Style Bae by Just Play

Happy New Year's Eve eve!  The December Virtual Garage Sale event was a great success, so thank you to everyone who made a purchase and helped support the blog.  Now I feel ready for 2024!  There are a few higher-priced dolls that didn't sell, understandably, and so I'll probably move those to eBay at some point.  For now, I'm enjoying a break from packing and shipping so that I can do some writing and animal wrangling.

This will be my last review of 2023, and I had a hard time figuring out which doll should hold that special place.  I contemplated some rarer, more expensive goodies, but in the end opted for a relatively simple and affordable playline doll.  It's been a month since I've written a review, so I figured this would be a good way to ease back into things.  Also, the doll I'm going to talk about today is unlike anything I've ever owned.  She's from a line called Style Bae, and is made by Just Play:

Style Bae Harper by Just Play, $19.99.

More Sale Dolls

My Priority Mail boxes finally arrived (both sets!) and I found a few more dolls to add to the sale.  However, I realized that I have to be careful: if I create a huge inventory, I'll never get back to writing reviews!  So this batch is much smaller than the previous one.

I also finalized the timing for the sale itself.  I have Tuesdays and Wednesdays off work, so I'll list all of the dolls for sale next Monday, December 11th, with the idea that maybe I'll have time to pack and ship any sold items on Tuesday and Wednesday.  I know that I won't have time to ship items on any other days;  I barely have time to eat.

I had to dig deep to think about parting with a few of these next dolls, but I have only a very tiny display area, and it makes no sense to have a doll collection that's stored away in boxes.  This girl is especially beautiful and rare, and I wish I had a better place to show her off:

22-inch Princess Aurora by Robert Tonner, LE 100.

November Sale Dolls

Things are going slowly but surely with my November sales event...which will probably occur in December at this point.  The biggest problem is that I ordered tons of Priority Mail boxes on the 16th, but they still haven't arrived.  They're in Trenton, which is super-close to me, but have not made any progress since the 18th.  I ordered another batch yesterday, but don't really expect a different result.

I can't ship anything until I have boxes, but I figured I might as well get started posting some of the dolls that will be for sale eventually.  I'll probably try to collect a second batch of offerings before the sale, since I have a zillion dolls, but let's start with these!

Sybarite Couture Swallow by Superdoll.

Monster High's Day of the Dead Doll: Howliday Skelita Calaveras

I'm back, as promised, with the second Day of the Dead doll, but first I want to outline my plans for the first Virtual Garage Sale event.  At this point, nothing will happen until after Thanksgiving.  But sometime during the week of November 27th, I'll start posting dolls for sale in the shop.  These will either be dolls that I've already reviewed, dolls that I'm realizing I don't have time to review, or dolls that are kicking around my house for some random reason.  I'll probably create short blog posts with groups of dolls as I list them for sale.

At this point I have no idea which dolls will be for sale, since I've had zero time to organize all of that, but there will be a lot of bundled, loose dolls from old reviews, including Rainbow High's Maria Garcia, who we met last week, and the beauty from this review: Howliday Skelita Calaveras.

Monster High's Howliday Skelita Calaveras, $45.

Rainbow High's Day of the Dead Doll: Maria Garcia

I can't believe that a big chunk of November is already gone!  Ack!  For anyone who noticed the announcement on my Virtual Garage Sale page, my plan has been to hold two big sales events during the year: one in May and one in November.  November is looking very crowded at the moment, though, thanks to Larvie swanning in and bumping other dolls from their scheduled slots.  Also, I'll have a full house for the holidays...including a foster dog and two foster kittens, so not much will get accomplished then.  Being realistic, at this point I'll probably have to shift the sale until after Thanksgiving, but I'll keep you posted.

Today I want to rewind and pretend it's November 2nd again: the Day of the Dead.  The Day of the Dead, or Dia de los Muertos, is a multi-day celebration to remember and re-connect with those who have died.  The basic idea of this holiday can be traced back to old Aztec customs, which were adopted by Spanish settlers and merged with the Christian All Soul's Day.  Currently, the Day of the Dead is celebrated mostly in Mexico, with colorful, joyful festivities that have attracted increasing attention from tourists in recent years.  The broadening fascination with this holiday is probably also responsible for several new Day of the Dead dolls, like MGA's Maria Garcia, who is the subject of today's review:

Rainbow High's Maria Garcia, by MGA Entertainment, $124.99.

Larvie, Teen Age Fashion Maggot

Oh, boy.  Do I have a treat for you today!  I was actually planning to do a two-part Day of the Dead review at around this time, but then a highly-anticipated doll showed up on my doorstep, and it was a stop-the-presses kind of moment.

Way back in February of this year, I was scanning Twitter for interesting doll information, and a post by fez caught my attention.  It was an advertisement for a Kickstarter campaign run by a man named Oscar Moreno.  Mr. Moreno, for inexplicable reasons that we should all be grateful for, wanted to make a vinyl fashion...doll.  Or rather a fashion maggot.  And she's a fashion maggot who looks like Barbie.  Sort of.  She's heavily inspired by Barbie, anyway, and she's easily the sexiest grub I've ever seen in my life.  I immediately pledged lots of money to the campaign and crossed my fingers that the project would get enough funding to move forward.  There was no need to worry: the campaign met its goal on the very first day.

I wish I'd had this little larva around during Barbie Month, but better late than never, I suppose.  Allow me to introduce the seductively squishy and subtly segmented Larvie, Teen Age Fashion Maggot:

Larvie, Teen Age Fashion Maggot, by American Toycoon.

Ily 4EVER Fashion Dolls by Jakks Pacific

First of all, I want to thank Hannah for stepping in and reviewing the 18-inch ily 4EVER dolls last week! I've been learning the ropes at my new job (and bringing home rag-tag foster animals in the process...) and was grateful for a helping hand.  I thought it was especially fun to learn about all of the different face molds.  I love the newest Stitch face, and because that doll is a freckled redhead, of course I had to add her to my collection.  Her presence in the house will probably prompt me to watch Lilo and Stitch, finally, which is something I'm embarrassed to say that I've never done.  So thank you to Hannah for that enrichment, too!

Since we're on the topic of ily 4EVER dolls, I want to take the opportunity to talk about the newest 11.5 inch fashion dolls from that line.  For anyone unfamiliar with the brand, ily 4EVER dolls are characters dressed with inspiration from their favorite Disney character.  So they're not meant to be Disney Princesses or anything like that, just Disney fans.  Anyway, I reviewed the original Shop Disney version of these dolls already, but the new dolls, which are made by Jakks Pacific, are different enough that I think they deserve their own review.  I decided to focus on a doll from this collection who is inspired by a sweet character who stars in a movie that I have no desire to watch again, Bambi:

11.5 inch ily 4EVER Bambi doll by Jakks Pacific, $29.99.