2015-07-30

Everybody loves Mattel's greasy glue

And when I say "loves", I mean "googles solutions for".

As I was looking at my blogstats the other day I noticed my post about Mattel's greasy hair problem topping the list of daily pageviews yet again. This has been happening a lot recently, so I thought I'd check the pageviews for all time. I found something pretty interesting:
Those are my top five most popular posts ever, with Mattel and their godawful glue as the undisputed winners.

They show up in the search strings as well: 

In the all time top keywords...

...and top keywords for the last month.

Congrats, Mattel! You win everlasting shame and dishonor.

Every time I see this post at the top of my weekly visitors count, I'm reminded that I don't actually have a good way of dealing with the head glue, and that I don't know what's in it or whether it's a health hazard or not. It's a source of worry that's taken a lot of the fun out of buying new Mattel dolls, and frankly I'm feeling less and less inclined to do so.

In the last year or so, almost all new Barbies I've bought have been body donors for older, glue-less heads (and sometimes I've still had to scrub glue off the neck disk). There are some great faces in the 2015 lineup, but from what I heard the glue is still in there (although I think I read somewhere that it's a new type that's slightly less likely to seep out?) and I'm not sure I want to buy the undercut flocking girl or "albino Artsy" with her big curly hair, only to dread the day the stickiness will inevitably appear and ruin the hair.

I'm not swearing off modern Mattel dolls forever, but... a hobby is supposed to be fun. Sticky glue head syndrome isn't.

2015-07-25

In case you're wondering where I've gone...

...well, I haven't gone anywhere, really. I've just not been in the mood for writing long blog posts lately, but even when I'm not blogging I'm still taking way too many photos and putting them on Flickr. So if, for some reason, you're dying to know what my latest goodwill find is, that's the place to look. :)