miniatures

All posts tagged miniatures

Lil Pocahontas 2 – The Reckoning

Posted by mikemacdee on June 17, 2019
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indian playset

Recently picked up a lot of micro playsets, two of which I wasn’t interested in: I already sold my Pocket Land amusement park sets (the blue one), and the pink heart has a cute wind-up diorama that is kind of amusing, but not my thing.

What IS my thing is tiny, adorable indian tribes.

No idea who made this. Maybe Simba. But it’s absolutely precious and I couldn’t pass it up, considering its rarity. It gives Western Polly another environment to explore as well.

The detail in this little knock-off is surprising. I especially love the grandma wrapped in a poncho, the cute little dog, and the awesome collapsible totem pole.

Mini-Kitty Mystery Solved

Posted by mikemacdee on July 3, 2018
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lovely kitty comp4

Remember this little gal on the right? I was right that she is indeed from the Lovely Kitty toy line and its cousin-lines (Petite Princess, Pretty Pixies, Betty’s Club), but it seems it was used for the locket playsets. I got a carded one recently that supports this:

Here we see another non-articulated mini-Kitty (or mini-Betty in this case), striking a different pose. Makes me wonder if each set came with its own doll, or if they were randomly assigned like Mighty Max.

Other Polly Knockoffs

Posted by mikemacdee on June 21, 2018
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Turns out there are way more Polly KO’s than I anticipated — literally too many to name! Here are a couple of nameless knockoffs, the pieces of which may not always be accurate.

polly kos

The first exhibits are a clamshell that comes in a couple variants on ebay and/or etsy, and two sets from a line sometimes simply referred to as “Dino” given the odd sticker on the compact. These scream “dollar store knockoff” if anything ever did, although I’ve seen far worse attempts at cashing in on Polly or Max.

The clamshell has a lovely scene inside: some sort of fantasy realm with a waterfall crashing down the side of a pink mountain. I have no idea if the mermaid doll goes with this set, but she seemed to fit right in.

EDIT: More info and guesswork found here.

EDIT: Identified! It is Mermaid Pocket Paradise, by the company Simba. More photos and details if I manage to win this auction.

mermaid pocket paradise by simba.jpg

polly ko.jpg

The Dino and Dog compacts come from a toy called Pocket Land, apparently, evidenced by this pic of a carded set I totally forgot I had in my Knockoffs folder.

Dino and Dog open into an amusement park and minigolf course respectively. I was able to positively identify these two dolls and their vehicles as belonging to this toy line (thanks again, Patricia!). These sets are shockingly cute, and would almost fit right in with anyone’s legit Polly collection. The minigolf course is missing a couple flags and the fountain is broken, but the amusement park appears to be complete and intact.

Hinstar’s Small World – Pocket Paradise toys probably belong on this list, too. I have a separate article about them here.

These Pocket Family toys are kind of neat. I mainly like the cat one with the two-wing entertainment center.

I’d never seen one of these before til one popped up randomly on ebay. A really low budget Lion King line, apparently. The card has a hole in the middle so you can see both sides of the compact, which is kinda neat I guess.

Lovely Kitty Cousins

Posted by mikemacdee on June 12, 2018
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I mentioned in the Lovely Kitty article that there were several alternate versions of this particular Polly Pocket knockoff, using the same molds with different names and different paint jobs. The others are Pretty Pixies, Petite Princess, and Betty’s Club. I suspect Lovely Kitty was the first — her name is still featured on the Betty’s Club version of the tennis/yacht race set.

I’ll be updating this post as I make new discoveries.

 

The first variant I got is a Pretty Pixies beach house with an easter egg colorscheme. I’m happy that the umbrella was intact. I later picked up a Petite Princess version of the beach house with a grim blue-and-burgundy horror-movie-night palette, and a Betty’s Club mini-locket depicting some kind of tropical campsite infested with rabbits.

 

Also interesting to note is the doll variants. Lovely Kitty looks like an albino blow-up doll, but her twins are much better painted and resemble proper pigtailed girls molded in better plastic. I suspect these are the dolls that go with Betty’s Club, though, because ebay listings of complete Pretty Pixies sets show yet another variant of Kitty with red hair and navy blue outfit: derp-wise she appears to be a hybrid of the first two, with normal skin tone but badly drawn-on face.

Most interesting of all the dolls is the smaller, better-dressed, and non-articulated Kitty, of which two have already popped up on Polly facebook groups lately. Her base is the same shape as the others, which originally led me to believe she was none other than the titular Petite Princess. However, I recently discoverd that was not the case when I purchased a carded ‘Princess set with the same red-haired doll mentioned above. So the identity of this little gal is still a mystery. (EDIT: Mystery solved in this article.)

 

It does appear, however, that Petite Princess included makeup items to set her apart from her cousins. The size of the cards appears to vary drastically as well.

