Review Time Again! Maru and Friends Twins Ash and Joy

  This review has been a long time coming. I first promised it way back in...August of 2020? That's when the dolls were to start shipping. I thought I'd receive mine then. Things happen though, I guess. One of them was the Covid-19 virus. When the dolls finally arrived earlier this year, we were buried under loads of snow. The snow eventually melted, but the ground was very muddy, the skies were gray, and the grass was brown. These kids are very summery, and I thought they deserved to be photographed in sunshine and, preferably, green surroundings. 

  Spring is finally upon us, but I still had to wait ages for sunshine, and, most of all, grass that wasn't dead and brown. Ironically, the next night after the day I took these pictures, (Huh? I mean the Tuesday night, after the Monday I took them.), we were COVERED in snow, and it snowed on and off all the next day. Since then it has been nothing but rain and cold. Someday I hope for real Spring!

  First of all, I have to say, the twins were sent to me for review by the company, free of charge. As always though, I will be doing an honest review.

   I lost ALL my unboxing photos! I have a new camera lens and I'm using a different memory card now. So whatever was the problem, it seems to have been cured. I wanted to show you the changes in the Maru and Friends packaging. The outer box, with the bright orange flowers is still present. The inner box now opens like a door, revealing the dolls without having to pull out an insert, or even remove the box from the outer box. Gone is the orange ribbon handle on the top of the boxes. It has been replaced by an orange satin and mesh ribbon tied around the box.

 It's very pretty, but I'll never get it tied back as prettily as it was when I got it! I did like the ribbon handle, but as a way to pull the inner box out of the outer box I suppose the ribbon tied around the middle of the inner box almost works better, as pulling it from the top, (by the handle.), occasionally got the box wedged. (I suppose it was for carrying the box.) But most people aren't going to be keeping these kids in the boxes anyway! They're too cute!

  Ash and Joy were  protected by foam sheets and tied into their boxes with ribbon, which is easily removed to free them.

No unnecessary plastic box front, which is nice.

  

Keep in mind, this isn't the way they came. I unboxed them before, but lost the pictures.

  Both dolls came with a certificate of authenticity.

 Ash and Joy are part of Maru and Friends' line of Mini Pals, which are 13" tall. You may have seen my other Maru and Friends Mini Pals CHAD, NOAH, and MARY HAD A LTTLE LAMB. 

  The early Mini Pals, like Chad, were made of a soft, bendy vinyl. Ash and Joy are made, like Noah and Mary, and the rest of the more recent Mini Pals, of a firmer vinyl. That is probably a better idea. They're easier to dress and undress with the firmer vinyl.

  The twins were sculpted by collector favourite, the late Dianna Effner, and designed by Maritza Gutierrez, who founded Maru and Friends. 

Look at those cute chubby cheeks!

 Like the other Maru and Friends dolls, they have a lovely, realistic look to their vinyl.

  Although they are twins, Ash and Joy each have a different head sculpt. Actually, that makes sense. Only identical twins would have the same face, and identical twins are always the same sex because they were originally a single egg that divided. Ash and Joy are what is known as fraternal twins.

 You know I love red haired dolls. These guys have beautiful red hair. It's a mix of red shades, for a realistic look.

And it isrealistic. I, had, and at least one of my kids has this hair.

Their hair is not rooted, but wigged. That means their hair can be changed if you get the urge. They can  switch wigs with other dolls. like the other wigged Maru and Friends dolls.

The wigs are held on with Velcro.

    Joy's hair has some loose curls at the sides of her face, and the rest is gathered in two side ponytails that have blue ribbons.

Her hair doesn't have a part in the back. I think I would have preferred one.

  The hair is soft, and not stiff or full of hair product.

  Both have the Maru logo on the back of their neck.

Both siblings have beautiful realistic blue glass eyes, but different shades of blue.

There are other colours mixed in, as real eyes have, making for very realistic looking eyes.

