Set your calendar to January 7th! Happily Ever After will be unveiling the NEW 2011 Tonner Collection!!! Because we are "Ambassadors" we get to show the new line earlier than most retailers. Sign up for our Newsletter today!!Go to heastore@aol.com
Friday, December 31, 2010
2011 Tonner Collection
Set your calendar to January 7th! Happily Ever After will be unveiling the NEW 2011 Tonner Collection!!! Because we are "Ambassadors" we get to show the new line earlier than most retailers. Sign up for our Newsletter today!!Go to heastore@aol.com
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Friday, December 24, 2010
Black Girls and White Dolls
It was Christmas 1984. Like all little girls, I had my heart set on one thing – a Cabbage Patch Doll. After opening a series of small gifts on Christmas morning, my mom presented me with the box I had been waiting for all year. As I tore through the wrapping paper, my excitement immediately turned to disappointment when I discovered that the doll of my dreams was brown.
I was just five at the time, so I took no pains to hide my displeasure with Santa’s choice. In fact, the painful moment is caught on VHS, when I turn to my mom and ask “Why Didn’t I Get the White One?” Although it was nearly forty years later, it was an episode straight out of the famous Kenneth Clark experiment form the late 1940s, when an overwhelming number of black children were found to show preference for white baby dolls.
Despite the fact that I was raised by a strong black woman and grew up on the West Side of Detroit, media and other outside forces had a powerful influence on my perceptions of beauty.
In 2005, Mattel, Inc.’s Caucasian holiday Barbie doll sold out so fast that the company had to issue rainchecks to those who were not lucky enough to get their hands on one. Meanwhile, the African-American holiday Barbie doll stayed on the shelves for most of the holiday season. Brenda Wade, a family psychologist, says its not completely surprising that black girls still favor white Barbie as study after study has shown that a significant number of young black girls still associate white dolls with beauty, purity, and goodness.
The fact that the African-American dolls bear little or no resemblance to the target market serves to further complicate matters. Many buyers often complain that black dolls appear to be nothing more than white dolls with brown skin or too ethnic, to the point of not resembling black children.
This year, I have had the opportunity to travel all over the country and to parts of Africa promoting my new book Thank God I’m Natural: The Ultimate Guide to Caring for and Maintaining Natural Hair, and yet I still find that many of our black and Latina daughters, mothers, and grandmothers have not come to grips with the fact that their brown or black is beautiful. This holiday season, my message to you regardless of how old you are, is that you are beautiful just the way you are.
I was just five at the time, so I took no pains to hide my displeasure with Santa’s choice. In fact, the painful moment is caught on VHS, when I turn to my mom and ask “Why Didn’t I Get the White One?” Although it was nearly forty years later, it was an episode straight out of the famous Kenneth Clark experiment form the late 1940s, when an overwhelming number of black children were found to show preference for white baby dolls.
Despite the fact that I was raised by a strong black woman and grew up on the West Side of Detroit, media and other outside forces had a powerful influence on my perceptions of beauty.
In 2005, Mattel, Inc.’s Caucasian holiday Barbie doll sold out so fast that the company had to issue rainchecks to those who were not lucky enough to get their hands on one. Meanwhile, the African-American holiday Barbie doll stayed on the shelves for most of the holiday season. Brenda Wade, a family psychologist, says its not completely surprising that black girls still favor white Barbie as study after study has shown that a significant number of young black girls still associate white dolls with beauty, purity, and goodness.
The fact that the African-American dolls bear little or no resemblance to the target market serves to further complicate matters. Many buyers often complain that black dolls appear to be nothing more than white dolls with brown skin or too ethnic, to the point of not resembling black children.
This year, I have had the opportunity to travel all over the country and to parts of Africa promoting my new book Thank God I’m Natural: The Ultimate Guide to Caring for and Maintaining Natural Hair, and yet I still find that many of our black and Latina daughters, mothers, and grandmothers have not come to grips with the fact that their brown or black is beautiful. This holiday season, my message to you regardless of how old you are, is that you are beautiful just the way you are.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Hello Dolly
Parents may have noticed there's no new version of Tickle Me Elmo this year, but that doesn't mean popular dolls are lacking this holiday season. In fact, they're among the scarcest toys on store shelves.Mattel Inc.'s $24.99 Monster High dolls — the poseable offspring of famous vampires, werewolves and more — are hard to find, analysts say.
Other popular dolls include MGA Entertainment's $29.99 Lalaloopsy with button eyes and brightly colored hair; the $49.99 Disney Princess dolls, and Fisher-Price's Dance Star Mickey, a $69.99 Mickey Mouse that dances and sings.
Most of these dolls sold out during the busy Thanksgiving Day weekend a note to investors, BMO Capital Markets analyst Gerrick Johnson said, despite the fact that most of them weren't on sale.
