Doll-A-Day 2023 #179: Temu Haul and an Articulated Doll

   Well, I did it again. I ordered some stuff from Temu. The weird thing is, I ended up getting paid to buy it! I ordered it, and a few days later I got an email that said my order may have been lost, so they were refunding my money. It also said that if my order did happen to turn up, that I could keep it, and the money. A day or so after that I got an email saying my order was on it's way, but they were sending me $5 because it was late! So I ended up getting paid $5 for ordering from Temu! So they are showing real care and responsibility for orders. I just hope their generosity doesn't drive them out of business!

  The whole haul only cost about $18 anyway, and the shipping was free. I also have to say that these pictures were taken with Ken's camera, which he has set weirdly or something. I apologize for some of the pictures being bright enough to burn your retinas out, and others being absolutely dim or out of focus.

 So, here's my haul. I got two 1/12 scale door handles. They came as left or right handles, and were sold in singles. I was thinking French doors, so I got both.

 They came with a tiny key. It really does fit in the keyhole, but it doesn't stay in when you let go. I hoped it would. You know, sometimes doors like that have the key left in, so you can lock the door when it's closed, and unlock it to open it, for doors that are left open a lot.

Keeping with the 1/12 scale theme, and doors, I got some tiny hinges. That's so I can make some French doors for those handles, and attach them to my house.

  I also got a sword letter opener... because, sword. It makes a great 1/6 scale sword. 

It looks a little Lord of the Rings Elves-y.

Next is a pad of little art prints. It also has a few print pages. 

They're mostly Alphonse Mucha... 

...but a few pages look like they aren't.

Plus there's a print page, as I said.

 Most of them would make good 1/12 scale framed art or posters, and 1/6 scale art. There's even a little blank Mucha menu.

  Along similar lines, I got these tiny maps.

Look at these two pictures. See what I mean about one extreme or the other?

I told Ken that these would have been great when the kids' dolls were going on trips and bringing back souvenirs.

  They're only a couple of inches wide, and they would look great in a 1/12 scale dollhouse.

Next is this little organizer. Again, sorry about the picture. It was the only one with Tammy for size comparison that even partially came out.

I think it could be used  for 1/12 or 1/6, depending on what you want to do with it.

  Before we get to the doll I ordered, here is probably my favourite thing from this order. Mini gummi bears! 

Are these not the cutest things ever?! 

They as a bag of 12.

  And finally, here's the doll I bought. She was really cheap. like, a couple of dollars. So I decided to go ahead and order her, and see what the quality is like. The doll came in several hair colours, but no red head. So, instead of the colour I was born with, I chose the colour I always wanted: black.

She came with her head off for some reason. I had to put it on myself. I took a little cramming to get it past the neck rim so it would stay on, but it wasn't hard.

 She has a pretty face.

And a very pronounced clavicle.

She can only turn her head. It can't tilt at all.

Her hair is not a terrible quality. I've seen much worse. 

It's quite long.

It's fairly silky and fully rooted on most of her head.

The rooting pattern is a bit wide spaced in places. But if you don't try to do a hair style on her, and let it hang as it is, it doesn't show.

Pulled to the side.

It is the kind of hair that looks a little greasy though.

But what about that articulation, eh?

Well, she's got a lot of it. Other than her neck, she has joints at her shoulders, upper arms, elbows, wrists. waist. hips. and knees.

Her joints are similar to Made to Move Barbie's. 

I meant to bring Made to Move from the house yesterday so we could compare. I forgot.

No ankle joints, unfortunately. She has those weirdly pointy legs/feet.

That waist joint doesn't really allow her to turn/twist very much.

This is it.

 She has a swivel joint at her hips, so she can sit in quite a few poses.

Sorry about the cat hairs. Cowboy pretty much lives in this room now.

She can't cross her legs though.

She has a lot more range in her arms. This is helped by the swiveling ball joint in her shoulders, and the turning joint in her upper arms, and the swiveling joints in her elbows. She can salute.

She can cover her mouth.

She can almost cross her arms.

But not quite.

She can even pat her head and rub her belly at the same time.

She looks graceful.

I was having a much easier time posing her right arm than her left. The left one just didn't seem to have the same flexibility. That's when I noticed that her upper arm joint was loose on the left arm. (You can see that above,)  It went back in place, but then, in checking it out, I found that her arm comes apart like a Monster High doll's.

I'm not sure if it is supposed to, but it does. It goes back just as easily though.

  So I like the stuff I got. The 'sword' looks a little cheap, but the other stuff is really nice. I love those gummi bears! The doll is worth the $2 something I paid for her, I'm not sure how much she would hold up to a child's play, but she's at least better quality than the fashion dolls that are sometimes available at Dollar Tree. And she is okay for an adult posing a doll for display or photos. 

