Terryist

 

Lottie Dolls

 

Vintage Style

 

Kids Must Know

 

Win what now?

Google 4B Movement

 

Yeah, right

The New Clone on the Block

Xianxian Princess dolls may not be cloning Barbie, but they do appeal to the adult Barbie collectors. Considered as an IT doll clone, they offer the FR vibe (minus the fashion sense), but come at playline Barbie  prices. (Note: Prices may have gone up since I first ordered but there are still other sellers/apps offering at lower prices.)

The 1st doll I got (above) including the two fashion sets shown (sold separately; the hat came with the swimsuit set but the wedge shoes are from my collection) costs less than the discounted Barbie Looks dolls (the ones with the pastel 90s looks)! The Barbie Looks doll came with just one meh look.

The Xianxian Princess dolls only come in two skin tones and I won't be expecting more. There's another clone doll (Mengf) that offers more skin tones but I haven't tried them. I tried another unknown clone doll body and I had a problem color-matching it with Barbie heads. That failure kept me from trying Mengf specially since Mengf doll bodies cost at least twice as much as Xianxian dolls and even that unknown doll body. At least, Xianxian comes with its own head, in case none of the Barbies match.

Unknown Clone Doll

Just like the Miss Melody doll, this unknown clone doll has a cheap hollow plastic body. It also has thinly rooted hair, located only in the middle part. The vintage hairstyle and the austere look got to me so I decided to take her home. Let's call her Cosette from now on.

Miss Melody

This clone doll came packaged like those vintage baggie Barbie dolls. Its body is made of hollow plastic. It had the label "Miss Melody". Aside from the blond hair, the actual doll didn't look like the doll on the label. The doll on the label had round eyes. Her austere expression and almond-shaped eyes appealed to me. Even if her eyes used to be blue, I saw a possibility.

I have been wanting an Asian counterpart for the Barbies with the nostalgic head mold. I don't mean the nostalgic head painted with Asian features like in the BFMC. I want something like Fabiola of Hollywood, but she is hard to get. (Hey, Mattel. Here's an idea. Instead of selling the nostalgic mold all by itself, give her more vintage friends with distinct molds and ethnicity. Rewrite some of what was wrong in Barbie herstory.)

While I wait for the re-imagination of Barbie's past, Miss Melody will have to be one of Barbie's vintage friends. I plucked all her blond hair out. It was just rooted in the middle part, so it wasn't that hard. I painted her eyes brown and lend her a vintage Fashion Queen Barbie wig. She is Miss Melody no more. Let's call her Diyan.

Defa Lucy

 

If you need no bourgeoisie dolls, clones are the way to go. One of the more popular clones comes from the Defa brand, Lucy. She knows how to make a scene with an upcoming relaunch.  Despite the criticism of inclusivity, she do what she do. A doll with Chinese roots, she don't need nobody to tell her how to run it. She got herself some baddies, it's simple as that.

Defa-neatly, we love her once, but will we love her twice with the relaunch? She will run it, run, run it. This is no debut. Will she go the bourgeoisie way? It's time to roll the dice.

Filipina Igorot Doll

 

My first dolls were modern Barbie clones. After nearly 2 decades of collecting Barbie dolls, I now find myself collecting clones dolls. I feel like they have their own stories to tell, just like this Filipina Igorot doll.

This doll appealed to me because it was made in my country. I also like the details (the authentic Igorot fabric and wooden beads) on the costume. Most importantly, it came in a clone doll price. It was inspired by the Ethnic Barbie dolls released in the 90s, but unlike the Mattel dolls, these dolls have flat feet. The face sculpt seems like a clone of the Teresa face mold.

A quick search on the web showed other variants. The dolls below were searched from the web, and are not mine.

Playing the Blame Game and Dolls

ICYMI, a lot of Barbie dolls are now made in Indonesia, and less from China. This did not prevent Chinese sellers from offering Barbie dolls at competitive prices. I recently bought a Barbie Looks doll from a Chinese seller (not from any local seller) because the price was unbeatable.

