A Variety of DALL-E Dollies

Today started out totally normal for me.  I got up, let the dogs out, grabbed a cup of coffee, and sat down to read the news.  But then an article in the Washington Post completely changed the course of my entire day.  And forgive me in advance, but it's likely to steal all of the free time you thought you had, too.

The article I read was about DALL-E, an artificial intelligence, text-to-image generator that has just become widely available to the public.  A text-to-image generator is software that can use regular text to create an image.  So if I input a phrase like "pencil drawing of a dog," DALL-E will give me several computer-generated images that look like pencil drawings of dogs.  And judging by the Washington Post sample images, I could see that DALL-E is very good at what it does.  The article was focused mainly on how this type of AI can be dangerous--and I can see that angle.  For example, people wanting to make a point could generate fake photographic evidence to claim something happened when it actually didn't.

But of course I wasn't interested in DALL-E because I want to create conspiracies or topple governments, I just wanted to see how good this thing is at rendering photographs of dolls.  And it's darn good...at least some of the time:

DALL-E redhead doll in a blue polka dot dress.

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.