  So that's it for today. See you tomorrow for some vintage goodness.

Review Time!: Maru and Friends Billie Jean Pop Star Doll-A-Day 2023 #177

   Today's doll is also a review. She's Billie Jean Pop Star, the latest doll from Maru and Friends. She was provided for review by Maru and Friends, but, as usual, I'll give you my honest opinions.

  I have to say, this review has been a challenge. I have been trying to keep up with the daily posts, do work at the house, take care of things rescued from the house, do housework to help Emma out, do extra laundry, washing clothes and things rescued from Fuzzy's room, (There has been more rescuable clothing and bedding than you would have thought possible. Plus odd things like toiletries and Chapsticks! The closet door is mostly charcoal, as I found Monday when I saw it for the first time, but there was unburnt Chapstick!), and any number of other things. Every picture I've had to take for this blog, for the last couple of months at least, has had to be taken 3, 4, or even 5 times, at various focus',  just to make sure I get one that's in focus, since my autofocus is out of commission. Then I have to go through all those pictures and delete all the out of focus ones. (Or the ones where the crack in my protective lens makes such a glare that it renders the picture unusable. That problem reared it's head quite a few times during Billie Jean's photo shoots, because they were sunny days.) Just doing the pictures for a post has taken forever. And I do a post every day. I have my phone, but I'm not really good at taking anything but landscapes with my phone camera. I'm going to have to get good though, because yesterday Ken tried to remove that cracked protective lens again, and ended up breaking my whole lens! Now I can't even manually focus. We are still sleeping on an air mattress, which naturally loses air over time. Without even noticing it has lost air, it loses enough that sleeping on it gives me terrible shoulder pain. (I understand the back aches, but the shoulders?) I have been hardly able to move my left arm some days. That makes typing with my laptop on my lap, or editing pictures, pretty painful and difficult sometimes, and there's no desk or anything here to use. Not sleeping well has meant that every day about 4 or 5 o'clock I can hardly keep my eyes open. That makes it hard to concentrate! Add to all that the approximately three weeks Emma spent in the hospital, where I was with her every day, and still managed to keep up with the daily posts. Shew! But here we are, finally done!

    Now! Enough whining! On to the review!

   Let's get the less interesting stuff out of the way first. Billie Jean arrived in a cardboard shipping box, within which was her regular box.

The box was tied with a pretty gauzy ribbon and sealed with a Maru and Friends sticker.

The box has an open front with no plastic. Good for them!

Billie Jean was held in by ribbon ties, and protected from the ribbon by foam strips.

Her hair is protected by a hair net and her accessory, which we'll talk about below, is in a plastic bag.

  She's the first doll in the anniversary limited edition series. Maru and Friends is celebrating their 15th anniversary. Billie Jean comes with a certificate of authenticity.

Her head sculpt is by the late Dianna Effner, and you can see it in her face.

  Is it just me, or does she look like Jennifer Aniston? 

  She has a slightly tanned complexion. 

  Billie Jean is another first too. She's the first fully articulated doll from Maru and Friends. In addition to a jointed neck, hips, and elbows, she also has jointed wrists, and jointed knees and ankles.

We'll talk more about that in a bit.

 Billie Jean fits right in with the other Mini Pals from Maru and Friends. Here she is with mini Savannah.

Billie Jean looks a little older than Savannah.

  Her blue eyes are made of glass, with a realistic blend of colours. 

  She has very long lashes too. Real top lashes, and painted bottom ones.

Her eyebrows are made up of a soft solid line with individual strokes painted over it. One of my doll's didn't line up though.

Her lips are painted with a light stripe down the middle, to give them depth I suppose. It looks okay from a distance, but a bit odd up close. 

I would have preferred a more natural look. But I guess she is supposed to be a pop star.

  Her hair is a wig. She has a little silicone wig cap to hold it on.

It worked really well, until I took her out for her second photo shoot. It was really hot that day, and I think the heat made the wig not adhere to the wig cap as well. Once I took the wig off to show the wig cap, it didn't want to stay on any more! Her hair kept slipping off! I think it was just the heat. I've had other Maru and Friends Mini Pals with wigs, but theirs were held on with Velcro, so I haven't dealt with the silicone caps on Maru and Friends dolls before. I was always afraid the hair would get caught in the Velcro and get ruined. There's not that fear with the silicone cap. Just don't take your dolls wig off out in the summer heat! 

The wig is made with shades of brown and red.

  

Billie's hands and feet have some nail definition. 

 

 The bottoms of her feet are smooth, but the palms of her hands have some detail.

Used the phone for this one. see how blurry it is?

