Mini Brands Fashion Capsules *Updated*

Two of the four Mini Brands Fashion capsules that I've purchased (thus far)

After receiving an assortment of Mini Brands Fashions (minus the capsules) as a birthday gift, I became a little obsessed and purchased four additional capsules and an assortment of loose items offered in an eBay auction. The element of surprise, but knowing that the contents of each capsule would contain something I like, and hopefully not a duplicate, fueled the obsession. The capsules are from series 3 and 4.

Each capsule in the Mini Brands Fashion series contains two surprise packages. The following images are the contents of the first two Series 3 capsules:

A gold atomizer-shaped shoulder bag, a designer-style silk scarf, pink shoes with square cutouts, and a gold charm bracelet (or necklace) were in two packages in the first Series 3 capsule.

The atomizer-shaped purse was in one package. The other items shown above were in the second package. The first two capsules were ordered from an Amazon seller who offered the two for $13.99. They retail for $9.99, so I thought that was a good price, and shipping was free because I purchased other items that qualified for free shipping. 

These items were in the two packages of capsule 2 from Series 3: a blue quilted shoulder bag, white high-top sneakers with a black-and-white side "swoosh" design, faux lipstick, and a silver necklace.

The blue shoulder bag was packaged alone. The other items shown above were in the second package in this capsule.

A red velour purse, red stacked-heel open-toe shoes, a gold-tone necklace with red faux gemstones, and matching earrings were in two packages from a Series 4 capsule.

The red purse was in one package; the other items were in the second package in my 3rd Mini Brands Fashion capsule purchase.

These items from Series 4 were in my 4th Mini Brands capsule purchase: faux lipstick and perfume, white knee-high cushiony boots, and a peach shoulder bag. (The shoulder bag was in one package; the other items were in the second package in this capsule.)

While shopping at Walmart, I checked the toy department, found the Mini Brands display, rummaged through the assorted capsules, and luckily found one fashion capsule, the contents of which are in the picture above.   

So far, I have been fortunate not to purchase any duplicate items, but my obsession did not end with these four capsule purchases.

An eBay Find

I found this assortment of Mini Brands Fashion (MF) items in an eBay auction. These items are from different Mini Brands Fashion series. The tan boots and fringe purse are from Series 3. All other items are from earlier MF series.

Grouped items from the eBay purchase were photographed:

It was the tan knee-high boots that influenced this eBay purchase. The two stylish shoulder bags were an added plus. The sunglasses were included with this purchase, along with the items in the next three pictures.

Two MF image cards and a Chihuahua

A bottle of lotion, two makeup brushes, and a compact

This is a close-up of a bottle of faux lotion with the top removed.

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These four dolls wear Mini Brands Fashion accessories that were either part of my birthday present or my purchases.

Elara holds a quilted blue shoulder bag.

Fanah copped two silver lamé items: a shoulder bag and silver ankle boots.

The tan fringe purse and tan boots pair well with Nichelle's cold-weather attire. (I didn't have trouble putting the boots on or removing them.)

Barbie Fashionistas #6 Party Glam Desireé holds a pink lamé purse and wears fashionable white knee-high boots.

I am looking forward to accessorizing other dolls with these Mini Brands Fashion accessories! 

BTW: I've ordered a 5th MF capsule that will arrive soon. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it doesn't duplicate what I already have.

Update: 11 p.m. 07-23-2026

My 5th Mini Brands Fashion capsule arrived crushed.

The 5th MF capsule arrived earlier today. The capsule was severely damaged in shipping due to poor packing, but since I was going to open it anyway, I decided to keep it. I'm happy I made that decision because it does not duplicate any of the MF items I already have, which are shown below.

This unnumbered Mini Brands Fashion capsule contained a red faux leather shoulder bag, a pair of red sunglasses, red ankle boots, and a container of red lip gloss. I believe this capsule is from the first MF series.

XianXian Toys' Elara models the sunglasses, shoulder bag, and ankle boots. The red lip gloss is tucked inside the shoulder bag.

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©Black Doll Collecting/dbg

There are countless items to collect and write about. Black dolls chose me.
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Thank you for reading. Comments that are not spam are appreciated. Spam comments will not be published. To contact me directly, use the About page link, which is also visible in Web View mode, find, and use the email link.

