Doll-A-Day 2023 #316: Barnum's Animals Crackers Kelly

   Today's doll is part of a 2002 series of  Kelly dolls called Barnum's Animals Crackers.

Better known as just 'animal crackers', the 'crackers' in question are the little animal shaped cookies that come in the little boxes that look like the wagons circus animals used to be hauled in.

  There were three dolls in the series: Jenny as the tiger, Kayla as the lion, and Kelly as the elephant. The boxes were made to look like they were circus wagons too, with wheels. The box also has a string handle, like real boxes of animal crackers.

Why didn't Kelly have to paint her nose? And what happened to her shoes?

Kelly is wearing an elephant costume with a completely vertical trunk, and big ears lined in pink.

The bottoms of the pant legs have black elephant toenails on them. And all the dolls came with a mini animal cracker box.

  That's it for today. See you again tomorrow.

Doll-A-Day 2023 #307: Jackson and Jayla

   Today's dolls are some I spotted yesterday. I had never seen them before, and I thought they were really cute. So here they are, Jackson and Jayla.

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  Jackson and Jayla are characters from the Barbie TV series "It Takes Two".

Jackson and Jayla, who are twins, are the size of the current Skipper dolls. Jackson has molded, painted hair, and a checked shirt and jeans.

  Jayla has a long braid, and a cute 'Happy Vibes' shirt and denim skirt...and a rather large ponytailer.

She as rooted hair and painted details around her hairline. 

  The dolls come with three dogs, and a bunch of accessories for taking care of them, plus an ice cream cone, and a soccer ball. I'm not sure if that's a big purse, or a bag to carry a dog in...or both.

  Cute dolls, but I don't need them, or to pend money on them right now. So they stayed in the store.

  Those are today's dolls. Tomorrow we'll see another interesting doll.

Doll-A-Day 2023 #268: Cool Times Ken

   I had another doll planned for today, but I'm still having trouble with that new lens, and my pictures came out blurry. I don't want to have to use a flash because of reflection from the flash so we're stuck with this. I did take another lazy day today, and, in fact, took a nap! Maybe tomorrow I'll be awake enough to take some more interesting pictures.

  Today's doll is Cool Times Ken. For some reason my computer isn't letting me copy pictures, and I wanted to keep the full picture because these guys are all for sale. So I am stuck with the full photo. Cool Times Ken is third from left.

  Cool Times Ken was made in 1988, and that kind of shows. He has a very 80's outfit, including a yellow shirt with orange sleeves and a pizza decal, black stretch pants with white stripes down the sides of the legs, and black and white checked suspenders.

Now that's an outfit.

  He doesn't have a very 80's hairstyle though. The hair looks more 70's to me.

  The Cool Times series of dolls included Cool Times Barbie, Ken, Christie, Midge, and Teresa. The outfits were full of checks and polka dots. Once again Ken was the lone guy. 

  I still haven't seen the Barbie movie. I intended to go, but the opportunity has never arisen. 

  See you tomorrow for another doll.

Doll-A-Day 2023 #267: Beach Fun Barbie and Ken

   Today's dolls are grabbing the last sunny days of the year to hang out on the beach. They're Beach Fun Barbie and Ken.

  These two were made in 1993. That was the days of big haired Barbies and stiff looking Kens. These two are no exception.

  They are a 'special edition', but I'm not sure what was special about them.

They had the standard articulation of the day, which was not much. I really didn't like the stiff straight arms and the bland smile of the Ken's then. This wasn't my favourite Barbie face either. And those clothes! The 80's and the early 90's had some loud coloured clothes, and some wild patterns. Not my style. I was more of a black and white and dark green and dark brown dresser. I still am, although I try to branch out into blue sometimes! These two survived high and dry in the Room of Water. They are for sale, but for the life of me I wouldn't be able to find them now. They have been tubbed and gone to storage. 

  I had an exhausting day today. I had an appointment with my endocrinologist, Yay! My thyroid nodules have not changed, and I don't have to have a biopsy! What a relief! She also said that if I get a clear ultrasound next year I don't have to have any more! After that I had to have blood work done. I'm not good with needles, but the girl did a pretty good job. I felt it a bit, but it wasn't too bad, and the rubber thing they put on my arm to squeeze the blood down there didn't pinch my arm too much, as it does sometimes. Then we went to the house to wait for a guy who was coming to tell us how much new windows for the Room of Fire might cost. I was wondering if I would need to mow the grass. Well I couldn't have if I had wanted to, since the yard was inches deep in leaves, switches from the walnut trees, and fallen walnuts. I spent all my time raking leaves and walnuts, and picking up nuts. Ken helped pick up nuts, as long as I raked them over to him. We picked up two boxes, and one giant bucket, of nuts, and the yard was still full of them. I got most of the leaves either to the tree line, where the leaf sucker truck will get them, (Or not, as you know if you've read my previous complaints about the leaf sucker truck,), or in a couple of big piles in the yard, which I'll deal with on Monday. We had a couple of stops to make after that, and had to pick up some groceries. I fell asleep waiting on Ken as the store. Tomorrow I'm going to try to take another partial day off, after I finish repairing AJ's favourite chair. (Yes, the honeymoon couple is back home from Italy.)

