Mori-San, Where Are You?!

I noticed this paper tag under the Barbie tag in a sweater from "Cheerleader."

I happen to also read Japanese!

This says: 森, which is pronounced "mori," which means "forest."  It's also a common surname, so I can only guess that Mori-San inspected this piece and left his or her tag to prove it.

Where are you, Mori-san?!  What was life like at the Barbie factory?  Haha.

I have seen other paper tags in Barbie clothes but this is the only one I can recall that had legible Japanese on it.

Send me photos of your paper tags from Barbie outfits and I'll tell you what they say!

 

Barbie Bench Mystery

 

What if I told you the much-coveted Barbie Susy Goose piano got reborn as a cake topper?  Would you believe me?  Well, it's true!

This whole blog entry started a few months ago.  I was assisting in cleaning out the house of a family friend.  This friend died, age 99 years old.  In a dirty old box full of flower pots in her garage, I found this:

   Huh.  A Barbie Susy Goose bench?  Sure looks like it.  But.. um.. it's a little weird.  One, my friend was 99 years old.  Two, she didn't have any daughters.  Three, no children had lived in the house for decades.  Four, no other Barbie stuff or even toys were in the house.  Also.. it just didn't look right.

When I got it home, I examined it next to known a Susy Goose bench.

Hum... well they look pretty similar, but look closer:

Same size.. same basic shape... the plastic feels different though...

Susy Goose Barbie bench has no marks.

The gold bench is marked "WILTON-CHICAGO 60643 W 808 MADE IN"  Note that it says "Hong Kong," but the "Hong Kong" appears to have been scratched out of the actual mold.

Well!  That got me really curious.  Wilton?  Like cakes?  Whut?

So I started Googling.

Turns out, Wilton made a piano-shaped cake topper.  Turns out, this cake topper was 100% made from the parts of the Susy Goose piano.  Don't believe me yet?  Keep reading!

Here are the two piano tops compared to each other.  Pretty much the same, though obviously different plastic and different levels of painting.

The piano legs are also very similar, though I can't 100% tell since I don't have one in person.

Here are the two pedal assemblies next to each other.  Again, they look pretty much the same, just with a different method of attaching to the piano itself.

Here's the detail of the Wilton bench's feet.

Here's a close up of the legit Susy Goose bench's feet.  The molding is much cleaner, but there is less gold detail.

Here they are together from the top.  If you ripped the fabric off of the Susy Goose bench, you would find a similar molded piece of plastic underneath, though it would be white.

Here is a close up of the differences in molding.  You can see the Wilton Cake Topper bench is much cheaper.  The plastic is also a much cheaper weight and feels more brittle.  It just feels "cheap."

Anyway, I have seen this gold bench being sold as a legit Susy Goose product, or even as the Susy Goose piano bench!  It is NOT!   If you buy this bench, please do not pay whatever you'd pay for a Susy Goose piano.  It is knock-off.

However, that being said, of course it displays perfectly fine with Barbie and is an excellent replacement.  Just don't pay a Susy Goose price for a Wilton product.

Here's what the Wilton cake topper looks like in full.  I think you used a Wilton piano-shaped cake pan and put it in-between the top and bottom of the plastic piano pieces?  I don't know.  I couldn't find any other pieces of it in my friend's garage.  The candle sticks look like they might resemble the Susy Goose ones as well.

ANYWAY, there you have it.... no matter how long you collect you're always going to find some new weird thing.

Lastly, I can't speculate as to how this happened.  This cake topper came out in the early-to-mid 1970s.  Susy Goose was out of business by then, I think.  They hadn't made furniture for Barbie for years at that point.  I don't know what happened to their molds, patents, files, or anything like that, or how it might have migrated to Wilton and whoever designed this thing.  Who knows?!  

If anyone out there can share more insight, please do!  Information on Susy Goose online is hard to come by, except that it was registered as a trademark in 1941 by someone named Paul Jones.  THIS ARTICLE says Susy Goose liquidated in 1970, so I'm guessing that would be exactly the time Wilton acquired the molds.  They apparently moved production to Ohio in 1967, shortly before going out of business.

Apparently the original Susy Goose factory was in Jonesville, Michigan, under the name of "Kiddie Brush & Toy Company," founded in 1927. (and HERE is the Wikipedia article about the building.)  I didn't know that Susy Goose products were made in the United States, I assumed they were made overseas like (most) Barbie dolls.  That also makes it more interesting that the Wilton bench was (probably?) made in Hong Kong.

