Tomy's Tinkle Tots, also called Pipi Baby, and Bikinis.

I have two islands and three shells. The shells we got from one of those discount shops in Wood Green, mid 90s. I believe I was already in secondary school, or near to it, at the time we got these. I remember fixating on them and dreaming about having the full set 🙁 As in actually dreaming. I really wanted the Rainbow Shower Island, and a Lullaby Moon. I remember the adverts, even though I believe they stopped airing long before we got these. "In their lullaby moooooon!"

My sister has the boat island, with one of the brown haired boys.

The islands we found some months later in Woolworths, reduced to clear. They were the proper retail quality UK versions (no gender-bending!).

Enough talking! Time for pictures!

I tell you something, if I really want to win an auction on eBay, no one will ever be able to outbid me 😉

It started with a painful childhood memory. You see, the first ever Sindy I got, as a present at the tender age of three, was the Superstar Sindy. Sindyyy, Superstar Sindy, you're everything I want to be! Superstar Sindy, dance with me! You're everything I want to be! Superstar SINDY! And she had this cool silver microphone. And for some reason, my mum let me take the doll with me to school, complete with all accessories. In hindsight, she may well have tried to convince me to leave them at home, but that's not important.

What's important is that I did take them. And one day, the nursery teacher — we shall call her Mrs A — didn't like that I was playing with the microphone while she was talking to the class about something or other, and she said to give the microphone to her and she'd look after it. I didn't want to, because I knew, even at the age of three, that grown-ups rarely keep their word. But she pressured me and in the end she took it from me and put it in a box and I never saw it again.

So you see, I was right to never trust a grown-up at their word.

In any case, it had a lasting effect on me. I still feel the pang of loss. Even when my little sister, three years later started nursery, I asked her to keep an eye out for it, being so upset I deluded myself into thinking it must still be there. More years later, when other girls I knew started nursery, I plaintively made the same request of them.

Wait! For seriously! No! How the heck did I not know about this?!! Apparently my nephew has been watching this on Kix! for some time now and I had no idea! Although I vaguely remember hearing his singing the theme and asking where he learnt it. Hmm. Only a couple of days ago he just caught the end credits and that reminded me to go looking.

See, I knew they were planning a series 2 for real this time, because was it Chalopin or Ryshpan who said the second series work was underway on the DVD interviews, but I am so seriously late to the party. I just haven't been keeping up. Rabid Fangirl is losing her touch 🙁

So as soon as I heard that the second series was out (I'm soooooo late to the party!) I had to go search on youtube. I must have read an old post that said it was only in French at the moment, so I didn't hunt down an English version. Luckily my French is good enough to understand most of what they are saying, even if there is a big lag between hearing the words and understanding the words.

So far, it's actually all right. I was scared they'd do an Adult Icarus and ruin everything (see NAEZ), but they've kept the style faithful to the original, and even kept the theme tune. I like that the voice casting (for the French version; a review says the English voice cast is pretty awful) is also faithful to the original. Zia seems less helpless in the new series and I'm not so keen on the way Esteban's facial expressions are animated; it seems to change his character somewhat*. But overall, I'm not disappointed.

So I've just ordered my DVD set and I'll do a full review when I've watched it!

_{* I remember who he reminds me of the way they've animated him. Ben 10 Series 1. Seriously!}

OMG!!!!
The cast list [Edit: the link is dead and the Wayback Machine doesn't seem to have cached it either.]
OMG!!!

Whoa, it's weird to imagine him as Esteban! All this time we were told Esteban was voiced by Adrian Knight, and he wasn't; that was Tao.

I still don't have the DVD 🙁 I'm so poor!