Doll-A-Day 2023 #173: Savannah Mini Pal

   Today's doll is the last one of the three I got from Emily at The Toybox Philosopher when she was selling her dolls  before moving. She's the Savannah Mini Pal from Maru and Friends.

She went to the beach on a dreary day. There was sunshine right before I tried to take her pictures, and then as I was taking them, there was a downpour and she had to duck back into her plastic bag and wait for a sunny day to finish her photo shoot.

  She doesn't have her box any more. That was so she could fit in the big box with big Savannah and my Zwergnase, but she has her certificate of authenticity.

  She is the tiny version of regular size Savannah.

She has the same fair complexion and freckles, and bright red hair.

 

The crack in my lens filter really shows up when I photograph too directly in the sunny direction. On this day it wasn't even sunny and the light still hit the crack in such a way that it left a blur through some of my pictures.

 

But not all of them, and some only faintly, like this one.

I need to remove it. It's only a clear filter, meant to protect the real lens. But it's screwed on so tight that I can't get it off. Ken says maybe we should risk it, and just break the glass out, but we're afraid of scratching the real lens. You know. The one that won't focus properly any more!

  Savannah is very pale. That's not unusual, since she's a red head. Ivy is probably at least this pale, if not more so. But if Savannah had been my mom's kid, she would have been told to "Get out and get some sun! You're pasty pale!", like I was told when I was a kid. And I spent all my time outside!

Mom never caught in to the idea that she had a red haired kid. I was most likely going to be pale. But then, she was also disappointed that I didn't have curly hair, and that I wasn't a boy. 

This was third grade. She tried to curl my hair until she gave up. My hair just wasn't having it.

There's no pleasing some people I guess.

  It was getting pretty windy too. This picture reminds me of one from our trip. (But you haven't seen that one yet.)

She looks so beachy, so I thought a picture at the beach would be perfect. It would have been if it had been sunny. which it couldn't stay long enough to get a sunny picture. There was just enough sun to make a glare in the lens crack.

I don't think I've told you how I cracked my lens yet either. That also has to do with our trip. Our cursed trip. I do intend to finish those posts, and now that I have my pictures back, and some things from the house that I bought on the trip, I can finish the trip posts.

This Savannah is one of the first Mini Pals, so she has the soft, squashy limbs. I don't think they use those at all these days. Her arms and legs are very soft and bendy, (without holding the bend.). The most recent ones have a firmer vinyl. When I tried to hold Savannah by just her arm, it bent and she couldn't stand up straight. You may have seen where I reviewed Chad, the first Maru and Friends boy. He was like this. Although the limbs are soft, and bend easily, the dolls still manage to stand okay. And their arms and legs can move outward. If you can balance them in a spread legged position, they can support themselves fine. 

She did need a prop to stand on this uneven ground. Unfortunately, you can spot it at this angle.

  They also have cute Dianna Effner faces and a really nice feature: They can tilt their heads side to side and up and down. This adds a lot to the moods you can get from them. 

  Since her first try at a photo shoot got rained out, Savannah tried again. It was the first day of the Air Quality Alert, but we did it anyway. I got a few dolls quickly photographed. Then we gave up.

   Savannah is wearing her original dress...

WHAT is in the sky?

...white undies, and shoes.

They match her dress.

They have a texture on the bottoms.

  She also originally had a hat. I swear I got the hat with her, but I must have left it in the box. Both attempts at her pictures were rushed due to environmental conditions of one kind or another.

  Our air is almost back to normal now. Give it another day or two and we should be at our usual numbers. On the day I took the second batch of pictures, Ken and I were out and about and got some lunch. The place we got it doesn't do dine in, and we went sort of across the street to the grocery store for drinks. I looked for a nice place to park and eat our lunch in the car-what I call a car picnic-  and behind the store was the most beautiful forest! The grass was mown on the slope up to a line of pine trees, and beyond that in a slight distance, was a wood. I took some pictures on the slope, and then climbed to the top of the slope to take the pictures you saw the last two days, of Hermione and Harry. That's when I found that there was a small soy bean field at the top, and at the back of that was the woods. It was a very small soy bean field. While I was sitting at the top of the slope, I heard a crash, and looked up to see two deer. They had just burst through the trees at the edge of the field, (thus the crash), and they ran along the edge of the field a short distance, and then popped into the woods again, their white tails flashing. With the overcast sunlight of the day, and all the greenery in an unexpected setting, all sort of hidden in a circle of trees, it looked sort of like a fantasy. There I was, sitting there with a camera in my hands, and all I thought of doing was getting Ken's attention so he could see the deer, which he surely couldn't have anyway, from his location in the car at the bottom of the slope. From there it was impossible to even see that there was a soy bean field. It was a beautiful sight though. I'm sure the camera couldn't have captured it anyway.

