Beast Girl Misaki doll to be released soon!

There’s a lady from Japan coming soon for her fans - and it is none other than Misaki from the FR: Nippon Collection. Created by David Buttry, Beast Girl Misaki is released by FR: Nippon, so pricing and other details will be handled through their distribution channels and dealers. Integrity Toys is not selling the doll and neither is the W Club. Azone is allowing priority pre-ordering from US and international customers starting at some time on February 5th, 2021 from any one of the following sources (check these sites out from time to time starting on Feb. 5th):

http://www.1999.co.jp/eng

http://www.hlj.com

Japanese customers ONLY will be able to purchase her directly from the Azone site:

https://www.azone-int.co.jp/azonet/

Please note that the exact time that this doll will be going live is not known. And have in mind the different time zone (Tokyo is GMT+9).

No pricing or other details like edition number, skin tone etc. were available, although rumour is that she will retail near $200.00, She reminds me a lot of Billie Eilish - who has released two different dolls in her likeness so far.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Prototypes shown, final product may vary. For adult collectors ages 15 and up only.

Doll cannot stand alone; a doll stand is included. For adult collectors 15 years and up only.

All photos and information contained herein is copyrighted Integrity Toys, Inc. and Intercap Merchant Partners, LLC 2021 and may not be reprinted or disseminated without express written permission. FASHION ROYALTY, POPPY PARKER, NU. FACE, METEOR, EAST 59TH and all other character marks followed by ™ or ® are trademarks of Integrity Toys, Inc. Chesapeake City MD USA 21915. All rights reserved. The W Club is a trademark of Intercap Merchant Partners, LLC. All rights reserved.

Doll Photography by Jayme Thornton and Ahmet Steltman; Layouts and graphics by Alain Tremblay, Marketing

Happy 61st birthday Barbie!

It’s the 61st birthday for the famous fashion doll, Barbie, or Barbara Millicent Roberts, as is her full name. To honour the anniversary, let’s check out some collector Barbies that were unveiled these past few days.

First up is the Japanese Barbie Convention 2020 doll. The convention was cancelled due to coronavirus, but the doll will be sent to those that were to attend. Designed by Carlyle Nuera, she is a vision in red. The concept for convention Barbies this year is Chromatic Couture and Japan got the red one. The sculpt is madam LaVinia and she’s dressed in a faux leather bralette, satin palazzo pants and a red tulle bodysuit. Her hair and make up are all red too. This is my favourite of the two convention dolls.

The second doll is the Paris Fashion Doll Festival 2020 exclusive Barbie, unveiled this past weekend in Paris. She’s in total blue, part of the Chromatic Couture concept. Again designed by Carlyle Nuera, she has the Mari face sculpt and is dressed in a high-low bubble hem gown with puff sleeves made of two-tone metallic blue taffeta, with a powder tulle blue overlay and clear blue jewellery & shoes. Her make up and hair are all in shades of blue.

And finally, sketches of some of the last BFMC dolls were revealed in the past days. This collection is on its last year and Rober Best is trying to end it in the best possible way. The first one is Best To A Tea. She’s wearing a Chanel style suit. We have seen lots of them on Silkstone dolls and they are all lovely, so I guess this one will be too.

There will be a giftset released too, named The Best Look - a play on the designer’s name perhaps? The sketches look gorgeous, even though the outfits look a lot like past releases. A redhead in grey or black will look smashing. Wondering if she will be in the latest, articulated Silkstone body or the original one. I know most BFMC collectors would prefer the latter.

Anna Sui Japan does Barbie as part of her Swinging Tokyo Collection!

Anna Sui, the well known US fashion designer, has launched a new project called "SWINGING TOKYO". Taking inspiration from the 1960s London street culture "Swinging London", which is the origin of her creation, she proposes a fashion that can be enjoyed freely and urbanely for the next generation of Tokyo. In this project, she initiated a collaboration with various other creatives. From May 1st, 2019 (Wednesday), sales begin at Isetan Shinjuku and the official online shop (Japan).

One of the project’s collections is a collaboration with Barbie. There are four types of dolls combined with an outfit designed by Anna Sui and an original mug, comprising a set of Barbie Doll and Anna Sui collection-ware that will be cherished by all ages. The combination of the catchy and girly world of both brands is a must-see for fans. Each set is sold for ¥21,600 (about US$194.00). There are some T-shirts too. The title below and all information are translated from the Japanese site.