  They have 'real' lashes on top, and painted ones on the bottom. Unlike the early Mini Pal, Chad, whose lashes were glued on, and starting to come off soon after he arrived, these are set into the vinyl, and firmly in place.

  From the photos on the Maru and Friends web site I was a little wary about  the pale pink of  Ash's lips. It didn't look like a very natural shade, or even flattering. But in person it looks fine. It doesn't look as good in my photos as it looks in real life either. I guess it's hard to capture, but trust me, his lips look quite natural.

  Joy's lips are a very nice natural colour. While Ash's look fine, I do prefer the colour of Joy's lips. 

  The eye brows are made up of separate strokes, rather than a solid line.

She looks so real! 

   They both have a delicate sprinkling of freckles across their faces.  

  

  Like all Maru and Friends dolls, Ash and Joy are strung. They are jointed at the neck, shoulders, and hips. They can sit...

...and their arms can spread out to the sides, although not very high, as well as move up and down.

They can look up and slightly down.

  Their legs can move out to the sides, and can be turned inward or outward, so they can be shyly toed inward the way Ash is above, or strike a bold, broad legged stance. .

Their outfits coordinate, with Joy wearing a yellow and white gingham blouse, with cuffed blue and white gingham shorts...

...and Ash wearing a white and yellow gingham shirt and cuffed navy blue shortalls.

His shorts close in the front with a snap.

The straps crisscross in the back.

Afterward it occurred to me that this picture looked like he was peeing on the tree. Oops.

 

So I took another.

Ash has a blue bow tie that matches his shorts, and an extra yellow and white gingham bow tie.

Both ties Velcro closed in the back.

  Joy's blouse has...what would you call this kind of sleeve?

The blouse closes in the back with snaps, and her shorts close with a snap in the front, just like Ash's.

They both have cute little kid, slightly pudgy bellies, and belly buttons. Her shorts have belt loops, but no belt.

  Joy has yellow sandals with a cut out design. The ankle straps close with Velcro.

They both have sculpted fingernails and toenails.

  Ash has white ankle boots that really tie and untie.

His boots have a sight texture on the bottoms.

  They're just like the boots that came on previous Maru and Friends dolls, Coy and Noah. As usual with Maru and Friends the quality is great. The clothes are well made from quality fabrics, just like tiny human clothes. Neither Ash nor Joy are wearing underwear or socks. Underwear can be purchased on the Maru and  Friends site though. 

  I really love these dolls. They have gorgeous Effner faces and are made of wonderfully warm looking vinyl. The glass eyes add a 'live' touch to the dolls' faces. The dolls have a fair amount of posability for their limited jointing.

 The hair is very pretty and realistic. I love that I can change the wigs if I want to. (Now Maru and Friends need to sell a line of wigs for these dolls. That would be fun.) The clothes are good quality, well made clothes, with snaps instead of Velcro. The snaps are great for kids because for one thing, they can learn to use closures that actually appear on real clothes, and for another thing, there isn't the worry of snagging the doll's clothes or hair with the Velcro. I taught my kids to always re-velcro their doll clothes closed when they took them off the dolls, so the clothes didn't get ruined by the Velcro. (Not that they all did it all the time!) Barbie clothes with gauzy parts, and sweater fabric were in the most danger, and I have come across loads of that type at yard sales that are totally ruined because of the Velcro. 

    All but one of the Maru and Friends dolls have been sculpted by Dianna Effner I asked Maritza about the future of Maru and Friends, following the death of Dianna Effner late last year. Here's what she had to say:

 "Dianna's passing is sad and sudden. But she left us with lots of doll designs prior to her  passing that we have yet produced. So soon we will launch two dolls for this season and some other surprises that are in development phase. We look forward to continue to produce her beautiful art for generations to enjoy her legacy."

 

  Ash and Joy are a limited edition of 300. They are available on the Maru and Friends website for $115 each, or $199 for the pair.

  There are outfits for the Mini Pals available on the Maru and Friends website too, including pajamas,  undies, and two boys outfits. 

