Sunday, May 3, 2009

Collector Confession: My Scene of Body Snatching

I don't really collect Mattel My Scene fashion dolls.

I harvest their bodies for other fashion dolls. I actively body snatch.

My first body snatching exercise happened when I was about seven. I had a standard Barbie, but I lost her head. Don't recall how the head was lost. I also had a Maddie Mod doll. Maddie was the local crazy lady. She had what I even then considered an inferior body. Problem? Solution. I popped Maddie's head off her flimsy original body and onto the Barbie body. Maddie survived.

Zoom forward a few decades and behold the adult doll collecting Dana. This time though, the body snatching isn't for replacing missing heads. No. The body snatching happens to appease my aesthetic sense. The My Scene heads are annoyingly large; the Flavas' heads are too big for their bodies. What if I popped a Flavas head on a My Scene body? Ah, the peanut butter and chocolate collusion moment. Vision pleased by improved proportions. Ah, the world's a better, brighter place.

What's the next step in body snatching? Improving articulation - pose ability - in fashion dolls and action figures by snatching action figure bodies to house doll and/or action figure heads I prefer. Baby, look at them now. Really moving and grooving, third millennium style.

Mad Maddie is still around. She's lost her right foot, her right forefinger, and her left little finger. Wonder if it's time for her to snatch another body? Perhaps ... only this time, there are other heads before hers.