As usual, the clothes on the Maru and friends dolls are almost like human clothes. They are so well made, using quality fabrics. Billie Jean's outfit is faux leather, and consists of a jacket with matching skirt. 

The Maru and Friends label is inside.

  The clothes are fully lined, just like human clothes.

The skirt closes with a hook and eye. I assumed it was a snap and pulled so hard I tore a stitch through! It's not a snap!

See that gap? I did that!

The jacket closes with metal snaps and a real buckle.

She also has a pair of white undies.

Her boots are faux suede, trimmed in pink faux fur. 

The laces really do tie and untie. And they have to be untied to get them off. She's sockless though, so they slip on and off easily when untied.

The soles have a slight texture.

For a final accessory, Billie Jean has a pink faux fur purse to match her boots. 

The purse really opens and can hold small items. There's a zipper so the stuff stays in too.

  I was impressed that Billie Jean's articulation holds even with the leather like clothing. If she had strung joints, I don't think it would. But because she has actual metal joints, they hold tightly against the less flowy fabric.

See that cloud' in front of her face? The sun hit the lens crack just right. I lost most of the pictures from that day because of that!

  And let's talk about those joints. Okay. They aren't the most attractive joints in the world. But then joints are usually not very attractive. Her legs sort of look like she has skin socks on.

Her arms fare a bit better, but I always look at that wrist joint and think there should be skin there.

But these joints do hold a pose, and that's what it seems to be all about these days: posability. 

There is a great range of movement in those arms, and they do hold a pose really well. They can even hold a tight pose through that faux leather jacket.

  Billie Jean has it over a lot of dolls in some of her posing aspects, and doesn't meet up in a couple of others. It's a trade off I guess. For example, she can pose all day when it comes to her wrists, elbows, knees, and ankles.

(Her knee and ankle joints swivel in place too, which means sometimes they got a little wonky on me, even if it also meant they were more posable. I was never good with swivel joints, as my G.I. Joe will attest!)

  Those aspects are great. I love Billie Jean's posability. Previous Maru and Friends Mini Pals didn't have those joints, (except for  Pinocchio, and Pepper, who had jointed elbows. (We'll get further into that in a minute.) You can see my reviews HERE and HERE.), but they had great flexibility in that their arms and legs could move out to the sides as well as back and forth. That helped them stand upright and also do poses that looked good, even if they needed some support. On the other hand, who looks more natural in this 'relaxing and looking at the sky' pose? 

Billie Jean can't move her arms and legs out to the sides, but with jointed elbows and knees, its not quite as necessary for interesting poses, especially with her elbows and knees having a swivel feature too. 

  One of the best things about posing a Maru and Friends doll, even the Mini Pals, was always the way they could tilt their heads. With those cute Dianna Effner faces, it was so great to be able to tilt their little heads in cute poses. They could tilt side to side, as well as look up and down. Billie Jean is the first one I have had that can't tilt her head, and I miss it. Hopefully Maru and Friends will bring back that feature, and keep the articulation in the future.

  The difference between the jointed elbows on Pinocchio and Pepper, and the jointed elbows on Billie Jean is, their elbows were strung, and although their elbows could be posed, they didn't pose very far, or hold the extreme pose, or hold much of a bend with thick sleeves. Strung joints tend to bend, but not be able to take extreme bends without snapping back a lot. Billie Jean has those metal joints, and can do a more extreme bend and hold it, even through her sleeves. I just wish the jointing could be more attractive, especially the wrists, and the lack of smoothness on her legs below the knees. One benefit of the metal joints over the strung joint is that strung joints get flabby after a bit. Stringing wears out, and needs redone after a fair amount of play. The metal joints may have a longer life. The drawback would be that if they break, they can't just be simply repaired, like restringing would be.

  You know I love cute Dianna Effner face sculpts. I'm always a bit confused by the juxtaposition of the sweet children's faces and the adult style clothing doll companies sometimes dress their dolls in. I know kids dress like adults these days. I am sometimes concerned that doll companies try to make even the child dolls look 'sexy' or 'flirty', (or even that real kids clothes do the same). I'm old. I like to see a little kid dress like a little kid. I suppose that doesn't sell well to kids these days. They want dolls that dress like they do, and they dress like adults. But I'll always prefer a child doll dressed like Savannah to one dressed like Billie Jean.(Even if I didn't like to wear dresses myself as a kid.) Of course, you can always change her clothes, and Maru and Friends does sell some really cute traditional children's outfits too.

  Billie Jean sells for $149, but at the moment she is on sale for $130. In fact, there is a sale on a lot of the dolls, and clothing, on the Maru and Friends site right now. And while you're at it, check out the new doll they have coming up, that I am really excited about!