Skooter

So yesterday’s mail brought my first Skooter to my house.

[(c) Henson/Disney. Image from Wikipedia. Click for source.]

No, no, not Scooter!  Skooter!  This girl:

Skooter is (was?) Skipper’s friend, with an even sillier name than “Skipper.” 😛  (Maybe they sounded more normal back in the ’60s.)  Skooter was a short-lived doll, only made from 1965 to 1968, unlike Skipper, who’s been pretty much omnipresent since her introduction.

The swimsuit she’s wearing is actually Skipper’s.  (Naturally, just like Barbie and her friends, Skipper and Skooter share the same body, and can thus share their wardrobes.)  Skooter originally came in a red and white two-piece swimsuit, according to the photos on DollReference.com.  (And yes, that is the primary source of my knowledge on Skooter.  I knew her face instantly on seeing it because I’d seen pictures in a Mattel fashion doll book, but I hadn’t done more than glance at those pages of the book, and the shelf the book is on is currently blocked by stuff I’m storing for my brother prior to his move, so I can’t look at it right now.)

Anyway, Skooter here came from shopgoodwill.com, and…well, I’m going to have a lot to say on that subject towards the end of the post, so for right now I’ll just talk about the lot Skooter came in.  Naturally, she was listed as a Skipper, not a Skooter, and she came with a case and some clothes.

Probably the most common vintage Skipper case on the planet. 😛  The hinge is a little rusty, and the lids cave in a bit, and it’s generally not in the greatest shape, which is probably why the bidding never got too high…in which case the other bidders were not looking at the real treasure of the lot:

Look at her!  She’s practically perfect!  Her hair isn’t even mussed up!  Clearly, this is a doll that was not played with, but simply sat/stood on a shelf, being admired.  So she’ll already be used to her life here. 😛

So, moving back to the case, here’s the interior, with some of the clothes inside.  (Please ignore the doll stands I had to use to get it to stay open for the photo. 😛 )  See that black line across the one side of the case?  That’s the string that was holding Skooter in place in transit.  Anyway, there’s a detail I want you to notice here:

It’s a little dolly closet!  You can hang up all her clothes on hangers inside!  That is completely cool.  Why don’t modern Barbie carrying cases do that?  (Oh, wait, modern playline Barbies want you to buy whole new dolls, rather than new clothes…)

This is a cute outfit, but the tights ensure it has to be put on the original Skipper/Skooter body only, and can’t be shared with, say, a Blythe or a Licca or a Pullip.

Yeah, you heard me.  See, I was looking at Etsy for new clothes for my girls, and in searching for clothes to put on that late 80s Skipper I got at the local used place (who still kind of smells funny, even after being washed, I’m sorry to say), I saw that some of my search results were showing vintage Skipper clothes on Blythes.  And one of the sellers mentioned how nicely they fit.  That should have just made me irritated that the vintage Skipper collectors were going to have to compete with the Blythe crowd as well as their fellow vintage Skipper collectors to get the vintage clothes…but it actually made me go “ooh, then surely Skippers can wear Blythe clothes!” which meant I had a whole new avenue to look in for clothes to put on the 80s Skipper.  (I’ve decided on a nice outfit for her, but I haven’t actually bought it yet for reasons.)

Anyway, since Blythe and Pullip can swap wardrobes decently, I thought I’d have Barbara and Selina model two of the outfits from this lot.

This actually looks pretty cute on Barbara, doesn’t it?  She’s going to keep wearing it for a while.

This one’s actually a Barbie dress, not a Skipper dress, and it seems to be homemade.  Anyway, I thought it matched Selina’s current wig pretty well (though the yellows look more similar in the shot where I didn’t use the flash, but then Selina’s eyes looked all dark and creepy) so I had her wear it for the photo.  Then I put her back in the articulated Silkstone’s little black dress, ’cause this one looks rather awful on her. 😛

Her hand was hiding this little stain in the previous shot.  Looks like pen, doesn’t it?

