Play Sets: Barbie Wizard of Oz Emerald City Playset

  Happy Halloween! Our state said no trick or treating because of the virus, but our town did it anyway. I chose to go along with the state and not hand out candy.

  Last month I totally missed the end of the month and didn't do a playset. I have had a post ready for ages, but Ivy came home and forbid any digging in her newly straightened closet because it gives her anxiety. That meant I haven't been able to get in her closet and get out the playset I had the post ready for, to photograph it. Well, I give up. I'm doing the post this month with stock photos, and some photos of the playset I used before to show you some of Ivy's Oz dolls. I should have photographed the whole playset then, but I was trying to get Ivy's room done before she came home, so I didn't take the time.

  So, this month's play set is this one. It's the Barbie Wizard of Oz Emerald City Playset.(Now that's a mouthful!)

It was sold in 2000. Ivy wanted this set, and she had the Barbie as Dorothy talking doll to go with it. No dolls came with the set. The set did come with a plastic Emerald City facade, which you may have seen in my post on the Wizard of Oz Kelly and Tommy dolls I came across while redoing Ivy's room last Fall. You can see that post HERE.

The doors really open. The "Bell out of order. Please knock." sign is a separate piece which hangs on a hook in the facade plastic.

It also came with a cardboard yellow brick road, which you might have seen in that post, and the posts I did on the Oz Munchkin Tommy dolls HERE, and HERE.

The 'road' was printed. along with some poppies and grass at the edges.

  Some small pieces came with the set, which was based on the "In the Merry Old Land of Oz" portion of the movie. (You can see that part of the movie HERE.) These included a hair brush, fake scissors, a perfume bottle, and an oil can. And of course Dorothy needs her salon chair to get her makeover. The chair comes in pieces and you have to put it together. In the movie the chair was actually a lighter, mint green. They did a pretty good job on the design though.

  The other big piece to the set is the Wizard's balloon. Included is a plastic balloon basket, with plastic 'ropes', and a real mylar balloon you can blow up.  

  The balloon basket can hold one doll. The irony here is, Dorothy never made the trip back to Kansas in the balloon, since Toto jumped out of her arms to chase a cat, and she jumped out of the balloon to follow him. The other irony of including the balloon is, the only major Oz character Mattel never made a doll of is The Wizard, who is the only character to actually ride in the balloon..
  There was a 1/6 scale Wizard doll to go with the other Oz dolls made by Multi Toys. He was hard to find though. I'm not sure he wasn't a Canada only release. I know he was excluded from the boxed set of Oz toys that Multitoys made. (That set included Dorothy and friends, and both witches.) I think I still have a Multitoys Wizard somewhere in my attic in our old doll show stuff. There was also a Wizard made by Hamilton Presents, for it's Oz line.

  Well, that's the playset for this month. Hopefully next month we'll see an actual in hand playset! See you tomorrow for the Doll Book of the Month Club.

I Manage to Totally Miss the End of the Month...

  Can you believe it? I completely lost track of the date, and have thus missed the Playset of the Month post for the end of last month, and the Doll Book of the Month Club post that was supposed to happen today! That will be rectified tomorrow, so hang in there. Sorry!

Play Sets: Bounce House Sample

  Okay. I admit it. the play set for this month is a bit of a cheat, but also really cool. To preface a little bit, when Ivy was little she was really into Kelly dolls. Her favourite dolls to play with were 'Blue', a former Tommy, and her sister 'Rose', who was a Kelly, so most of the doll stuff bought for Ivy had to fit them. One Christmas I was searching for Kelly sized stuff on Ebay when I came across today's 'playset'. I don't remember what I searched to find it, and I've never seen another one. It was perfectly Kelly sized though, so I bought it for Ivy.

Modeled for size here by Gareth World.

  It's a perfect little bounce house.

 I always thought it might have been a salesman's sample. In looking on Ebay I see that there's a miniature Spiderman bounce house in the  'Sold' listings, that calls it a 'miniature store display'. I don't see bounce houses being sold in stores, so...? It's labeled 'Action Air'  ,which is a company that makes full size bounce houses.

  The bounce house is made almost just like a real one. The major difference is that instead of inflating, it's filled with foam. There's a zipper on the bottom.

There's a warning on the front. It's obviously meant to show that there's a label on the real one, but this tiny one isn't very legible.

The opening to the bounce section has a Velcro closure.

The sides are mesh, just like a real bounce house.  I'll tell you a story of what happened to child Fuzzy in a bouncy castle once, but not until the end of this post.

 There's a narrow section in the middle for kids to climb from the bounce section to the slide section.

The tunnel emerges at the top of the slide.

And there's the slide. 

I'm not sure what originally attached to the Velcro strip on the slide. Any ideas?

There are padded posts at the bottom of the slide.

  Okay. now for that story about what happened to little Fuzzy in the bouncy house at a kids event thing. Fuzzy, along with a bunch of other kids we didn't know, was bouncing in a bouncy castle, way back when the kids were small. Fuzz must have been about 10 or younger. All the kids were bouncing and having a good time. All of a sudden, the inflating device conked out, and someone screamed for all the kids to get out of the castle. The kids shot for the exit. Fuzz was knocked down by the herd of panicked kids. Unable to get up with all the kids trying to run out, (because the floor was squashy, and getting more so by the second as the air fizzed out of the castle.),  Fuzz rolled around, trying to get up. I was panicking too, because my kid had suddenly disappeared. I couldn't get in to Fuzz until all the other kids were out of the way. Once they were,  I dived inside, only to find Fuzz nearly vanished in the quickly deflating bouncy castle's floor. You see, Fuzz had not been able to get up, and had rolled into the crack between the floor and the wall. If I hadn't been such a paranoid mom that I stood and watched Fuzz bounce to make sure he didn't get abducted, things could have ended tragically. Once that castle deflated, the weight of it might have made it impossible for Fuzz to get out at all. Fuzz could have suffocated. I managed to pull Fuzz out of the crack and we got out. I'm not sure which of us were most scared by the whole thing.

  So that's this month's playset. See you tomorrow for the Doll Book of the Month selection, and soon we'll see my recent Goodwill finds.