  You can read about Maritza, and have a look at my review of Maru, the doll who gives the company it's name HERE. You can see my reviews of Maru and Friends' Chad HERE, Noah, HERE, Mary Had a Little Lamb HERE, and Coy, HERE. You can also see my Jamie HERE, and my Savannah HERE.

See you again soon!

Dolls on the Highway!

   We had an interesting day Monday. I called the auction house to see if any of my absentee bids had won anything. Yay! I won! But don't get too excited, because I only won two of the auctions I left bids for. Not that I'm not happy with what I won. I am. And I'll show you those things soon. Today I want to tell you what happened after we picked up my wins.

  I made room in the trunk while Ken went in and got the lots I won. While he was paying for the lots the guy at the counter told him that about half of the lots were won by one person. She had bid online, (I guess 'gallery only' bidding means there's no live internet bidding. You can still bid online before the auction starts.), and had come all the way from Wisconsin with a pick up truck on that rainy Monday, to pick up her wins. Who would bid on so much stuff, and not have something to haul it back in that would keep it dry? I was assuming she was a dealer, to buy so much stuff, but I would think a dealer would know better. The lots are just in cardboard boxes, with no lids. Ken and I were thinking how wet her stuff must be getting on her way back to Wisconsin.

  So we started off to a very nearby town to feed Ken's currant addiction with 'bin stores'. (Bin stores get loads of things, from store closeouts to Amazon returns, They sell the things for a set price on the day they are received, usually $6 to $10 each. Each day afterward the price goes down, usually to $3 on the next day, $1 the day after that, and sometimes 50 cents on the last day before they get new stock in. They sometimes get things like air fryers, computers, guitars, curtains, and clothing. Ken is going to shop at them until he finds, as they were searching for in "Time Bandits", 'the most fabulous object in the world'.) Anyway, as we started down the highway we hadn't gotten far when I saw something black and white in the grass at the side of the road. "The big Linnea!" Linnea is a doll based on the book "Linnea in Monet's Garden". You may have seen my 11" Linnea HERE, and my 6" Linnea's HERE. I remembered seeing a larger Linnea in the auction lots. We immediately started planning how we could rescue Linnea from the rain and absolute destruction at the fate of traffic. We had to go all the way to the exit to the next town to turn around, but luckily it only took a couple of minutes. We decided I would pull over into the shoulder and drop Ken off with a plastic grocery bag we dug out of the back, to put the certainly very wet Linnea in. Then I'd wait for him, unless the situation insisted I drive off. In that case I would take the exit again and come back for Ken, picking him up on that side of the highway. 

  I worried about Ken getting hit by a truck, but he insisted that he is not that stupid and can look after himself. As we approached Linnea, this time we both saw something in the grass just before Linnea too. I pulled over farther from Linnea than I thought, so Ken had to walk back quite a way. I ended up waiting for a while, as he walked waaaaay back to get Linnea, and finally driving to the exit again and coming back. 

  When I arrived back in the vicinity of Linnea, I spotted Ken's red shirt. (Lucky wardrobe choice for that day, as it made him easier to spot!) What was weird though, was Ken wasn't carrying a plastic bag. He was carrying a large plastic storage tub! Where did that come from?! We popped the wet tub on top of Ken's winter coat he was still carrying around in the car, since the coat needed washed anyway, and we have pale gray car seats. 

  Once we were safely back on the road again, Ken told me his story. He had picked up Linnea, and spotted something else. Then he started spotting dolls, and doll parts, and clothes, and the tub of course, (all in the grass, and not on the highway.). The tub was still partially filled with dolls. (The whole tub of mostly cloth dolls must have flown off the truck and been hit, strewing dolls all over the highway.) It sounds great, and maybe even we could return the stuff to the lady from Wisconsin, who certainly must be the one who lost it. (But who knows? She only bought half the stuff.) Well, once we got finished at the bin store, which we had to go to first because it was about to close, I checked out what was in the tub.

