BEARRIVAL

I'm a little tardy on Bearrivals. 

Ha. This is Tardy. 

Tardy is possibly the most popular character I've seen this year. Some people were downright obsessed with him to the point that it dampened my excitement. I dunno why, but it's that way with me sometimes. Too much hype and I care less and less. 

Thankfully, when he arrived, I fell in love with him. 

I mean, this face. 

Tardy is part of this year's prehistoric/extinct Bearhouse collection. I think he's supposed to be a giant sloth, but giant ground sloths didn't look like larger versions of modern tree sloths. He's super cute, but I don't think of him as a prehistoric creature. He's just another sloth like Dringle is. 

(Now Atlas, the upcoming Bearhouse character, looks more like a giant ground sloth. He doesn't really look like an Atlas bear, which is what he's supposed to be.)

September is part of the Calendar Minimo collection. Minimos are mohair bears but on a small scale. I had totally forgotten about September, because when I added him to my wishlist, stockists still didn't know their allocations or any real info about them. I never knew if I was on the preorder list or not, so he kinda went out of my head. 

It was a pleasant surprise when I was told I could pick mine. I almost didn't get one because this guy was literally the only one I liked enough to pay that price. If he hadn't been there, I would have passed. 

These next two arrived today. 

Smog is stunning. A lot of people liked his pal Foggy (better?) and I do like the pea green on Foggy, along with the pea soup fog joke. But Smog's color is just plain gorgeous. He was the one I was more looking forward to and he does not disappoint one bit. 

And finally, the enormous Stompy, the woolly rhino. Stompy was a Quarter 1 character and both the UK and Australia got him right away, while we in the US got forgotten yet again, and only got him now, months later, when the other locations are on their second or third delivery of him. UGH. I get that there's a shipping delay so we're last, but each location should still get some stock roughly the same time, and no location should get a second batch before anywhere else has gotten their first. 

Stompy was worth waiting for (even though we shouldn't have had to...yes, I'm cranky about this repeated problem). 

He's huge but doesn't weigh a lot, so he seems very cuddly. 

Aww, that little tail. 

And this FACE. 

I still have a few outstanding preorders for the year and most of them are from this Bearhouse line. Here's hoping we get more soon.

REVIEW: Magic Mixies Pixlings FAYE

FINALLY!!!!

Faye has been delayed not once, not twice, but THREE times. I almost can't believe she's here. 

Well worth the wait though. She's SO CUTE.

She's a little lighter pink than I expected her to be, but that's plenty fine. 

I didn't get a shot of the leaf in her hair, but it's there. 

Her skirt is very tight-fitting. 

She's got a little bikini going on. 

I adore her ears!

Cute shoes. 

Fairy wings. 

Another win for the Pixlings. This line continues to impress with its designs. I hope they'll give us some body diversity and some darker colors soon. They're all creatures so far, but I'd also love to see some celestial, seasonal and weather inspiration. 

PHOTO CREDIT: Mine.

COLLECTION UPDATE: Lounging Lizards

I've gotten a few new Lounging Lizards since my overview post back in May. 

Thanks to my friend in the UK, I was able to add a couple green beach lizards to my set. 

These were sold with kids' meals and even have a little comic included. I left this one bagged because I have him loose. 

My winter set grew by quite a lot. 

I had the complete sci-fi set already, but here they are again. 

I got one new Western guy, the yellow one. That just leaves the pink cowgirl and I have this set done. 

I'm most excited for my new wizards though!

I was able to add two dark blue ones: the one with the staff in this photo. 

And the one bouncing on his tail here.

 

These guys are my favorite set. 

Definitely one of my most obscure and random collections, but I love them.

PHOTO CREDIT: Mine.

Dolly Insider's "Friday Dolly Questions" Part 9

#46: What crafting skill would you like to learn for your dolls?

I guess rerooting would be the most useful, but I honestly do not have time for any sort of customization aside from the occasional necessary haircut. 

#47: What doll line that you haven't seen in a long time would you like to see come back? 

BARBIE GENERATION GIRL. Body diversity and playline articulation that was ahead of its time. Yeah, I know there were only elbow joints and two body types, but do you know how uncommon that was in those years? Plus, the cast was diverse with actual personalities, and the book series was excellent. I've wanted this line back for ages!

#48: If you had $1000 to splurge on doll items, what would you buy?

Boxed vintage pieces. Like Jem, She-Ra, etc. I always meant to upgrade all my childhood She-Ra dolls, but I only ever got a few. 

#49: What type of doll-related content do you enjoy watching on Youtube? 

I watch the animated shows that accompany doll lines and that's it. 

#50: Where do you buy your dolls?

