The Spring Toy Show, and What I Bought There, and What's Up With Ken

    I haven't been around for a while. I think the last time you heard from me our car had died. We were without a car for a while, and then some people we've known for a long time offered us a van for a really great price. They got a lot of things fixed on it, using their own money, because they knew we really needed a car and were low on funds. It was a nice van, and had cool stuff like heated seats, and a CD and cassette player, and even a DVD player and tv for the back seats! I doubted we would ever use that, since we don't often have anybody in our back seat these days. It was still kind of cool to have though. We might have taken a trip at some point, and pulled over to enjoy a little TV while we ate lunch or something. I say 'might have', because three weeks into having the van, on the way to a doll show in fact, it became hard to break on the highway, in the rain no less, and the weird noises the van had been making: clunks, pops, etc., and the weird things it had been doing: juddering when reaching 55, listing to the left, having super tight steering, became worse. Before we reached our destination the van was feeling very scary. We did actually get to the doll show. It was a Saturday afternoon, so we weren't sure how we were going to get home. I actually took Ken into the venue where the show was being held, while my sister checked around for somewhere that might be open and able to take us on such short notice, and so close to closing time. When I came back out to park the van, she had found somewhere. I went back in to get Ken, and reloaded Ken and wheelchair back in the van  We carefully drove to Midas. The manager was going to take the van for a test drive, but ran back in saying, "I was going to take it for a test drive, but noooo! I'm going to run it in here and check it out." So he did, and was back in seconds. The subframe had broken. He said he was surprised we even made it into Midas. He said it would take at least $2000 to even start fixing what was wrong with it. With the miles on the vehicle and all the other things he said would probably come up next, the only thing that made sense was junking the van. Midas Man also said he couldn't see how anybody could have been under there working on the van recently and not seen that this was about to happen. 

  So once again, after three weeks, we were without a vehicle again. And by the time we got everything straightened out and a van rented  to get home before the car rental place closed for the day, it was too late to bother going to the doll show. There was less than an hour of the show left, and it costs $10 to get in now anyway.

  Last week Ken went in for a heart catheterization to have stents put in. He'd been in the week before, when they went in through his wrist. They decided he had more to do than they wanted to do through the wrist, so he had to come back. I was very scared, but he did fine. We were supposed to go home after it was finished, but they ended up keeping him a couple of nights so they could flush his kidneys out with IV fluids. Turns out, the contrast dye they use for the procedure can damage the kidneys, and Ken already has kidney damage from his diabetes. They did one side of his heart, but he was starting to have to move because his back and leg were hurting from laying on his back so long, so they had to stop. Now he has to go back in a couple of weeks to have the other side done. I'll be terrified again. If any of you want to do a few prayers, or send some positive vibes or thoughts Ken's way, it would all be appreciated.

  But before all that happened Ken and I went to the toy show with my sister. It's the Xenia, Ohio toy show, and it supposedly one of the biggest in the county. It may or may not be, but it sure is huge. It's held at a fairground, and it encompasses many buildings. We have always gone to every single building...except this time. It was supposed to be very cold, but turned out to not be too bad. But I have been having a lot of hip and back pain the last few months, and my sister recently had surgery to correct her botched double mastectomy, so she was tired, and not feeling her best. Only Ken was doing fine, although he was getting wheeled around. I could have done better from a wheelchair too. So we called it quits a bit  early. There were lots of dolls, as has become usual with this show. For once I didn't buy anything from the dealer I bought the Saucy Walker and lookalike from at the last show. I did buy a couple of things though, which I'll show you in a minute.

  First I'll show you a few interesting things I spotted. 

  I'm not sure if I have shown this same doll in a previous post. She looks familiar, and I know I photographed some of the same dealer's dolls before. This is a Lisa doll by Takara.    

There was this boxed set of Cousins dolls at another dealer.

  The Cousins were baby sitters to go with the Quints dolls by Tyco. (Why weren't there 5 of them? Somebody got off easy, watching only one kid.) I am familiar with the Quints dolls, but I never heard of the Cousins before. I knew they had to be connected with the Quints though, from the look of the packaging. Apparently they were supposed to be teenagers. There were several sets. Their gimmick was that when they stood close together their outfits formed a picture. How weird.

