Burlington recently replaced a Best Buy at one of the shopping centers around here, so I headed over to see if it's cleaner, neater, and politer than the other nearby one. They had done a real holiday inventory set-up!
It's holiday time, so we need Disney-esque princesses.
The edge gals are clearly Cinderella and Aurora. I kind of love the short versions of their typical outfits and may steal this idea for sewing projects. The gals in long dresses baffle me. The gal in aqua might be intended as Elsa? But who is a dark-haired princess in dark pink?
It's almost as difficult to figure out the characters in Chic's Fantasy Fairytale sets, which have something I'm thrilled to see (and rarely get to): all-Black princesses!
Top left is clearly intended as Tiana, and top right is Ariel. Bottom middle is Belle, and bottom left is plausible as Cinderella. That leaves top center as Elsa (though the period of the gown is wrong), and bottom right... purple.
Have I so badly lost track of Disney princesses that there's someone famous in purple?
Meanwhile, Sparkle Girlz are going upmarket, into the boxed $8 price range. This one exploits the "surprise" element, because part of that sparkle is exploiting the trend of the moment.
It's like if Madeline Hatter and Tinkerbell had a daughter.
Sparkle Girlz have also entered the standard clone fields of baby-sitting and dog-walking. Nobody in clone land wants to come up with a new body mold to do a real Skipper knock-off, so they reproduce Skipper's pastimes on their standard "teen fashion" doll.
Kudos to Zuru for committing to the Giant Heads, Giant Eyes schtick down to the level of babies and bulldogs, I guess. But has anyone at Zuru HQ ever seen a dog being walked?
Finally, no toy display is complete without a fairy. It looks like all of the design effort went into her wings.
One of my goals at Burlington was to look at socks for bargains that might work as winter sweaters and body-con dresses for my dolls. This was kind of frustrating, as girls clothing this season has a remarkably limited color palette based around ballerina pink, white, and tomato red.
The entire women's and girls' sock aisles were like this! The color combo is pretty, but it's not one I especially want to do anything with. Perhaps I will reconsider and do pink-and-white ensembles for the Katie Kolony, but I'm not feeling the excitement on that one.
Then I found the pair of socks that's the exception to the universal color scheme!
This four-pack was priced at $4.99, so it's the same $1.25 a pair I'd pay at the dollar store. Figuring one sock per outfit, I have enough socks for all seven adults and teens to have new winter sweaters at 75 cents an outfit, plus my time and patience.
I'm calling that a success, as well as an incentive to learn how to use the serger.
