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. 

  

So What Show Did I Go To? And a Few Odds and Ends

   In my last post I mentioned that there were two other shows recently, a doll show and a toy show. I have been so tired lately that I debated going to neither, and just staying home and resting. But then I thought that there weren't going to be more than a couple more shows until next Spring. Why not hit the ones I could before then? I thought of going to both, since they were on different days. But in the end, I was too tired and achy to do both. I have been going to the toy show with my sister for the last few years, and it came first. So Ken and I went to her house the day before, so we wouldn't have to get up so early and drive to her house on show day. She's an hour and a half away, and the show is about 15 minutes from her house. 

  We went to the show, which is held at a fairground. It's huge, covering more than half a dozen huge buildings, with all of them being packed full of dealer's tables. There were so many people shopping it was hard to get through the aisles. Worse than that, it also made the buildings like large, toy filled ovens. A few years ago we went to the Fall toy show, and it was so cold we thought we were going to freeze to death. This year my sister was sorry she didn't bring in the little hand held fan she had in her car.

  I think there were slightly fewer tables with dolls this year than the last couple of years. Maybe they found that dolls weren't selling as well as they wanted, so the dealers are bringing more toys than dolls. There were still way more dolls than used to be found at toy shows. Here are some of the more interesting ones I saw.

  This is a Moni doll.

  I recognized immediately that this doll looked like a tiny Sasha doll. Sure enough, the internet describes them as 8 inch mini Sasha dolls, of lower quality than Sasha dolls, and made in Hong Kong. They are supposedly rare because there were copyright problems, and they stopped production I guess. I can see why. They look so much like Sasha dolls. She doesn't have the scary eyes or the weird hands though.

  This was a beautiful Teeny Tiny Tears doll, in her case, with almost all of her things. 

  I had never heard of a Barbie PTMI Birthday doll. I liked the look of this one, so I took her picture. In writing this post I looked it up, and PTMI Birthday Barbies are given to employees at the Mattel factory in Indonesia on their birthdays, and have been since the 90's. That's the only way to get one, so they are pretty rare.

  I found this doll, on the left, kind of interesting. She looks like Tressy, but she's small. You can gauge her small size by comparing her to the 70's Charlie's Angel's doll to her right. (Assuming, of course, that you are familiar with the Charlie's Angel's dolls...)

She also doesn't have Tressy's grow hair feature. The tag she had said only that she was a Japan rubber doll with painted on shoes.

I recognize that jacket. In fact, I think I have one. I can't remember who it came on, but it wasn't this doll, unless there were two dolls who came wearing it. I have no idea why she's wearing a bunch of plastic discs around her neck. Completing her ensemble is the ever popular sock dress.

  I have a small collection of... shall we use the term? Hillbilly dolls. You can see mine HERE, HERE, and HERE. There were quite a few...such dolls at the show. In fact, there were more of them at this show than I have ever seen at a single show, and they were not all at the same dealer's tables. Strange. I didn't photograph all of them, but here's one of them.

  I also have a weakness for sad dolls, and dolls you're meant to feel sorry for. This Poor Pitiful Pearl was mint in her mint box. Check out her original clearance price.

  I am familiar with Brooke Shields dolls, but not with this one in an evening gown.

  At the last doll show I was proud of myself for not buying anything. This time I did buy something, but it wasn't for me. I spotted two old dolls with definate limb problems in a box under the dealer's table. At a previous show I got a Pippi Longstocking doll from the same dealer. She was complete and nearly perfect, and only needed a minimal wipe down and her ponytails put back in. The dealer considered her too far gone to fiddle with though, and sold her to me for $5! She must not deal with anything she has to spend any time on making presentable, because the two girls in the box were the same situation. They were very nice, but doll number one, which is a vintage 1950's flirty eye Saucy Walker, with teeth, brunette braids, and her entire original outfit, including onesie, dress, socks, and shoes, and even hair ribbons, needed her head and arms out back on. 

Doll number two, a vintage Uneeda Susan Stroller, needed her arms put back on. 

I got these two dolls at an amazing price. I didn't need them, and promised Ken I wouldn't keep them, but I figured somebody would love them, and they needed rescued.

   The dressed one is definitely a Saucy Walker, because she's marked Ideal, and, as I said, has her original dress, with her original onesie underneath, socks, and shoes. (Even her shoes are marked 'Ideal'.) The other doll is marked Eegee, and is almost certainly a Susan Stroller. They are in really nice condition, other than just needing restrung. Saucy has flirty eyes that work well, and their sleep eyes work too  Unfortunately the crier box doesn't work in either. I think I should be able to restring them. I have put the arms back on a Susan Stroller, but I didn't have to put her head back on. There are kits you can buy with the rubber bands and S hooks to fix them. When I have them fixed they'll go up for sale. If anybody is interested in them, leave a comment with some contact information, and I'll get back to you.

