Review of Wilde Imagination's Bashful Burt

  This little guy recently came my way.

He's Bashful Burt, from Tonner Wilde Imagination's Sad Sally line.

His big expressive eyes and slightly mournful look appealed to me.
   There has been only one other edition of Bashful Burt. Bashful Puppy Burt was a very limited edition of 50.

  My Burt arrived in a brown shipping box with the other things I bought. Inside was this white shipping box.

And inside the white box was this black box with a lid that lifts off...

It says Sad Sally, but trust me, it's Burt.

..to reveal some mysterious tissue paper, covering...

Bashful Burt!

He was hiding 'bashfully' under that tissue paper.

The box insert lifts out. Burt is held in by these little twisties.They were incredibly tight and hard to untwist.

 But once they were removed Burt could be lifted out. His neck was protected from the twistie by tissue paper. His hair was covered with a white hair net.

Burt has sort of a pale peachy complexion. I love his quizzical eyebrows.His eyebrows aren't solid lines. They're made up of a lot of little strokes.

His boots were in plastic to protect them from the twistie.

And here's Burt, free of all restraints.He is made of resin,and has 15 points of articulation.

He has a cute puppy shirt and great boots.

I love these little boots. They really lace and unlace.

Is anybody else getting the Wicked Witch of the East from this picture? I'm almost expecting his toes and legs to curl up and roll back under a house.

His jeans come pre-dirtied. It seems to be done by hand,as various Burts have different patterns and amounts of soiling.

His shirt closes in back with snaps and is lined with the same peachy nylon fabric that the inner tights are made of.

His pants close with a snap too.

Burt wants you to remember that he also comes with a stretchy hat.

I'm not sure what to call these hats these days. I always called this kind of hat a toboggan or something. Now they seem to call them 'beanies'. I always think of a 'beanie' as this:

Not necessarily with the pig.

Burt wanted to show off the back of his hat.The hat stays on his head really well.

Under his pants Burt is wearing, not socks, but striped tights. I suppose it's so his socks stay up better under those pant legs, but he was a little embarrassed.

And under those he was wearing a pair of peachy coloured sheer tights, which alot of the Tonner dolls I've seen wear under their other, coloured tights. I suppose it's to protect the legs from staining, or maybe to make the other tights slide on easier.

Here's Burt's complete original outfit. It includes his puppy shirt,jeans,striped tights,sheer tights, stretchy hat,and black faux suede boots.

 
 



 Straight out of the box Burt had plastic on his arms,presumably to protect his arms from stains that might come from the shirt sleeves.



 The plastic was super tight, wrapped and taped. It was hard to get off. I was a little afraid I was going to pull his hands off, or his arm apart. I ended up cutting it off, and worrying I was going to scratch his arms with the scissors.

  Here's a look at Burt's body articulation. He has an upper torso joint and a waist joint. 

And he has a tiny belly button.

He's also jointed at the neck,shoulders,elbows, wrists,knees, and ankles. We'll look at more of his articulation in a minute.

  Burt's hair is very soft and silky. I was wondering if Burt's hair was rooted or wigged.I  checked, and discovered it was a wig. I gave it a little tug to remove it,and it came off, along with all the Velcro dots,including the ones that were supposed to stay stuck to Burt's head to hold the wig  on.

The inside of Burt's wig, with all Velcro attached.

The wig doesn't stay on very well without being attached. And by the way, Burt takes a size 5/6 wig. 
Here I would like to say that I did contact Tonner/Wilde Imagination and ask what kind of glue I could use to reattach Burt's wig Velcro, and to let them  know about the boot lace hole tearing through. Even though I only sent the email on Saturday, on Monday there was an email, from Michelle at T/WI customer service,waiting for me. Michelle was very nice and friendly. She recommended Tacky glue for the wig Velcro. (I nearly used Fabri-tac, until I remembered that I once used it on something plastic and it dissolved it! I was afraid of what it might do to Burt's resin head.) She also mentioned that I could 'moleskin' Burt's head to keep the wig attached. She's done a tutorial on their Facebook page showing how. I figure I'll just make a big mess of him if I try that! I'm going with the glue option.
 Seeing him here without his hair and boy clothes, you can imagine what a lovely girl he would make.

Burt has those beautiful big brown eyes.They actually have detail in them. They're not just solid brown.

The resin is very smooth.

  The main difference between Burt and Sad Sally is that she has 'real' eye lashes, and Burt is smiling slightly more.

Sad Sally

Like Sad Sally,Burt also has changeable eyes. His head is held together by some very strong magnets.

His eyes are held in with putty. The ribbon is on the ring that holds his stringing.

  Sad Sally takes 14mm eyes, so I assume Burt's are the same.
  While I was at it, and spending money, which  I don't do in this kind of quantity very often, I also bought one of Burt's extra outfits. It was one of two available. The other was Shy Stripes.

Shy Stripes

But I bought my favourite,Timid Togs. (In fact, I like it even better than his original outfit.)

He's not wearing the boots in this picture, because I hadn't  taken the time to put them on him yet.

Another white box inside the brown shipper contained Timid Togs.

And inside that was this plastic bagged box with the Sad Sally logo.

The box is pretty cool, because it's tuck flapped in a swirl pattern...

...which opens kind of like a flower.

Inside the box is lined with tissue paper. The insert comes out easily.

