So What Show Did I Go To? And a Few Odds and Ends

   In my last post I mentioned that there were two other shows recently, a doll show and a toy show. I have been so tired lately that I debated going to neither, and just staying home and resting. But then I thought that there weren't going to be more than a couple more shows until next Spring. Why not hit the ones I could before then? I thought of going to both, since they were on different days. But in the end, I was too tired and achy to do both. I have been going to the toy show with my sister for the last few years, and it came first. So Ken and I went to her house the day before, so we wouldn't have to get up so early and drive to her house on show day. She's an hour and a half away, and the show is about 15 minutes from her house. 

  We went to the show, which is held at a fairground. It's huge, covering more than half a dozen huge buildings, with all of them being packed full of dealer's tables. There were so many people shopping it was hard to get through the aisles. Worse than that, it also made the buildings like large, toy filled ovens. A few years ago we went to the Fall toy show, and it was so cold we thought we were going to freeze to death. This year my sister was sorry she didn't bring in the little hand held fan she had in her car.

  I think there were slightly fewer tables with dolls this year than the last couple of years. Maybe they found that dolls weren't selling as well as they wanted, so the dealers are bringing more toys than dolls. There were still way more dolls than used to be found at toy shows. Here are some of the more interesting ones I saw.

  This is a Moni doll.

  I recognized immediately that this doll looked like a tiny Sasha doll. Sure enough, the internet describes them as 8 inch mini Sasha dolls, of lower quality than Sasha dolls, and made in Hong Kong. They are supposedly rare because there were copyright problems, and they stopped production I guess. I can see why. They look so much like Sasha dolls. She doesn't have the scary eyes or the weird hands though.

  This was a beautiful Teeny Tiny Tears doll, in her case, with almost all of her things. 

  I had never heard of a Barbie PTMI Birthday doll. I liked the look of this one, so I took her picture. In writing this post I looked it up, and PTMI Birthday Barbies are given to employees at the Mattel factory in Indonesia on their birthdays, and have been since the 90's. That's the only way to get one, so they are pretty rare.

  I found this doll, on the left, kind of interesting. She looks like Tressy, but she's small. You can gauge her small size by comparing her to the 70's Charlie's Angel's doll to her right. (Assuming, of course, that you are familiar with the Charlie's Angel's dolls...)

She also doesn't have Tressy's grow hair feature. The tag she had said only that she was a Japan rubber doll with painted on shoes.

I recognize that jacket. In fact, I think I have one. I can't remember who it came on, but it wasn't this doll, unless there were two dolls who came wearing it. I have no idea why she's wearing a bunch of plastic discs around her neck. Completing her ensemble is the ever popular sock dress.

  I have a small collection of... shall we use the term? Hillbilly dolls. You can see mine HERE, HERE, and HERE. There were quite a few...such dolls at the show. In fact, there were more of them at this show than I have ever seen at a single show, and they were not all at the same dealer's tables. Strange. I didn't photograph all of them, but here's one of them.

  I also have a weakness for sad dolls, and dolls you're meant to feel sorry for. This Poor Pitiful Pearl was mint in her mint box. Check out her original clearance price.

  I am familiar with Brooke Shields dolls, but not with this one in an evening gown.

  At the last doll show I was proud of myself for not buying anything. This time I did buy something, but it wasn't for me. I spotted two old dolls with definate limb problems in a box under the dealer's table. At a previous show I got a Pippi Longstocking doll from the same dealer. She was complete and nearly perfect, and only needed a minimal wipe down and her ponytails put back in. The dealer considered her too far gone to fiddle with though, and sold her to me for $5! She must not deal with anything she has to spend any time on making presentable, because the two girls in the box were the same situation. They were very nice, but doll number one, which is a vintage 1950's flirty eye Saucy Walker, with teeth, brunette braids, and her entire original outfit, including onesie, dress, socks, and shoes, and even hair ribbons, needed her head and arms out back on. 

Doll number two, a vintage Uneeda Susan Stroller, needed her arms put back on. 

I got these two dolls at an amazing price. I didn't need them, and promised Ken I wouldn't keep them, but I figured somebody would love them, and they needed rescued.

