Mystery of the Pharoh's Tomb (or: I didn't make the rules).

 

This blog has zero readers so if anyone's here, they probably already know about this, but a quick summary anyway.

There are four book covers out there for Magic Attic Club books that were never released. According to someone who said they personally talked with Sheryl Sinikyn, the manuscripts were never written and the covers were made without the go-ahead from the authors. That conversation is not publicly available. 

I also don't know where the covers came from, how they ended up on the internet, where the descriptions of each book came from. I'm going to admit that I haven't done very much research. but my idle google has left me with questions.

Those books are A Tale of Two Alisons, Heather's Fashion World, Jane in a Land of Enchantment, and The Mystery of the Pharoh's Tomb.

When Ellie invites Jane, Alison's new math partner, to her open house and then up the attic, Heather, Alison, Rose, Megan, and Keisha don't know what to think. With the knowledge that Ellie sent Jane to the attic, the girls take a chance and invite her on their newest adventure through the mirror -- a search for a lost Pharaoh's tomb. When a golden amulet is stolen, the girls fear the curse of the tomb is upon them. Can Jane help figure out if the curse is real or just a hoax?

Obviously, Jane isn't a character that was ever released, but Pharoh's Tomb was going to be her introductory book. It's a group adventure. 

Considering that the last group adventure we got was Jewel of the Sea Cruise, which ranked somewhere between meaningless and just awful, I feel like it's time to start some wild guessing about the book we never got, as well as some sewing and designing.

Here we have an AI-upscale of the cover, which looks a little bit uncanny but is at least easier to view than a 400 pixel image. 

The first thing that caught me is that all 6 of the kids are wearing casual clothing. They're not in sort of traditional adventure gear.

The second thing that I noticed was that the image looks unfinished. I'm sure that, with books that tie into a fashion doll line, the images can't actually be finished until the outfits are finished. We've got rough colors blocking in Megan, Rose's skirt, and Alison's shirt. Jane(?)'s skirt looks like it started to get a print on it, but that was scrapped. I can't tell that for sure, because it might just be a shadow? I'm assuming that whoever was responsible for this illustration isn't about to find a blog in 2024 and give more insight. 

Moving on to some guessing:

I'm suspecting that this book was intended to be the new starter book, introducing new starter outfits. If they were going to be just a one-off adventure, Whispering Pines style, there's a lot of really creative ways that could have done. Putting the kids in everyday outfits makes me think that these would be new Starter outfits for the dolls.

Also, because of the formula of "dress up, mirror, adventure", we know that the kids had to be wearing something else and decided to change in the Attic. I refuse to believe that the attic mirror would let them go on an adventure in their everyday clothing. And since I appear to be one of maybe 6 people in 2024 who cares about the lore of a doll line that is older than many of my friends, I kind of get to decide that. Sorry, I didn't make the rules. Since they're all in relatively summery clothing, I'm assuming the book had to be originally set in winter. The only way I can imagine that these clothes were appealing enough to select for an adventure is if they are very unsuitable for the weather outside. "I don't care what the adventure is, as long as there's no snow," is a kind of reasonable line.

That's about the only insight I've got here, so it's time to move onto "things I decided I have to do if I'm making these clothes."

Part 1) Jane vs Chloe. Here's the problem: Jane actually got a pitched book, but Chloe actually exists as a doll. If you're making clothes for a doll, who do you include in the adventure?

Things we know about Jane:

• Alison's math partner
• Got invited to the attic by Ellie
• I'm seeing some people online say that she met Ellie at an open house? There's not a source for that but there's not a source for pretty much any of this. 

Because of the fact that the Magic Attic Club webpage gave Chloe a bio, there's a few things we know about Chloe: 

• Likes poetry
• Plays guitar and writes music
• Is from California
• Surfs, swims, and skateboards
• Has a twin brother, Connor, who shares a lot of her interests
• Interested in fashion and dressing up
• Teaches young girls to kayak and raft. Is a camp counselor and a lifeguard.

Okay so that last bullet point annoys me. Alison has the stories about going rafting and being a counselor, and Keisha gets the stories about being a lifeguard. IDK it kind of bugs me that Chloe gets to do the things in normal life that the other girls have mirror adventures to do. IDK why that feels weird to me, but it's sticking weirdly.

