Doll-A-Day 317: Mia by Ideal

  Today's doll is all ready for Christmas in her bright red dress. She's Mia.

Mia is 15" tall.

She was made by Ideal in 1970.

 Mia was part of the Crissy family of grow hair dolls.

She has the long hunk of hair that 'grows' when it's pulled while pressing a button on her belly. It retracts when a knob in her back is wound.

She also has dark blue sleep eyes, and a cute toothy grin.

Her original outfit was a cute light blue romper with a dark blue velvet bow at the neck, and a pair of light blue shoes.

 I bought this Mia at Salvation Army last December when Goodwill and Salvation Army both had over 50 Crissy family dolls all at the same time.You can check out the post I did of it HERE and see the amazing group on the shelves at Goodwill. You can see the post where I bought Mia and her twin at Salvation Army for $1.50 each HERE.

 I remember so many kids bringing Crissy and Velvet dolls to school when I was little. They were all the rage for a while. It never occurred to me at the time that I could own one myself. I'm not sure I even coveted them. I know I didn't know of Mia until I was grown.

As it turns out, she and Cinnamon are my favourites of the whole group.
  See you tomorrow for another doll.

Ok. Now it's getting weird...

  Not that it wasn't weird before. If you read this blog you'll remember a couple of posts back I found 52 Ideal dolls(mostly Crissy and Velvet) at Goodwill on Sunday. Well, today Ken mentioned that I hadn't been to Salvation Army for a while, so while I was at that side of town Christmas shopping I stopped in. The first indication I had that history was about to repeat itself was a lone Crissy sitting behind the counter on the 'Hey these things are valuable shelf'. I looked around the store and went back to the shelf next to the toy aisle that contains the 'Hey, these toys might be a bit valuable too' stuff. I then had a flashback to Sunday: the shelves were full of Crissy and Velvet dolls! I counted them:42!! There was a lady picking one out. She ended up with two Crissy dolls actually. I showed her how the grow hair feature works on the first one ad she decided to get another one. These dolls were mostly in very nice condition, much better than the Goodwill dolls. Some of these dolls even had shoes, although they were also wearing those homemade dresses, from the same pattern as the Goodwill dolls.There was a curly haired Crissy and a Country Crissy, but these dolls had a slightly higher percentage of non-Crissy and Velvet dolls. I saw at least 2 Harmony dolls, (They were blonde ones.Did they make a blonde Harmony?), and three Mias.Two of the Mias were really nice, so guess who came home with me!

  They were priced at $2.99, but today is half off day, so $1.50!

Unfortunately when I got home I found that I had lost one of Flowered Mia's mint condition blue shoes. While I was wrapping the Christmas presents I had bought for Ken while I was out, he called Salvation Army to see if they had found a stray blue doll shoe. And they had! They were actually holding it at the register, so I have to go back tomorrow and get it.

Flowered Mia needs her bangs to lay down, but her growing hair was braided and is beautifully silky.
  I also found a BFC Ink Addison and a 70's or 80's Ginny, who I am probably going to steal the clothes off for a World daughter.

   I'm pretty sure they'll fit. I know Madeline clothes fit Stacies, and they're a pretty similar size. Which reminds me. I still need to hunt down those two Madeline outfits I have been debating on keeping or selling. That velvet dress would be great on Jo for Christmas.
  And before I leave I have to show you something. I found these at Family Dollar the other night.

These are the perfect 1/6 scale chocolate Santas! I wish they had had these when the kids were little!

Here's Santa next to an AAA battery for size comparison.

There were bunnies out at Easter, and although everybody is too old for doll Easter baskets now, I had to pull the doll's baskets out just so I could give out the tiny chocolate bunnies! Well, I guess we know what all the dolls are getting in their Christmas stockings this year! (Don't read this Emma!)

Here's a nice close-up so you can see how detailed the little guy is.This is way bigger than life size.

And another bonus is, they're Russell Stover candies, so they taste great too!
  Have to go now. If I really get my act together there'll be a Worlds Christmas story soon.

Whaaaat??!!

 I saw one of the weirdest sights I've ever seen in a thrift store this morning at our local Goodwill. I stopped in to check out what they had since I was in the shopping center anyway, dropping Ken off at work. I almost always check first up front, where they keep the dolls they think are worth something. This time I almost forgot to check there, and when I turned around to do so I was met with this:

  They are almost all Ideal dolls. Nearly all of them are Crissy and Velvet, and there was one Mia

and a Harmony.

And I think this is Magic Hair Crissy. Whoever she is, she's missing her growing hair.

 It was bizarre! I counted them. There were 52 in all!!

They were all priced at $2.50. Some of them were nice, but a lot of them had had haircuts or had marker on their faces, or just were generally messed up.

Kind of makes you wonder. If they had belonged to a collector, you would think they would have had nicer dolls. If not a collector, then why SO MANY? Maybe they had had or wanted those dolls as a kid and made it their mission in life to rescue all the ones they came across and give them a home!
   Mia had had a massive haircut or I would have bought her. I like Mia, and I have Crissy and a couple of different Velvets. Harmony didn't look too healthy either. They were almost all the original Crissy dolls, but I did spot one later Country Crissy, from when they started using Velvet's face for her. There was a Miss Revlon wanna be who was wearing that Crissy's dress. Other than that I think they were all wearing homemade dresses, which seemed to all have been made from the same pattern. One of the people who work in the store said the dolls had been there since at least Monday, and another person said there was a lady who came in and bought about 5 of them, but that's all she knew of that had been sold.
  I got a bit excited because I thought, if they have all these, what other older dolls might they have in the toy section? So I headed to the back, where I found this Little Sophisticates doll.

I still have the one I bought as a kid. I thought they were beautiful when I was little, and I still think they're cute.
  I also found this American Girl Addy. She was wearing Samantha's tea party dress.

 The dress is missing the collar and needs a cleaning, but I needed a dress for the Samantha I was keeping, as she didn't have any clothes of her own. What are the odds I would find an American Girl in the wrong dress, and it would be one I needed? Anyway, Addy will need some clean up and rehab, but she's in pretty nice condition, and she's Pleasant Company. She'll be finding a new home, as one American Girl is enough for me. (Although I would have preferred Emily or Saige to Samantha.)
  With Christmas fast approaching I have been working my...fingers to the bone. I have most of my shopping done. Most of that was accomplished in ONE DAY on our trip to the Big City to visit my Dad in the nursing home. I figured that would be our only trip out of town before Christmas except for visiting Dad on Christmas eve. That's not going to be much of an opportunity to shop though. And while I'm here, right now Big Lots has all Barbie dolls or playsets 'buy one get one half off'.
  I have also been plowing through with the Ebay. At the moment we can't move for packed auction items, but it was nice to see a stack of them go out the door to the post office the other day.I know I have a house under here somewhere.