The Lucky Pound Puppy

  I know I said you might not see me for a while, and here I am again already, but I had to share this with you.
  As you know we are going to England in a few days to visit relatives. I have been trying to gather together some gifts to take. I thought a fitting gift for the kids would be the Ohio Beanie bear. The bear came out in 2002. (Since he's the Ohio Bicentennial bear. Barb the Evil Genius undoubtedly knows what I'm talking about here.) That made finding enough of them kind of hard, even though I've been buying them when I've found them at garage sales and stuff for a while now. (And don't worry, they were either still in their plastic bags, or have been washed, so they are clean for the kids.) At the last minute we found out that our great niece is expecting, so that added another bear to the list. I haven't been able to find one though, so I had to substitute an America bear. Well, one of the kids is our nephew James' son William. When James was born Ken sent him a Pound Puppy. The Pound Puppy was named Tootsie, and James took her everywhere. She was his favourite toy. When they came over for our wedding in 1989 James brought Tootsie. In our wedding pictures Tootsie can be spotted under a bush, where James' mother threw her just before the picture was taken, so James' face would show,since he liked to hold Tootsie to his face and suck his fingers! (The actual throwing is in the wedding video.) James still had Tootsie tucked away somewhere the last I heard. I told Ken the perfect gift for William would be a Pound Puppy, but where do you find one? Do they even still make them? I thought of it too late to get one online somewhere. Well I did it! Yesterday I stopped in at Salvation Army and found a bag with not one, but two mini Pound Puppies! I brought them home and washed them right away so they could be good and dry for packing.They aren't the super tiny ones. They're about 8" long. They're gray, not brown like Tootsie, and Tootsie was a full sized Pound Puppy, but I think James will be tickled by the thought.  

Just A Little Note to Say See You Soon

  Well, we'll be off to England any day now, so you may not hear from me for a while. I'm looking forward to seeing England again, and friends I haven't seen for nearly 30 years.Mostly, I'm looking forward to seeing Ken in his 'natural habitat'! He's been so excited and counting down the minutes to the trip. This will be the first time he's been home since he moved here more than 31 years ago. There will be visiting time with his sisters and their families,and trips with them to show the girls a bit of the country, and places Ken used to live and work.  We'll also be going to London with the girls for a few days. It isn't much time to see London, but if  we can squeeze it in I'd like to show the girls where I lived. The girls are looking forward to some shopping time while we're in London, and as anyone who has been around young ladies will know, we could easily take up the whole 3 days with that! (I should talk. I'm quite a marathon shopper myself...)
  Before I go I want to welcome our newest follower MajorMistakes. Thanks for joining us! MajorMistakes has two blogs, Straight on til Morning and Off with my Head, which you might want to check out.
  See you when I get back, if not sooner. I hope I find something amazing to share with you while I'm there!

Another Goodwill Haul: Vintage Tammy,G.I Joe and more

  Before we start,I have to welcome our newest follower,Linda. Welcome Linda! Linda, formerly of What Happens in the Doll Room, has a couple of new blogs, Darkroom Dolls, where she posts her doll photography, and  The Old Darkroom, where she posts cool old photographs. Plus, I think I figured out who the follower is that I missed a while back. If I'm not mistaken, it's Milena. Welcome Milena! (If I've welcomed you before, just ignore me!) Milena has a blog called MINIMAGINE, where you can see the great furniture and room boxes Milena has created and sells.
  I have found a few vintage dolls this summer, including a Tammy, but I made quite a haul of vintage and newer dolls at Goodwill a week or so ago.

All these dolls were $1 or $2.

Another Tammy! And she's a red head!

It took me a while to figure out if this G.I. Joe was old or one of the newer repros.

They redid this exact 'figure', (Since he's a guy's 'doll'...) when Fuzz was little, and he's 20 now.

His feet are a different shade than his body. They almost look like they've been replaced, but I'm pretty sure all these were dumped from the same load,and as somebody's old play dolls, that's unlikely.

I researched him, and he seems to be one of the old guys. From what I found when I researched it, the older ones started out saying Patent Pending on their right 'cheek'. Then it became like this guy's, with the patent number.

The repros look almost the same, except they actually say 'reproduction on the left 'cheek'.
  Fuzzy has a red head, just like my childhood G.I. Joe.

My childhood Joe, who was called John, in a typical pose.I never could keep him straightened out. Even his wife Midge can't believe it. By the way, he did originally have the Joe scar on his face, but my sister removed the scars from our Joes to make them  more aesthetically pleasing...

This guy looks more like my sister's brown haired Joe, except this guy is a 'hard head', and hers was a 'soft head',meaning this guy's head is rock hard, where as her Joe's head was soft and hollow,just like her first husband's.

