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Shiny things, a roundup.

First up, the newest is probably the one I ordered first but it was a pre-order so, y'know.

Behold, Princess Venus. I'd seen the cute little Q Poskets around but at some point last...summer (checked- literally ordered her the day before my birthday) they pushed them pretty hard and I decided I'd give Venus a whirl. I have Saturn and Pluto on preorder as well, though they were pending on how much I liked Minako here.

She's pretty small but not tiny, and easy to assemble since you just pop the head on the body and the body on the stand. Voila! I went with version A, apparently for all three. I'm still a sucker for Sailor Moon stuff and the princesses are a particular soft spot, so I must resist a lot.



In the background you can see my newest Squishmallow: Cici the red panda.

Like fuck I wasn't buying her. She's so cute! The little ones make it easy to get my cuteness fix without running out of room quite as fast. The downside is they aren't quite as cuddly, though they are still as soft.



Shifting gears, I would like to thank the FB group/person who mentioned these as great for holding swatch sticks. It's amazing. I had to take my last round out before the picture because Adora decided to chomp down on them (rude!) but I popped one back in so you can get an idea of how it works. This way I don't have to spread them out across the desk/printer (good thing because both are kind of a mess) and they take up so much less room. I managed to use this when I was sick and it made swatching in my room much easier. It's technically I think a makeup brush holder, but I'm told it also works quite well for pens, so if I ever finish my swatching, I'll probably switch it to that. I'll try to remember to grab a pic when I do the next round of swatching because it's niftier then. Until that time, enjoy the purple.



Finally, for now anyway, I don't remember if I shared my Hot Topic tale of woe. If so, ignore until the pics. If not, I'll try to make it short. Due to buying my Maid Marian purse, I had Hot Cash at HT. I never have HC so I went to the site to see if there was anything I wanted to buy. Yes. Lots. Any that worked with HC or was available for shipping? Not so much. I finally stumbled across this cute little backpack and fell in love... but very quickly realized I absolutely did not want to walk around wearing anything that said call me because dudes have gotten extra fucking weird lately. But then I saw the tech wallet and decided to give it a shot. If it's not something I can use happily, I'll either gift it to Cass or chalk it up to being right way back when, and it wasn't super expensive when you factor in the HC. If it's good, then huzzah! I grabbed a Luna keychain to hit the HC threshold and now I wait.


Lesse. Worked on my cross stitch and either I've gotten better at it (heh) or the printed pattern wasn't as wonky on this part. Ooh. Ahh.

I think I started with just hel being done and I did the rest of the letters while catching up on The Great North, Abbot Elementary, and Animal Control which I may have started because Vella Lovell is in it and stayed because it amuses me.

I did work on CC, but that's not going to be finished in one day.

Also chatted with Cass and have come to the realization that she's just never going to watch any show I recommend unless it's just the trashiest, stupidest thing, or it's a documentary type thing. Like, I could find the shittiest reality show and recommend it to her and I guarantee she'd watch the whole damn thing but Arcane, any of the Marvel Disney+ shows, Interview, Hilda, and god knows what else? Nope. I've tried recommending stuff she can watch with the kids. Nope, though I do think The Owl House did sneak through. Shorter episodes. Nope. Longer stuff. Nope. But then she'll tell me about no less than three shows she binge watched at someone else's request and it's very much that meme. You know the one. :P AND she will absolutely badger me if I don't watch her stuff. Currently it's Shrinking, which is actually worth the praise, I'll give her that, but since I can't remember the last show she watched for me, I'm a little irked.

But I think I'm focusing on that more than the other things irking me in the conversation because I fear if I give those more of a thought, I'll say something when maybe I shouldn't. TV stuff, eh. It's not like I don't have a fantastic backlog of shows she's suggested (some I have absolutely no intention of watching because just about anything on TLC these days is fucking garbage and I stand by that), it's just I have a higher watch percentage than she does when it comes to our "you should totally watch this show!" back and forth.