Visit and follow DeeBeeGee's Virtual Black Doll Museum for detailed installations of antique, vintage, modern, and one-of-a-kind black dolls. http://virtualblackdollmuseum.com

Connie Carter

Poppy Parker clones

Two new Poppy Parker clones wearing only black high-heeled shoes arrived in late June. They use the same head sculpt as the doll I named Piper Parker, but because of their different hair colors, I've given them a new name: Connie Carter, inspired by the name another collector gave his dolls. 

I dressed them as shown above, swapping out the black shoes the doll on the left arrived wearing with a pair of black slingbacks that came with the fashion she now wears. She holds a shoulder bag from my Mini Brands fashion birthday gift case.

They posed for a close-up photo that highlights their arched eyebrows and dark lip color, which I like better than the original doll's lip color.

This side-by-side photo confirms that they use the same head sculpt as Piper.

Initially, I thought their head sculpts differed from Piper Parker's, but after placing them side by side, I see they are the same. The arched eyebrows of the new girls give them a different look. Piper's bangs hide her curved eyebrows. The Connies' darker lip color enhances their appearance, as well. 

These bang-less dolls (that arrived before Piper) use the same head sculpt as the others. Without bangs, their curved eyebrows are better visible.

The newest dolls (Connie Carter) were sold with a vast choice of hair colors and skin tones. I ordered from this link, which might not work after the dolls are sold out or by the time this post is published. 
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All photos and text are copyrighted and cannot be used elsewhere unless permission is granted by the author.

©Black Doll Collecting/dbg

There are countless items to collect and write about. Black dolls chose me.
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Thank you for reading. Comments that are not spam are appreciated. Spam comments will not be published. To contact me directly, use the About page link, which is also visible in Web View mode, find, and use the email link.

Visit and follow DeeBeeGee's Virtual Black Doll Museum for detailed installations of antique, vintage, modern, and one-of-a-kind black dolls. http://virtualblackdollmuseum.com

Studio XOXO! Basix Dolls

Studio XOXO! Basix Midnight Fire Fanah and Jacques

In May, I ordered my first two Studio XOXO! Basix dolls, Midnight Fire Fanah and Jacques. Designed by CJ Starz, the dolls were sold nude. I dressed them as shown next.

Fanah wears a "wet look" orange dress and a pair of silver Mini Brands Fashion boots. Jaques, who has a broader body than most male fashion dolls, wears an ensemble designed to fit his body type.

The lovely Fanah is shown in a close-up.

Fanah is a 12-inch slim-bodied fashion doll with multiple points of articulation. She has fiery red straight-rooted hair that extends to her upper thighs. Her painted eyes are hazel. She arrived with slightly parted lips and painted teeth. I painted over the teeth to give a closed-mouth appearance. Two extra pairs of hands and extra feet were included.

The oh-so handsome Jacques poses for a close-up.

Jacques is a very handsome 13-1/2-inch-tall articulated male with a muscular build, brown-painted hair, painted-hazel eyes, a closed mouth, full lips, and pale lip color.

Midnight Araxá (Raven)

In June, Araxá arrived. Also sold nude, like Fanah, she is multiarticulated and has two extra sets of hands and extra feet. 

Araxá and Fanah have the same body type.

Midnight Araxá with raven hair is a 12-inch multiarticulated fashion doll. Her long, straight, rooted hair extends to her thighs. She has painted blue eyes with painted upper and lower eyelashes and silver eyeshadow. She has slightly parted lips with red lip color.

The lovely Araxá is seen in a close-up

Araxá was initially dressed in a black "wet look" dress with black knee-high boots. 

Shortly after dressing Araxá in a black dress, she and bestie Fanah decided to swap clothes, as illustrated next.

The ladies swapped clothes and took the following "selfie". 

After the lovely ladies took this selfie, they posed with Jaques.

Studio XOXO! Midnight Fire Fanah, Jacques, and Midnight Araxá (Raven) in a close-up

A full-length view illustrates how well they display together.

Fanah, Jacques, and Araxá visited Paris, France, and took this human-led AI photo.

As a side note, these dolls are in the last routine installation at the Virtual Black Doll Museum.

Related Link

Studio XOXO! on Instagram

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All photos and text are copyrighted and cannot be used elsewhere unless permission is granted by the author.

©Black Doll Collecting/dbg

There are countless items to collect and write about. Black dolls chose me.
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Thank you for reading. Comments that are not spam are appreciated. Spam comments will not be published. To contact me directly, use the About page link, which is also visible in Web View mode, find, and use the email link.

Visit and follow DeeBeeGee's Virtual Black Doll Museum for detailed installations of antique, vintage, modern, and one-of-a-kind black dolls. http://virtualblackdollmuseum.com

My Mother-in-Law's Doll

Rebecca was made from an Apple Valley kit.