  I don't know who the littlest guy is,because he has no markings at all.He's made very like a Mego, but with slightly different jointing. The larger of the two little guys is a Mego though.

Mego guy even has his shoes! But what's the deal with those shorts?

Megos are super jointy and poseable. I'm pretty sure he's Action Jackson. He kind of looks like the Planet of the Apes astronaut, which would be great, because I need him.Unfortunately, I think his hair is too dark and his side burns are too long for him to be the POTA astronaut.
The large girl is a BFC Ink Kaitlyn.

She's the more jointy one too. I need to weed out all my extra BFC Ink dolls and get rid of them. This girl may be the Kaitlyn that stays if I can get that ink mark off her head. I have heard Mr. Clean Magic Eraser is great for removing marks like that, but I haven't had much luck with it. I wish I knew what I was doing wrong.
  The smaller newish girl is a Forever Best Friends doll.

I love the faces on these dolls. They were made by MGA, the company that makes Bratz and Moxie Girlz. Their clothing is very similar to those lines. In fact, I could do with more shirts for them that aren't 'belly shirts', as my girls always call them.)The kind that are so short your belly hangs out.)

I think she's Brianee. She's the kind with jointed hands and hers are missing. That's ok, because she at least hasn't had a hair cut, and I have some dolls from this line with hair cuts that have their hands. I can always switch the hands to this one. That's another line of dolls that I need to sort out my extras on and get them out of here.
  To update a recent post, my Barbie Dream Kitchen and Dinette has sold. That will help a bit when we come back from England and have bills to pay, even if I am sorry to see that kitchen step ladder and Corning Ware go!

Ideal's 'Honeyball'

  Well, we'll be going to England very soon now! Ken is counting down the days. (Ok, and even the minutes.)

  

We're not excited. We just like to pack...for weeks now.

  I am trying to get on a better sleep schedule so I don't have jet lag when we come over, but my sleep has been so thrown off since I have been having to pick Ken up from work at 3 or so in the morning and then come home and take a shower and try to go to sleep. I tried to sleep between taking Fuzz and picking Ken up last night, only to have Emma call me and wake me up to say, "Who wants to get on this changing my sleep schedule thing I'm going to do, with me?!" I said, "I was doing it, but you woke me up." And then she told me she would pick Ken up, so I could have gone to bed anyway!

  As I told you yesterday, Ivy got her hair cut. When Emma texted us the picture of Ivy's new do I said to Ken, "I wonder if she saved me some hair". I have always saved some hair when the kids have had haircuts. Not only because I'm sentimental, but because it's interesting to see how the colour has changed over the years. Emma's was pale blonde when she was tiny and it's now brown. Fuzzy's seems to be the only one that is relatively unchanged. Anyway, I doubted she would, because I didn't think she would think to, or she'd be embarrassed to ask the beautician to rescue it. But when we got home she met us at the door with a bag of hair. 

The other piece is mine. Ivy gave me a trim a couple of nights ago, and yes, they are the exact same colour.Even Ivy thought it was hers.

She didn't save it all, but she saved me the biggest piece. Aww. Thanks Ivy.
  On other matters, welcome to our newest follower,All4 Barbie. Thanks for joining us!  All4 Barbie has a few blogs, which you can check out by clicking the name in our followers list.
  For the record, this post contains a few photos I borrowed from the internet for reference purposes. I will gladly remove them if I'm asked.
A while back I was finding loads of old dolls at Salvation Army. It's been pretty slow lately, but this summer I did find this girl.

The hair ribbon seems to be original, but the outfit is modern.

I passed her up a few times, but when she was half price I decided to get her. As it turns out, she's a rare doll. She's Ideal's Honeyball.

Honeyball is a weird name. It makes me think of 'Butterball', which in turn makes me think of a big dead, naked turkey.
 

Gross.

But I digress. Honeyball has a vinyl head, and a wired foam rubber body. 

This makes her very poseable, and squishy soft.

 

This blurb appears on her box.

It also makes her dangerous, as she's somewhat edible, as little kids could bite chunks out of her squashy foam body. Kids do that. How do you think my squiggley rubber dog ended up like this?
 

Yes, those are my childhood teeth marks and staples his ear.

(So I bit  my toys. It felt good,ok? That's not nearly as strange as the reason I have this dog. I fell in love with the dark green version my sister brought home from school. 
 

Here's the maker. I can't read it, can you?

He belonged to her friend, and my sewing sister brought him home to sew him a black velvet FUNERAL SUIT! The friend had decided he had died and she was going to bury him! I was horrified! I begged my sister to ask her friend if I could have him instead, but to no avail. After that I tried to find a green one like the dead guy, but all I could find was this slightly smaller orange one.)
Now what was that I said about digressing? 
Posing her also makes her foam wrinkly.