Are the molds still out there somewhere?  Could some toy company make repro Barbie accessories?  Are they floating around?  Does Wilton have them?  Wilton, are you out there?  Can you make me a Susy Goose piano?

SO STRANGE.  Has anyone else ever noticed this, or am I the first one?  

The Mystery of The Floral "Black Francie" Swimsuit

 

A few weeks ago, I bought a lot of clone-type dolls in an auction.  I like clones, and I was having fun going through the stuff that came with them. 

One doll stood out a bit.. her swimsuit looked... familiar...

"Oh neat!," I think, "It looks like "Black Francie's" swimsuit!  Neat!"

So, I got to googling, and low-and-behold, several websites were claiming this swimsuit was a rare variation of Black Francie's original swimsuit.

Now, believe me, I would LOVE THAT TO BE TRUE.  I would LOVE to own a rare and impossible-to-find Francie swimsuit.  I would love to tell you that I found an impossible-to-find Francie swimsuit in a $17 auction.

However, I can guarantee you this cute swimsuit is NOT A MATTEL PRODUCT.

This is a clone swimsuit.  Is it made to look like Black Francie's swimsuit?  100% definitely yes.  Is it made by Mattel?  100% definitely no.

I'm going to tell you how I know, since other websites that picture this swimsuit do not give any additional information.  Let's learn all about the MYSTERIOUS, ULTRA-RARE, BLACK FRANCIE, FLORAL SWIMSUIT.

- First of all, this swimsuit is only referred to online, by uncited sources.  It doesn't appear in Joe Blitman's Francie Book, not even the vaguest mention.  Mr. Blitman is arguably the world's most Franci-est expert on Francie.

- It doesn't appear in Sarah Sink Eams's Barbie Clothing Book, maybe the most complete Barbie fashion book ever written.

-  Heck, it doesn't even appear on Mattel's Website.

-  This swimsuit has SNAPS.  Francie's swimsuit has BUTTONS WITH LOOPS.

-  The straps are different.

-  In my opinion, Francie's swimsuit is more of a boy-short bottom, while this is more of a brief.

-  IT IS DEFINITELY NOT TAGGED FRANCIE.  Francie's swimsuit is tagged.

-  The quality is not like Mattel's.

ANYWAY, so where did this swimsuit come from?

The clone I found it on is a "Made in Hong Kong," type, possibly PEGGY ANN.  Was it her original swimsuit?  Maybe.  I haven't found one in package to prove anything.

Was this swimsuit ever sold on a African-American / Black doll like Francie?  Maybe.  It's possible some company made a knock-off type doll to compete and copied the swimsuit too.  Again, no in-package examples have been found.

Enjoy a few more pictures of this cool swimsuit:

The doll I found it on, probably a "Peggy Ann" or Peggy Ann type.

Front view, off of the doll.  The fabric is very cute.  It's not poorly made, but it's not up to Mattel standards.  It's quite fragile and not sewn very well.  The red part is definitely cotton.

 

ANYWAY... mystery... sort of solved?  It's not a Francie swimsuit, but I'm intrigued to find out where it came from.

If anybody out there knows, please let me know!  If anyone has an example mint-in-package, PLEASE help let's solve this mystery for good.

PS. Since we're talking about Black Francie, I'd like to remind you that Black Lives Matter.  Please support social justice and equality in your community.

Laundry Day

Oh golly, it's been a while!

But, to be fair, it was slow going in the vintage Barbie department over the winter.  Now that we're back to flea market season, and "good for photographs outside" season, I can get back to writing a bit.

I've been cleaning up Barbie and her clothes for as long as I've been collecting Barbie.  I've tried, failed, tried again, and kept going.  Like many collectors, I'm no mint-condition obsessed person.  I'm happy enough finding slightly messed up dolls and clothes and doing what I can to make them better.

One of the lovely things about vintage Barbie clothes is a lot of them were made out of sturdy fabrics and remain very washable to this day.  Yeah, they're old, but a lot of their flaws are still repairable.

So, I've used products from Twin Pines of Maine for cleaning up dolls for about 20 years.  The products really work better than anything else, at least in my opinion.

I hadn't had any of their products around the house for a while, so I decided to place an order and refresh my stock.

When my order arrived, I pulled out a bunch of white Barbie items from the doll clothes bin and stuck them in some Perk (doll clothes cold water detergent) with some added Booost (detergent booster.)

Honestly, I had forgotten how well this stuff works!

Check out this before and after comparison of two "Friday Night Date" dresses that were equally yellowed/dirty.

The whiter one is after about 24 hours of soaking in the Perk/Booost solution.  They were about equally dingy gray, though the left one didn't have age/dirt spots.