During the last couple of decades of her life, I would buy dolls for my mother-in-law on special occasions because she loved dolls, too. After she transitioned in 2009, my sister-in-law (SIL) kept most of her dolls. She allowed me to choose one to keep, and a select few other close family members were given a doll. An Apple Valley Kit doll that I put together and named Rebecca, my mother-in-law's middle name, was my choice.

Rebecca's sculpt is called "Raspberry," because she's blowing one.

Rebecca uses the Apple Valley Raspberry mold because she is blowing a raspberry. She is a very happy baby.

In the late 1990s, I purchased a 24-inch toddler doll from another collector, made by Jessie International of Quebec, Canada. The company's mailing address was included on the cloth certificate of authenticity sewn to the doll's back. I contacted them by mail to inquire how to purchase additional dolls. They sent me one of their catalogues, from which I purchased at least a dozen dolls wholesale with the intent to sell the dolls, and I did. I gave one to my mother-in-law (MIL). She fell in love with it, and so did her neighbors and other associates. These women, who lived in a rural town, had never seen such "beautiful Black dolls." For a short time, my MIL and I had a small business selling the Jessie Collection dolls. I kept one for myself, and she kept the one I had given her. The others were sold.

The Jessie Collection dolls are indicated by a yellow star.

Initially, I couldn't find a recent photo of my Jessie Collection dolls (the one purchased from another collector and the one I kept from my wholesale order from Jessie International), but I did have the above group photo, taken on June 14, 2003.

This is a close-up screenshot of the June 14, 2003, photo that includes my original two Jessie Collection dolls. The one on the right is the one I purchased from another collector.

As I was creating tags for this post, "Jessie International" was noted as a previously used tag. It was used for the following photo taken of my two dolls for a 2010 post about dolls from Canada. Find the link to that post at the end of this post.

This is a better photo of my original two Jessie Collection Dolls. They are from 1990 and 1995, respectively.

In June 2026, I attended a "mother's appreciation dinner" hosted by my niece. Towards the end of dinner, my niece presented me with the Jessie Collection doll I had given my mother-in-law. Obviously, at some point, my SIL had given it to her, and now my niece wanted me to have it.

This photo was taken before my MIL's Jessie Collection doll's ponytail had been restyled.

At some point, my mother-in-law gave her doll new socks (I could tell by the pink ribbons attached to the sides, which did not match the dress color), but the dress, pantalettes, and shoes were unchanged. The doll was still in great condition, except her ponytail needed restyling, her socks and shoes needed washing, and I chose to swap out the pink sock ribbons with red ribbons. 

The video below captures the ponytail restyling technique and includes an image of the final result.

Related Link

Dolls from Around the World - Canada

 

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All photos and text are copyrighted and cannot be used elsewhere unless permission is granted by the author.

©Black Doll Collecting/dbg

There are countless items to collect and write about. Black dolls chose me.
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Thank you for reading. Comments that are not spam are appreciated. Spam comments will not be published. To contact me directly, use the About page link, which is also visible in Web View mode, find, and use the email link.

Visit and follow DeeBeeGee's Virtual Black Doll Museum for detailed installations of antique, vintage, modern, and one-of-a-kind black dolls. http://virtualblackdollmuseum.com

Artificial Intelligence is Not 100% Reliable

This unknown 21-inch clay and cloth doll entered my collection in July 2020.

The pictured doll has been part of my collection since July 2020, and I've never been able to identify her maker. Recently, I asked Google's Gemini AI  assistant to help me trace the doll back to its original maker using the same headshot photo and a description of the doll's head markings. It is marked: "ETG © VT" within a circle with an "M" to the right of the encircled letters.

Gemini provided a lengthy, detailed answer and identified the mold maker as Vesta Turner, based on the VT head mark. I then searched for online information about a doll artist or mold maker named Vesta Turner, but found nothing. So, I commented that I couldn't find information about her online. Gemini gave a vague answer stating that very little online information is known about Vesta Turner and that some doll sites (including my Black Doll Collecting Blog) might have additional information. 

So, I asked it where it found the information it provided, and it wrote: 

To be completely transparent with you, I need to make a major correction: I completely hallucinated the name "Vesta Turner" and the details surrounding her studio in my previous responses. I made a completely ungrounded logical leap trying to decipher the initials "VT" on the back of the doll's head in image_8c3a03.jpg, and I apologize for providing you with fictional information. 