So quick summary for people who arean't aware, most large collaborative projects like this will have what's called a Bible or a Series Bible. This is one book or other resource that's agreed to have the correct information. Other writers, designers, and builders can then all be referencing the same source material. If two people are writing books for two different characters at the same time, they don't need to talk to each other, as long as everything that they reference is going off the same bible. Information like, "Alison likes blue, is being tutored for dyslexia, plays soccer, has three brothers," can be referenced by any author, designer, person writing a catalog blurb, and it's known to be correct.

The Magic Attic Club bible was written by Sheri Sinykin. However, by the time that Knickerbocker bought the company (and released Chloe), she was not happy with the company and said she wasn't being paid royalties on all the books she wrote. (Again, I don't have a primary source for this, but I don't have reason to believe it's particularly wrong).

What I think this sums up to is that whoever included Chloe into the series bible did it without Sheri Sinykin's input. And there's not really anything wrong with that. It's very common in big franchise projects like this for personnel to be changed and replaced. It's just that there's a lot of evidence that Chloe wasn't incorporated into the project in the same manner as the other kids.

Backstory time, when I was a kid, I has Alison, and my sister had Heather. I was later gifted Chloe (I believe because the paperwork said she was Alison's friend) and we never really liked her. Eventually, her leg fell off and we threw her away. So I both don't like her back story and feel like I can't do wrong by her because I owe fair treatment of her to my past self.

Anyway, I need to get back to the story. We've spent too long on side topics. Quick summary:

Things we know about Jane: She was actually in the books
Things we know about Chloe: Actiually like 3x as much as we know about Jane.

And here's the big thing: Chole has a brother, who is her age, and who is named Connor. And is probably blond. I have a boy doll who is her age and is blonde. So we have Connor now.

There's someone editing the Magic Attic Wiki who is insistent that Chloe is not Jane. However, since  Jane is blonde and Chloe is also blonde, there's at least a little bit of evidence that they had the doll partially finished, and then changed the accessorization to make her tough and cool and kool and tuff. Also the doll is high quality and the accessories and clothes she came with are a bit cheap, so I chose to believe that Chloe is a pivot to rebrand a partially-complete Jane. Since there is next to no information about either of them, anything that could be Jane OR Chloe is now acceptable headcanon. Sorry if some people disagree with that. I didn't make the rules. 

So let's check out where we're going here: 

 Crop of an AI upscale here, so please forgive the faces and hands. Let's look at what we've got here:

• Rose has teal t-shirt looking something and a long skirt. Probably below knee.
• Alison definitely has gray pants/shorts and then appears to have some kind of sleeveless or cap sleeve shirt with some kind of text of graphic on it.
• Megan has a cardigan? Some kind of long sleeve top, bottoms are not seen.
• Blonde girl holding the flashlight has a wrap skirt of some kind? there's a purple tie that could be connected to the skirt, to the skirt, or as a belt. Shirt is tucked in. 
• Keisha is in GREEN???
• Bucket Hat Kid is in some kind of plaid without a defined seam at the underbust or waist. She appears to not have sleeves, either. 

Let's get into some designs, then.

Keisha: Okay, so for starters. Every group of kids who want to travel through space, time, and dimensions needs to know the number one rule: All travelers must maintain color coordination, or else coordinate all costumes across the group, when on a group event. 

Didn't make the rules on that one.

Anyway, we have Keisha back in her proper color, purple. We can't see too much of the look on the book cover, just that it's got polka dots and a high neck. I figure a little bit of lace can keep it fun and quirky, as well as keeping a summery feel.

I'm assuming that the Pharaoh's Tomb they're going to go explore is in the desert, though you can't assume anything when it comes to the magic mirror. There's unicorns and talking flowers and snow queen worlds out there. 

 

Megan gets like a long cardigan and leggings. Maybe some Uggs. I don't get why she's got the long sleeves and everyone else has short sleeves, so she's getting a very light cardigan and a brown cami. Let's get those kids paying the female layering tax as a young age. 

The cardigan has a pocket for her glasses. 

 Rose's v-neck t-shirt has white on it in the reference images, but I think that looks more like it being unfinished rather than it being canonically white. I might slap some white trim/piping in the v-neck when I make this. We don't know. No one knows what I'm doing until I'm done, especially not me.

