Doll-A-Day 2017 # 39:Frozen Elsa Animator's Collection Toddler

  Well! We have quite a covering of snow today! Perfect for today's doll! Elsa!

I love these Disney Store Animator's Collection toddler dolls!

They have wonderful big eyes and sweet faces.

 I have about 8 of them, but only 2 were bought new. The rest were thrift store finds, including today's Elsa.

Really, this kid should be wearing a coat, but she's Elsa,so I guess she's ok...

Only a few days ago I was outside with Goldie Blox and it was fairly mild,and I showed you my starting daffodils. Here's what they looked like today.

The toddler dolls are 16" tall.

They're jointed at the neck,shoulders, and hips,

They can actually lift their arms out from their sides a little,and not just up and down.

They can tilt their heads side to side,up a little,but not down very much.

I have Kristoff too. You can see my review of him HERE.

The Frozen toddler dolls haven't changed much, but there have been a couple of different dresses, and a special set with Elsa and Anna with extra dresses. This is original Elsa though.

She was found at the thrift store like this,(Except for having a bath.),with her original dress and tights, but no shoes. She borrowed some for some of her pictures, but is shoeless in some of these.

"Do you want to build a snowman?" Gee,who could she be talking to?.......
See you tomorrow!

Doll-A-Day 80: The Swedish Chef

 I said I had one more doll from my trip to the Disney Store, and here he is.The Swedish Chef!

This is a fitting doll for today because today the new Muppets movie, "Muppets Most Wanted" opens across the country. (Let's hear a Kermit style "Yaaaaayyyyy!!!")

I had never seen a doll of The Swedish Chef.

He's really good too.He's about 21" tall,

There is a mouth under that mustache.(But no eyes under the eyebrows!)
I have most of the other Muppets, but no Swedish Chef, until now. As I said before, with the deal giving you $50 credit when you spent your first $50 on your Disney Visa, all my Disney Store purchases that day were free!
 Who knew the Swedish Chef was married? (Emma said, of course, he was Jim Henson's hands.)

I have always loved The Muppets, since before Sesame Street. I grew up watching them, and I have never outgrown them. That's because Muppet humour covers all ages. Everybody can get something out of it....except my mom. I got her to take me to see The Muppets Take Manhattan when it came out. (I didn't drive then.) When it came to the scene where the Muppets are trying to break into The Mallory Gallery and end up being chased by guard dogs and they all shinny up a drain pipe,I was cracking up. Mom was disgusted and muttered, "Stupidest thing I ever paid money to see: a bunch of stuffed animals climbing up a drain pipe!" Mom wasn't into humour that could in any way be seen as children's entertainment. (Except for the Pink Panther. She loved him.Wonder how he rated.)
  Everybody knows it's one of my pet peeves that Disney owns the Muppets.(Even more than it annoys me that Warner Brothers owns everything MGM made. I think of the old studio rivalries and imagine Louis B. Mayer spinning in his grave every time the Warner logo shows up on an MGM movie.) I know it was Jim Henson's choice to sell The Muppets to Disney because he wanted The Muppets 'to live on forever' after he was gone. But it just annoys me that The Muppets are considered Disney characters now. The Muppets are The Muppets, and can never really belong to anybody else.
  I loved the last Muppet movie.I read that Frank Oz chose not to participate because he didn't think it was true to the characters. I thought they really got the characters right. The whole spirit of the thing was so in line with the original movies and TV show. As much as everything will be different now due to there being no Jim Henson (Which there hasn't been for the last few movies.),no Richard Hunt, (Scooter, Janice, and Statler. Richard died in 1992.),and no Jerry Juhl, (The Muppets head writer from the beginning, until he died in 2005.), I think the last movie was as close as it could be to the originals.But that's my opinion, Frank.
 I was actually considering doing a give away to celebrate the new Muppet movie, and the fact that I have these cool mini Kermits,but I don't think there are enough people out there reading this thing to bother. Maybe if I get a few more followers, (on the Google thing, not just by email, so I actually know I have them. How do you know who's following you by email?), by my 1 year anniversary of this blog in May, I might have a give away. So there you go. I've set you all a challenge, and it benefits you!
  Tomorrow is Skipper Saturday again. See you then.

