Surprise! Sanrio Milford

I had a bit of a surprise when I was visiting my family for Thanksgiving - I realized there was a *second* Sanrio store in Southern Connecticut! Not only is it only like 15 minutes away from the first one, but it's actually much closer to my family's house than the first one! So I'd been driving way out of my way to go to the Trumbull Mall, when I could just be going to the one like 5 minutes away. The crazy thing is that I'm this mall all the time to go to Target, but I hadn't walked over to this piece of it in ages. I found it randomly when I was checking the mall's webpage to find out the name of the toy store next to the target. If I'd ever walked over like 4 more stores, I would've run right into the Sanrio store! I guess it's actually only been there since August, but that's 4 months of Sanrio goodness I'd been missing!



As you can see, it's nice and big, tho I think it may look bigger than it actually is - it's long and narrow, and has some odd angles going on. I bet if you measured square feet it would be similar to the one in Trumbull.

I also think the Trumbull store has a slightly better selection of merchandise. I don't know if they have a slightly better buyer, or if they really both get the same stuff and it's just that the Milford store sells stuff faster. The mall in Milford is busier than the mall in Trumbull, I think.

At any rate, Sanrio now has TWO chances to take my money while I'm in CT!! >.< It's probably a good thing there's no official Sanrio store in Boston too, I shudder to think - my *room* would probably look like a Sanrio store!!

Since the Christmas stuff was already up when I was there for Thanksgiving, I couldn't resist taking some photos of the tree full of cute ornaments. (some of which came home with me, of course!)





I really like the round ornaments, but I didn't buy any because my tree is too small.





I concentrated on the round ornaments b/c I didn't buy any, but you can see Charmmy there at the bottom of the photo - my tree is full of those little plushie ornaments. (I'll post photos of my tree next)

Thru the other window you can see the giant plushies. Cute!


I think the Trumbull store also has nicer window decorations. Is it crazy that I feel bad I didn't get over to the Trumbull store too? I know it will have basically the same things, but I feel disloyal somehow! XD

While I was at the Milford store tho, I picked up this interesting little brochure about starting a Sanrio store. It looks like the stores are basically franchised, if I'm understanding things right (which I might not be! XD), which I did not know. That might explain how it happened that two stores opened within throwing distance of each other in Connecticut, but there's none at the moment in Boston! Also interesting to note is the info on how many Sanrio stores there are in the US.





The flipside gives more specific financial info. Maybe too specific if you aren't trying to open a store, but for those of you who are interested:

Hello Kitty at FAO Schwarz

One thing about Toys R Us buying FAO Schwarz is that there's now a lot more Hello Kitty stuff there. This would be exciting except for the fact that it's all stuff you can also get elsewhere. But even still, here's the goods! ;]

They had (oddly enough, in the candy section!) a big display of loungefly stuff. I love lougefly's items, but they are always so expensive... >.<







Even tho I didn't get the best picture of it, I liked the pirate kitty coin purse...

Then, since it *was* the candy section of the store, we have Hello Kitty candy:









The candy display included the Hello Kitty Jelly Belly jellybeans I had read about. There's nothing particularly exciting about these, they are just regular Jelly Bellys, except with a Hello Kitty face on them. And for that they were like twice as expensive as normal! <.< The bigger boxes were $8!! I ended up buying one anyway because a. I'm a sucker and b. I figured I was in NY, I may as well splurge a bit (and I haven't seen them for sale here in Boston).





I haven't opened them yet so no pix of the inside or reports on the taste! XD

There were also, I think, some plushies upstairs, but nothing I haven't seen elsewhere. And, I'm afraid, I don't remember which ones they were! I was too busy being disappointed they didn't have any sirotans this year... They did have these pillows tho, which was something a bit different:



And with that, we've reached the end of my trip to NY pix. But not to worry, I've still got more Hello Kitty pictures to upload! XD

New Clothing Sets

Ok, as promised my next post (as in, this one you are looking at! :P) is about new Barbie clothes that I spotted as I was doing my Christmas shopping. Stores did add quite a bit of new stuff just before Christmas, tho I've been disappointed not to find any of the big "off label" type clothing sets I've found in the past. I looked at Wal-Mart, K-Mart (all the marts. haha), and Target. I did glance in Kohl's too, but I don't pin them as the type of place where they do anything other then get overstock from the other places I just mentioned. So I am not sure if that leaves anywhere else. It's not just the big 'store label' doll clothes packs that are missing. In previous years, I have seen all kinds of toys packaged that way. This year I really only saw a couple! I don't know if this is something about the recession (but I would've thought that stuff would sell even better in a recession) or just that whoever made that stuff before isn't making it now.

For an example of what I mean, here's a picture of one of my beloved Kerri Mitchell/Designer's Choice sets from Target:


Ah well, no sense crying over what's not there. Let's move on to the things I DID see.

First up, some things that are not strictly clothes. A couple of those "100+ pose" dolls that just came out. I hadn't seen these before, for whatever reason:





Target had them on sale for $7.99 (down from $9.99) this week (last week?) so I bought one. I like the funky purse, but I'm actually undecided if buying her was wise...


So far that's been one of my few good holiday deals though. I was in CT for thanksgiving, so prior to my trip into NYC I decided to make an early morning trip to the mall. I've never done this, so it was in the spirit of adventure and all. In preparation, I dutifully read all the circulars, but even then, didn't see anything too intriguing. Walmart promised it had some really cheap Candy Glam dolls, so I went in search of those. Here's the Barbie aisle at Walmart:


There were several new outfits I hadn't seen before. I though maybe they were walmart exclusives, but later trips to Target showed they were just new. More on those later. One thing I saw that really intrigued me was this cute Moxie dollhouse:


Another thing I saw that I hadn't seen before was this cute "bird-watching" Barbie:


After quite a bit of searching, I finally found the Candy Glam dolls that were on sale.