  I didn't take many pictures at the show, so here are a few stray pictures I took at some of the places we went lately. 

  This pretty girl is roughing it outside at a local antique mall.

  The place has a habit of putting a lot of cool stuff outside, including dolls that I suppose it thinks aren't good enough for them to sell inside the actual building. This girl is in some rough shape, but I think she deserves better treatment than this, especially if they are still asking $45 for her! She isn't going to be worth anything before too long. I wish I could rescue her before she's completely ruined, but I can't afford to do that.

  We went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame while Ken's sister and brother-in-law were here a few weeks ago. You might not be expecting to find dolls there, but I did see this guy...

Okay. This marionette of Beck that was part of the Saturday Night Live exhibit, (which I highly recommend,), isn't officially a doll, he comes close enough.

  And if you saw my last post you will have seen these original 60's Beatles bobbleheads.

  And that's it for this post. You got two fairly close together this time! I am proud of myself. There  was another doll show yesterday, the last this year. Did I go? We'll see next time 

Toy Show Haul, Including Pippi Longstocking

   Holy cow. I have missed the Doll Book of the Month Club for the second month in a row. Honestly, I can't find my books. I brought two from Emma's that I was going to do when we moved back to the house, plus one here, and I can't find any of them. I really need to sort some books out.

  And it has been a month and a half since my sister and I went to the toy show, and I still haven't shown you what I got. Today I am taking a sit down day because yesterday my bad leg and my back were hurting so much, and I was so stiff, that I could hardly walk. So, it seems like a good time to look at that toy show haul.

  This toy show has loads of dolls. It seems like it has more dolls all the time. That's good, because I collect both. However, it's kind of messing up my old thing about getting good deals on dolls at toy shows because the dealers aren't used to dealing with dolls. A lot of these dealers are.

  I didn't buy much, and some of what I bought wasn't dolls. For instance, the set of limited edition Beatles cards that complete my 90's set.

  This mini guitar isn't a doll either. but it can be used with one.

These are quite expensive, but this one came with the case and a stand, (which I forgot to photograph), and it was only $15. 

  I bought something that is actually a doll, but it's going to be a gift for someone, so I'm not showing it. But I will show you this tiny doll.

He's marked My Toy 1965.

  He's about Kiddle size, at 4 inches tall, only with a very similar body, but a larger head. He originally came wearing a blue and white striped one piece outfit with a neckerchief. (I'm not sure if it was attached to the outfit, but I think so.)  He might be a My Toy Half Pint doll. If not, he at least has the same head and body, but may be a different series.

  The last thing I bought was this very familiar doll.

She's about 11 inches tall.

She's a 1972 Horsman Pippi Longstocking doll.

  Pippi is a much beloved character, from the books by Astrid Lindgren.

The dealer sold her to me for only $5, because she thought Pippi was in really bad shape! I forget how she put it, but she shrugged at my saying I'd take her for the $5 she asked, and said basically, that she was rough or something. She seemed to think she was beyond fixing! I don't really see much she needs though, besides her hair combed. She has her complete outfit, including shoes, socks, and undies. She has all her hair. She just needs her ponytails done up again. This version didn't have her hair braided, or sticking up.

  I have a weakness for red haired dolls, dolls with freckles, (Both things I never wanted myself. At least I avoided the freckles.), and dolls with goofy faces. Pippi dolls usually hit three bullseyes.

  So that's what I got. Doll shows seem to be over until about August. The next toy show I go to is in October. But I'll be around.  

Tammy World and I Had a Busy Month: Toy Show, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Titanic, and Pee Wee Herman

   My birthday was last month. I turned 62. Ken says we get to enjoy the whole month as part of our birthday. So I did a lot of stuff last month. And of course, Tammy World wanted to come along for the fun. (She didn't have to age though. She's still ten years old.)

  On my birthday we went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to see the new enductees exhibit just for the Kate Bush part.

"Bit windy!"

 I've loved Kate Bush since 1978, and I was so glad she got into the Hall of Fame.

Me with the Kate exhibit. She's there, sandwiched between Willie Nelson and George Michael.

  It's not well known, but those headset microphones that everyone uses now, were invented for Kate Bush's only tour, in 1979. The first one was rigged up using a wireless microphone and a wire coat hanger. There was one of the originals in the exhibit.

 Emma met us up there and went through with us. After we left there we headed for an Italian restaurant. We were trying to get there in time to get the mascarpone French toast, but we were a few minutes too late. So we got  regular Italian American things like lasagna and eggplant parmesan. And it was my birthday, so of course there was dessert.

It was my birthday, so I got to taste all the desserts.