The basic places like Amazon, Target, Walmart, Shop Disney, American Girl. Older stuff from ebay and Mercari. For the occasional Azone, I use Tasina and Fabric Friends. Temu is fun for the cheapie stuff. There's an awesome local toy store that I visit, but I haven't bought a ton there. I mostly sell.

#51: What were your 2023 dolly wins?

I used to do my Year in Review posts, but those were really helped by my Month in Reviews and my Flickr account, both of which I've stopped doing. So I likely won't be doing that again, but I can skim my list of reviews from this past year. 

Some faves from this year were: SH Monique, MH Abbey, Patsy "Just Another Wednesday," Astra Girls Dryade and Celestina, Little Mermaid movie full-size sisters set, Creative Soul Snow White, Cry Babies BFF Shannon, Miraculous Purple Tigress, RH Runway Jade and Poppy, all the Pixlings, Disney ILY Ursula, SH Series 3 (especially Scarlet), EAH smiling Raven, MH Neon Toralei and Twyla, Scary Bebops vampire, MH "School's Out" Draculaura, Nebulous Stars Isadora, and my Rainbow Brite Stormy figure from Five Below. 

REVIEW: Magic Mixies Pixlings AMBER

Yay, time for a new review!

I pre-ordered Amber and Faye, but Amazon has pretty much botched this pre-order. They were supposed to be out on the 1st and I was supposed to get them on the 5th, but that didn't happen. As we had to leave for vacation on the 8th, I ended up cancelling my order because they just didn't ship it in time. 

Naturally, shortly after that, Amber came in stock. I ordered her while on vacation and picked her up from our package hub when we got home today. 

Amber has the orange gem on her bottle.

ADORABLE.

Her bangs are held down with gel. Usually, I'm all about washing it out, but I think I'm going to leave it. 

Her arms and hands have this awesome molding. Not sure it will show in the pic, but I tried.

Cute boots.

Her skirt is the oddest thing about her. I'm not sure how fluffy, cotton candy-esque skirt equals dragon. It's cute, but I also like her without it. She's got a superhero vibe. 

Wings. 

Gah, I love those ears. And whatever you want to call the things on her head. 

I meant to take one more pic, but I've been in the car for 6 hours, then spent more hours unpacking and finally getting to eat, so my brain is tired. 

I think she's my new fave, though I do still have a strong love for Celeste/Unia. 

PHOTO CREDIT: Mine.

MAGIC MIXIES MIXLINGS Series 4 PARTY CHEAT CODES

I'm doing something a bit different here. I don't actually have any of the Series 4 Mixlings in hand, but I do have the cheat codes, so I'm going to share. This is all thanks to a member of a FB group I'm in for these. (As it's FB, I'm not going to share actual names, but thanks!)

Cheat codes are once again found on the bottom of the cauldron. Only the 4th and 7th characters matter. The rare code will be 2 characters shorter than the others.

Code next to the name is for the singles. I'll be adding doubles underneath. I didn't know until recently that this smaller series had doubles, but they do. 

 

MAGICAL DRESS-UP PARTY:

LUGGLE: 1-7

SINOKU: 2-1

CHAZZY: 2-3

NOBATA: 2-0

NIKIRA: 1-9

COSHU: 2-4

LEERA: 1-8

SALEENA: 2-2

MYSTICAL MASQUERADE PARTY:

DAHZI: 0-9

MEENIA: 1-3

JENKLE: 1-1

KUDA: 1-5

JEZRA: 1-2

KWAKKA: 1-6

DAWNE: 1-0

Double: 1-1 (Penala)

MARA: 1-4

ENCHANTED BIRTHDAY PARTY:

PENALA: 2-5

Double: 1-1 (Dawne)

BRYNN: 2-9

RAVEENA: 2-7

TEMIN: 3-2

THUBUZ: 3-1

REXELL: 2-8

PIXLY: 2-6

BRAGON: 3-0

FANTASTICAL GLOW PARTY:

GECKLER: 0-1

FINNEL: 0-7

VERA: 0-3

JINDA: 0-5

VAZZY: 0-4

JANDEL: 0-6

GIGU: 0-2

FINZA: 0-8

BEARRIVAL

One last Bearrival before vacation! I'm so glad these two made it. My stockist has had some delays thanks to medical issues, so I only have the two instead of three, but Tardy will just be a little more Tardy and that's fine. 

This lovely is Harvest Moon. I adore orange, so I knew she was going to be one of this year's favorites. 

She's a little bit of a grump face, which I don't mind, because the striped fabric on her arms reminds me of Tango and he's absolutely a grump face. 

I wanted one with more of the dark orange on her head and that left me with only two to pick from, as the vast majority had lighter orange there. 

Her colors are so beautiful!

The moon necklace didn't come with her, but my stockist clearly has a great selection of celestial pendants to go with all these moon and planet bears from this year. 

