Sad toy news

Some people say that 2018 was a bad doll year, I don´t know abut that. While my collection was kind of put on hold due to a lack of money, I don´t feel like that have been a bad thing. I have been delighted to see the new Barbie made to move dolls and I allso think some of the new dolls this years like hairdorables and boxigirls are quite cute. I have allso discovered a great (danish) company that make wonderfull doll furniture and accessories, but I will talk more about that in another post. 

It was late last year that the bad new started rolling in. In december, Top toys, the company that own Toys R us in scandinavia, went bankrupt. They allso owened the danish toy chain Fætter BR. I have been trying not to let it get to me, but it was a big blow to my toy loving heart. There were a Toys R us close by, that I loved going to, it was something that would allways make me happy. The whole closing down of the stores have been pretty abruptly, and I allready miss going there to look at their big selection of toys. As a kid I used to go to the Fætter BR toy stores very often, on vaccation at my grandparents, I went there alot with my brother. The stores are alot smaller than Toys R us but they have a lot of charm and still nice selection of toys. When I started collecting toys as an adult, it was Fætter Br stores I went to the most, I spend a lot of time looking at the wall of dolls, I never bought any thought. I should not despair about the cloosing of these stores, there are other toy stores I enjoy, and there are other smaller toy chains that might exspand now that the big guys are gone. But I am sad about it, and I really hope Fætter Br will make a comback in some way. The good news is that the Fætter Br brand was bought by another company, now I just have to wait and see what they will do with it.
A few years ago a toy store i liked, located in the city, closed down. It was the store where I bought my fist and second Paola Reina dolls, and I contiued buying clothes for the dolsl in that store. I was a bit sad but allso okay with the stor closing because I had other toy stores I enjoyed going to. It allso turned out that another toy store had bought the place, and I like that store as much as the other even though they don´t sell Paola Reina dolls, they do sell some other nice stuff. 
But that store is small, if I want to go to a bigger store, there is one half a hour away. Driving half an hour is not too bad, but my boyfriend and I don´t really have any other buisness in that town, so we don´t go there often. I allso worry that there are too much I wan´t to buy when we get there, since I have experienced before that they have a nice selecting of stuff not in Toys R us that I wan´t. I really have to be careful not to spend too much money on toys, and I feel like I shoudl be ready to spend when I go to that store, and I am not allways ready to spend. Last time I wanted to go there and talke dwith my boyfriend about it, we ended up not going, which I am a bit dissapointed about. I kept feeling unsure if it was ok for me to spend money, and I was allso a bit busy at the time so it was difficult for me to actually put off time to go there - and I am pretty sure my boyfriend forgot about it. This is something I really hope to chnage in the future, I might have missed some great stuff and nice moments in that store just because I could not put myself together to go there. 

Then Tonner dolls announced that they were closing, and I was dissapointed. I am not a big collector of Tonner dolls, I only have two. But I have been admiring their dolls for years, and I was really hoping they would make new dolls I would want to buy. I was very optimistic with their Outlander and Fantatsic beast line,  it is a bit difficult for me to swallow that there won´t be any more dolls. Maybe I should be relived that I won´t be spending money on exspensive dolls, but I was dreaming of having just a few more collectors dolls to display in a pretty glass cabinet in the living room. Now I wonder if the glass cabinet I am planning on buying for my Tonner dolls will look empty. I might look for some Deja Vu Lady Arabella dolls on Ebay, maybe the Lord of the rings dolls as well, but it won´t be the same as falling in love with a new doll. I will keep an eye on Robert Tonners new company, Phyn and Aero, some of the dolls look interresting but noting I really like. I am a very picky doll collector so I don´t really think they will make any dolls I will fall in love with. 

On another note my favorite doll blogger quitted blogging. I followed The Toybox philosopher since I started collecting, she have allways had the best reviewsa and I loved learning about and falling in love with new dolls thought her posts - I will greatly miss her post. I love reading doll blogs, but a lot of thosed I used to follow don´t blog annymore, and I have less energi to read blogs these days. On youtube some of the people I follow for toy videos have allso stopped posting and it is very difficullt for me to find new people that I wan´t to follow.   

