Two words to summarise STCC2009 for me: Blythe ROCKS! I just *might* be a little biased here, but I seriously thought Blythe was the most impressive booth there. Dollzinc has done a tremendous job this year with the Blythe booth! But I seriously need to improve my events photography more. I was so caught up with the giddiness of all the excitement that I only took pictures of dolls, and little of anything else. So yep, I didn't take any pics of the impressive Blythe booth. Lots of dolly pics though!



Dolly gains only ranked 2nd for me this year. What took the #1 spot was all the lovely people I met during the convention. Blythe people seriously rock too! Here's Morgan in Dollsville, by the uber-talented Joo Li, with whom I had so many delightful chats with. Joo Li is so adorable!




We also had a really fun dolly meet at TCC after everyone had made their purchases. And yes, everyone bought something! See the Prima Dolly Tokyo at the extreme right? She is fresh out of the box! Only 2 girls in our group pulled out 'lucky' red balls to purchase Tokyo at her release price. And of course Beelan had to rub salt to the wound by showing off her Tokyo. Baaaaaaaad girl! Jooli wisely kept hers low key, haha! And then the next day, Beelan won her Marigold. And that was the one Michi & I really wanted to take off with when Beelan wasn't noticing! ^^

Finalists of this year's Blythe Beauty Contest made their Singapore debut at the convention. Since their pics are already available online, I didn't bother to upload mine. But it was certainly a privilege of being able to oogle at them up close! Psss... It's absolutely criminal to say this, because she IS cute, but I still don't get what made the winning doll a winner. To this, hubby gave me a strange look and questioned whether my taste was warped. Yes, he obviously likes her. Melvin said she has an innocent child-like charm which he really likes. Erm, ok...

And collectors in Singapore had the tremendous privilege of setting eyes on the prototype dolls of Simply Lilac and Simply Peppermint, even before their release pics made it to the official Blythe website!






Simply Peppermint, in particular, bears such a strong resemblance to Prima Dolly Melon. Melon of course is still much much prettier IMHO, but I do appreciate the release of Peppermint. I see as CWC's ingenious way of trying to satisfy collectors' demands and at the same time, trying to ease up escalating secondary market prices.



"Girl Who Holds The Key" is a custom by Miyuki Odani of the famous Theater Alfort. Miyuki Odani is a true blue doll artist who thinks long and hard about a doll's concept before starting to work on her, and handmakes every single detail of the doll. Her work was specially chosen by Junko Wong to be featured in STCC 2009.


"Baby Candy Princess" is a collaboration effort of Mindtrigger and AliceAlice' under the team named "Dollerina". When Rinna of Mindtrigger was giving a description of "Baby Candy Princess" at the tea party, she humourously said that when she first finished rerooting all that wool hair, she thought BCP looked liked a Pomeranian and even apologised to her team mates!

Freddy Tan, Singapore's very own high-profile & uber talented doll artist, also specially created 2 custom series for the toy convention - "Rainbow Spirits", and "Seasons".




The leader of the Rainbow Spirits has special rainbow-coloured front facing chips, and her skirt is a creative culmination of the fabrics from the other 7 rainbow spirits.


She has such gorgeous curls too!


"Seasons" - Spring. All 4 dolls of the series were absolutely breathtaking, but this was my personal favourite.


"Seasons" - Summer.


"Seasons" - Autumn. Freddy just finished her on the preview night itself. ^^


"Seasons" - Winter. I heard this particular set was already snapped up even before the end of the the toy convention.


And here's the beautiful Junko Wong at the autograph session.

I was at the toy convention for Blythe and DOLLS. So other than Blythe's booth, the other booths that I stayed more than my nominal quick second was Ddung's and Barbie's.






I only have mini Ddungs at the moment. I guess I get thrown off by the big ones because the ones I like are often the limited editions and their price range veer very close to that of Blythe. And as always, priority of my dolly budget goes towards my darling Blythes first, plus, the right opportunity to adopt a big Ddung never came up. She & Momoko are still unmaterialised items on my dolly wish list. I really like my mini Ddungs though!


There was NO WAY I could have gotten a big Ddung at the convention, despite so many cute ones on display there. My entire dolly budget was busted on Blythe! The damage was mainly due to the 4 dolls I got. *gulp!* If I had actually won the prima dolly lotteries, the damage would have been worse. Haha!

Sadly, Pullip and J-dolls weren't represented at the toy convention this year. I heard this year's booth rental went up by a lot, and that scared off quite a few niche toy distributors. Hubby however, enjoyed the fact that there were collectively more booths this year and more for him to browse through!

I had 3 different STCC companions this year. On the day of the preview, I brought Zahara's yet un-named and yet un-photographed sister. Morgan accompanied me to the convention and the dolly meet on the 2nd day. Zahara masqueraded as my Autumn girl on the 3rd and accompanied me to the tea party (more pics of her in the next entry!). But I learnt that I should have brought another doll (and a 4th companion) to the Blythe Tea Party, so that I could take random shots with her. Oh well! There's always next year! ^_~