Doll-A-Day 79: More Rapunzels,Updates and Comparisons.

  I'm glad to report that my dad is doing better and I feel alot better after seeing him yesterday.He's still in the hospital but is supposed to be going back to the nursing home tomorrow. (For the record, I feel guilty that my dad has to live in a nursing home, but he has dementia. We kept him at home with us until his dementia got so bad that he starting needing around the clock guarding,etc.. It didn't allow the rest of the family to be together or do anything else. Didn't stop me from feeling guilty though.) If you don't know what dementia is,it's in the same family as Alzheimers, but...crazier. He has aural and visual hallucinations and gets confused.
   That's enough for your medical lesson.  
  I was supposed to do a post on my last Disney Store purchase today, but I'm saving that for tomorrow, for reasons that will become apparent then. I thought today I would cover a few things I forgot to include this week.(I've been quite flustered, as you can imagine. I considered not posting at all, but it kept me from curling up in a ball and throwing up.) So here are a couple of other dolls, and a few afterthoughts, plus I have updated the Snow White post to include some thoughts I forgot to think at the time...
 Today's doll is going to be two dolls: these two Tangled Rapunzels I got at a nearby Goodwill one night a while back.Here they are with the Rapunzel I reviewed earlier this week.

  I was going to show them in comparison to the short haired Rapunzel I featured earlier this week, but I forgot, so here they are now.

Short haired girl seems to have a rounder face. They all have the freckles.

Does anybody know which Rapunzel's these are?

The one with the long hair has jointed everything. The one who has had a hair cut has jointed arms, but the same soft bendy knee legs as short haired Rapunzel and Snow White.She also has those metallic hairs amongst her regular blonde hair.

"Thanks girls, but can you do anything with this one hair?" Jointed leg girl on the left is weak at the knees and can't stay standing up straight very long. That's why she looks so short here.Hair cut girl is cheating by standing on her tip toes. She knows the other two can't do that!

And an after thought on Snow White: Snow White seems so tiny compared to Gothel and Rapunzel, until you get them together. For comparison, here they are together.She definitely has a less cartoonish appearance.

See you tomorrow for that other Disney Store doll.

Doll-A-Day 78: Review Week: Disney Store Snow White

  Today's Snow White doll finishes up my articulated doll purchases from The Disney Store.

I couldn't resist her cute little face.

 Same situation with the box as the last two. Luckily she had a lot less stuff pinning her down than Gothel or Rapunzel. A twisty wire on her feet, a few tiny plastic thingies in her cape, and a couple in her head.

 

 She was wearing tissue paper pants.(And painted on undies.)

She's jointed at the neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips,and has the same bendy knees as the Rapunzel I reviewed a couple of days ago.Maybe I should explain those legs. They aren't bendy, as in, just having wires in them like a Tutti or Gumby. They have a knee joint, similar to a Barbie knee, but are a much softer rubbery leg, and the bend is more....uh, bendy than a Barbie knee.

The outfit is a bit too shiny and sparkly for my tastes. I'd like it to be more like the movie dress, in cotton or something. I also always have a problem with the way they do those red bits on the sleeves. Those are supposed to be cut outs with the red bit underneath showing through. I realize that would put the price up and also isn't the best idea for a lasting costume for a kids play doll, so I'm going to let that one pass this time!

This is the first Snow White doll I have bought for myself.

I like that they did the stand up collar this time, and it's actually pretty good.