Despite all of this sadness, I am actually pretty positive that I will have a nice doll year in 2019, but I will talk more about that in another post. 

Jurassic World Owen

I got  my first Ken doll!! 
I bought the Jurassic world owen doll for myslef as a christmas gift. I tink he is quite the handsome guy, he has some nice articulation and he has rotted hair. I will probably have to buy collectors dolls such as him to get ken dolls I like, since playline ken is stiff and has mouled hair, which I do not like at all. 

The doll is suppose to look like Chris Pratt, but I dont really think he does. I am going to name the doll Chris though, because I like that name and I like Christ as an actor. 

He stand very well on his own. I really like his outfit, it is very casual with jeans and a shirt, but the vest gives it something extra - I like how outddorsy it make him look. 

he comes with a nice collectors stand, but I am probably not going to use it since he stand so well on his own. 

His hair is very gelled, i think it looks kind of like Chris Pratts hairstile in the movie even thougt the dolls hair is longer. I really like his face paint, with those realistic blue eyes, glossy lips and beard stubble. His eyebrows make his expression quite serious, and I have been worried that he looked a bit too angry, but I am getting used to his epression and I just think it is part of his peronality. 

I paired him up with some of my girls to see how he looks with them, here he is with Aisha. His face is much more realistic than their, and his expression quite a bit more serious. But the fit is not terrible, I think I just need ti get used to the fact that he does have a bit of a different style than the girls. 

Here he is with Rory, he is a good hugger. Fron certain angles he doesn´t only look serious, but he also look quite caring. 

I brushed out his gelled hair and I really prefer how his hair looks now, soft and lively, I think the cut suits him, like he is styish but allso a bit messy. 

While Chris looked very nice with Aisha, I don´t think their personlities match that well, and Aisha allredy have a romantic partner. I do think however that his personality match with Cassie, they are similiair yet different enough for them to be good friends.. 

and later romantic partners. He is going to be a runner like Cassie is and they both really love nture. 

I am really happy about this doll, I hope to add more guys to my Barbie dolls collection, but since I am not buying very many dolls, I don´t know how realistic that dream really is. 

Customization

This post is about the small costomizations of 3 different dolls. 
The first costomization is one I did more than a year ago, but I just kept putting off blogging about it. 

I have changed the color of the lips on my Liv doll Emily before, but being unhappy with the result, i decided to try again. 

I had tryed to give her lips a neutral/natural color, I had succed in doing so but the color was too light for her skin. 

After half a year I sat down, ready to try again. I removed her lip paint, and dicovered that under that paint, her lips were a color that looked pale peach. I thought that color looked quite natural for her, so I decided not to paint her lips again. She is such a pretty doll, while I don´t focus all that much on my liv dolls lately, I do still fidn them very pretty. 

My next project was to do something about my Barbie doll Michelles smile, as I have a hard tim about how much teeth she is showing. I saw a video on youtube that showed how to just cut out the teeth part with a knife and glue the mouth shut, so i decided to try that.  

I did not wan´t to mess up on my beautiful and loved doll, so I first tryed it on a doll that I got with the design studio I bought some years back. 

Cutting out her teeth went well, but gluing her mouth shut didn´t. I coulden´t get the glue properly in her mouth and I ended up having glue all over her lips. I used nailpolish remover to remove the glue, which also removed her lip paint. 

I decided to only cut out her teeth, and not glu he mouth shut, so she would have a bit of nd open mouth, but not really a tooth smile. While I did hurt he rlip paint a bit when I cut out her teeth, I am happy with the result. While she had a nice smile, it did not fit the way I do storytelling with my dolls, it is imforpant for me that they can embody a wide range of emotions. 

My latest idea was to remove the freckles on my redhead Rory. While I love freckles I do not like hera at all, they are way to unnatural looking the way they are perefctly round dots, symmetrically placed on her cheeks. 

I did not remove all the paint on her cheeks, there is still a faint trace of her freckles. I am very happy with the result, I think she looked a bit goofy before, now she looks more mature and elegant. 

I really like making small changes like this to my dolls, it can make a big difference.