 This particular girl has never been posed very much, so I didn't want to do too much posing with her and wrinkle her now.

 So she did a lot of head posing.

She has a cute little pudgy belly.

And strange looking mold spots on her,uh. You know.

She was produced in 1966.

 I had never heard of her before, but apparently she was popular enough to have been made in a couple of different sets, (At least.)

This is from a 1967 catalog,

 

For a foam rubber doll she sure seems to have taken a lot of baths. Although the version below seems to be made of vinyl instead of foam. By the way, she's the most adorable doll, although I'm not sure if that's official...

Maybe they discovered how edible she was and changed her...

She also had a wardrobe and a puppy!

1968 Sears catalog. The Playroom Case and outfits were sears exclusives.

The above ad doesn't mention the Playroom Case being musical,and the inside is different,but the front looks the same as this  'Musical Play Room'.
 

This orange sun suit seems to be what most of the Honeyball dolls came in.

The Musical Play Room included drawers for her clothes, a room area, and a plastic toy 'record player' that played music when the handle was turned. Pretty neat idea.

I found this one for sale online.

  Honeyball is about 10" tall. Because of the foam she's very light. I have a foam Raggedy Andy I got in answer to my desperate wish for a Raggedy Andy when I was a kid. He has this same arrangement, with the wire armature and soft foam body. (And no, I never bit him... that I recall.) He's super poseabe too, although I was always very wary of posing hm too much, lest he get all mangled like the wire covered foam Pluto I have.Plus he had the same wrinkling problem as Honeyball, even back then.(Both Raggedy Andy and Pluto  are somewhere in my house. When I come across them someday I'll show them to you.) I'm really surprised Honeyball's foam body is in such nice condition. I would have thought the foam would have started to deteriorate,but it seems fine.

She got her hair combed part of the way through her photo session. 

I couldn't get the hair ribbon out, so I did the best I could. The ribbon is attached to a bobby pin and I think it must be stitched in too.
  Just thought I'd show her to you since she's supposed to be rare and a lot of people might not have seen her.

More Recent Acquisitions: Little Miss Revlon

    The girls went off today to get haircuts before we go on our trip. Ivy had about a foot of hair cut off! I hated to see it go, but it's her hair. Besides, it will grow back.
  Ken and I headed out of town to a small town nearby that was having it's "Corn Festival". Ken loves corn and spends his life in an eternal search for yellow corn, since, around here at least, we are told 'everybody' wants white corn these days. (Well, it was white corn a couple of years ago. Now we're being told that 'everybody' prefers bicolor corn. I think 'everybody prefers' whatever they're trying to sell at the time. They like to push the white or bicolor corn because they can get 2 or  3 harvests of it a season, compared to one harvest of yellow corn, since yellow takes longer to ripen.)
  Well, it was the most corn-free corn festival you could imagine.To paraphrase a Monty Python sketch, it was certainly uncontaminated by corn. To quote my dad, it was "the nighest no-festival I ever did see". There was roasted corn, which was white corn, and that was the only corn there. There wasn't even anything else made of corn. Just so he could say he'd had something with corn Ken and I went in a little folksy restaurant downtown where he got a bowl of corn chowder. It did have yellow corn in it, even if it did most certainly come out of a can. At least I do have several ears growing on the corn I planted for Ken this year.
  I want to welcome our latest follower, To TylkoJa. (I hope I got that right!) She has several blogs, which you can check out by clicking on her name in the followers list.
  Well, I haven't had much luck at Salvation Army for a while, but I spotted this Little Miss Revlon there  recently.

She's in her original box...

...and has her booklet.

I'll show you more of the booklet in a minute.

Her outfit is called Gay Stripe Dress (9121) I believe. There were apparently several variations of the fabric for this dress, but I'm pretty sure this is it.

Here it is in her booklet:

She's wearing a pair of clone shoes I think. They are way softer than the white shoes in the box, which I think are her originals. There is also another clone pair in the box.

She has her Miss Revlon purse too.

Someone had the forethought to stuff it with tissue paper to prevent it splitting.

She has beautiful blonde hair.

She does have some green ear.

She has another, bigger problem as well...

She needs restrung. That's not a big problem though. My friend Connie does alot of doll restringing and has kindly offered to restring Little Miss Revlon.
Also in the box was this doll sized glove.

The strange thing is, I got another single glove like this at a doll auction a couple of years ago! Ivy recognized it immediately when I showed it to her, and she was as excited as I was. It's so cute!
  For those of you interested in Little Miss Revlon and her fashions, here's the rest of the booklet.

 And here's the back cover:

  We'll be going to England soon, but I have a few more posts ready and in the plans for before we go.