  See you tomorrow for another doll.

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Doll-A-Day 2023 #114: Kelly as Little Red Riding Hood

   Today's doll is a boxed set: Kelly as Little Red Riding Hood.

This is one of those collector's sets featuring Barbie's little sister, Kelly. It was fourth in the Storybook Favourites series, which also included Raggedy Ann and Andy, Goldilocks, and Hansel and Gretel, This set was produced in 2001.

The back of the box gives a kindler, gentler version of Little Red Riding Hood than the one I grew up with. In this version, Grama was just hiding in the pantry, and comes out when a huntsman scares the wolf away. In the version we had as kids, the wolf eats Grama, and a woodcutter ends up cutting the wolf open with his axe and Grama is found whole and sound inside the wolf's stomach!

  Kelly  as Red wears a pretty dress, with attached apron, and her signature red hooded cape....

...while the Wolf wear Grama's  night cap and glasses!

This wolf could barely get Red in it's stomach, let alone Grama.

  Red has her basket of apples. In the story I know, she has a jar of jelly and some bread for Grama.

The elastic that held it to her hand has finally given up.

Red's cape has a hook and eye closure, but is stitched together anyway.

 The Kelly dolls in the collector sets like this seemed to have more realistic hair than the play line dolls. It's not crazy long, and not as terribly thick as the play line's.

  That's the doll for today. See you again tomorrow. 

Doll-A-Day 2023 #70: Cool Crimps Skipper

   Today's doll is an unbelievable 30 years old this year. She's Cool Crimps Skipper.

 I say 'unbelievable'  because to me, 1993 doesn't seem that long ago. I was 31, Emma was 2, and Ken and I celebrated our fourth anniversary that Fall. Now Emma is 31, and Ken and I will have been married 34 this Fall. Where does the time go? 

  Well, nowhere for this girl. She hasn't aged a day since 1993. Back then, crimped hair was still a thing.

She still has her instructions.

And the tools to use with them.

SHe has a cardboard case full of cardboard hair equipment.

She has a comb and a brush, 2 heart shaped crimpers and two regular crimpers, and a fake bottle of...hair product? 

How to use said crimpers, for results like 'when Mommy goes to the beauty shop!'

And she has plenty of long hair to use the crimpers.

Her hair elastics have crumbled away over ALL those years.

She's still in very nice condition though. Luckily she, and the other dolls stored in the box she was in, were stored in ziplock bags, because the box got soaked by the fire crew, and the water was dark brown and smokey smelling.

Apparently, baby pacifier jewelry was also quite a thing in those days.

She is wearing her original outfit, consisting of a blue blouse, trimmed in the same pink and white and blue and white gingham as her overalls...

,,, and the aforementioned overalls.

Real pockets!

The overalls only reach to just below her knees.

She also has pink high top tennis shoes.

She has the 'big eye Skipper' , or anime' inspired head sculpt, which is just about the least popular head sculpt amongst Skipper fans, although it does have it's fans.

  There were two other dolls in this Cool Crimps series: Cool Crimps Courtney, who had a green version of Skipper's outfit, complete with the pink pacifier jewelry, and Cool Crimps Kevin, (You can see mine HERE.) Kevin had molded and painted hair, so I don't know what he was crimping. With all the stuff coming here to be checked over for moisture, I have been going through a lot of stuff. In doing so I discovered that I have two of these dolls. The other one doesn't have her accessories, or even her shoes. She does have her outfit and stupid pacifier jewelry though. 

She at least stayed clean where she was, and she doesn't smell like smoke. She needs to find a new home, so if anybody is interested, let me know. She's $10 plus shipping. And remember, if you want me to contact you, you have to leave your contact information. Most people seem to forget that,

Tomorrow is another doll.                                                                                                                   

