30th Anniversary Limited Edition 17″ Ariel Doll headache…

By Moggymawee on January 26, 2020 • ( Leave a comment )

Nothing like a ~~obsession~~ passion to revive a dead blog ^^”. So, I just want to briefly update and share some more pics of my 30th Anniversary Limited Edition 17″ Ariel Doll, which quickly soared and surpassed my 2013 Ariel in becoming my all time grail doll. I gushed cringingly about her here.

So I mentioned at the end of that post about a broken necklace, and how I may have to purchase another one without this defect from the secondary market. I did complain to Disney customer service about this and they compensated with a 20% refund.

Now if you know me at all, you’d know I totally went ahead and bought another Ariel doll within a few days. Aaaaaand, not only did I purchase another one – I ended up purchasing two!!! So yes, I now have three of these amazing Ariel dolls (and yes, I’m fully aware of my obsessive intensity (∥￣■￣∥)). Though, in my defense there’s a good-ish reason for all this madness.

The second Ariel I ordered was from a scalper on Ebay. Well, I assume he was a scalper because he had just sold another one, and lacked the basic etiquette of selling expensive limited dolls – he didn’t show any actual photos of the doll in hand, he did not mention defects (I had to find this out the hard way) and he had no idea what “double boxing” meant. I should’ve paid attention to all these red flags, but I was mercilessly lured by the price and his 100% positive feedback.

Furthermore, the seller was very responsive and did show me some grainy low res photos when I requested. He also kept reassuring me that there was absolutely no defects or flaws on the doll or box yadi yadi ya. I was so focussed on checking the intactness of her necklace that I completely neglected to pore over every inch of her box, face and body with my anxiety-inducing eagle eyes.

And guess how the doll was when she arrived 2 weeks later (via that rip-off blood sucking Global Shipping Programme ಠ_ಠ) – yup, you guessed it – flaws, flaws and FLAWS! She was riddled with issues, the main one being a big red ?paint stain over her neck that the plastic had absorbed – so the usual surface cleaning agents such as alcohol, acetone and magic eraser would not work. I am currently applying 10% benzoyl peroxide treatments with minimal success. I plan to try RemoveZit stain remover after baby #3 is born (that stuff reeks!). Her box also had these massive unsightly creases. I was utterly dismayed.

So what was my logical solution to that? To shelf out another couple hundreds of bucks of course (ಥ﹏ಥ)! To be fair, I did just sell a bunch of my Monster High collection so it wasn’t like I was just irresponsibly tossing money down the drain! I was simply recycling my hobby funds.

This time, I purchased from a fellow collector, who ~~took pity in~~ understood my insanity completely and even took extra pictures and videos of the doll for me. After two agonizing weeks, she finally arrived – and she is absolutely perfect! No broken necklaces, very beautiful clean and precise face up (best one out of the three I have), and lovely styled hair! Her number is slightly higher than my original one, but it’s still quite a low and even number.

30th Anniversary Limited Edition 17″ Ariel Doll

My three 30th Anniversary Limited Edition 17″ Ariel Dolls (red mark photoshopped out)

My three 30th Anniversary Limited Edition 17″ Ariel Dolls (red mark photoshopped out)

So all in all, I could’ve just used all this money to buy the pink dress D23 Ariel -____- but to be honest, I prefer the face and hair on the store Ariel better. I’ll still casually scour Ebay for one at a decent price, but honestly; this whole Ebay secondary market business has left a super bad taste in my mouth. In the future, if there’s a limited edition doll that I adore, I’ll make sure to order two from ShopDisney on release. Quality control has become pretty questionable with Disney lately, so hopefully ordering two would save me from headache like this.

Now I will start preparing my wallet and heart for the upcoming Saks Fifth Avenue version of Ariel – I’m really hoping she’d be in a dress this time. I can probably forgo the D23 pink dress Ariel if so. It would surely be a grand ~~and stressful~~ event!