  Linnea turned out to be huge. I thought she was about 18" tall, but she's 26" tall! Ken even found her straw hat! But unfortunately, Linnea lost an arm in the accident, and split her neck seam in the back. Her stuffing was spilling out, her yarn hair had come unglued from her head because of the rain, she was so wet that her black outfit had stained her peachy body, and she has what look like rust stains on the back of her white pinafore. Plus her hair had several pill bugs in it! 

   As for the rest of the dolls, there is a large, maybe 24" Mary Englebreit doll who definitely had a worse time than Linnea! Her head is off, her leg is off, and the foot is off that! Her stuffing is spewing everywhere, and her apron was stained by her black velveteen dress. Her cardboard tag was still there though! Sweet Ken picked up everything he spotted!

  I'll show you those two dolls' before and after photos when they've been 'restored'.

  There was a Cher doll that had obviously been run over. Her body was completely shattered, her legs and arms everywhere.

That's Cher at the bottom. I already threw away her crushed torso bits. There are a couple of Ken doll legs, and some parts to the G.I. Joes. The stuffing is from the Mary Englebreit doll. The shoe is anybody's guess.

We have her arms, and her poor legs were still attached to  the pieces of her torso, and one foot still had a shoe on it! 

Her hair is silky and perfect and so are her lashes. I was hoping her head could be switched with a Cher head with a hair cut or bad lashes, to make a completely nice Cher. But what I wasn't expecting was that her nose had been sanded off when she was run over! So she has great hair and lashes, but the tip of her nose is missing! Typical. I thought that at least her dress would be salvageable, but  it got a hole in the accident.

  There were a couple of G.I. Joes, or, as Ken referred to them, Action Man dolls. (Which is what they were called in England, where Ken grew up.) One is complete but for the lower half of one leg. That's ok, as his knee peg is still there. He can be revitalized someday. 

The other poor guy had somewhat the same reaction to his trip on the highway as Cher. His body was shattered, with his lower torso still hanging in pieces inside his pants. His upper torso was mostly gone, but I did find some bits. 

I only later noticed that the odd G.I. Joe boot Ken picked up still has a foot in it!

Ken also picked up his head, which, ironically, has perfect flocking. Isn't that always the way?!

  And of course both of the Joes were talking Joes!

  The cloth dolls are mostly handmade. There is a doll with a soft, thin, rubber mask face, with a tag from the Doll House in Hampstead, New Hampshire. I know I read something somewhere online about dolls with that doll shaped tag.

Someone was collecting them and told about how they were made by a lady, in the 40's I think, maybe the 50's. I can't find ANYTHING on the internet about The Doll House in Hampstead, New Hampshire! The whole internet, and there's NOTHING! If anybody knows anything, please leave a comment. She  looks so new and fresh, (other than her accident marks!), it's hard to believe she's very old.

She survived pretty well, and she dried out pretty easily. I think she must have been covered by other dolls or something, because she didn't seem to have gotten nearly as wet as some of them. She has two black marks on her face...

But the 'skin' didn't tear!

...but her hair is still nice, and she still has her tag attached to her wrist. She also has a hand written tag and a pencil written note on the back of her hang tag that says she's Pollyanna. I know there were several Pollyanna dolls made that have the red and white gingham outfit too.

She's wearing matching gingham bloomers, a white slip, white socks, and little black felt shoes that are removeable.

And Ken picked even picked up her straw hat.

She has a cloth body with string jointing.

   There is another nice cloth doll with a tag. She's a Molly E doll. Besides her hang tag she also has a tag on the bottom of one foot.

 And she has a hand written tag that says she's from the '40's. 

 

Her skirt is just laid on her because she was STILL not dry!

She has some staining from her red clothes, and some browning from the slowness of the water drying. She took forever to dry. If she's carefully spot washed, and dried very quickly, Like on a burning hot sunny day.), I think most of the browning would wash out.

There's a little African American rag doll with a mask face. She seems to have fared better than most of the other dolls, although she is soaking wet. 