"The increase in sell-outs should be considered a good sign for overall toy demand," Johnson said.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Chimps and Dolls
In a fashion similar to human girls, some young chimpanzees seem to play with sticks as if they were dolls.
The findings, reported in the Dec. 21 Current Biology, are the first documented evidence of boy and girl primates in the wild playing differently with their toys. Though these patterns’ origins will surely be argued, they add to the constellation of behaviors shared by humans with our closest living relative.
“We find that juveniles tend to carry sticks in a manner suggestive of rudimentary doll play and, as in children and captive monkeys, this behavior is more common in females than in males,” wrote anthropologists Richard Wrangham of Harvard University and Sonya Kahlenberg of Bates College.
Wrangham’s group has studied chimpanzees in Uganda’s Kibale National Park since the late 1980s, following in the methodological steps of his mentor, Jane Goodall, whose exhaustive, patient fieldwork first revealed that chimpanzees use tools and are more like humans than once thought.
The Current Biology paper is based on observations made between 1993 and 2006, and represents hundreds of thousands of hours spent trailing individual chimpanzees from dawn to dusk, recording their use of sticks.
Kibale’s chimps used sticks to probe holes containing water and honey. They used sticks to hit and threaten each other. They played with them. And, finally, they carried sticks — holding them under their arms or in their laps, for hours at a time, even while walking and climbing and feeding and resting.
“Regular stick-carrying has no discernible function,” wrote Wrangham and Kahlenberg, yet it accounted for more than one-third of all stick use.
Carried sticks were shaped differently than sticks used as weapons or probes, and “unlike other types of stick use, carried sticks were regularly taken into day-nests … where individuals rested and were sometimes seen to play casually with the stick in a manner that evoked maternal play,” wrote the researchers.
Stick-carrying was also most frequent in juveniles, particularly juvenile females. With parenthood it invariably ceased.
Wrangham, best known for proposing that cooking meat jump-started hominid evolution, thinks the stick-carrying habits resemble how human children play: Regardless of culture, girls seem to play more with dolls.
Explanations for this invoke both sociology and biology. Wrangham sees the latest findings favoring the biological. “We suggest that sex differences in stick-carrying are related to a greater female interest in infant care, with stick-carrying being a form of play-mothering,” they wrote.
The study’s implications may, however, defy easy analysis. Though a few anecdotal reports exist of captive chimpanzees treating sticks like dolls, the behavior has never before been reported in the wild. For now, Kibale’s chimps are unique in their invention and culture.
It’s also tempting to think of chimpanzees as snapshots of an earlier stage in human development. But chimps have also evolved, culturally and biologically, in the 3.7 million years since our branch of the primate tree split.
Maybe the Kibale chimp dolls don’t represent an echo of ourselves, but an example of cultural convergence, with two species separately developing the same behavior, just as biological features like wings and eyes have evolved in similar but independent ways.
Whatever the origins of playing with dolls, it seems to be — along with tools, grief, love and warfare — one more thing that humans and chimps have in common.
The findings, reported in the Dec. 21 Current Biology, are the first documented evidence of boy and girl primates in the wild playing differently with their toys. Though these patterns’ origins will surely be argued, they add to the constellation of behaviors shared by humans with our closest living relative.
“We find that juveniles tend to carry sticks in a manner suggestive of rudimentary doll play and, as in children and captive monkeys, this behavior is more common in females than in males,” wrote anthropologists Richard Wrangham of Harvard University and Sonya Kahlenberg of Bates College.
Wrangham’s group has studied chimpanzees in Uganda’s Kibale National Park since the late 1980s, following in the methodological steps of his mentor, Jane Goodall, whose exhaustive, patient fieldwork first revealed that chimpanzees use tools and are more like humans than once thought.
The Current Biology paper is based on observations made between 1993 and 2006, and represents hundreds of thousands of hours spent trailing individual chimpanzees from dawn to dusk, recording their use of sticks.
Kibale’s chimps used sticks to probe holes containing water and honey. They used sticks to hit and threaten each other. They played with them. And, finally, they carried sticks — holding them under their arms or in their laps, for hours at a time, even while walking and climbing and feeding and resting.
“Regular stick-carrying has no discernible function,” wrote Wrangham and Kahlenberg, yet it accounted for more than one-third of all stick use.
Carried sticks were shaped differently than sticks used as weapons or probes, and “unlike other types of stick use, carried sticks were regularly taken into day-nests … where individuals rested and were sometimes seen to play casually with the stick in a manner that evoked maternal play,” wrote the researchers.
Stick-carrying was also most frequent in juveniles, particularly juvenile females. With parenthood it invariably ceased.
Wrangham, best known for proposing that cooking meat jump-started hominid evolution, thinks the stick-carrying habits resemble how human children play: Regardless of culture, girls seem to play more with dolls.