Doll-A-Day 2023 #49: Dream Date Skipper

   I am well aware that I am still 6 days behind on the year. I have been helping around the house, doing most of the cleaning and laundry, to make life easier for Emma, since we are staying here with them, cramping their lifestyle and being annoying, and filling their fridge with our stuff. I've also been drying out wet things from the house, cleaning sooty things, washing sooty laundry. plus trying to take pictures and keep up with the blog. I am way far behind with the posts on our trip, and am starting to forget what we did. I have tons of pictures for a post on things we've saved...or not, from the fire. While I was on steroids for my lung inflammation all that was easy. I was pain free and could move easily. Climbing stairs was easy. Of course, as soon as the steroids ran out, the pain and stiffness began to return. Now it's going full force. My back is killing me, my feet hurt, it's become difficult to go up and down stairs again. And Emma lives up a LOT of stairs. There's a flight from the parking area to the level the house is on, more stairs to the sidewalk to her front door, and once you reach her door, there are loads of steep stairs up to her apartment. In fact, there's a big set of stairs, and a short set of stairs. The final set is short as far as number of stairs go, but the stairs themselves are very tall, (for me anyway). Plus, Emma has an old clawfoot bathtub, and I'm so short it comes higher than my knees. Add to that my stiffness, and I have to get in and out with a step ladder. (That's not funny!) We're sleeping on an air mattress. which is probably more comfortable than our real mattress at home, but hard for two old people in pain to get in an out of. I'm also afraid I'm going to run out of dolls to post if I catch up with those 6 days. I had enough posts predone at one point to catch up most of the way, but I figured I'd better hang on to them for the time being in case I needed them. And of course, things needed done and I didn't get anything else photographed until I had used all those up. So I was right. And now I'm low on dolls, and I can't fill Emma's house up with stuff. So I daren't bring any stuff here unless it's stuff that needs rescued from the house. That's one reason I have been posting so many of Emma's dolls. They're already here. 

  Today's doll is both. She's Emma's, but she came from the house and needed rescued. She was in a box of dolls that had gotten some water in it, but not everything was wet. Today's doll just needed the faint smoke smell aired out. She was in a ziplock bag and stayed dry, and fairly smoke free. Emma decided she wanted this doll, and even bid on one in an auction the other day. She lost that one though, and who am I to turn Emma down if she wants something at this point? So I gave her to Emma. She's Dream Date Skipper.

  She was produced in 1990. 

  This head sculpt, which Mattel began using in 1987, is usually referred to amongst Skipper collectors as the 'big eye' sculpt. The sculpt was used for several years, before Mattel changed Skipper's head to a more realistic sculpt. In the meantime they also used the big eye sculpt for a Tinkerbell, and a Peter Pan Wendy doll.

   She has HUGE hair. I suppose that even though that was an 80's thing, there was still some around in 1990.

She came with instructions on how to 'release' that giant hair from one of those stupid plastic strips they sew the hair to.

Yeah. Like it's that easy.

 Skipper's box stated that she came with "3 Pretty looks and a trendy hairpiece too!"

I'm not sure how trendy this hair piece was for teens in 1990.

 It also told kids to "Put on her hair piece and she's absolutely gorgeous!". Can't she be gorgeous without it?

I'm not sure if that band goes behind her head or under her chin, and the instructions don't tell you.

It doesn't sound easy, or even clear!

"How glamourous she looks for a party, dinner, or dancing". Because all early teens go out to dinner, or 'dancing' dressed like they're going to a ball.

Look at the combed back bangs part! This is without the big hair piece. I was afraid to ruin her hairdo. It's made it all these years and I have given her to Emma. It would be a bad time for me to try to deal with hair. You know how I am. I remember in the 80's when Unsentimental Niece used to have those huge stand up bangs that looked so stupid from behind. A Giant wall of bangs. Ivy think I had 'big hair' in the 80's, but it was nothing like this. 

As you can see, her bangs are the colour of the hair piece, and not her actual hair.

The instructions show two options for her outfit. The skirt is in two pieces: a short tutu looking thing, and along skirt. See that 'disc' it's telling you to tie the bow on to use as a bracelet of hair piece? Remember that.

The box tells you she has: "Glossy shorts for the ice cream shop!"

Because everybody wears shiny shorts to the ice cream shop. And what were they calling an 'ice cream shop' in 1990? Those weren't the days of Mickey and Judy going to the ice cream parlour!

The box also expected her to attend the movies in a giant tutu. "Fabulous mini for the movies."

She looks a little over made up, over dressed, and overhairdoed for a kid barely in her teens.

How old was Skipper supposed to be in 1990? I know they had aged her up a bit, but how much? I mean, they have her dating. But this outfit looks more like a prom dress of the day anyway.

Oh my goodness. Look at that hair.

Her accessories included a pair of blue flats...

 

...a hunk of tulle that's supposed to be that 'bow'...

...a brush, a heart shaped purse, and that disc you were supposed to use as a hair piece or bracelet. This thing would make a HUGE bracelet.

The disc and the purse came with stickers to decorate them.

She also has a bracelet that isn't that huge disc.

And there's a huge necklace to go with it.

And she came with this stuff. 

 This doll came in some I got at an auction. There were some in there that I liked, but this isn't one of them. She's a bit too much for me!

  That's today's doll. Come back tomorrow and see what else we have for you.