Blythe Meet-Up at the Southern Maryland Doll Club Show, Waldorf, Maryland, September 12, 2009

(Originally written on September 13, 2009)

Yesterday I attended a Blythe doll meet-up that was held at the Southern Maryland Doll Club Show. I originally decided to check out the Southern Maryland Doll Club Show and I happened to visit the This is Blythe forum when I saw a notice of a meet-up being held during that show. There were no responses to that notice nor were there any indications as to which time Blythe owners were going to get together. (The doll show itself was being held from 10 a.m.-4 p.m.) I had attended doll meet-ups in the past but they were all Asian ball-jointed doll meet-ups. On top of that, I hadn't attended any doll meet-ups since the Asian ball-jointed meet-up that was held during the 2007 Otakon anime convention. If all that wasn't enough, this show took place nearly 10 months since my hip replacement surgery and it took a very long time for me to regain my health.

So I decided to take my one and only Blythe (an Ashton-Drake Galleries reproduction of an early 1970's Blythe was was originally manufactured by the now-defunct Kenner Toy Company) just in case that the meet-up was going to happen. I was glad I did because when I arrived at the doll show and began to peruse the various vendor tables, I saw three other women who were openly toting their Blythe dolls so I pulled mine out and introduced myself. The other women were very nice and friendly and their Blythes were all very lovely. I took a bunch of photos yesterday so, without further ado, here they are. (Click on any of the photos to see a larger version open in a new window.)

The doll in the first photo is not a Blythe doll. This was a doll I actually won as a door prize. When I first arrived at the show, I was invited to fill out an entry for a door prize and I thought that I wouldn't be notified if I had won until after the show ended. (I assumed that because I filled out my name, address, phone number, and e-mail address.) I was startled when someone called out my name in the middle of the showroom floor while I was checking out the vendor tables (before I met up with the other Blythe folks). Well, anyway, she's an Asian doll (either Japanese or Korean) who's encased in a plastic box. I attempted to remove her from her box but her feet just wouldn't budge so I figured that she's meant to stay in her box forever. There is some Asian writing on the bottom of the box but I don't know what it says since it's in a language that I'm not familiar with.

The dolls in the second photo are Blythe dolls. At one point we decided to temporarily leave the doll show and eat lunch at a nearby Texas-themed BBQ restaurant where we displayed our Blythe dolls at our table.

My own Blythe (left) is seated next to the new Asian doll that I had just won.

We returned to the doll show after lunch where we shopped among the tables. A lot of vendors asked us questions about our dolls and seemed genuinely interested in Blythe. One of the vendors was kind enough to let us put our Blythe dolls among her merchandise and take pictures of them.

I'll admit that I didn't buy a lot of doll-related stuff aside from a couple of cute $2 Barbie outfits (which would not only fit my Blythe doll but my other 1/6 scale dolls that I also own). The best bargain was a bag full of Ken outfits that I purchased for $5. (I have a Soul Doll Kimmy that can wear Ken clothes--as long as I sewn darts in the back of the shirts--and finding nice looking masculine clothes for him can be a total bitch at times.)

The show itself was held in a high school and the vendors were all set up in the cafeteria. The school cafeterias I used to eat in during my public school student career generally had no windows. This high school cafeteria was different in that one wall had a series of long windows that overlooked the hallway next to that room. The show organizers used the long windows to put up this display of dolls and stuffed animals. The toys displayed in the windows were not for sale at the show and the displays were pretty imaginative. Each window had a different theme ranging from Harry Potter to Raggedy Ann to fairies to dolls from around the world to Gone With the Wind. The photos I took of these windows should give you an idea of what it was like to see such a display.

Blythe Meet-Up at the Southern Maryland Doll Club Show, Waldorf, Maryland, September 12, 2009

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