  I also saw something I've never seen, even in ads.

Can you spot which thing it is? It's Casper, in a box! I always wanted my cousin's Casper doll, and I finally got one as an adult. I've never seen his box though.

  Another thing I saw that I had never seen was this Liddle Kiddles Talking Townhouse.

I've had the Kiddle Klubhouse before, but I don't think I'd even heard of the Talking Townhouse. Apparently it had a pullstring talk feature. If this house was in good shape, $30 was a good price for it.

 

 There was also a dealer with Monster High dolls, including the giant sized 17" ones.

  I also saw this Strawberry Shortcake house.

  I didn't take many pictures this time. It was dark in the buildings, and most of the stuff wasn't displayed in a way that made it easy to get good pictures of. And I was in pain that day and just not feeling it. As I said though, I did buy something. It was near the end of our stay at the show. What did I get? 

  

  I spotted some Barbie and Skipper dolls at one table. Most of the dolls weren't in great shape. One of them was my favourite Skipper, the Mod Era, red haired, eyelash Skipper. I have a few of these Skippers, but  one has a reddish face and is missing most of her lashes, and one is paled out a bit.  One is nearly perfect but for a piece chopped out of her bangs. This girl has thin hair, and her lashes are there, but short. But you know what? I can fix that. Her face colour is pretty good.

She was marked $35. I asked the dealer what the least she would take was. She said $25! There was another Skipper I considered, a sausage curl. She was marked $25.While I was on a roll, I asked the dealer what she would take for both. She said $40, so I said okay. 

Her head is great, including her lashes.

 Unfortunately, her feet and ankles aren't in very good shape. 

 I can always switch her head to another sausage curl body that has a bad head. I probably have one.

  I might try to sell the sausage curl girl, or at least her head. 

I really can't afford to spend that kind of money any more. I hadn't bought a Skipper for myself in a long time. (I did buy a 'Sample', or Test Market Skipper at a show, but she was to sell. I have to pay for going to shows somehow. They are quite a drive, and the doll shows cost $8 to $10 each to get into, and the toy show costs $5.And now Ken has to go with me, because I can't leave him on his own, so it costs twice as much.)

  I also missed the other Spring doll show because Ken had only just come home from the hospital and had to take it easy for a week or so. So the next doll shows are this Fall. We'll see what happens then. 

  

Doll-A-Day 2019 #199: Matty Mattel and Sister Belle

  My neck is a little sore today,but not too bad. It almost hurts more from my stretched neck muscles,(from having my head laid back so far while they did the biopsy,),than the needle punctures The bruise isn't as bad as last time either.

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  Today's dolls are a cute little girl and boy.

He's Matty Mattel.

And she's Sister Belle.

Matty was Mattel's advertising mascot from 1955 to the early 70's.

From 1961 to 1963 Matty and Belle hosted a Sunday morning cartoon show called "Matty's Funday Funnies". The show included cartoons of Casper the Friendly Ghost and Beany and Cecil,all of which were also produced as dolls by Mattel. (You can see my post on Casper HERE.and my post on Beany HERE. And of course, in between the cartoons kids saw commercials for Mattel products.The Matty and Belle dolls appeared in 1961.

They measure about 17 inches tall,but of course, they can't stand unsupported. Both Matty and Sister Belle use the same head sculpt as...GULP!...Casper the Ghost!

"You never know what we'll say next." Well, we kind of do, because you only have certain sayings.(Ok,so you don't know what order they'll be in.)

 I've said it before, but Casper is kind of like the ghost of Matty Mattel! (You can see my post on Casper HERE.)
Matty and Sister Belle are talking dolls.
  

Her box REALLY wanted you to know that.

The box front manages to mention talking FOUR separate times!

