bought her, I was so besotted with the look that I expected to get more of her size, but so far, I've resisted.

Front row, L to R.

1. Wulf, Kenzo's dog. A Target Xmas ornament some time between 2018 and 2021.
2. Ben, a Kid Kore Katie who's socially transitioned to being a guy. Younger brother of Kelsey.
3. Tigger, Sylvester's tiger.
4. Evi Love, youngest daughter of Delilah. 
5. Neveah, a Kid Kore Jodi of the early 2000s.
6. Simply Fresh Kylie on a MTM body. Oldest daughter of Delilah, half-sister of Kenzo, mother of Neveah.
7. Bette Mae, niece of Brodie. A Kid Kore "Dancing Brook." Officially Seminole.
8. Mr. Peabody, pet dog of Skipper's family.
9. Brooke, my first Kid Kore "Dancing Brook." Younger sister of Brodie.
10. Rosa Lee, a Romany Kid Kore Katie.
11. Kelly, younger sister of Skipper.
12. Lucky, a Lucky Industries Tommy clone. Younger brother of Lacey and Sylvester.
13. Isabelle, a Kid Kore Katie. Younger sister of Lacey and Sylvester, older sister of Lucky. It should be apparent that instead of buying more Today's Girls, I became addicted to Kid Kore Katies.
14. Joelly, a Kid Kore Jodi with brown-red hair. Younger sister of Kenzie and Kristy. I thought when I bought her for $1 at the Alameda Point Antiques Fair that she was titian-haired and would be my sole Jodi as younger sister to Kelsey and Ben, but her hair is browner.

More Dolly Insider questions, because I'm easily influenced

While I'm managing not to get around to a photoshoot for the Kid Kore Jodi I found for $1 at the Alameda Point Antique Faire, I've been experiencing feelings similar to the dismay of Teatime Tangents at the Dolly Insider questions being a one-year series that ended with 2023.

Admittedly, my answers after a while get boring and predictable: I collect mostly 1990s clone dolls, particularly Kid Kore; I sew and do light customization; yay me.

So I grabbed a couple questions that made me pause to think.

35. What doll would you like to see re-released?

If Mattel were to do a Mod TNT head mold on a playline doll with articulation, I'd at least think about getting one. I'm not up for buying collector versions, though, which makes me useless to Mattel. Alternately, bring back the 2010-ish Fashionista articulation as the playline standard.

39. If you could visit any doll company, which one would you visit?

I'd want a full tour of one of the doll factories in China, including a meeting (with translators, as needed) with their VP in charge of strategy or marketing or sales -- whatever role(s) are involved in the decisions about what to clone, what to offer as white label, and when to hop on a new trend.

Failing that, I'd go for Simba Toys, makers of Steffi Love and Evi Love. I'd like to learn about how the Love ecosystem is developed, particularly why Steffi can come in a pregnant version without anyone raising a ruckus. Also, why are there so few non-white Steffi and Evi variants?

45. What five dolls would you like to add to your collection?

This is a tough question because I've managed to find cheap most of the dolls I want. Acquiring the two Kid Kore guys was a big step toward completion. Let's see:

• Kid Kore Piper (dark-haired) or Morning Dove (Native American). This is the Skipper-equivalent.
• Kid Kore Girls Club or Carla. This is the 6" doll with a Katie face and a suspiciously similar to Creata Today's Girls ballerina body. She precedes the existence of Mattel Stacie.
• Creata Today's Girls "Middle School" sister. This is presumably a Skipper equivalent.
• Totsy Asian 11.5" doll, presumably a Mulan clone. She's tremendously pretty , and I've seen her only in a large lot with dolls I didn't want.
• Mattel Jazzy (Barbie's cool teen cousin in the 1980s). This is a maybe -- periodically I look at her on eBay, bookmark about twelve of them, then decide none of them quite hit right to buy.

47. What long-discontinued doll line would you like to bring back?

I'd be most entertained by seeing a full revival of Topper "Dawn" and friends, but I don't think I'd personally buy it.