Close up of the comparison.  Additionally, the brown spots you can see on the dirty one also came out (almost) completely with Perk/Booost.  There's a sliiiiiight yellow discoloration where they were, but you'd have to be looking for it to spot it.

So, while Perk/Booost is pretty pricey, I still recommend it if you really want to clean some doll clothes (or other vintage textiles.)  Though this outfit isn't worth much, it's certainly worth more now than it was when it was gross and dirty.

I've got some more before/after comparisons coming up that I can show you later.

I should also note, that Perk/Booost can't help everything.  I had an orange PAK skirt with some sort of funky red/brown stain on it (possibly lipstick) and it did not come out even after 24+ hours of soaking.  (But I might just dye the skirt brown I guess.)   However, a satin white PAK dress had gross brown stains I didn't think would come out, but they came out completely.  So it seems like luck, and just test it and see.  If it doesn't work, you're no worse off than when you started.  If it does work, then great!  You've improved your collection.

More pics coming later.

==========================================

Some late additions:

Before and after.. the brown stains on this dress came right out.  (The flecked on glitter was already mostly gone.  Otherwise, it would have come off, just FYI.)  It came very clean!  The flocking didn't come off, which was a nice bonus.

Another trashed Friday Night Date dress had a torn-off sleeve but I threw it in the wash bin anyway.  It came very white, so I suppose I have to stitch the sleeve now!

Dirty and brown Friday Night Date dress had age spots.  Came very white, the spots are nearly all gone, the largest one has a slight yellow remainder.

================================================

MORE ADDITIONS:

 These Ken shirts came pretty clean.... still a little yellow but maybe some more soaking would help.

The brown stain is less visible now, still a slight spot as you can see.. also the dress had a blue color to it from a previous stain treatment and it came much more white.

I had to take some stitches out to remove the rose from the dress before treatment.  The gross brown stains miraculously completely came out!  Also, this dress had really funky gross white stains on the back of the train.. it looked like maybe milk or something.  It COMPLETELY came out.  Of course, now I need to press and re-stitch.. but who cares about that, it looks clean as new!  I am VERY impressed.

Well, this is a surprise.  This thing was totally trashed as you can see.  I soaked it first for 24 hours and there was no improvement.  When I soaked it again, 48 hours, in a stronger solution, it came pretty clean.  You can't tell, but it still has spots, they are MUCH lighter though.  Now if you wanted to dye it another color or something to cover the stains, you probably could.  Much nicer.

Today's Flea Market Find - (07-31-2016)

Fresh from the fleas is this lovely ponytail Barbie:

The guy at the flea market (really, more of an antiques/collectibles show) had a large number of nice vintage Barbie dolls for pretty cheap.  I'm wishing I would have bought a few more now, but I only had so much cash on me.. ugh.. I am kicking myself in the butt right now!

ANYWAY.. this pretty girl, I'm going to call a #3/#4 transitional doll.  She has the rubbery-type arms and legs, nice soft brows, and the solid-body torso.  She has the typical faded-to-orangey lips that are often seen on #1s, #2s, and #3s.  Blue liner.  Torso might be slightly faded/blotchy white in parts.

No green.. just a few flaws.  Nice thick hair, flocked scalp... little curly soft bangs.

She's a beauty and was not that expensive.  So, I'm glad.

Obviously I haven't cleaned her up yet but she's very lovely.

Her nails also have some of the fading-to-orange look.  She wasn't wearing this when I bought her.

Not a very good picture of her face showing the bit of orangey fading to the lips, but otherwise her face is not bad.

Re-styling the ponytail will be the worst part....I've done it before but never on such a nice doll.

What dolls did I leave behind?

Sadly, the guy also had a lovely and in pretty-good-shape lemon blonde American Girl Barbie which I'm wishing I would have bought now.  The price was pretty reasonable.

Also, he had a Color Magic midnight/redhead which unfortunately her poor hair was chopped down to super short, basically ruined.  Too bad because I don't have a Color Magic in my collection and would have bought her in a minute if it weren't for the chopped hair.

He had a couple of nice bend-leg bodies, some TNT dolls and mod-era Kens.  A Barbie head on a Francie body... etc.

Besides the Ponytail shown here, the Lemon American Girl was probably the best in the lot.  Sadly, not many clothes or accessories or anything, which is really my main focus collecting-wise right now.

