Sunday Surprise: Sweet e.Baby From Playmates!

I've been having an incredible amount of fun hunting around for surprise dolls.  The really good ones are rare, but exhilarating to find.  I think the most intriguing examples I've found so far have been vintage items, many from the mid to late 1990s.  Today's doll, the Sweet e.Baby from Playmates Toys, is no exception to that rule.  This baby is from 1999 and features a computer CD containing...wait for it...the baby's secret gender and name!  Oh, yay!

I have no idea how I got lucky enough to find this gem.  I was browsing eBay for a Magic Nursery doll (coming soon!) and I stumbled on the auction for this little one.  I'd never seen this type of doll  before and I haven't been able to find another one for sale anywhere.  I paid $45, which seemed like a fair deal given the doll's scarcity.  I couldn't find any substantive information about this brand online.  There are two pictures of dolls in their boxes--but that's it.  It's almost like they never existed.

So, to put yourself in the mood for this review, think back (those of you who are old enough...) to 1999 and try to remember what the computer world was like back then.  That was the iBook "Clamshell" era for Apple laptops--when portable computers weighed 7 pounds.  It was before Stardoll, before Webkins, before Facebook.  1999 was also the heyday of Britney Spears, The Backstreet Boys, Ricky Martin and Eminem.  It was the year The Matrix came out--along with Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace and The Sixth Sense.  It was before reality television, and in an age when kids were still excited about vinyl Pokemon figures.  With all of that in mind, let's travel back in time and uncover this mysterious baby's seventeen-year-old secrets:

Sweet e.Baby doll and CD from 1999.

The Blueberry Muffin Retrospective--Part 2!

It's spring break here in Maine and there is visible (kinda green?) grass, a scattering of brave flowers, and a fair amount of sunshine.  It's pretty great.  Also, I am walking in normal shoes again for the first time since January, which is pretty amazing, too.  The walking came in handy this past week because my family spent the break looking at colleges for my eldest son...which is an exhilarating and terrifying experience, let me tell you.  Now we are back at home and I have finally found some time to finish the second part of my Blueberry Muffin marathon review.

In the first installment of this post, I looked at the debut Blueberry Muffin doll by Kenner, and also the Toy Head Quarters (THQ) and Bandai versions of the character.  Today I will review the Playmates, Hasbro and Bridge Direct dolls.  Hasbro has controlled the Strawberry Shortcake license for as long as I have been a blogger, so I've grown very accustomed to seeing those dolls in the store.  For this half of the review, I was eager to discover whether or not I like the newest Bridge Direct version of Blueberry Muffin as much as I like the familiar Hasbro doll.

I have also been looking forward to seeing the original Kenner Blueberry alongside her modern counterpart, which we can do right now to start things off:

Blueberry Muffin dolls from Kenner (left) and The Bridge Direct (right).

Hearts 4 Hearts "Lauryce"

This will just be a very short post that's meant as a companion to Nethilia's amazingly thorough review of the lovely Hearts 4 Hearts Mosi and Shola.  I went to Target to look at Shola in person after I read Neth's review.  Shola is a very beautiful doll, but I ended up falling for Lauryce instead.  I never would have guessed that Lauryce would be my pick, since I think her promotional pictures are the least appealing of this new Hearts 4 Hearts group.  The promo picture makes it look like she has a spray tan or something.  In person, this doll is gorgeous:

Hearts 4 Hearts "Lauryce."

Hearts 4 Hearts Dolls "Shola" and "Mosi" by Playmates Toys--A Guest Review!

I am excited to present another special review!  This time, my guest writer is Nethilia from the American Girl Outsider blog.  I love Nethilia's writing style and eye for detail.  Her educated, sensitive insights into other cultures are perfectly suited to reviewing these two gorgeous new Hearts 4 Hearts dolls.  Over to you, Neth!

Hey y'all--I'm Nethilia (Neth for short). I've been into dolls, toys, ponies and the like since I was a child. I'm the head administrator and founder of the American Girl Wiki and recently started blogging about the dolls (and fandom around them) at American Girl Outsider. While the main doll focus on my blog is American Girl, I personally collect and display all kinds of dolls and toys ranging from easily found shelf play dolls to limited edition resin ball jointed dolls. 

I tend to focus my collection on dolls of color because, as a woman of color, I feel it's very important to see other cultures properly respected and reflected in dolls--not just for the sake of people's exposure to other cultures outside their own, but so that children worldwide can see themselves reflected in their media (you have no idea how much it meant when The Princess and the Frog came out and a Disney Princess finally looked like me). I feel it's very important that even the smallest things and influences try to accurately reflect the diversity of the world--and that dolls of color aren't just, as I've heard it said, "re-dipped Barbie dolls" with the only sign of diversity being the color of the plastic/resin/vinyl/etc.  So, it makes sense that one of the lines that has really caught my interest is the Hearts 4 Hearts dolls. I fell in love with them soon after the initial release: first getting Nahji and then later adding Lauryce and Rahel to my lineup. When Mosi and Shola were announced at Toy Fair, I knew I was going to get my hands on them the moment they were available:

Hearts 4 Hearts "Mosi" and "Shola."