The collection

It all started with a single doll.

Isn't that what they all say?

See as a child I wasn't big into dolls despite my mother's attempts. The only doll line I remember actively being into was Cherry Merry Muffin, but I loved TMNTs, He-Man, Transformers.
I was a huge Gargoyles and Conan fan in the 90s, I read predominantly horror books and the "girliest" toys I collected were Littlest Pet Shop figures who my friend and I constructed elaborate soap opera storylines for.

I had barbies sure, but I never really played with them. They'd been my sisters and my cousin's, they were from the late 70s and early 80s and weren't exactly fashionable anymore, but also they were all blonde, blue eyed, skinny and tall. Just like my sister, nothing like short, frizzy haired brunette me.
I just couldn't identify with them, I couldn't be bothered with them all looking exactly the same. How could I construct elaborate plots when the whole cast were clones of one another? Aside from some creepy Stepford situation there wasn't much I could do with them. So they sat in their box.

The things I was into as a kid were trolls, littlest pets, dinosaurs, that sort of thing. I had lego and k'nex and a lot of video games (adventure games mostly)
I was a geek who preferred getting muddy and collecting insects in jars to playing dollies.

So how the heck did I end up collecting dolls?

Well, it all started with a cute redhead.

After my first child was born I had a lot of spare time on my hands. While he was in daycare I wandered around the city looking in charity shops and generally killing time.

I believe it was about 2010.. 

One day I spotted this little redheaded doll laying nude in a pile of cheap necklaces. She was 50p, she had a sweet face, for some unknown reason I found myself taken by her. Perhaps I was feeling particularly nostelgic at the time and just wanted something childish, I don't know, but I bought her on a whim and took her home.


She was, I found out through google searches a Wee 3 friends doll, named Lila or Miranda or something.

I liked her, she had a sweet smile and friendly face and reminded me in a way of toys i'd known as a child.

And so the quest began to find her some clothes.

This search lead me to the Bratz Boyz archive, a site that no longer seems to exist sadly. (man it was useful)
Bratz Boyz clothing I was told would fit this girl great. So I needed to go find some of that.

Ebay searching lead to a lot of dolls and I fell for them. Bratz came out when I was in my late teens, it had very much passed me by as I wasn't looking at toys when I was that age, I was "too old" for dolls so why would I venture into the toy aisle? I do recall my bff and i laughing our butts off at the blurbs on the back of some of the boxes once though, they were so horribly written and tacky.
We thought it was hilarious.

But looking at the dolls as an adult I realised I kinda liked the boy faces. They were cartoony, they were stylised but they had a certain appeal to them. Also a whole line of ONLY boy dolls? heck yeah! where was this when I was a kid? yeesh. Boy dolls just.. weren't a thing. In my suitcase of 30 barbies I had only one solitary ken, and he was ugly and only had one leg.
Boy dolls were, certainly when I was growing up, that second thought, unattractive, generally dressed in awful clothing and stupidly hard to find anyway.
Bratz Boyz on the other hand got fun, at the time trendy clothes, a range of hair and eye and skin colour combinations, cute faces and as they were so mass produced, there were loads to pick from and they were pretty damn cheap.

I grabbed a bundle with extra clothes.

And so the madness began

I started looking at doll forums, rediscovered Sindy and became fascinated with her and started to collect those too.

I discovered My Scene through the Bratz Boyz collecting, and from there learned about Monster High when it was released.

Yeah.. slippery slope indeed.

Nowadays i've sort of lost count.

I have hundreds of dolls from all different ranges and years.

My oldest I believe is my 1962 Tammy

(pictures at some point)