 Afterward Emma and I went in a vintage store, while Ken napped in the car. It was freezing that day.

"You're telling me! Did you get the picture, because I'm out of here!" 

And it had snowed like crazy on the way up that morning...

And was snowy at the Hall.

... so we were a little worried it would be really bad going home, but it was okay.

   Ken and I also took a day trip to a big antique mall that month. I am doing a separate post on that though.

  The next week or so Ken and I went to the Titanic exhibit  at the Center of Science and Industry, (COSI).

 It was interesting, and there was some new stuff we hadn't seen before, but there was a lot less stuff than we were used to. 

Had a recreation of the grand staircase though.

  We have been to two other Titanic exhibits there, and this one was pathetically smaller than either of them. We were told by a lady who was working there that the owner of the exhibit had sold to someone else, and the new owner has split up the exhibit to get more exhibits out of the stuff, in an effort to make more money. At the same time as we went there, my friend in Belgium told me there was a Titanic exhibit about to open in Brussels. It probably had the other half of the stuff I should have gotten to see.

  Being as it was so expensive and the Titanic exhibit took such a short time, we partook of the 'progress' exhibit. It consisted of  an early 1900's 'street', complete with shop fronts and fake starry sky.

One shop had this dollhouse doll that was definitely NOT of the era they were depicting.

  From that street the exhibit suddenly 'progressed' to 1962. You just turned a corner into the year of my birth.

  Ken found the thing he was most interested in at the whole place, including the Titanic stuff: a recreated 1962 diner, complete with menu, but no employees or real food. In spite of that, he sat at the counter for ages, perusing the menu. I think the opportunity to sit down for a while might also have been a draw. Tammy waited it out on the jukebox.

  Toward the end of the month I spent a few days with my sister. Ken drove me half way between here and my sister's and she picked me up. We considered stopping at an antique mall, but instead we went to the grocery store and bought stuff for tacos. 

  We had plans for my visit, which included tacos, a blooming onion, paper quilling, clay sculpting, quiche, going to the bicycle museum again to see the now returned Pee Wee Herman bike, making a doll quilt, dremeling the rest of the mohawk off the doll she got at a toy show a while back, going to the big toy show, watching a bunch of movies, and doing my laundry. 

  We had the tacos the first night. The next day we went to the Bicycle Museum of America. Some of you may remember that my sister and I visited the museum a while back and Pee Wee's bike was out on loan. Well, it was back, and this time we basked in the glory of the Pee Wee bike...

Tammy wanted to show off the bike too, but we weren't allowed to touch it...or put her on it.

  

My sister didn't want to be in the pictures, so if she doesn't like the alternative here, she brought it on herself.

  But of course, Tammy World had no problem having her picture taken.

  

   It was more beat up than we expected, but then, it was just a stunt bike, the one used in the scene where Pee Wee, trying to escape the movie lot guards, leaves an oil slick via nozzles on his bike.

 

 It was obviously not the main bike, because the 'saddle bags'  didn't open, and a lot of the chrome accents were adhesive. Of course, the bike had been 'restored', so that may have happened then.

  When we finished taking in every aspect of the Pee Wee bike, we looked around at a few other things that had come back from being out on loan. While we were doing that Tammy remembered there was something she could touch.

And she took advantage of that.

   After leaving the museum we had snacks at the coffee shop that had shut the door in our faces the last time we we there. They were okay, but I think we should have gotten pie, like we did the last time, for a couple of reasons.

   On the way back we stopped at a mall because I had heard that all the remaining J.C. Penney stores were about to close. Not true. My sister made me shop for shoes that I knew wouldn't fit me, because my feet have become, to use one of my dad's phrases, "as broad as they are long". That night I made quiche, while my sister played Prince Charming to her dolls and tried a bunch of shoes that I brought on them, so she could pick some out. I think that was the evening she also dremeled the hair off her doll. I had made double my crust recipe, so I also made up something for dessert out of the only things we had for pie filling: cream, milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and frozen strawberries. It was okay.

  In the morning we got up early again to go to the toy show. I'll show you what I got in another post. Here I'm just going to show you some interesting dolls that I didn't get. They were not in the best condition, and were overpriced. But it's a toy show, not a doll show, and the  dealer said he knew nothing about them. They were about 10 inches tall. Most of them were Kimports dolls.

Martha and George Washington.

George's pal Ben Franklin.

President Abe Lincoln and wife.

A very shabby and motheaten Clark Gable/Rhett Butler, that the dealer wanted $50 for.

Another Southern gentleman, who brought along his mint julip. Obviously the war was rough on him. Look at those pants. Also, something previously in the box must have had feathers, because there were bits everywhere. Look at his coat.

This guy was described by the dealer as a 'con-qweestidor'. He wanted $50 for him too.

