Holiday Shopping at Target and Toys R Us

With Hanukkah almost over and the Christmas season kicking into full swing, this is a special, hectic time of year.  I love seeing our Main Street come to life with lights, and hearing my kids sing carols out in the cold.  Of course another integral part of this season is shopping, and I am thinking hard about donations and gifts--especially presents for the amazing children in my life.

I hope that the content of this blog is helpful to those of you who are looking for a special doll for someone you love, but many of the dolls I review are hard to find, discontinued, or expensive.  I thought that in honor of this bustling shopping season, I would head out to a few local stores and see what is available for those of us who are just getting started with our gift-hunting now.  I'll show you what I found and give you my top ten list of what I would buy.  I also really hope that you will chime in with what you've found in your part of the world and what you think the best dolls and toys of the season are.  There is also a poll on the right side of the page where you can vote for the doll that you'd most like to see reviewed in more depth.

Today, I am going to focus on Target because it is one of my favorite places to shop and it tends to be well-stocked.  I will also add some comparisons to Toys R Us, my other most frequented big box toy store.  Next week I will visit a smaller, privately-owned toy store.  I'll get things started by showing you one doll I actually did buy: Monster High's new Jane Boolittle, who has the most awesome pet accessory ever:

Monster High Jane Boolittle and her pet sloth (Toys R Us, $21.99)

My Little Pony Equestria Girl Rainbow Dash, by Hasbro

I am not a serious My Little Pony collector, although I own a few of the figures and I remember these friendly little faces from my childhood.  Most of my pony-playing days were in the 1980s, so I have a special fondness for the chubbier, more docile-looking ponies of that decade.  Among my favorites were the mid-80s first generation (G1) ponies that look to one side (like Applejack) and the half-rearing characters (like Skydancer).  I also love the original mold, and in my youth, I badly wanted the larger My Pretty Pony toy that shared that same basic shape.

The ponies have morphed quite a lot in the last few years.  I have never seen the Friendship is Magic TV show, but I find the G4 toys cute in a new way.  Although they've shed the cow-like appearance of some of the 80s molds (G1 Posy looks particularly bovine...), they don't necessarily look like horses to me.  These little guys remind me more of Chihuahuas...but that's cool because I love Chihuahuas.

When I started hearing bits of information about the new line of Equestria Girl dolls, I wasn't sure what to think.  The Equestria Girls are teenaged human versions of the regular My Little Pony characters.  These teens appear in a new movie, My Little Pony: Equestria Girls.  The promotional pictures of the dolls did not look great to me.  For starters, they don't look human.  The movie characters look like reasonable cartoons of human beings, but the dolls have huge horse ears on top of their heads.  The other problem was that the promo pictures I saw showed only dolls with very limited articulation.  However, at one of my visits to Toys R Us, I found a small stock of the Equestria Girls, and I was delighted to see that two of the dolls (Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash) have articulated knees and elbows.  Furthermore, the dolls looked way cuter in person than they seemed in their pictures.  Won over by Rainbow Dash's colorful hair, I left the store with her, feeling unexpectedly excited about this review.

Equestria Girl doll "Rainbow Dash" and her Crystal Masquerade Pony equivalent.

The Toy Box Philosopher on Facebook

I have decided to set up a facebook page for this blog.  On facebook, I will link to some older blog entries now and then, share pictures, post announcements of my new reviews, do little giveaways, and offer up bits of news and information that are too quick for a full blog entry.  For example, today I am musing about McDonald's Happy Meal toys and My Little Pony, which seems like a good facebook topic.

Facebook link