Doll Collection Refresh - Baby So Beautiful

 You can be forgiven for not knowing what Baby So Beautiful dolls are. They were produced by Playmates for one year over 1995-1996. But they're one of my all time favourite play doll lines. Even when they came out, I was a teenager going through a "Dolls are not cool" phase. Even still, I dragged my best friend into a department store to check them out and we spent about an hour deciding which ones we'd want if we were little. As far as I know Baby So Beautiful were the original line. There was also Newborn Baby So Beautiful (which was smaller and younger) and Young Lady So Beautiful (who wore weird out of date ballgowns, up dos and fur stoles) but I'm pretty sure they both came later. Before I wrote this I tried to find more information about these dolls online, and was shocked to discover that there really wasn't any. I'm currently fighting the urge to buy every single one of these dolls that show up on ebay and build a database of faces, eye colours, hair styles and everything else. Unfortunately if I did that the Giant Husband would probably have me commited.

 Baby So Beautiful was a toddler doll with a similar concept to the original Cabbage Patch Kids in that there was an almost infinite variety of skin tones, face moulds and paint, eye colours, hair colours and styles, and outfits. This meant that no two dolls were exactly the same. Each doll came with a "Baby book" (a leaflet printed on magazine paper with spaced to record information about your doll) with "So Beautiful Firsts" printed on the cover, a pink plastic hairbrush, and an opalescent white plastic  "locket" on a gold coloured cord to keep a picture in. The tag-line was "The most beautiful baby in the world is your baby!" and like a lot of 1980s doll lines the pretence was that the child was adopting the doll.
 The dolls themselves are impressive for a play doll. The vinyl is good quality, with realistic inset acrylic eyes, and applied eyelashes. Their hair is lovely, not plasticy like most play dolls, and their outfits are detailed and well made. Two things really stand out to me though. The hair is wigged rather than rooted and the eyes are stationary - to me both these things are unusual in a play doll. But all in all, looking at these dolls now, I can only assume that they were discontinued because they were too well made and high production costs made them unprofitable. As far as I know all of the dolls produced were female.
 I have three of these dolls. Two were purchased at a toy shop in a small country town about ten years after they went out of production, the other is a rescue doll from a charity shop. I'm going to be working on these at the same time as my Patience dolls. Mostly because when I had a look at the rescue doll, she had the look of a doll in need of urgent care.

 Kathryn was my first Baby So Beautiful. And to me, she embodies everything that I remember about the line. This is the face that I remember the most, this is one of the few outfits I've seen more than once, this is the hairstyle I remember seeing. Her eyes are beautiful and clear, she has a cute ringletted hair style, and a sweet outfit. Hers is the best outfit of my three dolls. A pink blouse with lace trim to the collar and sleeves, a floral romper suit with lace frills across the backside, lace trimmed white anklet socks, delicate white shoes (with more lace) and a hair ribbon - surprisingly made of lace!

A sweet, little face

 She doesn't need much done for her. A quick dust, her clothes need a wash and she's lost a shoe. I'm pretty sure it's in a box of Barbie accessories in my wardrobe but haven't had a chance to look for it. Her hair is particularly dusty and her ringlets have loosened on one side. So maybe wash her hair (I hate washing doll hair) and try to fix up her curls.

Dusty, messy curls.

 Her shoes are the only thing about her that concerns me. They're that kind of fake leatherette stuff that's fabric with an incredibly thin vinyl layer over the top. It's horrible stuff. The vinyl always goes melty and peely or sticky and gross. The one shoe i currently have is discoloured and already starting to peel near her big toe. I want to clean it, but I don't want to make the damage worse or clean it with anything that's going to make it deteriorate faster than it already is. So, I'm kind of in two minds about whether I should touch it at all.

  Next is Cecily. Cecily has a different face mould, which I equally love and hate. From some angles her opened mouth expression makes her look slack-jawed and stupid, from other angles it's a look of wonder. I love the small dimple in her chin and her strangely high eyebrows. But I don't particularly like the colour of her face paint. It's too pink but also too dark, but I forgive it because it goes nicely with the colour of her outfit. She's the only one of my three dolls that still has her locket (none of my three still have their brushes or baby books.) but she used to have a headband which I can't find (and I'm pretty sure it's gone for good.) and it's possible she once had a blanket. I say possible because I know that I once had a pink doll's blanket bound in the same fabric as her dress. But I can't remember if it was her blanket or not.

Close up of Cecily's eyes.

  Cecily's dress is like a reject from the wardrobe of Little House on the Prairie. A pink on cream, floral, twill dress, with a double collar - one layer pink, one white; and bootees in the same fabric with bows on the front and white fuzzy pantaloons. Compared to Kathryn's outfit, this seems really lazy and a bit boring.

Cecily's dress in it's full boring glory.

 This doll's hair puzzles me a little. It looks at first glance as though it's in two plaits or pigtails, tied with ribbons. But when I looked at her more closely I saw short hairs sticking out all over her head. At first I panicked thinking her hair was somehow decaying and falling out. Then I realised she was still wearing her original hair net which comforted me a little, assuming if anything was decaying it was more likely to be the hair net. Having looked at her more closely now, I think it's actually not anything decaying. Rather it looks like her hairstyle is actually a short bob with one long strand hanging down on each side in a curl and the short pieces are the ends of the bobbed part.

 Untidy, sticky outy hair.

Faux pigtails

 Cecily needs a dust. Her clothes need a wash and she's somehow gotten a few grubby marks here and there that need cleaning off. I'm not touching her hair. If I'm right about her hairstyle, once the hairnet is taken off her hair will be impossible to keep nice.

The third doll, Kirralee is from a charity shop. At some point she has been the victim of a dog attack. The fingers of her left hand are gone, she has a small hole in one of her feet and very faint bite marks allover. When I got her she was bald and naked with no lip paint. At the moment she's dressed in an old My Child dress, her underpants, shoes and socks are stuff I happened to have lying around that fitted her. Her wig was stolen from a porcelain doll whose head was smashed. Her dress and her wig fit badly. The dress is too short. The wig is too big.

Kirralee's beautiful golden eyes and unfortunate mouth.

 But the biggest problem is her lips. I don't know what I used to paint them but it was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. It's bleeding into her vinyl. The paint needs to be removed before it ruins her face. Hopefully I can remove some of the staining with a magic eraser but I'm not overly optimistic. Then she will need a new mouth.
 Other than that she could do with a good clean. She needs clothes that fit, if possible something that will conceal this. . .

A new wig would be amazing but that will depend on whether or not I can get the Giant Husband to agree to the expense, which probably means it won't be as nice as I would like. Or possibly something could be done to make her current wig fit better. Hopefully I can get her looking a bit better than she does at present.