Blast from the Past

Today when I was digging through a box of junk in the basement I came across this case. It was the case that went to my old Hot Looks doll. It contained all of her much needed accessories. I used to love that doll. I had the Elkie version of the doll which is the first one in the group in the picture below. I remember how she had a sewn in bra and panties that I thought were so cool at the time. I think this was supposed to double as a swimsuit but considering the doll was cloth that was really a stupid feature. Looking back at the picture of the group the one next to the end bears a striking resemblance to a teen version of Punky Brewster, a show that I was annoyingly obsessed with. The eighties produced toys that I thought were the coolest toys ever. Of course through a child's eyes anything is cool. Looking back in comparison to the cool toys from the fifties and sixties the eighties toys seem kind of corny. I remember having a She-Ra doll. She was supposed to be He-Man's kickass sister. I was about four or five when she came out. I had a She-Ra costume that I used to play around in all the time. I even wore it out in public (which looking back my mom should never have let that happen) and I can remember waving my sword as people went by. She had her very own cartoon. Another cartoon that inspired a toy was Jem. I found some old VHS tapes with this cartoon on them when I was older and realized that not only were some of the the toys from the eighties rather corny so were the coordinating cartoons. I remember she would grab her earrings and she would change. I think that was right. I just remember she would grab her earrings, and there was also this talking computer. There was also this purple freaky character that I can't recall the name of. I had the doll of her though and I remember her hair was really shiny in places, and of course she was purple all over. I had a doll for every character. The dolls themselves weren't that cute. They were huge for one. The weren't the perfect Barbie doll size. They looked more like a transvestite trying to be Barbie. Really weird transvestite Barbies with coordinating fashion accessories and musical instruments. The picture doesn't really illustrate it but trust me they were huge dolls. I also had a My Child doll. I can still remember those commercials. The commercial said you could have one that looked just like you. Mom bought me one that didn't look like me but more like her, which I think was a subconscious thing on her part. All my dolls had dark hair like my mother's instead of strawberry blonde hair which was what I was born with. She always said she wanted blonde hair but instead I got that particular gene so she probably bought me dark haired dolls out of retribution. The My Child doll I owned had long black hair and bright blue eyes that I carried everywhere. I named her Molly (that might have been her name originally) and I had all kinds of clothes for her and everything. I eventually decided that I would like Molly's hair shorter and I cut it all off in a nice pretty chin length bob. Mom then proceeded to bust my ass saying that I had ruined the doll. Well maybe if her hair had been blonde I wouldn't have cut it. Molly and I had a falling out soon after. Thinking of the talking computer in Jem got me to thinking about another show with possessed electronics that was on when I was a child that used to scare the living daylights out of me, Read All About It. It was dark and gloomy and spooking. I remember the kids of the show congregating in this spooky room with a freaky typewriter robot that communicated via typing and this weird scary silver head. And the show was on PBS for Pete's sake, a children's television network. I guess the premise of the show was to scare me into reading. I don't remember it inspiring me to read. It was probably just full of subliminal messages to invade young minds and scar them for life. Maybe the silver head in the show sent me a subliminal message to cut Molly's hair.