Hodge Podge ~ updates on various dolls

Thrift shop find ~ My Melody Barbie

First up is a My Melody Barbie wearing a pink gown from the Goodwill. This is not her correct outfit, but she still has the My Melody headscarf and two original necklaces.

As she appeared right out of the shopping bag, before her make-over

I love the Steffie facemold so I had to buy this doll, despite the cost and replacement dress, which is not my preferred style. The Goodwill pricer knew this doll was higher quality than the usual playline dolls (correct, it's from the 2008 Barbie Collectibles line), so she had a $6 price tag. $5.99 to be specific, I usually round up when repeating prices. I'll give the pink dress to my nieces, they started playing with Barbies last year and they'll like it.

Part of the packaging was still in her hair (that annoying sewn-in plastic strip), which is a little odd since these dolls were sold 5-6 years ago. The MM charm necklace still has the clear rubber bands holding it in place as well.  

More Monster Aliens!

Allie Lectric is wearing a LaDeeDah fashion with pink Blob CAM shoes. Ari Roma is wearing a dress and shoes from the Vampire & Sea Monster CAM set. The black cage skirt is actually Una Verse's beach hat! It could also be worn under a skirt that needs support to poof out.

I probably won't buy more Novi Stars as they're no longer sold in stores where I live. I'll change my mind if the new dolls from last year show up around here, but I'm not counting on that, they only made it to some parts of the US for a brief period of time. It sounds like they were rounded up and shipped overseas. I really like some of the new characters but I don't care enough to buy them online. The only reason I bought these four Novis is because I found them on deep clearance, around $5 each -- I can't justify paying much more than that when all I want is the head.

Here are all four of my hybrids together. I love them!

The bodies, from left to right:

Mae Tallick (wave 1): Blob from the Blob & Ice CAM set
Allie Lectric (wave 1): Witch from the Cat & Witch CAM set
Una Verse (wave 2, Orbit Beach): Ice from the Blob & Ice CAM set
Ari Roma (wave 1): Vampire from the Vampire & Sea Monster CAM set

CAM = Monster High Create-a-Monster

There are other MH bodies you can use for all four heads. For example the Una Verse head would also look great on an Abbey body.

I want to give credit again to MyDollsareMyModels, he was the first to post photos of his Novi-Monster hybrids on Flickr. My post which explains how to remove the speaker from Mae Talick's robot head is here. That post also links to a video from MyDollsareMyModels showing how to swap heads. Let me emphasize again that you will need a heating pad or some other way to soften the alien heads without damaging the hair. It took me about an hour to soften up the green head with a heating pad. You can break the neck on the donor body if you're not careful.

Pinypon, or Pin y Pon

I think Pinypon mini-dolls, or figurines if you prefer -- they're plastic/vinyl with almost no articulation -- are adorable and would likely appeal to a lot of kids (box says 4+ but most young children will lose the tiny charms quickly). I've been eyeing Pinypon at Fred Meyer and finally picked some up last week when I noticed they were on sale for $2 each -- what a great price!

 

A couple days after buying these four Pinypon I returned to Fred Meyer and bought three more so my nieces would have even more pieces to mix-n-match when they visit. The series with pets were $3 on sale instead of $2 so I only bought one -- the girl with a kitty of course.

These small dolls share outfits and hair and tiny charms/accessories. And you can store unused charms in their hollow heads! Some hairstyles hold on better than others so I put extra charms inside heads with the secure hair.

For size comparison:

Polly Pockets, Cushion the hedgehog, various LPS animals, Pinypon, LPS Blythe, Monster High Venus

Pinypon look very similar to Kawaii Crush dolls/figures but I think Pinypon are cuter.

Each head has two expressions, you simply turn the head around to get a new face. The packaging doesn't show the alternate faces so I was eager to see how the expressions would change. The first doll I opened, Pink Ponytails, has a super cute expression of joy...

...but when I turned her head around... (this IS the same head, I just swapped the hair and clothing on all my Pinypon dolls so now she looks like a completely different doll)

How awesome is that?! I didn't expect a sad face, but it's fantastic! Most of the dolls have happy or pleasant faces, this is the only blatantly upset face out of the seven Pinypon dolls I own. The girl paired with the purple kitty has pink glasses on one side of her head, that was also a fun surprise.

I think these dolls resemble Japanese anime characters so I assumed they originated in Asia but they're produced by Famosa, a company in Spain. There isn't much information about them online, probably because they're targeted to young children and all you really need to know is they're inexpensive and cute. I just learned Pinypon have been around for a few decades (with some hibernation time when the dolls weren't being manufactured) but they didn't look like this back in the '80s.

puppy and kitten not included

I thought the dolls were cute in the packages but I like them even more after opening them up and swapping the clothing pieces and charms around. For $2 (sale price) they are a steal. I'll probably buy more if I find any with blue hair (they exist, just not at my local Fred Meyer) and I wouldn't mind getting one of the boys as well (also missing from the selection at FM).

These card backs don't show all the available Pinypon, there are a few more series with themes like sports, flowers, fairies, and mermaids.

Happy Easter!

Looks like I've accumulated a bunch of bunnies from various thrift shop grab bags over the years. :)