48. If you had $100 to splurge on doll items, what would you buy?

A full 1:6 kitchen would be a good starting point. 

51. What were your 2023 dolly wins?

This was the year I got back into collecting, found a lot of neat stuff, and bought it because it didn't cost very much.

The big cosmic win was when Dollar Tree started offering dolls with articulated knees, though.

52. What doll goals do you have for 2024?

Sewing outfits for the oddly sized members of the herd. I don't think this is the year for build them a house, but I might surprise myself.

Brodie, Kenzo, & Sylvester wish you a bountiful 2024

 

They're a bit of a ragtag crew at the moment. Kenzo is both thrilled and intimidated not to be the only adult male in the community. 

I'd been thinking about Kid Kore men for several months, mostly on the subject of "no." The reason for "no" was that I was intending to rebody Kenzo... only finding a body that's skinny and pale enough turns out to be a challenge. 

By December 26, Sylvester, who is the blond gladiator 1280 from Legends of Ancient Lands, had been on eBay for weeks with a 99-cent starting big and no takers. The end of the year is the logical time for sellers to move failed listings to the "donate" bin, and if he's donated it, he'll be somewhere far, far from here. So I bought him for 99 cents.

At the same time, Brodie, who is Chief White Eagle. was given a substantial markdown that would take him below $20 with shipping. He's in good shape and I kind of love his jersey, so I bought him too.

Skinny Ken looks very, very skinny between these boys. (Nude dolls after the jump.)

The Rococo AirBnB

Last year, when Target had these wooden trees in the impulse bins at the front of the store, I bought a single quarter tree, as I felt I could not justify the expense and space of buying four to make a whole tree. The tree has haunted me since, as it's too small for more than a little seating in 1:24 but too big for 1:48.

This afternoon I pulled out the 1:24-ish furniture bin to see if I wanted to do a coffeehouse or something, and I found my little porcelain furniture sets. These have been around since I was a tot, and Mom had sent them to me back around 2019, to make them my problem. So they've been across country and back, with no resolution.

They fit!

So I put up some scrapbook-paper wallpaper and found a few accessories to dress the place up. The poodle has been in my stash since I was a kid, though I don't recall why. The gal living there was being a dollhouse doll in one of Mom's dollhouses, and I'd kept her because she seemed like a good fit for smaller furniture.

This is one of those projects that doesn't accomplish anything of lasting artistic value but is soothing to do on a rainy afternoon.

Answering Questions in Imitation of Teatime Tangents

 I'm too lazy to take photos of the doll shoes I bought on Saturday, so I'm going to emulate Teatime Tangents and Toys' use of interview questions from The Dolly Insider's backlog of Friday questions. It's cooler than anything else in my head right now! (I removed questions where my answer is a repeat of "not my branch of collecting.")

#1: Which doll do you wish you ordered when it was released?

It would have been a purchase rather than an order, but I wish I'd known about the Simply Fresh dolls (collab between The Fresh Dolls and Family Dollar) when they were new, so I could have gotten one of the dolls with curly hair at Family Dollar prices. Fond as I am of Kylie, she's yet another putatively Black doll with straight hair. I could buy a Fresh Doll or a Naturalista with curls, but they wouldn't be discount-store projects.

2. Were any of your dolls given to you as a gift? 

Of the current batch, no. In the 2010s, my mother flooded me with doll gifts, which was awesome and generous but tended to end me up with dolls I wasn't that thrilled by.

4. Have you ever traveled with dolls? 

Yes, but mostly by accident. I do have an old blog post with Liv Sophie and Skelita Calaveras touring Old Town Scottsdale and riding the trolley in the off-season, back in the good old days when there was a trolley circling Old Town and the Arts District. Here it is: https://smallerplaces.blogspot.com/2014/12/skelita-is-proud-of-her-new-hat.html

5. Straight or wavy? Which hair do you prefer on a doll?

Wavy because my focus is 1980s-1990s off-brand playline dolls, and wavy hair was de rigueur. I've also developed a passion for boil-curling doll hair.