 

 

Further inspection reveals the cardback referring to the product as “Petite Miss”, making things even more confusing.

lovely kitty alts 4

Betty’s Club also sports this odd anomaly. Even on the cards, all the sets are the same, so I’m not sure where this fifth set came from — clearly a redesign of the yacht races set that I have. It clearly says Betty’s Club on the outside of the compact.

EDIT 6/4/2019: It must be an early version, because a carded one just popped up with yet another toy line name, Claire’s Secret Locket. The doll for this set is very different as well: no pigtails, and no waist hinge, but clearly it’s what the pigtailed version is based on.

Trouble in Pollytown

Posted by mikemacdee on April 21, 2018
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I’ve inadvertently become a Polly Pocket collector thanks to Mom and Grandma finding a ton of Polly Pocket houses at an antique store for a ridiculously low $9 apiece. None of them had the people in them, so I’ve started populating my ghost town.

polly pocket (1)

polly pocket (3)

Four buildings so far, with a handful of inhabitants. It’s like when you build a village in Minecraft and have to bust your ass just to populate it. And the occasional nightmarish creature shows up out of nowhere.

EDIT: The town has grown considerably…

Small World – Pocket Paradise

Posted by mikemacdee on January 5, 2018
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I recently discovered the company Hinstar produced a ton of weird little knockoff toy lines in the 80s or 90s, mostly in the form of 6-inch vinyl soldier toys. Apparently they also dabbled briefly in the mini-playset scene with Small World – Pocket Paradise.

No idea why this series of toys was given the Small World header, unless there were other mini-playsets by Hinstar (EDIT: there indeed were, such as Power Striker Rangers). What’s interesting is that they’re sort of a Polly Pocket / Mighty Max style toy, but with a bootleg Sanrio flavor: all the figures are cartoon animals, which I initially mistook for carnival prizes since all these toys are carnival themed.

hinstar pocket paradise (3)

They are indeed endearing in their shoddiness. I was sure this one came with a frog, but I was mistaken. The hippo is pretty darn cute though.

hinstar pocket paradise (4)

I got this one because it had a ton of figures and I liked the design of the collapsing ferris wheel. There is also a train set, an eatery/octopus merry-go-round, and another one I have yet to identify.

There are also two or three mini-playsets with wrist straps, one of which I managed to get carded. The card was partly popped off from age (see yellowed plastic in bubble) and held on with staples, so I removed the staples in order to take it out whenever I want. Despite having nearly a dozen of these little Sanrio knockoff characters now, I still don’t have Bizarro Keroppi!

There’s also this impressive Apple Hotel jumbo playset I’d love to get my hands on.

My Melody – Tearing Down the House

Posted by mikemacdee on January 5, 2018
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I’m a sucker for cute shit.

mymel house 01

A sucker. That’s why I broke down and bought a My Melody dollhouse, and only partly because I liked the little behooded bunny as a child in the 80s.

Sanrio had a ton of these cute playsets produced from 2005 to about 2009(?), and they’re pretty much all like this: somewhat modular and highly elaborate playsets with lots of bright colors and metric tons of furniture and decals. There’s a “do-it-yourself” element to them as well, which can also be fun if you’re into building and modeling, but if you get this toy for a daughter or little sister, you may want to help them assemble it, since you’ll likely need sprue cutters and a hobby knife to get the job done without breaking anything.

Some parts seem more fragile than others, so you’ll wanna be a bit cautious. The figures are thin, hollow plastic, not solid like I had first thought, and a few pieces like the flowers and bath faucet look like they wouldn’t last very long in the hands of a careless child. Get something like this for someone who knows how to care for their miniatures.

The trickiest part to deal with is the house extension that clips into the front yard: the first time you do it is a little tough because it has never been assembled before, so the pegs have to force their way through the holes in the yard decal; after that it’s a bit more manageable. If you want you can probably make the pegs shorter so it’s easier to add/remove, or cut them off altogether to make the house more modular. Now it can be a front room extension, a basement, you name it. The whole playset can be packed away inside itself like a bento box, which is pretty nice. I worry constantly about the little bathtub faucet, but that might be my anal-retentive gene kicking in.

You don’t have to apply any of the cutesy decals, either. You could easily make your own if you’re at all artistically inclined.

As a kid I had to play with girl toys more than once, and I usually managed to anger the girls with my deranged creativity. As I’ve stated in previous posts, a dollhouse is a blank slate where anything can happen. Doesn’t have to be just for playing house.

Sure, she has an air of sweetness and innocence about her. That’s so you don’t suspect the basement sex dungeon hidden behind the kitchen cupboards.

mymel house 14

“Take your flowery shit and GET OUT, you two-timing hussy!”

mymel house 17

Living out in the country has its downsides. Twenty miles to the nearest comic shop!

Also spiders.

Guest Blog Post at Little Weirdos

Posted by mikemacdee on December 14, 2017
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I wrote a guest blog post about Sammy Steel for the awesome Little Weirdos blog about collecting odd little toys and figures. Check it out here!

I give a basic overview of the toy line and summarize each of its three series. The article uses an assortment of photos from my Sammy Steel articles.

SS UK COMP 2