Christmas is coming, send in the clones!

 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.

My 4" kiddies

 

I used to be heavily into Sparkle Girlz Minis, mostly as a reward for getting grocery shopping done (though there was also a brief My Little Pony Surprise Pack phase, since Kroger carried those). My mother was obsessed with Kelly dolls. So I started the summer of 2022 with a ridiculous amount of 4" toddlers to deal with.

The vast majority of the Kelly dolls, I sold, and they were honestly the most fun part of eBay sales. They sell reliably, four or five of them fit in a small box together, they're light to ship, and every buyer was a delightful person. Excess Sparkle Girlz Minis got donated, and I eventually got down to one articulated Kelly and one Sparkle Girlz Mini.

This allowed room for growth. Here's the current gang, clockwise from noon:

• Old-school Funville Sparkle Girlz Mini from 2018, now named Ruby. The last doll I bought after moving to New Haven, except for a stroller set in the Bronx (which I no longer have).
• Simba's "Little Unicorn" AA Evi Love. I was determined that I'd only buy an Evi if she was non-white, and this little gal was marked $4 at TJ Maxx.
• Lucky Industries 1990s Tommy clone, now named Lucky.
• New Zuru Glitzeez (the Sparkle Girlz Mini by any other name), now named Jania.
• 2002 Kid Kore revised Jodi, AA, now named Neveah. Kid Kore updated face molds during the upheaval surrounding the rise of Bratz (as well as releasing some Bratz clones).
• 1990s "Amusement Park" articulated-knee Kelly.

The only doll I'm interested in adding at this point is a 1990s Kid Kore Jodi with red hair, for reasons that will soon be obvious.

In applying labels, I notice that I've had an Evi Love in the past. (The number of dolls I've had in the past and barely remember is kind of embarrassing. Some are so cute, yet mean so little that I'm questioning whether all my brain cells work properly. Oh well.) At the time, I wasn't crazy about Evi, because she's a chunky sullen gal. This one, I adore.