Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Doll-A-Day 127: Disney Alice by Mattel

Today's doll is Mattel's Disney Alice, from 1994.
Her shoes don't fit very well, and as soon as I put them on her today they split.




She's wearing a fairly traditional blue Alice dress and white pinafore, with the addition of some stars and sparkley stuff. Disney was big on this print at the time. It also appears on Beauty and the Beast Belle's aprons,amongst other things.


She even has her hair band.

 These hair bands were popularized by John Tenniel's illustrations of Alice in the original printing of Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There.


 They became so associated with the character that they became known as 'Alice bands'.
Sir John Tenniel's version of Alice talks to a somewhat unusual shopkeeper in Through the Looking Glass.

 She uses the big eyed Skipper head mold and body that were in use at the time

 
Talk about pencil necks! If they were going to make her head so big, maybe they should have beefed up the neck a little.



The arms on this body can stretch out to the sides as well as move up and down, which makes for a bit more poseability.
 Whenever they make Barbie into some famous character she's always "Barbie as...". Not so with Skipper.They just stole her head and made Alice, as well as Wendy from "Peter Pan". Poor Skipper. She's the Rodney Dangerfield of dolls.(She "don't get no respect.")




Generally I don't like Disney's Alice. I watch any version of Alice that's made into a movie, but I'll never be satisfied with any of them. None of them can match up to the images of the books that I have in my head. I hate versions that try to make the story too silly. There is madness there, but it's a serious madness. Make it too self consciously silly and you lose the whole feeling. I hope that made sense!



I also hate it when they try to modernize it, make Alice an adult, or make everyone American. I want my Alice to be an 1800's little English girl, like she originally was.


Tomorrow is another Alice.

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