   The dressed one is definitely a Saucy Walker, because she's marked Ideal, and, as I said, has her original dress, with her original onesie underneath, socks, and shoes. (Even her shoes are marked 'Ideal'.) The other doll is marked Eegee, and is almost certainly a Susan Stroller. They are in really nice condition, other than just needing restrung. Saucy has flirty eyes that work well, and their sleep eyes work too  Unfortunately the crier box doesn't work in either. I think I should be able to restring them. I have put the arms back on a Susan Stroller, but I didn't have to put her head back on. There are kits you can buy with the rubber bands and S hooks to fix them. When I have them fixed they'll go up for sale. If anybody is interested in them, leave a comment with some contact information, and I'll get back to you.

  I didn't take many pictures at the show, so here are a few stray pictures I took at some of the places we went lately. 

  This pretty girl is roughing it outside at a local antique mall.

  The place has a habit of putting a lot of cool stuff outside, including dolls that I suppose it thinks aren't good enough for them to sell inside the actual building. This girl is in some rough shape, but I think she deserves better treatment than this, especially if they are still asking $45 for her! She isn't going to be worth anything before too long. I wish I could rescue her before she's completely ruined, but I can't afford to do that.

  We went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame while Ken's sister and brother-in-law were here a few weeks ago. You might not be expecting to find dolls there, but I did see this guy...

Okay. This marionette of Beck that was part of the Saturday Night Live exhibit, (which I highly recommend,), isn't officially a doll, he comes close enough.

  And if you saw my last post you will have seen these original 60's Beatles bobbleheads.

  And that's it for this post. You got two fairly close together this time! I am proud of myself. There  was another doll show yesterday, the last this year. Did I go? We'll see next time 

Running Out of Doll Shows, But Here's One More

  Well, I didn't get this post up the very next day after the doll show, but then I have a good excuse. I've had a really busy couple of weeks. One week, amongst other things, I had to get an oil change, take the car in to get the tire plugged, thanks to a stray nail, and take the car to get the wheel bearings taken care of. When I did that, I had to leave the car for a few hours, which meant walking home, and then walking back to get it when it was done. It's a bit over a mile each way, and I strayed off on a couple of alternate routes to avoid the steep hills. So I was really pooped out that week. The next week Ken' sister and her husband were here to visit. We went to The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and The Ohio State Reformatory, otherwise known as Shawshank Prison. We drove to Emma's two days, and I can't even remember what else. We went out to dinner to celebrate our anniversary, Ken's sister's anniversary, and Emma and AJ's anniversary. Somehow we all ended up getting married in September, within a week of each other. (Ken's sister's son was married about then too.) I was totally exhausted by the end of the two weeks, and I didn't have time to do a post anyway. So I am finally getting around to this post about a show we went to about,,,what? Three weeks ago? A month ago? I have lost all concept of time. But we did see some cool stuff, so here it is.

  There was this pair of tall, pretty ladies, and some small girls, including a Tonner Betsy McCall, and a couple of Madame Alexanders.

  I like this small cloth faced doll. I'm pretty sure she's a character from something, but I can't think what. If you know, tell me in the comments.

   I may have seen, and shown you, this Madame Alexander doll before. I think she's Maggie. Anybody?

  More nice tall ladies.

  These Madame Alexanders might be the Little Women. You'll notice to the left of the one in red, that there is a doll in a plaid dress.

  She's a Betsy McCall. She's the Uneeda version, who was described as a 'child fashion doll', but she's sort of a tween. She's also referred to as 'preteen Betsy McCall'.

  The dealer said she thinks this is an original Betsy outfit. I've never seen any so I don't know. It isn't shown with the other outfits on the original box though. There were patterns available to make clothes for Betsy, so it could be a homemade Betsy original. You can see my Pre Teen Betsys HERE, and  HERE.

  As you might have noticed, I love Alice in Wonderland, so I had to take a picture of this Alice doll, with the baby that turned into a pig. Over her shoulders you can see a Madame Alexander, a Tiffany Taylor, and a Malibu Skipper.

  The cute doll in pink is Little Betty, by Madame Alexander.  Next to her is a more modern Madame Alexander.

  This doll and her dress were both beautiful.

