The Doctor Is In

Technically, the expedition was to get a Wiimote controller for my brother’s WiiU.  (That didn’t even get bought, because the store only had a neon pink one, and he would have felt a bit self-conscious about that.)  But in looking at the used toys, I found something truly astonishing…

The Doctor!

This particular store shrink-wraps loose used dolls, and his scarf was covering his face, so it was really the scarf that caught my eye, of course.  (K-9 was shrink-wrapped along with him, near his feet, though I didn’t notice him until a moment later.  I don’t think his scale is quite right, though; certainly he wasn’t made at anywhere near the same time.)

Close-up

Not the greatest face sculpt in history, but certainly not the worst, either.  It’s certainly recognizably Tom Baker, which puts it a step above many other television show tie-in toys of the era.  Yes, “of the era.”  I checked the copyright date on his back:

OMG, this doll is almost as old as I am!

Seriously, who sells these things in?  You’ve got a classic piece of Doctor Who merchandise, in good condition, and you sell it for a song to a second-hand store in a mall in the Midwest instead of online for a much higher price?  WTF?  I mean, I’m not complaining, because I got my hands on something I’d never have dreamed of even looking for, much less buying, online, but…it’s really weird.

Cheap clothes

Of course, this “doll” was intended as a large-scale action figure for boys, so they scrimped on the clothes wherever they could.  😛  So he can’t take his jacket off unless he wants to look ridiculous.  And he’s a touch too small for Ken clothes.  Maybe Liv boy’s clothes–though I only have the one outfit of those, and it’s not exactly the Doctor’s style–or G.I. Joe, but that would be even worse. 😛

😀 4 x 4 😀

The weird part here is that only the blocky little mini-figure was bought new.  The Star Wars figure sized one was bought at another location of this same used store chain, and the other one was bought at a sci-fi convention.  (It is, however, a new figure, unlike the Star Wars figure sized one, which dates to the 1980s, as far as I know.)

Anyway, I spent quite a while looking through the other loose dolls, in case there were other amazing finds.  I saw a couple of Gatchaman dolls–with fairly creepy faces–but mostly it was the usual assortment.  Except they did have one more of interest:

Styre

Styre here is in a different scale and is a much more recent line.  The different scale is okay, though, since Sontarans are supposed to be short anyway.  (Annoying story about Styre.  The price tag had fallen off him, so I had to ask when I was checking out how much he cost.  The woman at the register had to ask someone else, and when he comes over to tell us how much he cost, he addresses his “he’s this much, is that okay?” question not to me, the person standing at the register, but to my brother, who’s standing further away from the register, clearly not in the position of person about to pay.  Because obviously a woman is not going to be buying Doctor Who merchandise, right?  Ugh.  If it had been new show merchandise, he probably would have addressed the question to me, but since it was the original…)  I actually got a different toy from this line at that very same store earlier:

Cyberleader

The Cyberleader was the only one that seemed worth getting while new and full-price, but Styre was worth getting used, especially since he was about the right scale to go with the Doctor I was getting. 😛  But Styre, of course, is a dyed-in-the-wool villain, because there’s only one good Sontaran:

Strax, who thought you might want some grenades. Or help.

Anyway, I just had to play around a little with my new Doctor doll.  (Ooh, that sounded awful!)

Doctor: Oh, Romana, there you are! What on Gallifrey are you wearing?

K-9: Negative, Master. That is not the Mistress.

Doctor: I beg your pardon, I seem to have lost my companion. Have you seen her? About your height. By the way, would you like a jelly baby?

Okay, yeah, that was pretty stupid.  For a lot of reasons.  (Including that my frankendoll’s hair is darker than Lala Ward’s.)

Anyway, now I find myself even more insane.

Let me explain that statement.  As I have mentioned before, one of my “dolly dreams” is to own a real, full-size Blythe doll.  Although I have a “factory girl” (a.k.a. Blythe clone) on the way, that’s not really a substitute for the real thing.  And one of the Blythes on my Blythe wishlist on Amazon (I keep about six or seven wishlists on Amazon, just so I can keep an eye on prices in case they suddenly drop (don’t laugh, I have two dolls on the way that dropped from $20 to $10)) is Country Summer, which I had to add to my wishlist as soon as I saw her, because she looks like Romana II.  (Another one is, I believe, called something like Cassiopeia Spice, and I added her ’cause she reminded me of Jo Grant.)  But now that I have this doll, I’ve kind of shifted away from the cheaper Violetina as “I think I want that to be my first real one” to thinking that Country Summer “has to be the one!”  Even though she’s currently $180 on Amazon.  And I looked it up; that’s a $50 price hike since her release a year ago.  Yikes.  On the one hand, her price will undoubtedly continue to climb, but on the other hand, YIKES.

I think I seriously need to start buying lottery tickets.

That or I just have to set myself some kind of serious goal–like cleaning a major portion of my house–and say “No!  You can’t have her unless you meet this goal, or else!”

Well, either way, I definitely shouldn’t allow myself to buy her unless I can make up a suitably Doctor Who explanation for why Romana’s head would have expanded. 😛