Thursday, August 31, 2017

Doll-A-Day 2017 #243: Bend Leg Skipper

  Today we're having a flashback to the old 'Skipper Saturday' posts. (There is a year's worth of them,if you care to check them out.) The doll today is bendleg Skipper.


She's not the Mod era Skipper you might think of when I say 'bendleg Skipper'.


She's the first bendleg Skipper.


She was first produced in 1965.


She came in this navy blue swim suit and red flats.



This is the 'tan skinned' original version.


It always looks gray to me, but anyway...


The pink skinned version came out a year later,but wore the same swim suit. The pink skinned bendleg doll was produced for one more year before Skipper got an entire overhaul and became Twist N Turn Skipper in 1968.


The first couple of versions of bendleg skipper almost always have bangs that won't lay down. I got lucky with this one. Her bangs are fine.



They are extra thick though.


She was the first bendleg Skipper, and her legs do bend extra far. The dolls these days with click bend legs don't have nearly the bending ability of the original bendleg dolls. According to a site called Design Life-Cycle,the reason is "when the major component of Barbie, PVC (polyvinyl chloride), was incinerated, it produced hydrochloric acid, which is linked to acid rain. By the late 1980’s, the German government passed a law limiting the amount of plasticizer allowed in PVC (Lord 298). They even worried about the inevitable carelessness of children playing with toys. They worried that if children accidentally swallowed a toy made of PVC, their stomach acids would extract the plasticizer leaving behind a hard, dangerous object. Mattel eventually gave in to the law, making the legs of Barbie less flexible..." (The references to German law are probably because this is a German page, or source,but the same applied to the United States.) 






This will be old news for most collector's of vintage Barbie and friends,but for those just starting out,remember to never store your bend legs doll with their legs completely straight. Always leave the legs at the first click. This is something I learned years ago from listening, (You might call it eaves dropping!),to doll artist, designer and collector Mikelman make comments as he shopped at a doll show. I know him, so I could have asked why, but then my eaves dropping would have been more evident! (I just happened to be standing nearby,honestly!) I suppose it's because it stresses the rubber of the leg,or maybe the knee joint.


This is my favourite of the early bendleg Skippers that I own.For one thing, she's about the only one without bangs that stick out into next week!



She has beautiful,silky red hair.









That's all for today.

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Doll-A-Day 2017 #242:Maiden Fairhair

  Today we're looking at a doll I just found. She's this pretty girl.





I got her today. She's Maiden Fairhair,Lady Lovely Locks' friend.



I think she's the prettiest doll from the Lady Lovely Locks line I've seen.




All the Lady Lovely Locks dolls have the same face sculpt,even the Prince, but she still  gets my vote for the prettiest.
 




You may have seen my posts on the other Lady Lovely Locks dolls Maiden Golden Wave and  Prince StrongHeart.


The Lady Lovely Locks dolls came with 'Pixie Tails'. That's these little guys.


Maiden Fairhair came with three Pixietails, and this girl has all three.

They're supposed to be chipmunks.
They are usually missing.The Pixietails are basically hair barretts with a hairy tail.




The shaped flaps with the holes ion her dress are to hold her Pixietails.


But there are only two.



She has long brown hair. It's in really nice condition, still silky and curly.




 She's missing her shoes,but her dress is super clean and bright.
 


Lovely Locks dolls came first, but have the same body as the later Mattel Stacie (sister of Barbie),but the head is completely different from Stacie's.


The one exception is,Stacie could only move her arms up and down, but not out like the LLL dolls.


LLL was made by Mattel and the body is copyright Those Characters From Cleveland.


The main problem with the  LLL dolls is that the arms and legs are prone to paling and spotting, like some of the Barbie dolls of the same era. This doll has some light discolouration on her legs which may or may not be the beginning of the spotty syndrome.




It barely shows up in these photos. That's really good for a LLL doll. The Prince I showed you on one of my other LLL posts has really bad spotty arms. Most of these dolls have it,so this girl is doing pretty well!


The LLL line only an for two years, 1987 to 1989.





See you tomorrow for another doll.