And yeah, some of the doll bloggers are lowgrade dragging people who decide to assign a gender to their personal dolls, because their interpretation of "these dolls can be what you want them to be" is "all of them should be genderfluid because I said so." Look, if someone buys one of these dolls and wants them to be genderfluid or nonbinary that is great, and that is their choice. But I personally like having Skye as a girl and Alex as a boy. And that's my choice.
I've decided a bit more of their backstories:
Skye is kind of shy, but she's also artistic - she likes painting and collage. Outside of art, her best class in school is math. She wants a horse but her parents live in town and it's too expensive to board a horse, but she hopes some day to have one. She looks up to her older sister Sam but Sam is a lot more social and outgoing than Skye so they don't always have a lot in common.
Alex is good at languages. He speaks English and Japanese (he is of Japanese-American heritage) but also French and Spanish and is learning Italian. He wants to be a writer when he grows up; he has already written some short stories. He is an only child and secretly is jealous of the fact that Skye has an older sister. He plays soccer after school and is pretty good at it.
Alex and Skye are best friends - they talk about some day Skye illustrating the books that Alex writes. (They are friends, but NOT boyfriend-girlfriend). On rainy days, they like to play board games and sometimes get together with other kids to play multi-person games.
I will note that for modern "for play" dolls, these are super well-made. The articulation is really nice, they are fun to pose (articulated dolls are SO much more fun for me than the dolls with just hip and shoulder joints, and you can also pose articulated dolls more naturally). The clothes are remarkably well-made for mass-produced commercial clothes. The price point on these is higher than the average Mattel doll but I think they are worth it. Right now, I guess you have to mail order them; I've heard Wal-mart isn't ordering them* and Target sells them, but through the website only - not in stores. Maybe some actual toy stores will get them, I don't know. I ordered both these off of Amazon.
Though, I think more adult collectors are buying these than will be bought for kids. But that's probably okay too. I hope enough of them sell that Mattel keeps doing these kind of higher-quality "playline" things, and that maybe even they make clothing packs for these dolls: a lot of the fun for an adult collector is dressing and redressing and I would buy clothing packs for them if they came out (and were comparable quality to the clothes in the box sets)
(I'm still hoping they release the dark-skinned doll with the long wavy hair; if that one comes out I am definitely buying it)
(*I have a potential suspicion why, but I'll keep it to myself)
1 comment:
My grandmother was one of those people who would buy dolls and hold on to them to give them to people when she thought it was the "right" time. Do you remember the movie "Little Miss Marker"? (not the shirley temple one, the 1980 one with Walter Matthau and Julie Andrews) they made a doll for it and my grandmother bought me one, but gave it to me.. 4 yrs later? My family was big into buying and giving dolls. My mother has hundred and hundred of them. My grandmother when she passed the dolls were given to my mother as well. The amount of dolls in my family's house is actually pretty amazing.
So I find you talking about the articulation interesting. I remember the different kinds. the "click" motion ones. the first ones that had visible joints. I appreciate you talking about how easy it is to change clothes. Thank you for talking about this. I really do love hearing you talk about the dolls you get.
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