HOW BABY FACE
WAS BORN...
25. Eye Trouble
& Facial Expressions
The
heads go through several steps from wax
to finished doll, and with each step they
shrink a little more. There is a next to
last Vinyl head, which is the most
perfect head. Shrinkage on this head is
the most controlled. This head will be
molded one more time [and the 5% smaller
heads made from those molds will become
the final dolls]. And This Perfect, Next
to last head, is The Head which is
photographed for the boxes!
The
doll inside is something else. It shrinks
a little more and distorts a little
more,and If it is heated a little too
much, in order to insert the eyes, the
space between the eyes shrinks too much,
and the eyes move too close together, and
sometimes they tend to bulge. If
Natalie's mouth appears too large on the
box, it's bigger still on the doll inside
the box!
And
if you like the eyes of the doll on the
box, and think they're beautiful, cross
your fingers for luck, and hold your
breath as you open up the box! For the
eyes photographed on the box are the same
expensive German ones, that I used on my
first dolls, But the eyes inside the box
are "affordable" copies that
Galoob had fashioned in China! They
shouldn't be that bad, and if you're
lucky they aren't bad at all! But if you
happen to get one of the first couple
hundred thousand dolls, made before they
finally heard and heeded my incessant and
unwelcome Screams, the eyes on the doll
inside the box, will not be the deep blue
you see on the cover, but, the pale and
tell tale hue of "Kentucky Blue
Grass", instead!
Someone
in China had done a pretty good job of
copying the German Plastic eyes. The two
piece white styrene eyeballs were
perfect, and the pop-in lenses weren't
bad. They were a little flatter than the
originals so they didn't create the quite
the same degree of magnification and
magic. That's the sort of thing I would
have caught and corrected, if I had been
consulted, but it's also the sort of
thing that, perhaps only I would notice,
or care about. The sad thing about this
small detail and the big one, that
blighted hundreds of thousands of dolls
was that: It Wouldn't have Cost a Penny
More to Do It Right!
Having
done the hard part decently, they now
Ruined hundreds of thousands of eyes,
simply because the Idiot who Specified
the Colors, Couldn't Match Color! And the
rich and Realistic colors of the German
eyes, as shown on the boxes, Became Pale,
Washed Out and Weird! The brown eyes were
OK, but the Blue became Powder Blue, and
Bizarre pastel shades of Lime green and
Pale Lavender were introduced. This
caused the Irises to pale out and the
black pupils to Dominate, and each be
perceived as separate elements, rather
than as a Whole! They looked like a cross
between "Village of the Dammed"
and "Rosemary's Baby"! The
stereotypical Horror movie closing shot,
Where we get a close up of the children's
eyes, and Realize that They are "Not
of This World"!
- Mel
would like to suggest
that the advertisment at
the top of this page is
the perfect
"replacement
guide" for Baby Face
eyes!!
I
Bitched and cried out in the wilderness,
unheeded, until I made such a nuisance of
myself, that they, finally, promised to
change the eyes "as soon as they
used up the several hundred thousand they
had already made"! I wondered if the
doll would ever be successful enough to,
someday, get those new eyes!
She was! And she did!
The man who was
heading up the Cabbage Patch division at Hasbro,
which was the dolls new home after Coleco,
confronted Andy, at Toy Fair! And he was Livid
with Anger! He accused "Kiscom" Of
Ripping Off "His" Idea of using facial
Expressions on dolls! 