  That's today's doll. Don't forget to check out the Doll Book of the Month too.

Doll-A-Day 2023 #172: Hogsmeade Harry

  How are you all doing? For the second day in a row Ohio is under an air quality alert, because we have finally received the residual smoke from the Canadian wildfires. According to the Air Quality Index, 0 to 50 is considered okay, and today the air quality is about 149 here. Ken and I didn't even go work at the house yesterday because I'd have to be outside sifting the bags of rubble he'd bring out. We did go do a few things, and on the way it looked like this.

That's somewhere around noon, and that's not fog, people.

  On to today's doll. Yesterday we saw Hogsmeade Hermione, and today, SURPRISE! It's Harry Potter himself, (in the form of Daniel Radcliff).

Hogsmeade Harry was made in 2003. He is about 10 or 11 inches tall, and uses the same body as the smaller High School Musical male dolls.

  This doll is a pretty good likeness of Daniel Radcliff.

 

Of course, he also has Harry's famous lightening bolt shaped scar, even if it does look like he drew it on with lipstick or something.

He has Daniel Radcliff's blue eyes, rather than the green eyes Harry was famous for having in the books. In the first movie Daniel Radcliff's eyes were tinted green using CGI, but in subsequent sequels the idea was dropped.

  Hermione has some features like a twist waist, tiltable head, swiveling shoulders, and bend knees, that make her more interesting to pose.  Harry is stuck with a very standard body, with a head that turns, arms that can move up and down, and legs that can move back and forth, but not bend.

 

So Hermione gets to take the lead and do all the interesting stuff, on top of being smarter than Harry.

"Look Harry! Over there!" "Where?" " There!" "I can't see. I don't have my glasses."

  He attempts to make up for his lack of posability by having nice details like a very detailed hair sculpt.

Not sure about that paint job. He has a weird line around his sculpted hair, and specks of paint all over his ears.

He did originally have glasses, but mine are missing, leaving big holes in Harry's head.

  He has his original red t-shirt, which closes in the back with Velcro.

And his jeans. They have a stitched fly and pockets.

 

He also has pockets in the back. His pants also close with Velcro.

Lastly he has black tennis shoes.

  Harry came in a box made to look like he was in Honeydukes sweet shop. He would have originally come with his school robes, a grey jacket, and a Marauder's Map. The back of his box had cutouts that could be used to make two sided, (if flat), sweets packages, like a chocolate frog, a box of Bertie Botts, and three others. Why they couldn't have made the pictures so that they could be folded into three dimensional packages, I don't know. I guess then you'd realize they could have done that all along, and you'd feel cheated when you get those cardboard accessories that you have to fold up yourself, when you buy a Barbie.

  That's today's doll. See you again tomorrow, alas, not for the Hogsmeade Ron doll because THEY DIDN'T MAKE ONE!! But we won't go into THAT again!

Doll-A-Day 2023 #171: Hogsmeade Hermione

   Today's doll Is Hermione Granger.

  This particular Hermione is Hogsmeade Hermione, from 2003.There was also an accompanying Hogsmeade Harry. They were released to coincide with the "Prisoner of Azkaban" movie. As ended up being par for the course, there was NO Ron Weasley. I will spare you from another of my rants about how Ron was my favourite character in the books, and how the character got cheated out of the spotlight at every turn in the movies, and with the dolls. Most of his best stuff from the books was left out, blah blah. Also: J.K. Rowling! "Separate the art from the artist. Separate the art from the artist..." Anyway!

  Hermione would have originally come with her robes, a time turner necklace, and a Honeydukes bag. Her box pictured her in Honeydukes sweetshop.

Hermione is about 10 inches tall. She has a very similar body to the smaller High School Musical  Gabriella dolls.

  Mine is second hand, so she is only wearing her original hooded sweater and corduroy pants, as well as grey shoes.

They're Barbie tennis shoes made in dark grey plastic.

  I like her sweater. It has real pockets.

And it's really a 'pull over your head' sweater, with no Velcro opening in the back, and no hole in the hood to accommodate her big hair.

  She has some interesting articulation. She is jointed at the neck, shoulder and hips, and also has a swivel waist, and bendable knees. Her arms can also swivel outward.

Unfortunately, she can't put her hands in those realistic pockets!

I found the right leg seemed to bend and hold a pose more than the other leg, but that could just be because she has a worn out leg. 

  She can also tilt her head up and down a bit.

And she can lean it to the side.

    The doll isn't a bad likeness of actress Emma Watson, who played Hermione. 

  But while she looks okay from the front, she has a very strange head shape in profile!

Luckily that's hidden by her big Hermione hair.

   That's today's doll. Who will we see tomorrow?