Isn't she a sweetie? She's a pre-Mattel Samantha. She has the softer, brown eyelashes and softer vinyl. She also has the long, flat neck strings of a pre-Mattel. And as further confirmation, the lady who sold her to me was about my age and got her as a child, which would put her in the pre-Mattel category.
She does have some issues. Her major problems that I may not be able to fix are:
#1. She's missing some eyelashes on her left eye. I don't know how well you can see it from the pic. I also don't know why the image insisted on uploading sideways, even though I turned it first so it would be right side up. Sorry about that!
The thing about the eyelashes is there's not much I can do besides replacing the whole eye, which is WAY too scary, or sending her to the American Girl doll hospital for a new eye. The problem is, to get an eye replaced is almost the same amount that I spent for the doll and all her clothes. The other problem is that her eyelashes would be the newer, stiff black ones, which I don't care for as much. So she'll probably just stay sparse on eyelashes on her one eye.
Her other major problem is:
#2. She's missing a pretty large section of hair from the underside of her wig. Her hair actually looks okay from the top (see below pic). I just don't know how many ponytails we'll be doing on this girl! :) I may eventually rewig her, but we'll just see how things go.
Her only other problem that I may not be able to fix is that she has some pretty major water-type stains on her cloth body. I may be able to do something about these, but I'm not sure. I'm not super worried about them. You can see them in the pic below:
Other than that, most of her problems are typical and fixable. Her leg limbs are a bit loose (I can fix those when I'm brave enough) :), but she can still stand on her own. She also has a lot of markings on her vinyl, but I'm pretty confident that most of those will come off with the magic eraser. I'm planning on working on her vinyl once the girls fall asleep (if they ever do!). It never fails: whenever I'm working on a doll that's going to be for them later, they always choose that time to come out and ask a question, or get a drink of water, or complain about their sisters. I think they have doll radar or something! :)
Here are some other "before" pics of Samantha:
Her marks don't show up really well on camera, so you won't get the full effect of how much she's improved, but it will at least give you an idea!
And now, for the most exciting part: all the fun outfits she came with!
As you can see, I got a great treasure! She came with her Cranberry Christmas dress, her birthday dress and flower garland (just missing the white pinafore), her sailor dress and hat, her white nightgown and pink satin kimono, Molly's meet sweater and skirt, Molly's birthday dress, and an American Girl tie dyed shirt. Everything seems to be pre-Mattel. The clothes do have a few minor problems. The Christmas dress has a rip in the back that should be fixable. It would be upsetting for a collector, but since this is a starter collection for a little girl, I'm not too concerned. Samantha's birthday dress has a small stain in the front. Her sailor dress was horribly stained. I was able to get most of them out by using Spray and Wash and then washing it 2 times on a delicate cycle, then air drying it.
I actually washed all of the clothes on a delicate cycle and then let them air dry. Some were stained and they all had an old dust smell from being stored away for so long. The only problem I ran into was that the blue ric rac on Molly's birthday dress bled on the dress and on Samantha's sailor cap. I'm going to try one of those Tide White out pens for clothing and see if that takes the marks away. I'll keep you posted on if it works or not.
Well, I'm off to work on Samantha. I'll let you know how it goes. Magic eraser and downy dunk time! :)
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