The reason Mattel was so keen to push the talking aspect was because Casper,Matty,and Belle were their first talking dolls after the wildly successful Chatty Cathy,who had debuted the year before. You can watch a commercial for all three dolls HERE. All three dolls said 11 phrases, and were all voiced by legendary voice actress June Foray. June was also the original voice of Chatty Cathy,as well as a multitude of cartoon characters like Cindy Lou Who, Frosty the Snowman's Karen, George of the Jungle's Ursula, Mulan's Grandma Fa, Bullwinkle's friend Rocky the Squirrel,Tweety Bird's owner Granny, and Bugs Bunny's occasional nemesis Witch Hazel. June Foray passed away in 2017, just a few months short of her 100th birthday.
Matty and Belle are operated by pull strings on their necks.

It's really just the bottom of their hard plastic heads. The heads contain their talking mechanism.

 

They have firmly stuffed cloth bodies.

Matty's original owner decided her was Super Matty.

Matty is a little rough. He's also missing his red and white striped shirt,because my son really wanted Matty. I let him keep Matty and while he had him he changed Matty's clothes. The shirt has never reappeared, but these are his original shorts.

They have faint little stripes.

His shoes aren't removable.

He originally had a crown too. It kind of looked a Jughead style pork pie hat,but it was supposed to be a crown.The top of the crown resembled the jagged edges of the Mattel logo he appeared on.
  I got Sister Belle when Emma worked at Goodwill. She called me one evening while she was at work to let me know Belle had been put out for sale. I popped over and bought her. (Belle that is, not Emma.)

Belle has a red cloth body and a removable apron,with real pockets.

Her shoes aren't removable either.
 

 They also don't really unbutton at the sides. One of them has just come unsewn.
Matty was resurrected in 1979,when he began appearing on Mattel product packaging,calling attention to the product hotline number. Later he was used for a site called Mattycollector.com,which sold action figures for adult collectors. That version of Matty was grown and looked a bit grouchy and threatening.

Belle never reappeared.

    Those are today's dolls. I hope you'll come back tomorrow for more.

Doll-A-Day 139: Casper the Friendly Ghost Talking Doll, and Part Two of How I Coveted My Cousins Toys

  First of all, welcome to our new follower, Dogsmom.I hope she's reading this one, since she still has her own childhood Casper.
  Also, in case you missed it, I'm celebrating the one year blogiversary of Planet of the Dolls with a giveaway. Check out today's earlier post for details.
  Yesterday I told you about one group of my cousins, the doll they gave me,and the toys I'll always associate with them.Today's doll is one I bought because my cousins did not give me theirs. I bought this Casper at a toy show to make up for that.

Casper is a pull string talking doll, made by Mattel in 1962 I think, so he is the same age as me!

But he has less wrinkles than I do.

  His voice is supposed to sound sort of echo-y and ghostly, but these days, since he doesn't work as well as he should, it makes him harder to understand.
  He's about 15" tall, with a terry cloth body and a plastic head.

The creator of  "Toy Story" claims the character of  Woody was based on his favourite childhood toy: his talking Casper doll.

 It's the same head mold as Matty Mattel and Sister Belle.(In an eerie way, it's like seeing Matty Mattel as a ghost.Dead Matty!Yech.)

Casper the friendly ghost has, of course, been featured in cartoons, comic books,and movies. 
This Casper was cleaned up by the lady I bought him from, so he's fairly snowy white.

He's missing his red sash.

  His counterpart was owned by a different set of cousins.This group of cousins we often saw too. They lived even closer to us, so we saw them a little more often than our Kentucky cousins. These cousins were City Cousins too, but they lived in a bigger city. The oldest was a girl about a year younger than my sister, so they stuck together like glue. They were good friends and our cousin spent 2 weeks at our farm every summer.I suppose it was like going to camp for her.(Except more boring.)
   She and my sister lorded their advanced ages over me. My sister enjoyed having a partner to help her torture me, as alone she couldn't easily over power me. Though my sister is six years older than I am, she was the embodiment of the phrase '90 pound weakling'. One summer, in the midst of Monkeemania (Was there such a thing?...Emma will kill me for that one.), they chased me and held me down and gave me what they referred to as "The English Tea Torture" (as opposed to the Chinese Water Torture. We watched alot of secret agent stuff.).

