Doll-A-Day 2023 #266: Randy and Billy Balony

   Today I have been having a day off. I have been so tired lately, and my right foot has been swollen to  about the size of a Thanksgiving turkey for the last week. So today I have stayed off my feet, done nothing, and rested. Tomorrow I go for the results of my thyroid ultrasound, so we'll see if I have to go for another dreaded nodule biopsy. I'm hoping not, because having that long needle stuck in my throat 5 times is something I hate like you wouldn't believe. So today we're looking at some figures that Emma got me for Christmas last year. They're Randy and Billy Baloney, from Pee Wee's Playhouse.

  These small carded figures fit perfectly with the Pee Wee's Playhouse from 1988. That was made by Matchbox, as were the figures that went with it. These new figures are by ReAction. The card they come on even looks very similar to the Matchbox toys' cards.

  There was a Randy figure made by Matchbox, that came as a carded figure with Globey. He was different though. That figure had a raised right arm, an open mouth, painted black inside, and A LOT more freckles. There hadn't been a figure of Billy Baloney before. 

  The Randy character visited Pee Wee's Playhouse occasionally, said some obnoxious stuff, and then had to leave in a hurry as Pee Wee yelled at him. The character was a marionette. Billy Baloney was a ventriloquist dummy operated by Pee Wee, with no attempt to hide his lips moving. Although there hadn't previously been a Playhouse sized action figure of him before the ReAction figure, there had been a full sized dummy of him sold in 1988. The dummy was about 18 inches tall, and had moving eyes and mouth, and could be operated as a ventriloquist dummy by a rod in his back, just like the one on the show. That doll was made by Matchbox too, and bore a great resemblance to the original from the TV show. Fuzz used to sleep with mine, until Billy's head got bumped against the wall behind the bed so often he was starting to get blue and green paint marks on his blonde hair from the ocean I had painted on Fuzz's wall. 

  That ocean is gone now, and the wall with it. I found a piece of plaster with recognizable ocean painted on it in one of the bags of rubble from the room, and I kept it in Fuzz's stuff that I saved. I found a lot of pieces of ocean wall in those bags, but most of them were irretrievably blackened. Somewhere in that ocean there was a dolphin in the water, and a huge section of wall was a pirate ship. I had made a crow's nest for the mast out of half of a slatted basket, and we printed a picture of Fuzz and Fuzzy the Doll, in their pirate costumes from one Halloween, which I cut out to stand in it. I found the picture amongst Fuzz's photo albums. The covers had burned, but the pictures, although wet, were savable. I removed them all from the albums and dried them out. Didn't lose one of them. 

  Well, that was a bit of a detour, wasn't it? Anyway, as you might have guessed, I love Pee Wee Herman. I was really sad to hear of Paul Ruebens' death recently. One of these days I'll bring the Playhouse down from the attic and do a post on it, and all the figures. Emma used to love playing with it when she was little. And we had a cat who loved to steal Miss Yvonne. That cat loved to steal dolls with big hair and run off with them. She stole Kelly dolls too.  

  Those are the dolls for today. Thanks for letting me have a day off to rest and unpuff my foot. See you tomorrow.