How can Chinese businesses offer cheaper prices for the same item? No, it's not because they sell knock-offs! Their government subsidizes favored businesses allowing them to sell their goods for less. If this continues, local sellers, especially the official local distributor (Richwell aka Richprime aka KidsCompany) might suffer. Not only does the Philippine government offer little to no subsidies, the government also tax imported goods (even if they have no direct local competition) making Barbie's more expensive. The local SRP of a Barbie Looks doll is a little over US$50.

If I have to buy from Richwell, I wait for the sale season or maybe after a year after the release. They usually offer huge discounts by then. Barbie's popularity has declined despite the movie, sellers still have stocks years after the initial release. 

Of course, you can't blame the local sellers for selling at a high price. They got it for a high price as well. In the same manner, you can't blame buyers who buy from China since they want to get the best value out of their hard-earned money. I blame the government but I wouldn't expect most doll collectors to agree.

Surveillance capitalism

That's one reason why I don't use popular social media as much as I used to.

Sites owned by Google, Meta, X, and others collect user information, like behavior patterns and user interests. They use this information to keep feeding you information you are most likely to be interested in. Sounds nice, so far, right? 

Wait until you learn what they do to that information.

They can sell it to others who can use the information to package something you don't like with something you like, making you open to that thing you don't like. As you get more and more exposed to it, you'll start to question yourself if your not liking it was even valid.

Example: You like stand-up comedy. You don't like sexist jokes.

Posts on stand-up comedy get pushed into your feed. The sites test how you react to different levels/kinds of sexist jokes. Maybe you're a person of color, so jokes on dumb blondes don't affect you as much. Since the dumb blonde jokes are packaged with other jokes, you like the post. Maybe you're from the working class, so you like a content with a joke on privileged clueless women, regardless of their race.  It has other LOL jokes, so you hit the heart icon. The sites can run different tests on you and eventually you might realize that some women deserve to be laughed at.

They split hair with your value system and find ways to control you. They affect your purchasing behavior. (You didn't buy the last doll if you haven't seen it in some social media content.) They affect how you choose your government leaders.  They desensitize you, or worse, make you oblivious to on-going war crimes.

Fediverse: The Alternative

Recently, I discovered the decentralized social media sites. How do I describe it? It's like X but all other letters are involved (for illustration purposes: A to Z). Y registered users can interact with the posts from A to Z sites(aka server, aka instance). Y users don't have to make an account on the other sites as long as the other sites are federated with the Y site. 

The cool thing is that any person with enough programming skills and material resources can set up a site. The sad thing is that a malicious character can do the same and set up a malicious site. The good thing is that any site can defederate from the problematic sites, meaning the problematic sites cannot access the other sites. The best thing is not one entity/corporation is in control of all the data and user information.

Mastodon is an alternative to Twitter/X, while PixelFed is an alternative to Instagram. Everything in the fediverse is in the early stage, lacking other features from popular sites. Aside from the confusing initial choice of server/site in which to set up an account, there is also the initial lack of feed since it's hard to find a sub-niche interest in an already niche set-up. Once you find and interact with people having the same interests as you, you'll get the ball rolling.

I'm just glad that there's an alternative to the popular social media sites. For now, most of my doll posts will be in the fediverse.

Here's a glimpse of a doll content from a Mastodon intance of the fediverse.

Are these sweatshop doll clothes?

I got these from China (thru a version of AliExpress), that's one. The prices are cheap, I can't help think that some slave labor is involved. The quality of the pieces are better than the current playline Barbie clothes.

If these came from sweatshops, am I  a bad person for supporting an entity that exploits human labor? Also, these came from a country that is aggressively encroaching on our national territory. Does that make me twice as bad?

A course on "Wealth and Poverty" from Robert Reich posted on YouTube helped me answer some of my questions. I'm sharing it here as it may help you, too.