Tonner's City Girls...

[magkelly]

Thanks. I appreciate that. I've been sick for like months it seems on and off. Just not a good winter health-wise for me so far. I have a doctor's appt on Monday actually because I'm just tired and really breathless to the point where I am wondering if I have bronchitis or something. It's getting in the way of my fun. I'm not up to sewing or working on Delilah #3 and I've got at least half a dozen naked dolls waiting on me to put them in outfits and display them properly. Checking out shoes for Astor was about as much as I've gotten done all week. Ugh...

[Wardah]

I always wonder why larger scale playline fashion dolls never seem to take off. It can't be because "they don't fit Barbie clothes and shoes" cause Bratz and Monster High don't either but they always did well.

[magkelly]

Bratz and MH stuff is pretty commonly available. You can buy extra shoe and/or clothes packs for those dolls fairly easily. They did make some stuff for the MT's and these dolls have clothing packs as well but there is not nearly as much that's available for them as for Barbie or even the Bratz. MT accessories packs were not worth all that much. They charged a lot actually for what little there was and it wasn't until I got a couple of the packs on clearance that I even went there. I bought the wigs a lot but the clothes I didn't like most of what they had to offer. Bratz and MH I see clothing packs for all the time at Target. Like Barbie I can regularly find new stuff to put on my dolls if I want to spend $5-12.

With the MT's I was lucky if I even saw the dolls let alone the clothes and extra wigs. I usually had to order them online to get any. (Or use Liv wigs.) It's the same with this CG. I have to go to Tonner and spend $25 on a whole outfit just to get some extra shoes? No shoe pack as yet and I'll bet if they ever do go there it's $25-50. Barbie I can go to Target plunk down $20 and give my girls a whole new wardrobe if I want and besides Barbie clothes there are Stardoll clothes, and Disney clothes, and High School Musical clothes, and probably clothes from about 5 other lines of fashion dolls that I'm not thinking a lot about right now that I can steal clothes from. Oh and if I really want to spend a serious chunk Fashion Royalty clothes...

It's just a question of availability and price. 12" and even 16" dolls really have the advantage in that there is so much out there already for them. There's a lot of 16" stuff already out there too from Tonner,, Madame Alex, Mel Odom and others. It's not hard at all to outfit a 16" girl. (Albeit you can spend a small fortune doing it at near $100 an outfit these days!) Bratz and MH you can get stuff though it's not as easy as with Barbie. I've got Stardoll shoes on my MH dolls though, and there are Bratz clothes that fit them too. You can swap out some stuff though and that makes a considerable difference to me whether or not I like a doll line or not. I have more doll shoes than I know what to do with. Half a dozen huge craft organizer boxes full of different kinds of shoes from various dolls, several hundred pairs of shoes. Despite all those shoes I have exactly 2 pairs that will actually fit Astor? Okay, plus one set of shoe bases that I may copy so I can make her some more. But that's IT, out of hundreds of pairs. When you think about it that's pretty lame. Heck even Delilah, who I thought was going to be a real toughie turned out to have a couple dozen choices of shoes to wear in the end.

I like to make outfits. So having to buy whole outfits to get extra shoes is not something I am crazy about actually. I really like dolls lines that put out shoe packs once in a while. But I don't mind Mattel outfit packs that come with 2 or 3 pairs because I can deal with that ratio provided the clothes are worth buying. I must admit sometimes buying a clothes pack or a doll is all about the shoes. I've been known to buy either and resell the doll or some clothes just because I happen to like the shoes. I didn't get this huge shoe wardrobe by happenstance. I've been working at it for a decade or more.

It would have helped a lot had Astor had more accommodating feet. I have a lot of 13" and 16" clothes she can wear but putting anything on her that doesn't match her two oddly colored pairs of shoes isn't going to give me a lot of choices in terms of wardrobe. Red and silver can only go with so much unfortunately. The bases I've got are white so I will probably make her a quick pair of white shoes. I'm probably going to try to make her some black shoes as well. But she's going to need more of a shoe wardrobe than that to have any fun around here. She's supposed to be a model living in the city. Someone like that would have interesting boots and tons of heels, and all sorts of shoes. I'd like to make her something better to wear. Plastic footwear doesn't exactly do her back story justice...