MONTHS IN REVIEW: May and June 2017

So I just realized "Hey, I should do June's month in review" and then looked back and saw that I never did May! Yeesh.

Time to play a little catch up.

May started off by my adopting Scrummy, who was never really on my want list, but when I saw this one's smiley face, I had to have him and he's been a fave ever since his arrival.

Then I finally got my long-awaited first Kuu Kuu Harajuku dolls, only to be utterly dismayed by the poor quality. I had to return G and Angel, order two more of each and then I ended up with a good G and an Angel with a small lip rub, because she was the only one of three that had good eyes. Sad!

These girls arrived on May 11th, by the way, and are only just now showing in stores. I saw Love, Angel and G tonight in Walmart.

Next, I bought one of the bears who'd sat on my wishlist for months and she shipped along with one I'd only more recently decided I wanted.

Autumn to the left here had been on my want list for months and even with her lower price, I never got her. Well, that changed when she was one of the bears my stockist put on ebay. I ended up getting the one I wanted after having hr pulled from ebay and enduring a scare where another customer asked for her. But she made her way home at last!

Sergio came along with Autumn, but sadly, I haven't bonded with him. He ended up looking different in person than I expected and while I do like his colors, there's something about the cut of his fur on his head that I don't care for. He's been up for adoption for a bit now.

Speaking of bears and new homes, Loulabelle (center in the pic of three below) made it home, only to end up being rehomed within a month, I think it was. She was pretty, but not nearly as gorgeous or cuddly as Befuddle (on the left).

Bamboozle (on the right) also had a dalliance with being rehomed, but managed to sweet face me into keeping him.

Mystery is one that lived on my want list for awhile, then fell off it. Then she started appearing on ebay for really low prices, so I ended up finally importing her from a UK seller with eight to choose from.

Mystery is like Kuma. She's a permanent bed bear, mostly because she goes with my purple bedspread and sheets.

Winston Warthog is a Jellycat plush. I bought a lot of Jellycats a couple years ago, but then stopped. I did get Patrick Parasaurolophus back in March and that's when I spotted Winston. He wasn't on Amazon yet though, so I had to wait, but he appeared in late May and now he's mine.

Wozley was my next Charlie Bears purchase. I bought him from the same nice lady I got my beloved Kuma from. Wozley is also great and very, very grumpy! I've seen other Wozleys that weren't, so I love mine a lot because he's such a crab. His fur is really unusual, too, and I'm always a sucker for green.

I got this little Lanard Fairykins chef doll after months of seeing it relisted over and over on ebay. I saw a couple of these more oddly-themed ones in New York City when I lived there, but didn't buy any. I remember a St. Patrick's Day one!

Cheeky the monkey was an unplanned Charlie Bears purchase in very late May. I saw him on ebay from a US seller and ended up winning him for an embarrassingly low price. I can't believe more people didn't bid! He's so cute!

Let's see, I follow along in my Flickr to go in the right order and we've got a little spurt of reviews: DCSG minis, Rapunzel Animated, Kuu Kuu Harajuku Baby (I did get replacement boots from Mattel!), DCSG Intergalactic Gala Starfire, and the World Vacation Shoppies. Or rather, the first wave of them!

In early June, I finally imported these monster girl figures from China. I got six of them and they're all awesome. The ghost girl on the left in this pic is my favorite.

Definitely modeled after Monster High, but they're also their own thing and I wish they'd done dolls of these instead of some of the crappy MH knockoffs we saw!

Playmates 8" Silvermist rejoined my collection after being gone for years. I had her back in 2007 and don't remember when I sold her, but she was definitely sold, poor thing. Not the best representation of Sil by far, but there's something endearing about the 8" Playmates line.

This adorable Spike joined my collection in mid-June. I found him at Toys R Us and had enough coupons where he cost me less than $2. I think he's the best Spike plush they've ever made!

And then it was later in the middle of the month and I was in LOL hell.

My hell was not being able to find Spice, who is my fave LOL yet. I finally managed to turn her up once Target got new cases in, using the combined might of the flashlight test and the weight test. I'm not entirely sure she was worth all the money I spent trying to find her!

Eh, yeah, she was.

The latter part of June gave us some more DCSG stuff. I got Mission Gear Poison Ivy and then the 6" Starfire action figure. Both reviewed here, so no need for pics.

Bristle the hedgehog was one of my Charlie Bears wants for a few months. He was available only on QVC UK, which meant I intended to save for him and another QVC UK exclusive, have a friend order them for me, pay for them and their shipping to him, then pay for their shipping to me. Sounds like an expensive hassle, yes? Yes. That's why I never got around to doing it! But Bristle finally turned up on ebay and I happily imported him the regular way.

Little Ludo was right behind Bristle as my next-to-last CBs of June. Both Ludo and Bristle had difficulties being delivered, thanks seemingly to being shipped by the ebay Global Shipping Program. I have yet to receive anything else shipped this way, so I don't know if that's resolving itself or not, but I did just order the last four Zelfs I need from ebay, so we shall see if it happens again! I hope not. Pain in my butt.

It's not often a vintage 80s toy escapes my notice, but Grandma's Marshmallow Babies are one I definitely missed for years. These 17" dolls were made by Playskool in 1986. They're soft dolls with cute expressions (or in this case, sort of disturbingly come hither...I love this one) in pastel colors. This girl has pale yellow skin, while my others have blue and pale green. Very unusual for the 80s when there weren't many toys in human form that had unusually-colored skin. Doll-wise, Synergy from Jem is the only one that pops in my mind that wasn't some sort of witchy villain. These dolls also come with pink and purple skintones. I hope to add one of each, hopefully one with short hair, to my collection eventually, but I'm picky about them being clean and fully-dressed, so it may take awhile.

And to end, we have another bear! Yummy went on special at my stockist and I adopted her because her twin missed her. Yummy has a completely different face shape from Scrummy. I've seen a lot of Yummys like this that are more drawn, whereas Scrummy has a wide muzzle.

So that takes care of May and June. I need to remember to do July once we hit August!

PHOTO CREDITS: Mine.