Barbie and Girlish Chemical Reaction Collection 

According to the Japanese website, special items created from the "SWINGING TOKYO" project will start being sold sequentially at the Isetan Shinjuku Store and Anna Sui Official Online Shop from Wednesday, May 1st, 2019. I could not find any Barbie items online yet. The price is expensive for the doll quality: it is just a $5.00 play line doll repackaged in a Sui branded box. You do get an Anna Sui dress with her plus the mug but $190.00 for these is just too much. Remember that a Barbie collector designer doll is usually $100-150. And they are very limited. I wouldn’t pay even half the price for those sets, knowing of probably discard the doll. My favourite is the black dress with the bow. And for that price, they could have given each set a differently coloured mug, no?

© All photos 2019 Mattel. All Rights Reserved.

The debut of Dancing Queen Kylie at the FR: Nippon™ Collection

Integrity Toys just introduced Kylie™, a Misaki friend from the FR: Nippon™ Collection. The new doll is limited to an edition size of 300 dolls only. Kylie is a 12-inch plastic fashion doll with rooted hair and hand-applied eyelashes. She comes dressed with a dress and accessories include a purse, a ring, a bracelet, earrings and long platform boots. A doll stand is also included. Note: Kylie uses the Erin 1.0 head sculpt.

As the Misaki line is part of FR: Nippon, pricing and other details will be handled through their distribution channels and dealers. Kylie will be sold directly through the two US partners listed below only; Integrity Toys will not be selling the doll directly.

Azone is allowing priority pre-ordering from US and international customers through September 16th, 2018 at 10 PM Eastern time from either one of these sources:

Denise's Dolls

Fabric Friends Dolls

Note: After the September 16th deadline, remaining dolls will be offered on the Integrity Toys Japan website, maintained by Azone.

She’s a cute doll and I like her Chanel style bag and gorgeous disc earrings. If I collected Misaki I’d be thrilled to get her. What do you think?

Note: The doll pictured in the following images is a prototype. Final textures, fabrics and colors may vary slightly. Doll cannot stand alone, a doll stand is included. For adult collectors 15 years and up only.

All photos and information contained herein is copyrighted Integrity Toys, Inc. and Intercap Merchant Partners, LLC 2018 and may not be reprinted or disseminated without express written permission.

FASHION ROYALTY, POPPY PARKER, NU. FACE, EAST 59TH, THE INDUSTRY and all other character marks followed by ™ or ® are trademarks of Integrity Toys, Inc. Chesapeake City MD USA 21915. All rights reserved.

The W Club is a trademark of Intercap Merchant Partners, LLC. All rights reserved.

Doll Photography by Jayme Thornton. Layouts and graphics by Alain Tremblay, Marketing

Italian Doll Convention 2018 - Day II: the Gala night

Saturday is the busiest day of IDC: seminars, presentations, the fashion show and the gala dinner! For most of us It begun early in the morning, as we had to go and get the extra blond version of the convention doll, Ciao Poppy! She’s gorgeous but I do prefer the pink haired one. This one will go to my friend Maria of Habilis Dolls, who could not attend. And that is why you see her in the box.

Then it was time for a great presentation. My dear friend (we finally met!) Ada of Papusile Mele was giving us a lecture about Manga in Doll Culture! She showed us all the famous manga characters that got made into dolls, like Astro Boy, Lady Oscar, Sailor Moon and Candy Candy, giving us many details about manga history in between. Lots of rare and OOAK dolls were shown in the accompanying slideshow. 

We stayed in Japan with the next presentation: the story of the doll Licca, by the lovely Kazuko Hosokawa. Not only she told us the amazing tale of how Licca came to be, with lots of details and how she developed throughout the years until now, but also brought with her part of her incredible Licca collection, with the complete original Licca family a stand out. Both this and the previous presentation had the awesome Antonio Russo helping out with the translation, from English to Italian. Some dolls and gifts were raffled to attendees, ending the presentation in a most ideal way.

Third presentation of the day was called PoppyParkerly, this time dedicated of course to last night’s star, the lovely Poppy Parker: Daniela Ferrando talked about how the 60s are perceived aesthetically nowadays through our modern sensibilities compared to how it was back then, by using the 60s contemporary Barbies and today’s Poppies.  

The last presentation was a much anticipated interview: dear Ada got the chance to ask the talented Linda Kyaw, Mattel designer and stylist of @barbiestyle, lots and lots of questions about her career, Barbie in the past, now and the future. The questions were send by Ada’s readers and, strangely enough, Mattel did not censor them! The interview was very informative even for people who are not even doll collectors. Linda is very intelligent, gracious and kind. She answered all questions, avoiding pitfalls and confidential information of course, and, with Ada being a wonderful interviewer, the session was a blast. It was accompanied by lots of Linda designed Barbies in displays and ended with lots of dolls and other gifts being raffled to attendees.

