Something that seems to confuse people is that I am perfectly comfortable with opening up a 1972 Kenner Blythe doll when I’m not comfortable with customizing a newer doll (basically, any of the Takaras – nothing against ADG, I just don’t own any of them). It seems weird to me too, when I really think about it. Considering one is generally more expensive than the other, older plastic and is less replaceable than the latter. Granted, I haven’t done any ‘serious’ fixing work for my Kenners, mostly because I’ve grown to become attached to their primarily unfixed charm. But my dolls need to have limbs and fixed cracks. No ifs, ands or buts about it. I give my dolls limbs.

Eye chips, gaze lifting and new charms. That’s about all I do with Neos!

And you might think “But Michelle, that seems to be some serious restoration work” (and maybe it is), you pause and then continue on with “Surely if you’re comfortable with detaching a hardcap from a vintage doll’s head, you could be comfortable wrenching an eye mechanism out of the front of a Blythe’s face?”. The funny thing is? I’m really not. I’ve done it before (removing an eye mechanism from one of my RBLs) and it was hard! It took a lot of effort on my part (I lack the hand strength to ever do customizing efficiently) and to be perfectly honest, I’m pretty convinced that if I were to customize a doll, it would end up looking a bait doll. That is how much confidence I have in my wannabe customizer capabilities. And you know what? That’s okay! There are plenty of capable customizers out there that I do not need to throw my name into the ring because I’d rather just sit back and lovingly gaze onto the work of others (and believe me, I do). Restoring a Kenner? Let me at her! Customizing any Blythe? Ohhhh no.

Are you brave enough to customize a doll?

I’m not entirely sure who started it or where it originated from, sometimes “Blythe Meet” gets changed to “Blythe Meat” on purpose! I’m not going to lie – the first time I saw it I thought it was a typo. I mean, “meat” and “meet” are both real words, so it’s not like spell check would catch something like that. And then I realized that people were doing it on purpose, somewhat ironically (yes, there are clearly hipsters in the Blythe community). One of the lovely ladies in my local Blythe group uses “Blythe Meet” all the time and when I realized that she wasn’t using it as a typo (not going to lie), it kind of annoyed me a bit. Only because that’s not what the word is supposed to be! But I got over that super quick because others in the doll group use it as well, and then it was being used in comments as well and a lot of other people use “Blythe Meat” or “Doll Meat” instead of Meet. Since then initial thoughts of “What’s going on?”, it’s become more of a regular thing. I still don’t use it (mostly because my brain refuses to let me type Blythe Meat instead of Blythe Meet in an ironic fashion), but I’ve come to smile at it when it pops up on my Flickr contacts. After all, the important thing about a gathering is getting to spend time with friends, new and old, not worry about spelling of words.

What do you call your local and not-so-local gatherings of doll people? Blythe/Doll Meat or Blythe/Doll Meet?

So I have this Human, you know, who seems to forget that I am the sole reason that she decided to go on to collect more Blythes. And I am the reason that she ended up getting “Princess Prim” (gag me). But yes, my loyal readers, you all read her admissions that she plays favourite and that she would leave me behind in a fire if it came to it. And even worse, I found out that she had been buying gorgeous dresses and keeping them from me.

Case in point? Proof!

See? She’s always “blah blah blah, KENNERS” when she should really be focusing on me because I am the reason for everything. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that she acknowledge this on a regular basis with material goods, is it? She spends so much of her time with the precious Kenners and fixing their hair and making sure that they have new things to wear. And what do I have to wear? I’ve been wearing the same outfit for a week, you guys! This is cruel and unusual punishment! (I won’t be showing a photo of that, I cannot bear to be more humiliated to my peers!)

I hope you are all being taken care of much better than my Human does when it comes to me. And if you have any tips to make your Human care about you more than those pesky old and cracked “vintage” dolls, let me know! I may have to hold a garage sale when my Human isn’t looking and get rid of them, Toy Story style.

Sophie is a mostly stock Cappuccino Chat that came to live with me in June 2009. She loves shoes, new clothes, playing with her hair, fashion, magazines full of fluff and shopping. She aspires to be a model and would like to model for some of the ‘great’ dolly fashion houses one day.

When this question gets posed to me, I know what the person is really asking is “Who’s your favourite?”. By definition, I should only have one favourite. Because if there was more than one, there’d still be a ranking of who is number one and who is number two. Plastic is unfortunately one of those materials that will melt in a fire, so in the event of a fire, I’d probably try to rescue all of my dolls. You know, if it was safe to do so and I wasn’t putting myself in any dangerous. (Yeah right, I’d probably be the last one out clutching onto my dolls like they were some kind of life raft and somehow going to keep me alive when I walk through the flames.)

That said, whenever I get asked who my favourite is, my answer is to show people my phone. Now, my phone isn’t anything particularly unique (a white Galaxy S3 in a fun lime green case), but it’s the wallpaper that is the most telling part of all. As in who’s featured…

Because, let’s face it, the moment I laid eyes on her Frizziest-ness, I knew that Prim had to be mine. Princess Primrose, Primrose, Prim, Prim-Prim. I’m still incredibly thankful to my friend who a) found her (and her other six sisters that make up the Vancouver Seven) and b) for allowing me to adopt her and her other sister (Miss Lillian Rose). She is, without a doubt, the ‘top’ favourite out of the dolls that I have and I wouldn’t trade her for the world. And yes, that means rescuing her first in the event of a fire because she’d probably rise out of the ashes and beat me senseless if I left her behind and ‘dispose’ of whichever doll(s) I did rescue first.

Which doll would you save in a fire first?

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