These two were my favourites. Look at her face. They are Priscilla and John Alden.

  These two were the non-Kimports dolls. The man had a tag the said Oaklands Originals. The one on the left had a necklace too, but it had fallen off. I did put it back on.

 My bad leg has been bothering me again, and my back was killing me. I had to keep sitting down at the show. It was like a messed up game of musical chairs. I have never had to sit down so many times during a show. It was worst than the last doll show I went to, where my back hurt really badly, and I kept feeling sick. I sat down every so often then too. Of course, this toy show is a lot bigger. It's at a fairgrounds, and there are loads of buildings, and according to the flyer, 'over 700 dealers'. I was feeling mighty old. On top of that, I still had to stop at the store and buy laundry detergent because I had forgotten at the store the first time. We still had a blooming onion on our to do list, so we stopped and my sister went in and ordered a to go onion. Were we so tired and sore at this point that we nearly said forget about it. 

  When we got back we had our blooming onion with left over quiche, and for dessert we had leftover whatever-the-thing-was-that-I-made-up-the-night-before. 

  After all that we watched movies and stuff for the rest of the evening. We could hardly move.

  The next day we were glad we didn't have to go anywhere. We did laundry and watched movies, and in the evening we tried paper quilling. It takes longer than you'd think. We'd never done it before, and you have to quill up all those paper shapes before you can make anything with them. They take a while. Neither of us got any farther on our paper than a couple of eyeballs. (She was going to make a cat, and I decided on an owl.) 

  I did make a few other shapes. I wasn't sure at first what my picture was going to be, so I just tried out some random shapes the guys in the tutorial I watched had made. My sister refused to watch a tutorial, and then wondered how I got my middles to swirl like I did. She doesn't think she'll bother to finish hers, but I'd like to finish mine. Whether or not I do....

  The day after that we had to wait for the cake mix she had ordered from Amazon to arrive. Ken came and hung out with us, and we watched a movie while my sister made fried tofu and stuff for lunch, and the cake baked. It was a mochi cake, and I ate way too much and felt crappy, but it was good. 

  So the only thing we didn't get done was the clay sculpting and making the doll quilt. We decided  the quilt would be better done with the intended bed in hand, so I took the 'ingredients' home.

  We watched several episodes of Leave it to Beaver too. In total we watched 9 movies. Here's the final list:

  Into the Woods

  Tammy

  Ghostbusters (2016)*  Not as bad as I thought it would be.

  Cabin in the Sky *

  Music and Lyrics *

  Down With Love *

  Nothing to Lose

  We're the Millers

   Pee Wee's Big Adventure

  The ones with the stars are the ones I picked, and Pee Wee was a mutual choice, so we could spot the bike we had seen.

  The visit wore me out. (And it was April by then. Still) I was super exhausted, mainly from the pain in my leg. Yes, pain wears me out. It took me a couple of days to catch up on my rest, because the night I came home my leg hurt, and our cat, Jimmy, kept jumping up in the bed and walking on me all night. That's super painful too. The doctor told me several years ago that I have fibromyalgia, and my whole body is tender spots. The next day Ken and I tried again to do something we had meant to do the week before: get up super early and go to a bakery we know that sells pastries filled with real cream. It's about an hour away, and you have to get there early or everything we want is gone. I had to have blood work done that day for my endocrinologist visit coming up. So when we got back to town I went to have that done. My leg was killing me, and I must have been really tired, because I had a terrible reaction. Normally it hurts when they tie that giant rubber band on my arm, but this time it hurt so bad when she just started to wrap it around my arm that I couldn't stand it. The poor girl kept restarting and apologizing. I finally told her to just tie it on there, because she had to. It hurt so much that I had to do the pain control breathing. Tears were pouring. I didn't have pain from the needle. This was all just from the rubber band! Then she couldn't get the blood to come out!  She tried changing tubes to see if that would help. She finally got the blood. When she was finished I had to sit there a while and compose myself. That has NEVER happened to me before. From there I had to go to the library and get something printed. All the way there I kept bursting into tears. I had to sit outside the library and pull myself together for a while before I could go in. It wore off after a while, but it was really weird.

    This month is going to be busy too. My sister and I have a doll show next weekend, a screening of "Napoleon Dynamite" and Q&A with Jon Heder and Efren Ramirez, (Napoleon and Pedro), which was a birthday gift to us from Emma, and I have another doll show at the end of the month. In between there's work on the house and Ken's day off, where we try to do something fun. And tomorrow is the total eclipse. I just discovered that there is a Pompeii exhibit in Cincinnati! If I had known that and known how small the Titanic exhibit was going to be, I would have gone there instead! I've always had an interest in Pompeii and I always wanted to go there. Well, there's still Mother's Day.