Linda’s OOAK contribution to the IDC auction  

Me with Linda Kyaw  

After a brief interval (and a change of clothes), it was back at IDC for the Cartoonia parade fashion show! Anyone interested had registered for participating in this show, dressing up as a cartoon or doll character of his choice. The catwalk was set up in one of the hotel ballrooms. The show was a hoot: participants had incredible outfits, that had taken them countless days to make, complimented by styling, make up and hairstyles matching their characters, not to mention the choreography each one had prepared for their presentation. Lots of compliments, applause and bravos to all participants for the show that everyone thoroughly enjoyed! The photos of the show below (as a slideshow) are by another Greek collector that was there, Makis (thank you so much dearest!), as my seat was not ideal for catwalk photos.

Everyone attending the runway show could vote for his favourite costume, which was quite difficult as they were all amazing! You just had to give your favourite the corresponding coupon that was given with the rest of the registration stuff.  All participants were assembled at the hotel’s stairs for a last photo op and then it was time for the welcome drink before dinner, or, as Italians call it, l’aperitivo. An hour later, we were ushered into the ballroom for the gala dinner.

Athena was the winner of the runway show

Me with Antonio Russo and Oriele  

The welcome drink space

The whole room was decorated with lots of cartoon elements. Each chair around the big rotunda tables had a transparent balloon tied to its back, lit up with a string of colourful led lights. The centerpiece was a Barbie doll made up as a comics/cartoon hero by doll design duo Lantis Kelly and Catia Destro. Each seat also has a pair of sketches made by Living Plastic Doll for the gala.

The centerpiece doll

I had been assigned to one of the Spanish tables, table no.20, with the lovely Lionel as our wonderful and amazing host. The table gifts were all amazing and I added mine to the bunch: cute mini polka dot dresses in various colours, with matching headband bows and earrings, all made to order by my dearest friend Maria from Habilis Dolls. I already knew Lionel and José from Facebook and got to meet the rest of the table mates there for the first time, all amazing and some of the best I could have: Christelle, Fito, Francisco, Gloria, Maria, Nuria and Pepita! My warmest thank yous and best wishes, you were all amazing!

From left: Lionel, me, Gloria and Fito

Table gifts! You can see one of the Habilis Doll polka dot dresses I gifted on the top left of this photo.

After a beautiful ballet introduction, with the dancers dressed in Disney prince and princess outfits, Mario Paglino took the stage, welcoming everyone. He talked about the recipient of this year’s charity auction profits, Dynamo Camp and introduced their team. Then it was time for a speech from Linda Kyaw about Barbie, its history and its future, as next year is the doll’s 60th birthday. There was no preview of anything regarding that front, but we got to see lots of gorgeous Barbie photos, some of which were shown for the first time in public. Then Gianni surprised everyone by announcing that there was a gift for everyone, a special limited edition book (300 copies) dedicated to Linda Kyaw and filled with photos of her Barbie dolls, exclusive to the convention and Mattel approved: The World Of Linda Kyaw. A gorgeous book, printed in quality paper, with lots of doll photos! 

The dancers  

Mario welcomes everyone  

Linda Kyaw speaking  

Karl Lagerfeld OOAK doll  

Ralph Lauren OOAK doll  

60th anniversary logo

Lots of gifts were raffled off to attendees during the night, including many dolls. Our table won two of them! After dessert it was time for the convention doll. No surprises here, it was the same doll that was presented in the Paris and Tokyo conventions, Striking In Stripes Barbie. She is Gold label, has the Karl sculpt and a model muse body. Designed by Bill Greening, she wears an asymmetrical striped evening dress, with black strappy sandals, silver clutch bag and matching jewellery. It’s my first official convention doll (that I get while attending I mean), so I’m keeping her.  

Then it was time for the extra convention Barbie, the one designed by Magia 2000, Mario and Gianni. This one was based on the Totally Hair Barbie, remade by Magia 2000, with new hairstyle, make up, freckles and a spectacular dress with an overskirt in custom printed fabric (with comic related print) and a black body hugging Lycra dress encrusted with colourful rhinestones. She wears black stockings, pink shoes embellished with crystals and star crystal earrings. Miniatures of her own special box and the official convention booklet created by Roger Corbeau were included. 

One could see the OOAK benefit auction dolls in display in a corner of the ballroom. The talented creators really outdid themselves, as you can see in the photos below. How lucky are the people that bought them! The centerpiece dolls were raffled to each table, ours was won by Christelle - contrary to IT conventions, here you win both centerpiece doll and base for free.

After lots of fun, laughs, raffles and doll fun, we were ready to wrap things up and call it a day - there was a disco set up in another hotel hall for people that wanted to continue but it was already late and I had to catch the last metro train back to my hotel. The next post will be about the third and final day of IDC. 

Milano Centrale station