Oh. The one exception is that when the yearly (give or take) Mike Flanagan show comes out and I remind her, she will usually watch first (or very shortly after I do, there's almost always overlap) and bitch the whole goddamn time. Except for Midnight Club which she started first, after I pointed out it was coming out, and she did point out the issues but then I finished before she did. But I consider that an entirely different kettle of fish.

Now I need ice cream

AG's sticking to their montly releases and their collab with Jeni's is March's.

( Sugar high. )

Now, the random assorted AG gossip. When this collab first launched, the AG site had a Kirsten silhouette and people thought maybe AG was finally going to try and throw her out to try and capture the whole cottage core vibe thing she's queen of. Yeah, no. Kit got the nod and she's apparently coming out maybe next month. She's allegedly bringing her newer school outfit (the pink and brown one), her sailor PJs (fuck yes), and her original Meet outfit. Possibly other stuff, but I can only retain so much info. I'm a little confused though because Kit? She's never NOT been available. You can get her in her BeForever glory. Not entirely sure why AG keeps bringing their historicals out of the cubed retirement farm with very limited collections that seem to not sell all that well and then complain that they didn't do very well. I guess it's a nostalgia thing and maybe the initial push is worth it since it's not like they're doing any research for these items that they've already got everything for. *shrug*

Mattel had their shareholders meeting (I think? 4am me has lost the ability to care enough to look it up) and we got some additional info.
- Collector line coming, including collaborations with Swarovski, more from HP, the NFL, and a big announcement coming later this year.
-the LA store is reopening.
-reissuing classic character (see Kit)
- and the GOTY doll will now debut prior to the holiday season.


They also acknowledged that their sales were shit last year, and were kind enough to not squarely pin the blame on poor Corinne but yeah, her sales sucked. I blame the asshats who complain about people complaining (irony is so high right now, shut up) and then never buy anything direct from AG anyway (phew, dodged that hypocrosy bullet). Also the asshats who think all new things are bad or the racist fuckwaffles who literally will buy 17 versions of any given white doll but will not think of buying anything else. Or the brats who whinge about hair colors or you get the idea. Still mad that they torpedoed poor Kavi's shot at a decent beginning with the twins and now the holiday season is gonna be scuttled by 2024 and we're knocking on Spring's door and nothing new for Claudie but this isn't the time for that rant again.

Collector line- the Swarovski thing is likely their annual holiday doll, I'm not touching the HP thing because I have settled into the weird in between state where I can't give money to the hateful ogre but if I want this stupid doll line to continue, they need the sales and we've all learned that nothing stops the HP money train, and the NFL stuff is likely to not appeal to me. I am intrigued about this collector line and I wonder if it has anything to do with the birthday outfits from that survey last year? I do wonder what the big announcement is, because it's included with the collector type stuff, but I guess that could be a space saving issue for them.

I absolutely cannot deal with the people saying the big announcement is Kirsten coming back because guys? I love the girl but it's been pretty obvious for eons that she didn't sell well, at least not after a certain point (maybe when they came out with about 19 different TM versions of her?) and when she got archived the general fan reaction was "thank god it wasn't anyone important!" mixed with worrying about the one or two fans who were big Kirsten fans. Short of them finally deciding to cater to the collectors/adults and make actual LE outfits/accessories for the archived/cubed dolls without necessarily bringing the dolls themselves back (I mean, they did do the anniversary dolls last year so they did sell them recently), I just don't see a Kirsten included big announcement. *shrug*

2024's logo:


Is giving me serious horse girl vibes and I'm not the only one. It's possible this is Lila Monetti, whose name is their current trademark mystery character.

I don't know if I've missed anything big, but if so, please accept Pegeen the Pig as an apology:

If she goes on sale, I will absolutely buy her. But I don't want to spend $26 on a Wellie sized pig, dammit. Even one as angelic as this one...
But we all know I definitely would if I thought she was being clearanced without a sale.