(The gallery for this post is here.)

Anyway, so that’s what came yesterday in my first package from the Goodwill auction site.    Emphasis, unfortunately, on “first.”  I got excited looking at all that was available, and made a lot of bids on things that were quite inexpensive, never bidding all that much.  (I think the highest maximum bid I placed was about $40.)

But I forgot to look at the shipping costs.

Some of them are very reasonable.  And some of them are very much not so.  For example, this Tonner doll with a real weight of 1.9 pounds, and a “shipping weight” of 16 pounds.  Which means they charge you for the shipping as if it weighed 16 pounds, instead of 1.9.  Fortunately, on that one, I noticed the shipping cost before placing a bid on her.

Then there’s this Barbie, with a shipping weight of 8 times her actual weight, and a fixed shipping cost of $11.75, despite that she’s in a box that’s already had the crap beaten out of it!  And no, on this one I did not notice the shipping cost in time…and the only other person to bid on it bid just the tiniest amount too little to outbid me. 😦  So, yes, I just paid more in shipping than I did for the doll.  And that’s not the only time that’s happened.

The thing is, the first couple of bids I made were for things that were about to close, and I still got outbid at the last minute.  So I had gone on the assumption that most of the things I bid on would go the same way, that I’d lose in the last half hour.  And so I made a lot of stupid little bids, figuring that the chances of my winning any of the auctions were very slim.  (Especially since in most cases I was bidding less than I felt it was worth on the open market.)  But then on a lot of them I didn’t get outbid.  (The annoying one is the Barbie where I put in a max bid $10.00, and ended up paying $9.20.  If the other person had also bid $10.00, that’d be one thing, but they must have bid $8.20.  Who bids a weird amount like that?)

While I’m definitely annoyed at Goodwill for the crazy shipping costs, I’m mostly just pissed at myself for not noticing them until it was too late.  (Though that Barbie with the $11.75 shipping cost is decidedly the worst offender.  There’s no contest, in fact.  That’s way too much shipping for what’s essentially a loose (modern) doll in mint condition.)

The good thing is that I learned quickly, and I’m not making any more bids except in cases of things I feel like “ooh, I gotta have that or I’m gonna expire of longing!”.  Or for any Blythe or She-ra items.  (Blythe, of course, being unlikely apart from the LPS variety.  But She-ra is much more likely.  In fact, one of the few things I did get outbid on was She-ra’s Crystal Palace.)  Or at least on things with either very reasonable shipping or which are being sold by my local Goodwill, so I can pick ’em up in person.

The bad thing is that despite that it seemed like such a great bargain (and, actually, shipping costs notwithstanding, in most cases it still was) I ended up spending a great deal without meaning to, so many of the Etsy purchases I lined up in my cart are going to have to stay there for a while.  (Especially since I already made some of the purchases…)  That means most of my girls don’t get their new clothes after all. 😦  (I only got Romana’s and Hayley’s ordered.  And if I use the $22 that got added to my Paypal after I made all the Goodwill payments (ugh, timing!) it’s probably going to be to get the outfit for the ’80s Skipper, ’cause that outfit’s sold out before, and I don’t want to miss it again.  So Pyrrha and Rena may have to make do with clothes I already have around here.)

Anyway, going back to the very first line of the post, you may have noticed I said “my first Skooter.”  That’s ’cause one of the other items was also a Skooter — this time a blonde one (who was also listed as a Skipper).  But I only just had to pay for her this morning, so she won’t be here for a while, and I thought it was better to get this up now, instead of waiting for her.  (She’s coming nude, though, so she’ll be getting the red and white outfit with the tights from the case here.)

I’m going to have to go on a serious dolly diet now — especially since I desperately need to go clothes shopping for myself! — but with all those packages headed this way, there should be lots to post about.    And hopefully starting next week I’ll be able to clean up enough around here to let me do more stuff.  I have a project in mind that’s going to require lots of space, but should be awesome if I can get it accomplished.  But I’ll give that its own post. 😉