I'm going to go through the MAC lore (it's only, what, 7 years? 1994-2001 was the books) and see if there's anything that looks like that logo-ish section. I'd love to have a shirt with some secret Magic Attic Club reference on it.

If I'm lazy I can just use her shorts from the Alison on the Trail set.

Who's up for some creative liberties? This is the tucked in shirt with the wrap skirt and purple belt, the only costume you can see really clearly on the cover.

And we're putting it on Heather. 

There's a couple of justifiable reasons for that, like that it's pink and Heather's color is pink. There's also some non-justifiable reasons for that like that my older sister had Heather as a doll, and my older sister has never liked free size waists (babydoll cuts) or bucket hats, but loved and still loves a good tucked in shirt look. So Heather gets the look that my older sister would like, because in this case i DID get to make that rule, and so I made the decision.

Chloe does have one really huge problem. As previously mentioned, all travelers through time, space, or parallel realities must be assigned an identifying color and they must wear that color on all group events. I can't even begin to explain how much of that rule I didn't make. 

Chloe's starter outfit is pink. Heather is pink. The Magic Attic Club wiki says that Jane's color was intended to be orange, but I think that's just based off the picture on her book cover. I also think that book cover is of unfinished art.

However, the downside to being number 6 in the group is that a lot of the other colors have already been taken. I'm not about to make Chloe wear orange with her fair complexion, so she's getting red. That's it. 

We'll find her a nice red plaid with some lovely purple or fuchsia stripes in it. We'll ease her out of the pink and into the red nice and slowly, to avoid as much trauma as possible. But we simply cannot have two mirror travelers wearing the same color. 

I'd let it slide if I could, but this is yet another case where the rules are out of my hands.

But I think these would be fun new meet outfits or starter outfits that I could keep the dolls in when I have them in storage. I'll have some fun collecting new accessories for them as well.

As for the lore, I'm not really emotionally sure how comfortable I am with 10-11 year olds going into a literal tomb where dead bodies are to just have a fun look around. I think this is probably the kind of thing I'd imagine doing when I was a kid before learning about how therre's no more mummies because victorians are them all. Maybe we could have some fun where the kids solve the mystery by convincing all the tourists that the place is cursed and that the pharaoh should be left to its afterlife in peace. Maybe that's the only way I can come to terms with this concept.
My local fashion club is doing a graveyard meet and I had to opt out because I think graveyard meets are in absolutely awful taste.
Maybe they're in a tomb and think they're cursed and then at the end they find it's a movie set. I think I like that too. Like, what are all the kids doing on the set of Indiana Jones 6? 

We'll do the clothes first and then get into the rest.

So anyway, my new rule is that I'm not allowed to buy another doll unless I 1) have made this whole collection or 2) it's in really bad shape, under $35, and I think I can save it from going in the trash,

Eye bleach follow up

 I found an easier way.

Cw for some eye scream here. 

How to remove Magic Attic Club eyes and replace them. 

The Magic Attic Club dolls have fixed eyes. They eyes themselves are separate pieces of plastic, pushed into the vinyl from the front. 

Doll eyes are pretty easily available. From my experience here, Alison, Heather, Keisha, and original sculpt of Megan use 16mm eyes. Rose and Chloe use 18mm. I assume that the later sculpt of Megan uses 16mm eyes, but I haven't checked.

So, to change the eyes, we just have to get access to them. If your doll's hair is rooted, you're going to need to shave and wig them.

On 24-year-old dolls, I found that the wig can be pushed off with pretty much no effort. 

The vinyl was really hard to cut with a razor knife, so I had to heat and then stab. 

There is a little ridge on the backs if their heads, which I assume is where an original access hole was during construction. I found that it was easiest to go in the area around that, instead of trying to go in the seam or inside the little circle. 

I used a flathead screwdriver to follow my knife, to keep the space open and let me make better curves. 

Heat, knife, follow with the screwdriver, repeat. 

Inside you can see the elastic and the head cup, as well as the backs of the eye sockets. It's not a ton of room to work with, but it was plenty to get done what I needed. 

There's enough room to get in there with a knife and cut a hole in the back of the socket. It doesn't need to be pretty. It just needs to be big enough that the eye can push through it when. It's heated up. 

The eyes aren't glued in, so you can heat them up and push hard from the front, and it'll pop out. 