6. Do you own any custom dolls?

Cinderelsa is my custom project doll. Ben is my Kid Kore Katie conversion into a boy. Delilah the Dollar Store Beauty recently got a new wig (still needs to be glued on). My customization is pretty mild! 

7. Which doll has been in your collection the longest?

Manbun Ken has been in my personal collection the longest. Fashionista Teresa passed through my hands earlier, but she was in Mom's collection for about a decade. (I really culled over the course of multiple cross-country moves.)

8. Do you make dioramas for your dolls?

Long-term, I'm intending to construct a new house for a segment of the dolls, more elaborate than what I used to have for Liv Katie and Haley. At the moment, I just have a few pieces of furniture.

11. How do you display your dolls?

Due to 18 months of dealing with my late mother's overwhelming visual clutter in the family home (I did good -- we have three usable rooms that weren't usable before, plus much of the house is more efficient), I have very little tolerance for open display. Both my fashion dolls and my smaller dollhouses are in a line of cupboards with opaque doors. I take them out in batches to set up little scenes on my dresser, and then they get put away for house-cleaning.

13. Bangs or no bangs?

No bangs. Getting bangs properly cleaned and conditioned on vintage dolls is a pain. So I don't love bangs, but I have a lot of dolls with bangs.

14. Have you ever sold a doll you regretted selling?

Thinking both sales and donations, there's nothing that digs up major regret that'd justify an effort to rebuy. Gertrud, my Macmillan doll via AliExpress, gets an occasional thought of regret, but the fact that she never got her own blog post tells you I didn't quite bond with her.

16. What are some of your favorite doll themes?

I'm about to go on a sewing binge for frilly little-girl dresses for my 7.5" Katie Krew. Because I no longer do fantasy-type dolls, they're not really themed. If I once get started sewing, though, I have plans for the adult women's Met Gala dresses.

18. What's something you wish you knew before starting to collect dolls?

There will always be more dolls. It is not vital to grab an example of every doll that's tangentially interesting. 

21. Have you ever been to a doll event?

Not as an adult, though I've been to dollhouse shows, particularly Good Sam, and to some form of action figure show in Glendale, AZ, back in the day. I feel like I'm at such a low-end niche in the market that I'm not going to see products that interest me, nor find sympathetic pals.

22. What doll did you recently add to your collection that you've always wanted?

"Always" is pretty short-term around here. Cinderelsa is closest to a long-term want, because she represents a project doll where I did more than a basic thrift-store body swap.

23. Which dolls do you collect the most?

Kid Kore dolls of the 1990s dominate my collection, largely in the form of 7.5" Katies. This was an accident. Admittedly, I started with a couple Katies this summer, but the reason they multiplied so fast was that one would be thrown in with lots of something else I was looking for. 

25. Does your collection have more girl dolls or boy dolls?

I have only three boy dolls, and one of them, I turned into a boy myself (the actual boy in that line is rare). Eventually Manbun Ken is going to get a friend at the same time I order him an articulated body.

27. If a doll comes in multiple versions, do you buy them all?

The official answer is "no," but anyone who looks at the Katie Krew is going to laugh at me. Katies are the exception, and still I have no plans to find a titian one, nor to replace the brunette I turned into Ben. The idea is to start with the variant I like best, so no more need to come home.

28. Do you rename your dolls? If so, how do you choose a name?

Sometimes. "Katie" is the 7.5" dolls' species, so they all have their own names, based mostly on vibes. Just to be inconsistent, "Kelsey" is not a species, so there's Kelsey (the first, earlier one) and her cousin Kenzie (the inset-eye one). Cinderelsa needs a real name of her own, and Babysitters' Club Kristy really badly wants to be Brenda, so she may get a name change.

30. What do you like most about collecting dolls?

Sewing clothes for them, which is why I need to actually pull out the sewing machine and do it! After Christmas, I should finally have time and space. Researching is up there, too -- I have massive Pinterest boards on clone lines that I don't intend to buy for myself but love looking at.