This floofy guy is Bonfire Toffee. He wasn't on my original preorder list, but I added him in my follow up list a few minutes later. That made me fourth to choose, but thankfully, the three people ahead of me were quick, so I was able to get him home in time. 

I'm obsessed with him. 

I love his fur and he's super cuddly. He's thinner than I expected, which works out nicely. He's about the perfect size. 

He's also looking up. I'm not sure if they all do this, but mine sure does. It makes him even more endearing. 

He's definitely coming along on vacation. 

Hopefully I'll have more later in December. I'll have Tardy for sure, but Stompy and Smog are also impending. 

REVIEW: LOL OMG Swag (New)

I've had this girl a few days now, but life gets in the way. 

I was surprised that I wanted one of these updated main four OMG characters, but there's something I really like about the cut of Swag's outfit. 

She comes with a useless comb that can be useless in 3 different ways. I'd rather have a stand than this huge hunk of plastic. 

Her earrings I hate. You know me and being picky about round earrings. 

The glasses...well...

I like the style, but they don't fit right. To cover the bottom of her eyes, they sit below her nose. The lenses should have been a smidge bigger. 

The main thing about this new foursome is that they have transforming outfits. Swag can go from looking awesome to...her boxing match, I guess. 

Much better. 

I'm such a sucker for longer skirts and I love the layered effect.

Her shoes are super cute, too. 

I may have to revisit her hair when I get more free time. I washed the gel but didn't get quite all of it. She didn't have much, but you know MGAE and their need to have gel in at least one place on every doll in existence. 

She's cute and she'll look good with my others. Not sure if I'll get another OMG doll ever again, as I haven't liked anything else they've done with the newer releases, so she's a good one to end on. 

PHOTO CREDIT: Mine.

REVIEW: Breyer SeaHearts

I've been wanting to get my hands on some SeaHearts ever since I saw them on IG, and now I've got all twelve!

SeaHearts are an adorable line of seahorses made by Breyer. Each figure comes with a stand, a collector card, and two small sea friends. 

These are found at Five Below. They're $5 each. Not sure if they'll be sold anywhere else. 

The boxes are open in the front. 

The liner comes out and you can see the slot where the two sea friends are hiding. These are completely random from what I can tell. The ones I received don't match up with the ones shown on the promo photos on Five Below's website. 

The seahorse is held down by two ties. One holds the stand and figure to the liner, while the other holds the figure to the stand. 

Between the liner is the collector card. It has character info on one side and seahorse info on the other side. 

This line is very environmental, so expect a lot of that theme. 

So here is Maya. 

Maya is the only one I got that came with the yellow fish. 

Maya is a sea unicorn. There are 5 sea unicorns, 5 regular seahorses, 1 sea dragon, and 1 sea dragon unicorn. 

The figures have details that appear in the cold. I haven't bothered to put any of mine in the freezer because I can sort of see the details as is. The heart has a picture, sometimes a slogan. I know I saw a music note on someone's face. Each collector card has a symbol under the name of the character, so it's possible that symbol appears on the figure.

Corallina is my favorite! I love her colors. 

She's beautiful. 

Many of them have a lot of different colors.

Reed is the other orange one. He's a seahorse. 

He's great colors, too. I'm such a sucker for orange. 

Here are the two orange ones and the more yellow Maya. 

As you can see, there are different mold for the species. Maya and Corallina are both sea unicorns, but they're completely different in shape. 

I'll move on to Pearl next. She's the only white one. 

She's very pretty. 

Cordelia is the lone pink one. 

She's a regular seahorse like Reed and if you scroll back up, you can see that they're two different body shapes. 

Nori is the only one that came with a jellyfish. I liked the jellyfish best, so I was disappointed I didn't get a bunch of them. 

Sadly, this picture is blurry. Argh. But you can still see the cuteness. 

Nori's lovely shades of purple. 

Shelly is the other purple one. 

She's cute but my least favorite. Sorry, Shellly. 

Here are the purple ones. Shelly is darker than Nori. I threw Cordelia in here, too, just for fun. 

Moving on to the blues, this is Aqua.

Super pretty. 

Darker blue Cove is my fave of the blue trio. 

Beautiful colors. 

And Skipper is the lighter blue. 

He's the only one where I got cheated out of a sea friend. Only the crab was in the box. 

You can see the cold effect on his belly heart. I just grabbed these out of the package hub, so he was in the cold a few hours. 

Here are the blue three. 

Laguna is the only sea dragon of the bunch. 

I love her! 

And last but definitely not least, Nixie is the only sea dragon unicorn. 

She is my other fave along with Corallina. I love this darker green. 

And here are the sea dragons together. 

So that does it for Series 1 of the SeaHearts. I think they're super cute and will definitely buy more if they make a Series 2. 

PHOTO CREDIT: Mine.