Nostalgia ahead!
I didn't really become interested in anime until about 1999, when I first started middle school. My new friends introduced me to a TV program called Toonami, which served as my gateway into anime. Sailor Moon, Ronin Warriors, Gundam Wing, Outlaw Star...so many good shows and great memories. I can remember racing home from school so I could start watching Sailor Moon. And then I learned that our local ABC affiliate station aired Sailor Moon in the morning, about half an hour before I left for school; twice the Sailor Moon goodness in one day!
(Sailor Moon was my favorite out of all those shows, can you tell?) So obviously I was interested in collecting merchandise, which I initially was convinced that I would never be able to do. I knew that the shows were from Japan (despite the NA liscensors' attempts to rewrite to make them seem more American), and I thought that there would be no chance that the Japanese companies would bring Sailor Moon merchandise "all the way over here" to America. Well, thankfully young Miss Scarlett was misguided in this regard.
Our local Blockbuster (now there's a name most of you haven't heard in years, huh?) thankfully carried anime videos to rent, and I guess they proved popular enough that they began offering some to buy, along with some anime merchandise. These included Sailor Moon fashion dolls, which I was lucky enough to purchase occasionally (I mean, a tween doesn't have much money, so a $20 doll was a BIG purchase).
Unfortunately, our store didn't carry all of the dolls, so I never picked up all of them. I had, for many years, just Venus, Mars, and Mercury. But I wanted a complete set! Yet I could never seem to find them on eBay, and I just resigned myself to never getting Jupiter and Moon. Luckily, though, my dear friend Miss Momo stumbled across some of the exact dolls I was looking for in one of her anime buying/selling/trading groups! With her help, I was able to purchase these darlings, and now my Sailor Team is complete.
To preface all of this, there are a TON of Sailor Moon fashion dolls out there. When I was researching what kind I was looking for (because I didn't remember what company had made the ones I wanted), I used the Shoujo Dolls website, which is one of the best fan resources out there for purchasing anime character dolls. By comparing pictures, I was able to figure out that I was looking for Irwin Toys' "Deluxe Adventure Dolls," apparently known to fans as the "Ugly Face" variant dolls, compared to late re-releases with different face molds. (I'll go on record here and say that I actually think it's the other way around; I like the faces, which seem more elegant. The later versions look like frogs.)
Irwin's dolls are 11.5 inches tall, and have gold-trimmed uniforms, which the later re-releases lack. They also come with circular white stands that you can clip the dolls's feet into so they can stand up. Each doll also comes with a miniature, simplified Crescent Moon Wand, which made no sense, since that's Sailor Moon's exclusive item. It always bugged me that the other girls didn't get their own transformation wands.
Moon has a lot of hair, making for very thick ponytails. It's hard to translate some anime hairstyles into real life. Although according to Sailor Moon hair tutorials I've seen, I can probably take her hair and make it look like the actual character...hmm...
There's not a whole lot of range of motion with these dolls. They can sit down...
...and they can bend their knees a bit, but that's it. The dolls are not made out of the same hard plastic as Barbie or EAH/MH, but some softer plastic that's slightly more pliable. But not by much. Kind of hard to fight evil by moonlight if you can't bend your elbows, n'est ce pas?
But they have sculpted collarbones! That's...kind of cool, but not as cool as more articulation would be. The tiaras don't clip on or anything; they are actually embedded into the dolls' foreheads. I think that removable tiaras would be cool (and less weird looking), but I guess Irwin was concerned about minimizing the amount of small parts that kids could lose. Jupiter is super cute with soft medium brown hair that has a slight reddish tone, and very dark green eyes. Her doll is the same size as the other girls, which saddens me because she's the tallest. In my dreams, Mattel makes a Sailor Moon line and Moon gets the short doll mold (like Maddie Hatter) and Jupiter gets the tall mold (like Cerise Hood), and the dolls are all articulated and you can make them do action poses and stuff. But life has killed the dream I dreamed.
I guess I was shaking with excitement here, since the photo's all borked up. But you can see Moon, with roughly the same detail as Jupiter, sans the missing accessories. She has some blush on her cheeks, which is cute. The eyes on these dolls are very large, expressive, and anime-like. The lips are thin, with not much detail, and the noses are very subtle. It's definitely an early attempt to capture the anime aesthetic in 3D, and it's a toss-up as to whether an individual fan might like it or not.
Periodic searches on eBay turn up mostly NIB dolls from all of Irwin's various releases, and generally go from $20-$70, depending on characters (Pluto, Saturn, and the villains are fairly rare, expect to pay a lot) and condition. My best suggestion if you're looking to pick some up and don't care as much about condition are to seek out Sailor Moon buy/sell/trade groups.
Well, everyone, that's all for now. Miss Scarlett, signing out!