Because "Vesta Turner" was a mistake on my part, you won't be able to find any legitimate links or historical records connecting that name to doll molds, Leo Moss reproductions, or the 1970s and 1980s time frame. 

In the above response, it referenced my blog again, so I informed Gemini that I am the author of Black Doll Collecting. It apologized profusely and stated it would not insult my intelligence any further. So, in other words, if AI doesn't know the answer, specifically the Gemini platform, it will make something up (fabricate an answer) and call it hallucinating when confronted. 

On 06/27/2026, I updated my original post about this unknown doll with the complete Gemini conversation. So, AI users, beware and know that AI not only makes mistakes, but it also intentionally fabricates.

__________

All photos and text are copyrighted and cannot be used elsewhere unless permission is granted by the author.

©Black Doll Collecting/dbg

There are countless items to collect and write about. Black dolls chose me.
__________

Thank you for reading. Comments that are not spam are appreciated. Spam comments will not be published. To contact me directly, use the About page link, which is also visible in Web View mode, find, and use the email link.

Visit and follow DeeBeeGee's Virtual Black Doll Museum for detailed installations of antique, vintage, modern, and one-of-a-kind black dolls. http://virtualblackdollmuseum.com

The Sacrificial Barbie Deluxe Style 12

After the price of Barbie Deluxe Style 12 Barbie was reduced to $14.99, I purchased three because this doll is a complexion match for my Barbie You Create Neutral Kit 1, one of the kits Mattel sold with one body and three heads. I wanted all three heads to have their own body. So...

After removing two of the three dolls from the box, I had to first tackle their dry and brittle-looking hair (why, you ask, since I'm only using their bodies). I had an articulated $2 body to use for one of the heads.

This is how two of my Barbie Deluxe Style 12 dolls' hair looked right out of the box—dry and brittle-looking!

I gave them a rod roller set.

I saturated the hair with Lotta Body setting lotion and rolled small sections under with tiny red rod rollers as illustrated above. I left the rollers in for 48 hours to allow the hair to fully air dry.

I removed the rollers and later (after this photo was taken) gently finger-combed the curls to slightly loosen them.

Here they are from the front before sacrificing their bodies to two heads in my Barbie You Create Neutral Kit 1.

This is one of the Barbie Deluxe Style 12 dolls after resetting the hair, removing the original body, rebodying onto a cheaper articulated body, and redressing.

I stored the extra Barbie head and the two sets of original clothes in a plastic baggie. The third doll remains NRFB.

Bodying the Barbie You Create Neutral Kit 1 Heads

I was ready to pop the kit heads onto the donor bodies, only to discover that the neck peg on the Deluxe Style dolls was too large and would require modification. After almost giving up, I consulted the resident doll doctor, who used a wire cutter from my dollologist kit to modify the pegs for me. 

The peg on the left is modified (excess plastic snipped off). I had wrapped it with micropore tape after my modifications to cover any rough edges before my husband performed the required extra snipping. The one on the right is the original, unmodified neck peg on the 2nd Barbie Deluxe Style body.

One of the kit heads (Lara) is added to the modified peg and body and fits perfectly.

This photo illustrates that the kit heads will not fit the original Barbie Deluxe Style neck peg without modifying the peg.

The second neck peg was modified by shortening the stem and the side prongs, and the circular area at the base was narrowed with wire cutters.

Both Barbie Neutral Kit 1 heads are attached to the Barbie Deluxe Style 12 donated bodies.

Dressing the Three Kit Dolls

The third doll or first doll in the kit continues to use the Petite Made to Move body provided by Mattel. With all three dolls bodied and dressed, they posed for the final two pictures. 

Nichelle, Lara, and Mermaid (their head sculpt names) are dressed in a mixture of kit clothing and other fashion doll clothes, shoes, and accessories. 

The ladies pose for a final full-length picture.

It took several days, off and on, to complete the hair setting and rebodying process, but it was time well spent.

__________

All photos and text are copyrighted and cannot be used elsewhere unless permission is granted by the author.

©Black Doll Collecting/dbg

There are countless items to collect and write about. Black dolls chose me.
__________

Thank you for reading. Comments that are not spam are appreciated. Spam comments will not be published. To contact me directly, use the About page link, which is also visible in Web View mode, find, and use the email link.

Visit and follow DeeBeeGee's Virtual Black Doll Museum for detailed installations of antique, vintage, modern, and one-of-a-kind black dolls. http://virtualblackdollmuseum.com