Emma has one she got as a kid. Ivy was into Snow White for a while when she was very small, but she never had a Snow White doll. When I bought this one Ivy's response was, "But you don't like Snow White." I said, I don't dislike Snow White. I don't not like Snow White. (I mean, I don't specifically NOT like her. That's different from DIS liking her, or just ignoring her altogether.)

She has cute little rubber slip on flat shoes.

Actually, I love the animation in the movie. I think it's beautiful. I could never figure out why Snow White did all that stuff her stepmother made her do though. She was the Princess. Tell Step Mother to get lost.

Such a pretty face, and she's another short haired doll. I love her big brown eyes, and they painted the shape of her little mouth so nicely.

So, Snow was a little wishy washy, but sweet people can be that way. (I don't have that problem.)
 Tomorrow we'll check out my last doll from this trip to the Disney Store.

Doll-A-Day 77: Review Week: Disney Store Tangled Mother Gothel

  Well, Ivy is off on her Washington D.C. trip with the eighth grade. They left early this morning and stopped at Gettysburg this afternoon. They will soon arrive at their hotel.
  My dad, who is 90, gave us all a scare yesterday and this morning. He is in the hospital but appears to be doing better now. I know he's 90, but it didn't help that he was taken off his Lasix and had pneumonia recently because of it. Tomorrow I'll be going to see him,but it was hard today with all the dropping off, picking up, and more dropping off that had to be done.He has a bit of an irregular heart beat, but all his vital signs are good and his heart rate is fine. (I was confused as to how he could have an irregular heart beat and still have the proper heart rate. Apparently he has the right number of beats per minute, but they aren't regular.)
I don't feel much like it, but I'm going to continue with my regular routine for now. What else can I do? This post was already written, so I'll add the pictures. In truth, once Dad is back on his lasix he may be the same as before: 90. It's always a case of 'treasure every day' at this age.
 
Today's doll is sort of a companion to yesterday's. (Not by Rapunzel's choice, but...) It's Mother Gothel.

This doll is from the Disney Store too.She has exactly the same box as Rapunzel, so I won't waste my time and yours going over that again. If you're curious, please see yesterday's review for details on the box.

The usual conglomeration of twist ties, thread, and forty million of those little plastic thingies with the t-shaped end, most of which were in her cape,and left holes in it.

There were two versions of this doll at the Disney Store. The boxes were exactly the same except for this sticker in the bottom left corner.

The most noticeable difference between the dolls seemed to be that the dolls with the sticker had shorter, but 'bigger' hair.
.

"If I could turn back time..."

 I chose the puffier hair.She would have been very popular in the eighties!She has that Cher hair.

Her cape was hooked down with about 6 of the little plastic things. I thought that was a bit excessive. And as I said, they left holes in the cape.
 She had the tissue paper to puff her dress out too, like Rapunzel. 

She has jointed legs, as opposed to Rapunzel's weird rubber legs, so that may be another difference. I don't know what kind of legs the other version of Gothel has.Here's a look at those legs.

Looks like she's had a hard day on her feet.

She can't really sit down properly. She doesn't bend enough at the waist and her knees don't bend enough.She can only slouch, and she doesn't do that very well.
She just has regular high heel shoes. She has joints at the hip (just the regular back and forth kind.),knees, and ankles.

 
 And then of course there's this problem. She's bow legged, and she has a stain on each leg.
She's also jointed at the shoulders, elbows, and wrists.

Her cape has a Velcro closure and is easy to remove.She also has painted on undies.
  I love her face. She is a pretty good recreation of the movie character.

Another problem is her hair. Here's what it looked like fresh out of the box:

I messed with it a bit, and it eventually looked pretty good.

But by the time I got finished photographing her it was working it's way back to the bald spot again.

So, she has some flaws, mostly the legs and the bald spot. I imagine kids would get pretty frustrated trying to keep her in a chair too. She wouldn't be much good for hair play. Just trying to fill her bald spot I nearly frizzed out her hair and one side turned out longer than the other.
Tomorrow is the last of my Disney Store articulated dolls.