Vintage 1998 Shopko Battat Doll Garage Sale Find

Greetings and Salutations Doll Friends!

I went to a Garage Sale Saturday and there at a sale, mixed in with like 10 porcelain dolls was an old school Shopko Battat doll new in its box!! She was asking $10 but accepted $8 since it was like 2pm on last day of sale. I knew exactly what I was going to do with the doll!

I bought this fantasy boy wig a while ago with no particular doll in mind... I just thought it was cute and suspect that the Muzi Wigs on Amazon will not be as inexpensive as they are indefinately. After I bought my first one for Sasha I put a review good review on it and the price almost immedately went up. Funny! So I imagine the current prices will last until they get a bit of good feedback and then will all go up. So, I bought a couple of them. Teehee. 

So when I saw this doll, knew the wig would be perfect! 

I honestly had no idea that Battat ever made an 18inch doll for Shopko?! I guess I kind of assumed that all the Battat 18inch dolls had always been sold at Target. So when I found this one that was clearly marked as a Shopko doll, I was intrigued and, of course, Googled it. Apparently there were two sorts of 18" Battat dolls sold at Shopko in the late 1990s. There was this sort, the "Autumn Harvest" kind and there were also some called Collector's Lane . They even, apparently, had Mini Collector's Lane Kids dolls. too. Fun! 

The box was in good shape for being about 20 years old. It was very simple with only illustrations of a vicotrian looking house with a leaf in the middle talking about the dolls. 

See what I mean, not a whole lot to the box.

Here is the doll out of the outer box. The outfit seems very top notch and was probably worth every cent of the $8 I paid for the doll. See why I can never pass them up?? Teehee. 

I could tell strait off that the wig was not good quality. I have found other vintage Battat dolls  and both  I've removed the wig from and they were both dreadful wigs that were nearly impossible to pry off. 

Being as these dolls retailed for about $30 in 1998, if I am reading the information on them correctly, I think they must've put all the money of production into the doll and the outfit. So, naturally they had to scrimp on the wig. Kind of like the Heidi Ott Faithful Friends dolls I have found in the past. I digress...

Interesting note of warning. Eh?

I could tell I was in for the oh-so-fun 'hair sewn to the plastic' like some modern dolls.

I knew I'd planned to remove the wig but since I also wanted to show ya'll the doll as she came out of the box, I went about removing her hair from the plastic like I planned to keep her hair. 

She had this tag on her wrist. Apparently there was a Jill, this Cindy and a Susan in the line. 

See? Right out fo the box the wig looks pretty bad!! See the frizzy tangled mess underneath!

The cute little backpack was sewn to her outfit.

Did I mention the outfit was great? That was before I realized how great. The pockets on the cute little sweater are real, as are the buttons. The little skirt is made of corduroy in red with a perfectly matched mock turtleneck top. Very cute!

I was surprised to see that, under the cute outfit was some pretty well made underwear, both panties and a tank top. Sweet! These little white tops often work well for boy dolls with a pair of shorts or something. So nice to have another one.

Here she is... About to have her wig removed. 

Look at that! The wig was partly stuck to the neck. Very poorly done. Which was nice because it meant that I didn't have a moments pause in removing the wig. 

I just sort of pulled at the edge of the wig to see if it was, like, superglued on the way of all the other vintage wigged Battat dolls have been. I have literally just cut all the hair off all but the first one and haven't even tried to pry them off because they are extremely hard to remove!! I've just glued the wig over the wig cap after I cut off the hair. So I was really surprised when the edge of the wig gave way pretty easily... So I started pulling it off and was able to pull it off without even using nail polish remover or anything. Nice! 

I forgot to get much of a photo of the wig before I put it on. It came packaged in a plastic bag with a carboard sleeve around it to make sure the wig doesn't get squished. Aren't the colors nice!

I loved him right away! I have a few fantasy girls, Prism and Spectrum and so I needed a boy! I haven't decided on a name for him yet... When I look at him I think of anime boy with white hair and it makes me smile. Two of my favorite comic book characters of all time are Cutter and Skywise from Elf Quest and they both have white hair. I realize this little fella has brown eyes and not blue but I think he might be named Skywise Cutter anyway just because I like it. It kind of matches Prism and Spectrum's names.  

I think he's adorable.

Here he is with the old wig. I don't even think I'll save it for a forlorn looking thrift store doll... It just needs to be thrown away!

Here is Skywise with Becky, another vintage Battat I own. She was made after they began to give them plugged hair and it's actually pretty nice. 

I thought I had several of the Autumn Harvest doll's face sculpt already but when I got home to compare, nope. It's a different one than I have ever seen?

Here is Becky, Vito, Skywise and Mike. They are all vintage Battat dolls. 

I also have this fella Hector who is also an older Battat but again, a different face sculpt. So, it's fun to have the new one in my collection

Better run! 

Have a fantastic day!

XXOO

Heather