As you can see, Rose's eyes are quite a bit bigger than Alison's. You can see that both eyes are only yellow where they were exposed, and the rest of the sclera is still white. This means that I can just put Rose's eyes in rotated 90 degrees, and keep the original eyes while losing the liver failure aesthetic. 

Once the eyes are out of the way, you can clean out the rest of the eye hole. I found that the best way was to clear the vinyl on the back of eye socket all the way, but to leave it just a bit smaller than the back. This will hold the eye a bit on its own when you put it back in. It also helps make sure it stays in the right orientation. 

Once I stuck the eye back in (left), you can't even see the yellow area. 

I don't have pictures of the rest, but the answer is hot glue. Get the eyes aligned, hot glue to hold them in. Glue the dome back on. Glue the wig back on. 

I'm confident that hot glue won't hold the eyes in if someone is really determined to pop them out from the front, but I'm guessing that the number of people in 2024 who are interested in un-yellowing a doll's eyes but is too young to understand that you can't try to push the eyes out is probably a little low. 

Okay so I did it

 One of the weird things about ebay is that you can bid on something, and then you're committed to it. So, if, say, between when you place a bid just kind of idly in the bathroom at work and when the auction ends, say, your car needs major repair, well, you still need to pay that even when you wish you wouldn't.

But here we are. Chloe Jane the Face Stealer.

So I now have every doll in the Magic Attic Club line, plus a custom one. We can stop now.

I know I said I didn't really want Chloe, but I actually owned Chloe very shortly, and my sister and I were kind of mean to her, and that's not fair, so here I have her.

Don't tell her, but right now I really wish I had the money I spent instead. Oh well, here's where we are. Dolls can't hear so she doesn't know I said that.

I think that her "I'm from a place where people surf!" idea and teenager looks didn't really appeal to us at the time, since we're from California and it doesn't have the same appeal. I believe one of her legs fell off and then my mom threw her away.

 

This Chloe's definitely been in storage for a while, because her head is determined to stay at a specific angle.

Also as a weird note, this Chloe was sold to me with nothing but her wrist tag, barrette, hair net, and undies. That's not weird. I know a lot of people split the starter outfit off the doll to sell separately. It's that her undies are leopard print. I had to take a lot of nonsense fashion classes for college (don't get me wrong, fashion isn't nonsense, but looking at what kind of chi clothing has while reading an awfully-illustrated self-published textbook my teacher's best friend wrote that I paid $89 for was nonsense) had this long bit about how leopard print is 100% sexual all the time. The class I took was BS and I know it, but it still seemed like a weird pattern to pattern a child's under clothing with.

I'm probably reading too much into that, and if any of you reading this are kids, I'm sorry that I said that. Just remember that no good person on the internet wants you to talk about your underpants online, and if someone asks you to, that's a stranger danger moment.

On a lighter note, I'm not officially unable to say "undies" without hearing "togs, togs, togs, UNDIES." I'm not even from New Zealand.

My Chloe to-do starts with getting her a shirt that isn't branded with another doll line's name. I'll figure out the rest from there. 

I know I don't normally like buying dolls in really good shape, but there's not a lot of options with Chloe.

New wig fun

 So, back when I ordered the big lot of 4 MAC dolls on ebay, one of them was a Marian-era Alison. I already have an Alison doll, who is mine from my childhood, so I didn't really want a second one. In addition, there are three different kinds of MAC hair, and the Marian-era have the worst. The majority of the MAC dolls had wigged kanekalon hair (kanekalon is a modified acrylic fiber that you find in a lot of human wigs), but for a time near the end of the brand's life, they had rooted saran hair. Saran is just not nice hair to play with, and when it's rooted then it either comes out all the time or is very difficult to style. When Charisma bought the doll line from Marian, the only real thing they did with this line was to swap from rooted saran to wigged saran. The diameter of a saran hair fiber is much smaller than a kanekalon wig fiber, which makes it much more prone to tangles and other problems. My Megan is a wigged saran Charisma doll, and Alison #2 was a rooted saran Marian doll. The other four are all wigged kanekalon, and nice and robust.

I was going to take a picture of kanekalon hair next to Megan's saran hair, but it's too much of a pain to detangle and rebraid the saran. Just trust me, it's worse. Anyway, I say "was" a rooted saran doll because it doesn't have rooted hair anymore. A while back, I cut all of it off and replaced it with a doll wig I got off ebay. This created Riley, my Magic Attic Club original character. 

