Hat Plays Dolls

Because if I write things down, I'm a lot better about actually getting them done. Therefore!

From this point until I run out of stuff I no longer need/love/want, every Sunday evening (at worst, every other Sunday) every other Sunday evening (or every fourth Sunday evening*), I will be listing one of the following:

One Tonner doll I expect to end high
One Tonner doll I expect to end low or unpredictable
One former project Tonner doll
One Tonner doll outfit only

and

At least one random collectable Thingy or Thingy Lot. Could be doll stuff, could be figurines or action figures or Nice Books or something entirely random. Thingy or Thingy Lot.

Monster High will continue to be doubles, spare parts, and bits of stock items I don't need, want to repaint, or want to take apart for pattern purposes.

*I don't want to say I was making TOO MUCH money, but yeah I've sorta been making enough money that I haven't been thinking hard before non-bill purchases and THAT is dangerous behavior so. Scaling back the listing schedule.

( Yeah I'm gonna ramble some more about Letting Stuff Go again but that's because I'm wordy. )

More details coming soon, but man are the CSRs at Mattel generous and helpful. This is the third time they've gone above and beyond to resolve an issue I've had with Monster High dolls, and I'm just... really impressed with them, generally. Every time I've written in with a problem, I've gotten it resolved beautifully.

My FCA Operetta had one shoe badly molded? Got sent a voucher for her MSRP.

Gloom & Bloom Jinafire has two right hands? Got sent a new pair of hands at no charge.

Kitty Cheshire hand pack I ordered from the parts store (not a perfect match but close enough for Avea to take her gloves off) came with two left hands? New pair of hands and I didn't even have to send the old ones back.

There's something wrong with my City Ghouls Elle Eedee's hip joint? How about passing THREE Gala Ghoulfriends Elles back and forth between me and Mattel until we figure out this is just some kind of engineering issue and hey, I can feel free to keep one of the Gala Elles.

Send in a long note just to say I've had myself a little unboxing party and everything is just so much fun to play with and I'm really impressed with the dolls (and though I did mention one or two minor issues I also mentioned that hey, it was only dolls I wanted for the clothes so they didn't count as issues)? $35 merchandise voucher that I did not remotely expect because I wasn't writing in to complain, just to say how pretty IHF Wydowna is.

Shriek Wrecked Catrine should have a color-blocked part but instead has a mess? Please enjoy this $15 merchandise voucher.

First Day of School Ari's wrist breaks and can't be replaced? $15 check even though the doll is OLD. (I fixed the wrist with a pin.)

School Spirit Lunchtime Ghouls Draculaura has two left hands and Twyla's right knee won't bend? After a bit of back-and-forth about the holes in my collection, the $25 two-pack I got for $10 at a second-run store is being replaced by THREE dolls. Three dolls with a combined MSRP of $47.

Mattel's CSRs are awesome.

... That, or they're just relieved to see polite, relaxed messages from somebody whose issue is not their own personal Armageddon, especially in December.

I was told to start saving my receipts, however, so that's a thing I'll keep in mind for the future.

Iiiiii've got a new project brewing a big project I'm pretty excited about! And it's going to take weeks so there's not much I can do besides sit here and grin to myself. And maybe wash my ironing board cover, I'm gonna need that.

Okay, I'm a little behind in posting this (I've had the pics for a while now), but the day I picked up Pawla at Toys R Us, I also saw Fangelica at Target. Still, I knew I was going out of town, and I really wanted to get Pawla first, so I promised myself that if the Fangelica with the good eyes and the tiny black mark on her face was still at Target when I got back home, I'd grab her next.



And she was!

This time I remembered box pics. The single-pack five-inch Monster Family dolls come carded like action figures, although there's really a lot of empty space left in the boxes. (Which bothers me at the same time as I understand it-- it's like potato chips, all that air is for packing.) So let's head behind the cut to get a nice deboxed look at Fangelica.

( I took so many pictures. )

So yesterday I ran my usual errands, dropped eBay stuff off at the post office, did a quick Target run (my nephew broke a plunger and... look, it's really important that the number of toilet plungers equal or exceed the number of toilets in your home, especially if you have a toddler around), checked out the toy aisle (still resetting-- but I saw First Day of School Clawdeen and Fangelica! I held off), and went to Toys R Us because I had a $5 reward. I was about to use it on Lagoona and the least-wonky Kelpie when I said to myself "Wait, let me check this endcap," and lo and behold there was the $9 doll I really wanted to use that $5 coupon on.



Check it out, I got me a Pawla!

Okay, first things first, I frickin' love the Monster Family dolls, I plan to get all of them except maybe Ebbie and she could still grow on me (if I ever find one who doesn't have her pigtails covering her face). Weredith is cuter in person, Dracula is cuter in person, at this point I'm even assuming Sandy is cuter in person, they're all cuter in person. I love the concept of the Monster Family line and while I agree the execution could be a little better, the execution is still really good.

But I have like fifteen more pics, so ( click the cut to see if I can't sell you on Dead Tired Pawla. )

I am a Hat of many hobbies, and this journal is about my dolls.

I specifically collect three different scales of dolls: 1:12 dollhouse dolls (men are about six inches tall), 1:4 fashion dolls (men are about seventeen inches tall), and life-sized child or baby dolls (I have three, with a fourth in progress. I accept the idea that once you have three of something impractical, you have a collection).

This blog is or will soon be full of lists and photos of said dolls-- what I have, what I wish I had, what I have for sale-- items I've made for dolls, whether my own or other folks', and probably occasional links to eBay auctions, as well as a fair amount of plain old picspam. As I write this, though, this blog stands pretty empty-- hopefully just having it here and waiting for me to fill it up will prompt me to dig out my camera and my photo backdrops and play with my dolls some more.