Oh, and he had a ton of Dawn dolls & accessories/clothes too.  I'm trying to cut back on my Dawn collecting unless it's very cheap or something I really want, because I have soooo many Dawns now!  Haha. :)  

Anyway this guy was really nice, willing to cut me a deal and wearing a "Han Shot First" T-shirt. Such a refreshing change from the sorta-kinda-jerks I sometimes have to bargain with at the flea market.

I hope he's there next time and hasn't sold the American Girl because I'm really sorry I didn't buy it. 

-_-  I wish I had given him my card.

I don't have a nice American Girl in my collection.  I have one, but she has a broken knee and faded lips (my fault.. I treated green ear and inadvertently bleached out her lips.)

I have a couple of bend-leg Midge dolls that are willing to sacrifice a body if I ever find a nice American Girl head, though.

They always say it's what you don't buy that you regret.  I guess that's true.

Sunday's Flea Market Find - The Dirtiest Dolls Ever

Dirty Dolls, Bought Dirt Cheap

Got to the flea market really late on Sunday, so of course I wasn't expecting to find anything halfway decent, let alone any vintage Barbie stuff.. but low and behold I found

The dirtiest Barbie dolls I have ever seen.

Just look at these girls, I mean, wow!  They're filthy!

The Fashion Queen or Wig Wardrobe doll's face is caked with grime, one-arm Titan Barbie-Body Bubblecut has the grossest legs.  Clone head-on-Barbie/Midge-body is filthy, wearing Barbie in Switzerland #822, and equally-filthy Mary Make-Up only came home with me because she was wearing #1619 Fun N Games, and I hoped I could clean it up.  Plus, one slightly less dirty headless Barbie/Midge body, and a not-quite-as-filthy Ken shirt (1962's PAK Sport Shirt).

They were $2 each with the Ken shirt for free.  Now, they are so grimy that I was wondering if they were even worth $2, but I thought maybe I needed to rescue them.

A face only a collector could love.

Eesh!

They were so horrible, I did actually hose them off before I brought them inside.

After that, I let them soak in soapy water for several hours, and after that, started scrubbing with Soft Scrub, soap, and tooth brushes.  They are looking a little bit improved.

I gave the clothes a quick wash, too. I think maybe Barbie in Switzerland is a lost cause, but the Ken shirt cleaned up surprisingly well, as did Fun N Games.  Gonna let Fun N Games soak in some Biz for a few days and see how it goes.

If nothing else, the arms and legs surprisingly still have great nail polish, despite the dolls looking like they've been buried for about 30 years.

A work in progress...

Well, I'm sure they feel a bit better at least.

Saturday's Flea Market Find

Found for $5 bucks on Saturday morning is this cute Room-fulls Studio Bedroom set from c. 1974-75.  Too new to be considered vintage by some collectors, they've nevertheless become popular since they are so good for displaying your dolls.

Barbie on the box is wearing Best Buy #7814, also from 1974.  Looks like a Malibu Barbie to me. She has the old-style Japan arms.

The box is pretty beat up but the goodies inside are okay.

The back of the box has a cool 70s graphic, with a sunny sun smiling on Barbie's house.

Other sets included a living room and kitchen.  They are somewhat cheaply made like most Mattel items from this era, but the backdrops are amazing!

Close-up of the bedroom graphic.

Close-up of the other sets.

The chair is somewhat overstuffed and made with a thin felt-like fabric.  It doesn't stand up very well but does better when Barbie is sitting on it.  It's a little dirty so I'm going to attempt to spot clean it.

The studio bed/sofa is a blue plastic box (that oddly enough seems to have two "mounting screw holes" in the top of it for some reason... (picture later?)  The "bedspread" is a very tightly fitted cover that cannot be used as a blanket or anything, just as a cover to the plastic box.  The pillows are cotton fabric in a calico strawberry print.  The bedspread patchwork-esque fabric should be familiar to collectors of Best Buy-era fashions, because it was used in several outfits.  Barbie's Best Buy #7414 from 1975 used this fabric, as did Tutti's #7481 from 1976 Europe.  It's also likely this fabric appears in other outfits that Mattel used to de-stash, because I have a feeling I have several other items in this print.  

The radio/hi-fi/stereo cabinet is just a blue plastic shape with stickers making the graphics.

The backdrop is the best part!  Cool graphics and really good to encourage the imagination.  It can be folded in various ways to make a room-shape.  (The yellow card is just a carpet stand-in and was not actually included.)  I also like that they went through the effort to make the cushion on the stool match the print of the bed.

Sadly the stuffed elephant that is supposed to be included is missing.  If I see the flea market guy again I'll have to ask him to let me know if he finds it in with his boxes of various junk. :)

Anyway, that's the find of the week.