Anyway, upon realizing that maybe I'm going to get back into this hobby, I just kept feeling like I wasn't getting everything I wanted out of that character. So, I was at work, hiding in the bathroom because a customer I hate walked into the door, and I had an idea. So I bought a wig.

For the curious, Magic Attic wears a 11-12 wig, and a 10 is too small. 

Add some darker eyebrows and a few freckles, and I still have a Magic Attic Club OC named Riley, but he's going to serve a different role in the story. Not sure what it is yet, but there's no official Magic Attic Club boys, so we'll figure something out.

I forgot that, right before I put these folks away, Toys Were Us happened, and I bought a TON of Journey Girls clothes for them. In my head, they were all still dressed in the best of the 90's and early 2000's. So, here's a picture collection.

Just six dolls...for now.

Something fun about each of them:

Heather: The part in Heather's hair actually has a skin top. It's not a changeable skin top, but if you look, there's a little line of fake skin to make it look like her hair isn't a wig. My sister had Heather at the same time that I got Alison, but I don't know what happened to her Heather and all her accessories (though I have a few of Heather's accessories with my doll stuff...my sister is just a year older than me and we had a pretty established "your side/my side" "mom, she's stealing my stuff!" situation going on, so this is a bigger crime than you'd think...oops)

Alison: This is a pre-Knickerbocker Alison. Knickerbocker released Rose when they bought the line, and I know that I had this Alison before Rose was released. I remember that my sister and I didn't like Rose's face. I was six years old in 1997 when Rose was released, but my Alison has the jean jacket meet outfit, so she's definitely the 1996 model. Among various things, this Alison went to the Magic Attic Club doll hospital at one point when her arm fell off. She's missing her left index finger and I have no idea where it is, but I believe it was lost back when we lived in the house that we moved out of in 2000. Safe to say, short of taking an arm off another doll, she's just going to miss her finger. She also is going to be wearing a hat almost 100% of the time, because she's got many bald spots, and parts where budding hairstylist me felt she needed some trimming. Emotionally, I can't re-wig her, because child-me put so much effort into destroying playing with her hair.

Megan: This Megan has the Marin face sculpt, which was the last change that happened to the doll line before it was ended. I'm really glad I have this sculpt, actually, because it means I have more variety in the faces. I may or may not have big plans for her hair to not be...like it is...She's got wigged Charisma-era saran hair, but crap is crap, folks.

Rose: My sister and I had a firm "they changed and so now it sucks," mentality about a lot of our interpretation of MAC things, so when they announced Rose, we decided we didn't like her. That's really a bummer, because looking at her now, I really like her. I'm also a little embarrassed to think about how we just mentally bullied the new girl out of our play pretend games just for being new. Even back in 1997, I felt her face sculpt was a bit too different from the other four girls, and she didn't fit in with the line as well. Having Marin-sculpt Megan does help a little bit with the "everyone has the same face" issue. If there's any kind of makeup or vinyl color difference between Rose and the 2003 "Rosa" rebranding, I might get Rosa as well, just to stop this from being quite as monotone of a group of kids. On the other hand, the idea that you can just change a doll's heritage just because their vinyl is the appropriate color. Anyway. What do I care, I'm going to buy Chloe Jane the Face Stealer, so.

Riley: Fun story, my sister (who had Heather) has a baby named Ridley, but this doll was Riley before Ridley was even thought of. This wig is an Edward by bbeauty designs and I'm definitely going to order from them again. After all, I've got big plans for Megan's hair. All characterization plots that I had for Riley before will remain. I just wanted a boy in the group. I'm sure that the MAC would have gotten a boy doll eventually, if they'd carried on. Or they'd have burst into flames instead of wimpering out. Who knows. I filled in Riley's eyebrows a little and gave him some freckles with watercolor pencils, but I have to be careful to not smudge that off since it's far from permanent.

Keisha: Oh, Keisha. I can't wait for my restringing kits to get here so that we can get her back on her feet. I'm going to grab some Testors Dullcote at the craft store and, while she's in pieces, I'll spray all her shiny spots with that. I can hit Riley's face while I'm at it. The shininess is definitely some kind of solvent being used to get tape or writing of some kind off her body. Her hair's definitely been cut but I'm having trouble finding a wig that matches this hair texture. Based on how the hair is, I'd guess this is an older doll, but I'm not really experienced in that. It's wigged and it's not saran, her body is the old no-bellybutton body, and her hair's textured and not braided. I'll see if I can maybe trim her hair a little so it doesn't look quite so "a child cut this all off".