These were not the nice ones that I had seen earlier at Target! Boo!!
(I didn't get a good picture of the nicer version, so check this one by Impossible Princess on flickr if you don't know what I mean)

Moving on (finally! XD) to the outfit sets, I was also disappointed to note that the outfit sets had been reduced from 4 outfits to only 3 (and not any cheaper!).









There were also quite a few new single outfit sets. Unfortunately I feel like the price went up a bit on those too (They are $6.59 at Target). On the plus side, there are a bunch of new boys outfits...




The purple dress on the right side is pretty funny because there's basically a sheriff's star pinned to the shoulder strap! XD







This set has some really interesting shoes!




My favorite of the new outfits is that flight attendant outfit, but I haven't been able to talk myself into buying it yet.

I also just recently found these smaller outfit sets (no shoes). Kind of cute, but still $3.


Not a Barbie, but had to show off this latest Hannah Montana doll too - Christmas theme!

Barbies R Us

Trying to make my way through the rest of my "Black Friday" photos from NYC. (for those keeping score at home, I'm almost done posting them all either here or on flickr. It only took 3 weeks! >.<) Today's posting is about all the various Barbie products I had not seen before. These were all taken at either Toys R Us or at FAO Schwarz - which, starting from this year, is basically all the same place, because Toys R Us bought FAO Schwarz. I hear that FAO Schwarz used to be a great place to get collector dolls, such as Tonner. I didn't really experience the heydey of that, I think. Even last year, it seemed like there were fewer collector dolls than the year before. And even though Toys R Us said things wouldn't change so much with their takeover (I used to have an article about this, I can't find it), I found even fewer this year. Although admittedly memory is getting fuzzy with so much time passing, I didn't recall seeing anything that was not Barbie*! (boo) And I definitely didn't see any new version of this cute little FAO Schwarz holiday doll:

Now I really do regret not buying her last year! (there's a few things from last year I regret not buying. It's so hard to know what you are going to wish you'd bought and what's going to hang out in your house as another item of clutter...)

*There's still 3 Tonner dolls listed on the FAO website, but it's Miss Piggy and the Twilight dolls! I wish I could remember for sure that the Tonners were not there any longer, I think so, but... Madame Alexander was still there tho, don't mean to forget that!

Of course, if dolls aren't your thing, they did still have a new Holiday Bear (even if he was not as cute as last year's). And although they didn't have anything as unique as the Sirotan plushies from last year, they do still have all the Stieff animals. I didn't get any good pictures of those, however, since I was getting tired of taking pictures by the time I got to FAO.

Anyway, let's get back on topic here! First up, let's take a quick look at some Barbies I saw at the regular Toys R Us. The Times Square store often has a few things that I either don't see at other stores, or else don't see until later. So here's a couple of those.


I didn't recognize this girl, but she's seems to be a hair styling Barbie?


These intrigued me because they remind me of the concept of the "Wake Up" Momokos. Not getting an interesting outfit makes a bit more sense to me for a Momoko though than it does for a Barbie. I mean, for $25-$40, I could get a really nice Barbie with a really nice outfit!

However, it appears you can get a pretty wide selection of different skin tones and facial features, which is pretty cool:

When I saw these, I was wondering if they really were selling ALL of the dolls pictured on the box (the store only had maybe 2 or 3), but a bit of internet sleuthing says that yes they are. They didn't have any of those accessory packs at the store or I most certainly would've bought one!

Aside from some new fashion fever type outfits (which I will include in the next post I do), the Barbie Basics were the only new things I really saw at Toys R Us. I didn't linger tho, it was a zoo there! However, before I split, I couldn't resist snapping a picture of this:

Reminds me of how I treated my own Barbies as a kid! (I was not a fan at that point... XD)

Moving on to FAO Schwarz, the Barbie section still greeted me with the same layout. There was the big center display:



And the Barbie runway. And the glass cases along the back wall. Although I've got some nice pictures of the Barbies in the display cases in the past, this time I didn't bother because a. my camera was really acting up (I think it's dying... :( ) and b. I didn't really see anything new. I did spot this Barbie off by herself that seemed new:

My friend identified her, but I'm afraid I already forgot who she is... ^^; (the secret here is that I'm not really a Barbie collector at all, I just like to peek at them in the toy stores!) I liked her retro outfits, at any rate. Looking at the FAO Schwarz web page, I think she might be (the surprisingly expensive!! ouch!) Becky. (tho the outfits are not quite the same)

And speaking of outfits, there was a glass display case of those that I think was new:




There was also a table full of these dolls in pink boxes that I believe were marked as being store exclusives. I don't seem to see any info online about them tho, does anyone recognize them?






Lastly, we had a few more collector's dolls.


This one is the Philipp Plein Barbie Collector Doll Platinum Label.


And this one is the Barbie Collector Gold Label "Stunning in the Spotlight" Barbie Doll. She was indeed stunning!


I think we have here Barbie Collector Gold Label "Sparkling Pink 1964" Barbie Doll in both her outfits? It's too bad she's so expensive, I'd love to steal those clothes for my other dolls! >.>


I did not see the Amazonia Barbie while I was there, but having just spotted her now on the FAO website, I wish I had!!