Explanations for this invoke both sociology and biology. Wrangham sees the latest findings favoring the biological. “We suggest that sex differences in stick-carrying are related to a greater female interest in infant care, with stick-carrying being a form of play-mothering,” they wrote.
The study’s implications may, however, defy easy analysis. Though a few anecdotal reports exist of captive chimpanzees treating sticks like dolls, the behavior has never before been reported in the wild. For now, Kibale’s chimps are unique in their invention and culture.
It’s also tempting to think of chimpanzees as snapshots of an earlier stage in human development. But chimps have also evolved, culturally and biologically, in the 3.7 million years since our branch of the primate tree split.
Maybe the Kibale chimp dolls don’t represent an echo of ourselves, but an example of cultural convergence, with two species separately developing the same behavior, just as biological features like wings and eyes have evolved in similar but independent ways.
Whatever the origins of playing with dolls, it seems to be — along with tools, grief, love and warfare — one more thing that humans and chimps have in common.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Barbie - A Rare Beauty
For more than 50 years, the Barbie doll has been a beloved toy and fashion icon. The leggy blonde debuted at the American International Toy Fair in New York on March 9, 1959, and has come a long way, traveling to over 150 countries and becoming a nearly $2 billion brand. The book, from doll expert and collector Sandi Holder, is a guide to everything Barbie, showcasing photos of vintage dolls, fashion sets, prototypes, and many never before seen items.Monday, December 20, 2010
Dolls Grow Up A Little - NPR
Follow this link:http://www.npr.org/2010/12/09/131853392/dolls-grow-up-a-little-for-the-holidays
for a nice Holiday message.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
W Club Exclusive!
We are super-excited to introduce the second Fashion Royalty 2010 W Club Exclusive Doll available only to W Club members... Presenting Anja "Regal Solstice":Making her first appearance at the 2010 Dark Romance Convention in Pittsburgh, new collector favorite Anja makes her debut in the regular FR collection as the W Club Exclusive Doll!Wearing "the grand finale gown" of the Von Weiss 2010 fashion show, Anja is elegantly dressed in one of Giselle's most regal creations to date and is composed of multi-layered, intricately embroidered chartreuse organza and navy blue tulle. The gown is accented with navy blue satin for a total dramatic effect. Anja sports a refined fiery red hairstyle and comes complete with a delicate beaded necklace and earring set, gorgeous hot pink and navy strappy pumps, doll stand and certificate of authenticity.Marvel at Tonner
RENOWNED TONNER DOLL COMPANY IS SET TO RELEASE TONNER CHARACTER FIGURES BASED ON MARVEL SUPER HEROES Tonner Doll Company, Inc. has just been granted the license to create collectibles based on iconic MARVEL characters.
KINGSTON, NY- 12/15/10- Tonner Doll Company, an award-winning designer and manufacturer of high-end collectible dolls and figures, will team up with MARVEL to create character figures based on classic MARVEL characters.
"We were fortunate enough to work with Marvel a few years ago and I am thrilled to be back working with them," Robert Tonner, CEO of Tonner Doll said. "We are looking at all of the classic characters like Captain America, Storm and Jean Grey," he added.
Tonner Doll Company, best known for its unique ¼ scale, will offer MARVEL characters that are approximately 16"-17" tall with multiple articulated joints for expressive movement and mobility. In the wide world of collectibles, the ¼ scale is highly sought after for it's unmatched distinction and posing ability.
In keeping with the fine detail and high-end quality of Tonner's other popular product lines, they will feature hand-painted facial features, rooted hair; and authentic costuming inspired by the character's life from origin, and secret identity to hero.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Join us at IDEX!
Join us at IDEX Premiere 2011, January in Orlando, FL- IDEX Premiere is the ultimate trade show for the doll and bear industry! For Exhibiting information, please contact Kathy Dolly at KDolly@madavor.com or visit www.idexshows.com
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Sign up for DR monthly newsletter:
newsletter@dollreader.com
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
NEw Fairy by R. John Wright
We are pleased to introduce the Lavender Fairy™
from the exciting Flower Fairies™, Collection! She measures a
diminutive 11 1/2" tall and is fully jointed and shoulders, hips and neck
with new ball and socket jointing system with internal wood mechanism.
The Lavender Fairy has delicately hand-painted features and a wig of the
finest imported mohair. She has a sculptural molded felt body
and limbs and her graceful hands are sewn with individual fingers.
Her lovely fairy wings are sewn, molded and hand-painted out of fine organza.
This Garden Flower Fairy comes holding a detailed, realistic stalkof lavender made out of felt and silk crepe fabrics. Alighting on theblossoms is a tiny white butterfly made of organdy and felt.
Retail Price: $795
LE 250
ESTIMATED SHIP DATE: December, 2010. Call 215-627-5790 or email heastore@aol.com to place your order.
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