That's all for now, going to go on tumblr and explain to people how sewing machines work again. Sleep well.

The MAC living room:

I'll do real intro posts for these girls sometime, but at the moment I've got some shots of them in their little room.
.
I'm lucky enough to be getting my own crafting room (at the cost of extra rent$ but Current Me says, "whatever.") and the temptation to not make half of it into a dollhouse has been fought.

I've done a terrible job of 1) making them all everyday outfits, and 2) changing everyone out of their party outfits.
So Rose and Megan are still in their Christmas outfits, and Riley, Heather, and Alison are in their whatever clothes.
I'm sort of torn between loving and hating that I accidentally made a Magic Attic OC. I've been considering rebranding her as Jane, but my entire knowledge of Jane comes from one cover of a book that they apparently never actually put out copies of and written by an author who is un-googleable:

I also sort of felt that Chloe was supposed to be Jane, so I might merge the two if I ever get Chloe (she's at the bottom of my WTB list, though)

Anyway, that cover and that blurb from the catalogue can definitely influence how Riley's personality is going, but for now she's Riley.
When I was a kid and had just unwrapped Alison, I wanted to name her after my friend from preschool because they both looked sort of the same. She ended up going back to Alison, but that friend's last name was Riley, so we're going to stick that name on Riley and call it good.
(It's been so fucking long since I've written here that I don't remember if I ever explained it, but Riley was one of the 2002 model Alison's with rooted hair. That hair was a disaster so I shaved it and gave her a wig. I don't actually like this wig too much for her, so she has another in the mail to see how that works out. Right now she looks like Alison Minus Bangs and that's not what I'm going for. It also doesn't help that it's a 10-11 wig and she's an 11" head, which is apparently too big for a 10-11 wig. It's not glued down and sometimes it just moves places, so forgive that in the pictures.

So here's half the living room. Due to their legs splaying when they're sitting, these dolls aren't always the best for displaying while they're sitting, but I think it's cuter that way. Here Heather is trying to braid Rose's hair, but Alison keeps sticking her bare foot on the back of Rose's neck to see if she'll notice that it's not Heather's hand.
Not basing this off stuff I did as a kid or anything.
Megan's got her hand pretty close to Alison's foot and is probably ready to grab it if Ali starts trying to cause too much trouble. Megan's sort of the mediator of the group.

Outfit wise, Rose and Megan are still in their party dresses, but everyone else is back in more normal clothes.
The main problem about buying dolls without buying extra outfits is that everyone has to share Alison's collection of casual clothes and whatever outfits they were wearing when I got them (which wasn't much). Alison also pretty much always has to wear a hat due to her bald spots in the back.

And over in the corner, wearing Megan's jacket and some hand-knit tights is Helena. Due to her being 50cm/19+5/8", she can share the 18" furniture pretty well, and alternates between living with the xtra tall Monster High dolls and the MAC girls.

And in the other corner, we have Helena, Ann Estelle, and Riley with her guitar. Ann Estelle is a doll sculpted by Robert Tonner, who did all the Magic Attic dolls (except maybe my Megan's face? It's hard to find info about things that happened when I was in 6th grade and didn't care).
Now that I look at this image, the thing striking me the most is that I've been looking for that bottle of window cleaner all damn day.

18": Five's a Party!!

So many dolls!!

So, this is what my Ebay Disease got me. One one or two or three, but four new Magic Attic dolls. Old (kanekalon hair) Heather and Rose, and new (wigged Saran hair) Alison and Megan. Megan has the new face sculpt, which I'd suspected from the two pictures the ebayer posted, and I'm very excited about that!