   I thought these two were cute. They have those thin plastic or celluloid faces. Those faces tended to get caved in at the very least, so they're lucky they've survived all these years.

This is a crowd of Japanese dolls. I don't know who that first girl is, but she looks familiar. The others look like Jenny or one of her related friends.

School Going Skipper was a Skipper from India. I had never seen her before. She is slightly different from the U.S. Skipper of the same era.

   Petit Jenny is another Japanese doll. 

  This guy is obviously a Ken clone, or male doll from the early 60's. He's not the most attractive guy.

  My sister insisted I take a picture of this Phantom of the Opera doll. He's is really good.

  I ran across a whole spread of Cosimo and Cosima doll and clothes. They're Petra's little brother and sister, made in Germany.

  I always thought Cosimo was so cute. At one point in the 90's Big Lots had a huge buyout of Cosimo and Cosima dolls and clothes. I wanted a Cosimo, but by the time I finally decided to buy one, all they had left was Cosima and some clothes. So you might have seen my Cosima HERE. I finally got a Cosimo in a trade with a reader. You can see him, and several original outfits, HERE.

  These girls were so cute.

  I know I know who this dark haired doll is! Anybody want to remind me?

  This is a Connie Lowe doll.

  She's jointed and has some nicely detailed clothing. She's very expensive though. This is also a Connie Lowe doll, and it was my sister's favourite thing we saw at the show.

  I saw some more amazing Connie Lowe dolls near the end of the show that I wanted to photograph for you, but the dealer refused. She was one of those dealers who think their dolls are the only source of pictures of dolls for people who post dolls they don't own for sale online, in an attempt to rip people off. She didn't want her dolls photographed because people could post them for sale. People can get pictures of dolls anywhere and do that. They could get them online, or take pictures of dolls in stores or doll shops, or anywhere. But that's her prerogative. We had a nice talk about various things. She was nice. She just didn't want her dolls photographed, and that's her right.  

 This doll was about the size of a Tammy's Mom doll. She's quite pretty. I don't think I've ever seen her before. 

  You can kind of size her up by comparing her to the Sunshine Family Dad and the Pepper doll behind her.

  This Cinnamon doll in her original box was a good price at $25. I was trying to be good though, and although I love Cinnamon and don't have one in her original box or outfit, I do have two Cinnamon dolls.

  The rice of this set of Beatles bobble head dolls blew my mind.!

I know they're expensive enough without the box, so i guess that price isn't unreasonable. We went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the next week, and they had the same bobbleheads. Theirs weren't boxed and as  as mint though!

  I think I have a couple of these Baby Bonnet Beans around here somewhere. I got them at a yard sale, and I thought they were missing their shirts. I guess not.

  This doll was really cute. She's a Madame Alexander Janie doll. I've never seen one before. I like her a lot.

  This was a gathering of clone dolls. Some of them are really nice. That guy, not so much.

This Barbie clone is another really pretty one. If you look close, you can see she has a couple of pretty friends with her as well.

  I don't think I've seen a loose Momoko before. Boxed ones probably. But not a loose one I could really see well.

  Okay. I would love to have a Brenda Starr doll. I really like them. This one is ready for the rain.

  This doll in green made me think of a thick version of the Skinny Jinny, or Metti dolls. You can see mine HERE. She's interesting.

  So that was the recent doll show. And what did I buy? NOTHING!! I was so proud of myself! I didn't buy a stinking thing! I did get something though. My sister bought my Christmas present while we were there. We saw a beautiful, although damaged compo Shirley Temple clone on a table. The dealer was very enthusiastic about me photographing her, and held her up to be photographed. 

They had a tag on her that said $40, but they did NOT want to go home with her. They said make an offer, which I hate doing. Then they offered her to me for $20. I caved, but my sister hopped in and said she'd get her for me for Christmas, because she didn't know what to get me otherwise. So she went home with my sister, to wait for Christmas, when we will be reunited. Me and Faux Shirley that is. I'll probably see my sister before then,.

  There was a doll show and a toy show this past weekend. Did I go to both, or just one? And if I only went to one, which one? Find out next time, same Bat channel...uh, I mean, in my next post.