Charles's Pages about Doll Stuff - www.dollstuff.net

Barbie® Girly times two
(Click to see it bigger)

Basic dolls seem to be my favorite kind of doll - both for collecting and for using to make one-of-a-kinds. Unfortunately, in recent years it's been very difficult to find low-priced basic Barbie® dolls in the United States. The only "basic" assortment that's widely available here is the annual swimsuit line - but those dolls always have large flat feet now, which makes them kind of useless.

Of course, lots of basic dolls are created for the foreign market every year, and every year I wait with baited breath for Christmas-time to see if any local stores will get some of them in. Luckily, in the absence of KayBee Toys (), Big Lots comes through and gives my my (partial) foreign-market basic doll fix - but until they start hitting the shelves I worry maybe this will be the year they won't have any.

So I was very excited a couple of weeks ago I finally found the Barbie Girly assortment there. (Barbie Girly seems to be this year's equivalent of Barbie Style.)

The Barbie® Girly assortment: Barbie, Teresa®, and Summer®

Unfortunately, the excitement drained a little bit when I realized most of the Barbie dolls had the 1998 "Generation Girl™" Barbie® head.

Barbie® Girly and her two faces: 1998 on the left, 2005 on the right
(Click to see it bigger)

Barbie Girly's been available on the international market all year long with the open-mouth 2005 head, but almost all of the dolls I saw at Big Lots had the old head. I'm still not thrilled about Barbie's de-makeover and was kind of counting on these dolls as "supplies" for OOAKs, so this is disappointing to me. However, I have to admit the 1998-head version is pretty - especially compared to the 2005-head version, which has a really bland expression.

Okay, this entry started getting waaaaay too long so I'm cutting it into two parts. I'll post the rest later.