 This was my punishment for not liking Davy Jones. (I'm sorry, but my Monkee of choice was Peter Tork.) It was supposed to involve slow drops of burning hot tea being dropped onto my bare stomach, but turned out to be freshly made hot tea poured all over most of my torso. It's hard to do slow, meticulous drops when target of said drops won't stop wiggling.  
   There were times though, when my sister and I worked together and the target was our cousin,her accomplice.Let's call her Easily Fooled. Easily Fooled believed most anything we told her. When we told her the clumps of grass in the chicken lot were elf houses, she believed us. Like wise the skinny tree stump we told her was a leprechaun.She was,however oblivious to our insisted pleas that there was nothing scary about the poseable Popeye doll, or umbrellas, so we used to chase her with them.Hey, one at a time. It was either the doll or the umbrella, not both at once. Although there were two of us. We could have done that. 20/20 hindsight...  Why she had this irrational fear of the Popeye doll I'll never know. He was pretty harmless looking, especially after his head fell off and Mom used it as a pin cushion.
  The other two cousins were boys. The older one was between my age, and his sister's. He was...well, we could call him 'Damien', but let's be nice and refer to him as 'Teebee', which is what his brother called him when he was too little to pronounce his name.Teebee's  friend was the kid next door who liked to kill baby birds with his slingshot.You know what I'm getting at here.The third cousin was about a month older  than I was. Let's call him Mindless Follower. He often got in trouble, and his usual excuse was, "Well but, Teebee told me to." I've often imagined him getting arrested for something and telling the judge, "Well but, Teebee told me to."(That's unfair really. Mindless Follower has never been arrested as far as I know. Teebee on the other hand...) 
 

Tee Bee,Easily Fooled, and Mindless Follower. And yes, look out world! Tee Bee has a gun. I have wondered if the boys' behaviour was just them over compensating for always having to wear dress pants and dress shoes. Never once saw these guys in jeans or tennis shoes.

  These cousins weren't One For All and All For One like the other set I told you about yesterday. They always struck me more as All For Me types. (Except for Mindless Follower, who was more of an "All For Whatever Teebee Says, But I'll Take Whatever is Left (Especially if no one is looking.)" . 
  Since my sister monopolised Easily Fooled, I was left to hang out with the boys. We usually played together well enough.(Although there were times I had to bail on them and go tell an adult what they were doing.)I remember playing something with them that ended up with Mindless Follower dropping my Chatty Brother doll. Chatty Brother never spoke after that. Sometimes all 5 of us even played together.
   These cousins owned a Casper doll. He lived in the giant cardboard box in the corner of the dining room that they kept their stuffed toys in. (Hey! I had the exact same toy box at my house!) Every time we visited I dug Casper out of the box and played with him. I loved him, and I always hoped they'd give him to me.But sadly, they never did. I finally found an affordable one at a toy show a couple of years ago, so now I have my own, but I still think fondly of the dirty, well-loved little guy in that cardboard box. 

Easily Fooled,my sister, holding me, (Don't let that adoring look fool you.), and Tee Bee, getting an early start at controlling Mindless Follower.Hard to believe there's only a month's difference in age between Mindless and me! 

  

And here we are again. My sister looks a bit overwhelmed by Mindless Follower. Not me. I'm showing him who's boss! Tee Bee looks perplexed. He must be wondering what's to become of him...

Teebee did actually give me a toy once. It was a small rubber pig. He was black and white and was one of my favourite small toys. He traveled with me once, to the house of a relative I had never met before, and haven't seen since. I don't even remember who they were. But I remember that I had three pigs with me, two rubber ones the dentist gave out (I had a lot of cavities.), and Teebee's pig, and walking around outside in the dark by myself I lost Teebee pig. I went inside and managed to get somebody's attention enough to beg a flashlight to search with. I never found him though. I hate losing things. I still think about that pig. I suppose that's related to how Fuzz and I can watch a movie where people are being shot at or chased, and be more worried that they lost their hat. "Isn't he going to go back and get his hat?!", we both cry. You have no idea how relieved we were when Billy unexpectedly showed up with Dr. Grant's hat at the end of Jurassic Park 3! 
  Join me tomorrow for Part 3.