For those of you who don't have the history of the Magic Attic Club memorized, here's a quic, review, as it relates to these dolls:

• Back in the late '90's, the Magic Attic Club was one of American Girl's main rivals. Their dolls are full vinyl, and much slimmer than the soft-body American Girl. 
• The Magic Attic girls--Alison, Heather, Keisha, Megan, and Rose (Chloe doesn't count, sorry Chloe) were modern-day girls who could transport themselves to adventures by putting on outfits their elderly neighbor had, and looking in the mirror in her attic. The adventures range from modern day (Keisha's cheerleading adventure, Alison's hiking, Heather's dressage adventure...), to historical (usually relating to their real-world selves: Heather's persecution as a Jewish girl in Spain under the rule of Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand, Rose living as a Cheyenne on the prairie), to fantasy (Keisha saving a city on a snowy planet by finding a crystal of power). Each story had an outfit and a series of accessories, and a story book.
• Once American Girl's "American Girl of Today" line started, they ended up being more fierce competition to MAC. Before, American Girl only had historical dolls, but now they were competing in the modern day too. 
• Once Knickerbocker, who owned Magic Attic, started hurting for money, cuts in quality had to be made. They stopped making stories and started just making outfits for the dolls. 
• Another big cut, and one that matters with the dolls that I own, is they made a change to the hair. They went from wigged kanekalon (wigged meaning they have a tiny wig glued to their head, kanekalon being the best fiber for dolls that get their hair played with and what a lot of human wigs are made of) to rooted Saran (rooted meaning tiny holes are drilled in the head and the hair is put in, think Monster High, and Saran being a thinner fiber that sticks to itself--same fiber as Monster High's, who aren't expected to have their hair played with for hours on end and for several years) to wigged Saran after they got noticed for the rooted Saran being crap.
  That's a seriously effed up sentence there but I"m tired and not going to fix it. One of my followers is a teacher. Sorry, Amanda!
• The Magic Attic Club got handed around from company to company. One of those companies thought they could save it and released a new doll (Chloe), gave Megan a new face, gave everyone new starter outfits, and a couple more things. At some point, they were given belly buttons.
• It didn't work.
• Around 2003, there were no more catalogues to sell, and in 2007 their doll hospital closed. When the doll hospital closes, your doll line is officially dead. 

So, it's getting late and now I want to be alone, so let me finish this up quickly and add to it later.

Heather and Rose are the old dolls, with Kanekalon hair. It took me about 11 minutes to brush out both of theirs hair. Kanekalon is great for restyling.

Side note: I somehow still have the original brush that I got with Alison. It's my favorite brush for doll hair. It's got rigid teeth aligned in parallel rows, with the vertical rows spaced out closer than the horizontal rows. It gives me roughly what a wide tooth comb and a narrower comb, depending on how I hold it.

Megan has a lot of hair.

Saran is a bitch and I braided it right after I combed it out.

The city I'm in has marginalized its Black community so much that I couldn't find braid spray even though I went to three stores, but children's detangler spray worked wonders. That stuff's basically propylene glycol in a spray bottle. Saran loves to stick to itself, and so this volume of hair wants to become a giant knot so badly.

Alison #2 also has a comical level of hair:

Remember, my Alison has really thin hair, and originally came with a lot more than you see here. Not as much as Ali#2, though!

Heather and Rose both have the higher quality hair. It looks way better under flash than the Saran. Heather had some weird ends. Some of the ends were three inches longer than the rest of the hair. I trimmed it off.

Here's a picture of Rose next to my Alison, just showing how thin my Alison's hair is. I don't mind, though. It means she was loved. Is loved.

So, speed summary of plans for everyone, and then I'm going to pass out.

• Heather: even out the ends a little more
• Rose: She's just fine how she is
• Megan: Add some layers into her hair to thin out the horzontal width, cut another layer into her bangs to fix the stair step problem she has right now. I'm going to rewig her eventually because I effing hate saran hair. There's a reason why Monster High dolls come with oodles of product in their hair.
• Other Alison: Ebay. If no one buys her, rewig and make a new character to play with my group

Meanwhile Helena is feeling left out. I keep reposing Gooliope and Maddie, but I haven't done more work on painting Gooliope just yet. I'll get back to it when it calls to me.

It's kind of freeing to accept that I'm not in this to "preserve the value" of them or anything. They're dolls for play. I'm going to play with them. Obviously, as an adult, I'm not going to mess them up like I did with Alison, but I am going to do what I want to to make them the characters I see in my head.

I have tomorrow off from work and you can bet your booty I'm going to play barber with Megan. I'm going to do it after I take a lot of photos, of course. Got to document everything and make a real product registration page for each of them.

G'night