And the clothes are held onto the card with some stitches. It only required some tape peeling and stitch cutting to remove them.

The outfit consists of a sweater with a long neck,checked pants,striped short socks, a gray newsboy cap, and gray faux suede boots.

The socks, and the neck and top half of the sweater are made form the same fabric as the stretchy hat to his original outfit.

The gray boots are just like the black ones. They really lace up.

 I've been working on this review for a while. I have been pretty busy with some things around the house, so it has been a while since Burt got here.When I finally tried to put the boots on Burt, I managed to get them on without too much trouble.But when I tried to tie them, the top lace hole on one of them tore through. I didn't even pull hard. In the email I sent Tonner/Wilde Imagination I told them about the boot tearing. She asked which boot tore and said she would see if they had one to send me. It was nice of her to offer a replacement. It took me so long to get around to putting his boots on that I was just within the time allowed for returns and exchanges, but Michelle didn't ask me when I purchased Burt before making the offer to replace the boot. According to Michelle,
"We are very happy to help make things right, we do stand behind our collections and creations!"
    She was so super helpful and friendly. I got another email the next day telling me that a boot had been found and it would be sent out no later than the next day.

The sweater has a really long, or tall, neck. I never could get a cowl neck sweater to lay right on myself, and I still have the same level of sweater talent.

The sweater neck could do with being a little wider around, as it doesn't quite meet in the back, no matter what I do.(Of course, I have that lack of sweater neck talent, so it could just be me). The sweater and pants close with snaps.

Burt looks so cute in it.

My cap lining wants to turn out. I also can't get his socks high enough to keep those shiny sheer tights from showing.

Like all Tonner clothes, these are very well made and feel so nice. The boot lace hole tearing was very disappointing, and a bit surprising considering the quality of everything else.

His tiny 'pear' is actually a baby black walnut. I found two of them under the walnut trees in my front yard, but Burt dropped one as I was taking his picture,and I couldn't find it.

The hugeness of Burt's head makes him a bit hard to balance. He's top heavy. It's possible to get him to stand on his own, without support, but it's not easy if you want him to do any expressive poses.

 In most of these pictures Burt had a support prop. By the way, I made the little dog for Burt because he just looked like he needed one. I think it should have been more like Pete the Pup from Litle Rascals/Our Gang, but I had the white furry stuff already. The dog has a wired neck,body, tail, and limbs, so he's poseable. I wasn't completely satisfied with him though. I meant to make another dog more like Pete, but I've been so busy I haven't had time. So, I used this dog, but he isn't finished. That's why you don't see him from the front in any of these pictures: He has no mouth,eyes or nose!

"Come on Boy! Up!"

Burt's jointed arms don't work quite as well as I had hoped.One of his arms keeps bending whether I want it to or not. I straighten it out and it pops right back into a bent position. I tried using his arms to prop him in a sitting position...

...which he needs because his body doesn't bend forward in a way that allows him to sit upright with that big head unless his feet are touching the ground. Here he had to have a small rock wedged under his bottom to lean him forward a little, so he could stay upright. This is the price you pay for his big headed, big eye look.
  Burt's head tilts side to side well, but he can't look up. He can look down a little.

His hands don't bend at the wrists and hold the position, but they can be turned for some posing. Maybe if his stringing loosens up a bit he might be able to bend at the wrist better.

He does have cute little hands though.

 I decided to give Burt the old fashioned bundle on a stick because he looks so 'depression era'.

But he couldn't really hold it. The bundle was only stuffed with some small pieces of fleece, but it was heavier than his arms could hold. The arm kept unbending and letting it drop. His hand couldn't  bend around it to hold it either.

 It took some balancing.

 So he got tired and had to sit down.

He didn't need anything under his bottom to sit up in these pictures.

 

.
  So, what do I think of Burt? I like Burt, but he could be more poseable. Hopefully he will loosen up a little over time, (but not too much!) I love his little face and his clothes.His clothes are nice, except for the disappointing boot lace hole that tore through.But the company was more than happy to take care of the problem, and very quickly too.I was very impressed with their quick, friendly attitude and service.
   I love sad eyed dolls and boy dolls,which is why Burt appealed to me so ,but I would love to get some other wigs and see what Burt would look like as a girl. (Sad Sally would be an easier option, since they look so similar anyway, but she's more expensive!)
   Burt is made of better quality materials than the similarly made Ai dolls that I have.(Burt is resin, and the Ai dolls aren't.) Burt's head has two magnets,whereas the Ai doll's only have one.The magnets hold Burt's head together better than the Ai doll magnets hold theirs, and Burt's head fits together better. It looks like the eyes will be easier to change and get to stay in place than the Ai doll's too, but so far I'm not brave enough to check that out!
 

Ai Bee Balm and Leptospurmum.

 (Longtime readers may remember the trouble I had getting Ai doll Bee Balm's eyes to sit properly.) 

   I know I mentioned this review ages ago. I have been working on it for a while. In fact,I had to do it twice! I had it nearly finished and something happened and the whole thing disappeared! I had to go in my computer's recycle bin and find all the pictures, and then rewrite the whole thing. Between that and all the other stuff I've had  do lately,it has taken me ages. I'll be posting more often now that I have this taken care of.
    Here are some more pictures of the very photogenic Burt.