So wet she had to sit in a pan for her photo!

She has a mask face.

The back of her head looks more like fur than hair.

I'm not sure if she's old, or just made to look old. Her outfit looks handmade and is a style from the 20's or 30's.

There's small African American doll that really had a hard go. Her head is off and has holes.

I'm not sure if the holes were already there, or happened in the accident. Her thread hair is a mess, and she's being VERY stubborn about drying. I'm not sure if the little stuffed felt beret Ken picked up is hers, but I think so. It pins to her head with a straight pin.

  This little guy is tagged 'Nora Wellings', but his stockingette face doesn't look like Nora Wellings dolls to me.

This doll is made from a sugar bag, but I think the bag is a reproduction.

   The worst case was this poor 12" Polish doll. Her leg is split and her complete mask face is gone, except for the edges! 

She's stuffed with saw dust and refuses to dry. I hasn't helped that it has been cold and rainy here. I could only put them out to dry one day this week.

  There was this hand painted doll. Her whole head and body are painted.

Her head is off, and one of her legs is coming off. I thought her head had burst in the accident, which it did. But at least it's on a sewing seam. She might be repairable. The paint makes her stiff, and I suspect that's what made her so easy to burst.

There are several other cloth dolls, with painted faces, that were made to look old. This one is all in one piece, but is taking forever to dry. She has some browning because of it, and might have some stains on her clothes from other doll clothes bleeding onto her clothes. (I recommend Stain Devils Color Run Remover! Works very well.)

This girl is quite large. She has a painted head and painted boots.

Her bottom says Lindsey '85.

There's this girl.

She has a painted face and legs too if I recall. This is her tag. It fell off.

This poor bald girl is a 'Diane Durand doll', according to her hand written hang tag. I think the previous owner must have kept track of where she bought each doll and what she paid with these tags. Several of the dolls have them, saying 'ebay' or whatever, and the price. 

Her poor little face is 'skinned' in several places. Her clothes also have some browning from drying slowly, but I think they are sewn closed and can't be removed. She's wearing a heart shaped crystal necklace that she managed to not lose. She's all in one piece at least!

Her bottom has her date and number.

I thought she was bald, but then I realized this wig Ken also picked up might be hers.

  So you can see why the person who bought these dolls, especially if she was a dealer, probably doesn't care about getting them back! Especially if she has to pay shipping to get them. It's not worth it to her. But maybe some of you would like to try rehabilitating one or some of these dolls. I'm going to keep the Linnea, and probably the Mary Englebreit doll. Everybody else just has to go. I don't have room for them and I don't have any interest in them. I'm glad they were rescued, but I can't keep them. I'm going to see if there is any value to the G.I. Joes and their parts, the Doll House doll and the Molly E doll, and I intend to offer the African American girl in gingham to Debbie Behan, but everybody else is up for grabs, for only the cost of shipping. Any takers, please leave a comment, telling me the doll you're interested in, and your address, which I promise I won't publish. (It's just for figuring the postal cost!) First comment on each doll gets it if the commenter agrees to the postal cost. Otherwise it will be offered to the second commenter. I hope that's clear. I feel it was a little tangled!

Doll Show!

   Just to let everybody who is in  the vicinity know, there is a doll show Saturday, (May 8th.), in Rossford Ohio. It's the Toledo Doll Show, but there has been a change of venue. Here's the info:

Saturday, May 8th, 2021 ~ 10:00 AM - 3:30 PM
(Early Bird: 8:30 AM)
LOCATION CHANGE
 Total Sports Complex Rossford, 10020 S Compass Dr.,
 Rossford OH  43460
Dolls, Bears & Toys from Antique to Modern
Appraisals - Raffles - On-site doll stringing
ADMISSION: EB: $20; Adults: $7; Children 12 & under: FREE

Go to Dollshowusa.com for a $1 off admission coupon.

  This show is the day before Mother's Day, so, if somebody is thinking of a gift for you, tell them to take you shopping at the show!