My daughter has had a bunch of Christmas money burning a hole in her pocket for a couple of weeks now, she had decided that she'd really like to spend some of it on an American Girl doll so we did a little research.

It seems that American Girl dolls are rather pricey, and to make matters worse, they're very rare in the UK pushing the price even higher.  What is a girl to do?

I enlisted the assistance of Google and came across the store

Look what I found on a Cat's Protection League charity stall at the weekend.  This adorable (if rather dirty) little Kid Kore doll from the early 90s.

She needs a bit of a bath but her conscience is clean since she helped raise funds to help all those little kitties ^-^...

She se...

Many aeons ago Barbie was pretty much the only doll that I collected, but I haven't bought any new Barbie stuff for ages!  Today, though I splurged in an uncharacteristically self-indlulgent fashion and bought all these!

Although I do like the Fashionista Cutie's face up I lurve the pink hairedness of the Hollywood Diva, so I decided to do a bit of emergency surgery and swap the heads ('c...

My dolls are always getting into pickles... sometimes literally!

Well, it seems that those irrepressible Bratz are going to be relaunched by MGA Entertainment, and CEO Isaac Larian promises ' that the 2011 collection will prove to be "even more edgy."

I must admit that I am enjoying the preview pics of the girls but lets hope that "even more edgy" doesn't end up translating as "even more trashy" and this is truly a new start for the dolls!

As it has been such a lovely weekend we fleshy people and the plastic folks have all been enjoying the sunshine.

On Saturday my daughter's dolls got to spend the whole day loungin in the pool and sunbathing in the garden (and then went on a timetravel adventure just so as to not confomr to stereotyping)...

How did this information pass me by?  Littlest Pet Shop Petite Blythe, on the shelves in the UK!?  I just heard about them on Claudia's excellent 'Just Dolls' blog.  I thought I was seeing things!  I googled it and it looks like my local Smyths actually have them available right now, as I type!  I never thought I'd see the day, but I'm glad I have!

At the Sheffield Fayre recently I was also lucky enough to meet Janine Dearlove founder of Global Visionaries dolls.  Initially trained as an actor, single mum Janine, launched an initial range of eight greetings cards for children of colour at the NEC spring fair back in 2003. 

Since then her products have developed and expanded to include the lovely cloth dolls pictured on her website (actually the pictures on the website don't really do them justice in my opini...

Our nearest Smyths Toyshop now have Moxie Teenz in stock.

Initially I thought the Moxie Teenz look very similar to

I discovered another exceedingly cute and brand spanking new doll today, in my local Asda of all places.  She is Bitty Buttons.

They're all exceptionally adorable, a...