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Comments
There is exactly one thing I want (Barbie Space Discovery Skipper) but that's mainly because I've never had a modern Skipper (I had a 2007 Fashion Fever Teens era one from literally right before her character was rebooted). I didn't know she existed before I saw her in store, but she's a Skipper and her dress is cute if Modern Mattel basic.
This is the Skipper, next to Stacie. Despite Stacie's perpetual Old Lady face, I think she's also pretty cute. I like her sporty style.
Anyways, since I haven't seen any comprehensive Barbie Space Discovery posts online, I might as well do one.
The main "Barbie" from this line kind of sucks, but I guess that makes sense for what it is since she's an Astronaut. There are two versions, a Barbie and I guess a "Christie", because she doesn't have a Brooklyn face (though I mean, she should be a Brooklyn since I call every Hispanic variation a Teresa regardless of face, but this doll does specifically have a Christie face).
These dolls apparently actually went on to a space station for PR purposes.
The Space Discovery Barbie was repurposed for this random set that was mostly sold in Europe and Africa (but I've never seen it before).
The other Barbie in this line was a Teacher, which was a pallet-swap version of last year's generic Barbie teacher. I prefer the colors and style of the Space Discovery one, and her hair isn't in an unmanageable Playline Barbie bun.
There was also the AA variation of the current Dreamtopia "magic switch" Princess, which reminds me of when they used to do 9 Magic Switch dolls (before generic Fairytale Barbies were rebranded into Dreamtopia) and I had all 3 mermaids.
These were the 2015/6 Mermaids I had. Not my picture though. I especially loved the tan Barbie. For some reason, they haven't done a similar thing with the Millie (ie the current default Barbie) face since then.
Those were great because despite having painted on bras rather than painted (and molded) on almost everything.
I genuinely love every variation of these dolls. I just wish Barbie would have more fantasy hair colors. Frankly, I may regret this, but I also don't exactly mind colored legs on these as long as they aren't molded with other weird things.
It may be because I'm in a place where I can't get Hyper-Articulated Collector Barbies easily, but I've always preferred Barbie dolls with simple articulation. I really loved the early Posed Fashionistas era with the bent arms and model pose legs, but obviously everybody else hated it.
I did not realize I had this many thoughts about modern Barbie, then again I spend half my free time listening to grown men talk about modern Barbie.
*of the Kardashians, you uncultured heathens.
Just a few weeks ago I was thinking about how I wished I'd gotten the Barbie: It Takes Two Jackson and Jayla pack but didn't. Luckily, I found it in the usual place!
I stuck the new Barbie: It Takes Two Articulated Brooklyn here too because otherwise I'll never talk about her. Honestly, she looks okay, but ever since Rainbow High made the "black elastic banding with writing"thing cool dolls have never stopped annoying me with it. I really do want to get the Jackson and Jayla set though, what with their 'two dads' socially progressive messaging (that I flip-flop on approving/disapproving of).
Back to Fantasy dolls. I know I mentioned that I wanted another tan Millie mermaid, and here we have her! Unfortunately, she has the permamermaid body, which is completely useless to me. I honestly have no patience for rebodying dolls lately, since I barely ever even get any, but if I saw her in person I'd probably cave.
Aside from that, there's a random additional Barbie: A Touch of Magic (ie Barbie ATOM) doll coming out. She looks like some sort of Fantasy Queen, and I think she uses the modern Teresa face? That'd be weird, since there's also a normal Teresa (on the much-dreaded short body) who uses the Teresa face in this line. It looks like a modified Millie, but the Teresa face tends to look that way in stock photos.
Some doll fans have been loudly claiming that the Barbie movie dolls killed Barbie Extra since people were focused on those instead of the Extra Fly team, but I kind of doubt it. Barbie ATOM is a new piece of Barbie media coming out at the same time as the movie, and it's getting new dolls (granted, this was planned from the start since the Netflix show will be continuing at least until next year).
Meanwhile, one of the L.O.L. O.M.G. Fashion Show dolls showed up around here. Guess which one?
Eyup, the one with the darkest tone (I won't explain again why this keeps happening). She's one of the hair play ones, and she costs quite a ton (despite being a bargain bin import).
Funny story, one of these Christmases (last Christmas maybe?) I genuinely considered getting the other hair play doll (whose name is Twist Queen, because she's super cute) and one of the L.O.L. Tween babysitting sets (I love surfer themed dolls). Weird thing is I might cave and end up getting the latter (online), but I'll probably never get Twist Queen because she was way too popular for her own good.
The fashion ones are individually kind of meh, and basically none of the Fashion Show dolls will ever be as good as Twist Queen, so this line isn't for me otherwise (the cost isn't helping).
Continuing with O.M.G. matters, a mere fortnight after the line was officially cancelled, all four (!!!) O.M.G. Fierce dolls showed up on our shelves!
(LtR: Lady Diva, Royal Bee, Swag and Neonlicious).
I guess there are seven O.M.G. Fierce dolls if you include that extremely expensive Cleopatra limited edition and the two unreleased series 2 dolls, but these are the most important ones.
These are basically if the O.M.G.s developed the fashion sense of drag queens crossed with hip-hop video girls who were also streetwalkers, as dolls tend to be. Personally, I prefer the some of the Fierce dolls to their original O.M.G. counterparts.
Royal Bee ie Not Beyonce and Swag ie "Is this doll white or latina???" are real standouts to me, but I don't really know if I have the budget to get all this random doll stuff I want for no real reason (that I don't even have space for). When push comes to shove, I'll always default to Barbie, then maybe normal O.M.G., but it'd be nice to have mint-condition Fierce dolls just for memories sake.
This actually makes the fact that MGAE started Rainbow High off with Sunny having a lighter skin tone than Sasha (which I think they fixed when they redid the S1 dolls) kind of weird.
However, out of the main six, Sunny does tend to get the most exposure anyways, and L.O.L. O.M.G. has always leaned on lots of characters with darker skin tones anyways.
All this looking up Bratz dolls made me very nostalgic, and made me wish I could collect another Bratz scale line. Unfortunately, my only option would be L.O.L. O.M.G., which I dislike for the proportions and the fact that they have (somewhat) anatomically correct busts.
Also, they don't have names and rarely ever show up in second lines. Every doll is a unique release, so you can't build any attachment to the characters.
*I'm not being serious here I'm just being a jerk.
I spoke too soon it seems. This year, Monster High (which has been back for a while now), Rainbow High and L.O.L. O.M.G. have released "refresh" lines with their main characters. In addition, Rainbow High released a playset with the doll I assumed was the least popular in the line, Skyler, wearing her own fashion brand (and immediately spoiling the whole of the S4 plot as to who won the Project Rainbow fashion competition).
This Skyler is cute but maaaan that playset sure exists. I love her outfit so much, but I'd never get this because I only want a quarter of what it comes with.
So we've had:
Monster High Refresh Clawdeen and Draculaura, in their looks from the first movie (which, somehow, were not the ones the original dolls had). They're not exact, but you can see the inspiration.
I like the refresh Draculaura, but I like all the Draculauras. The refresh Clawdeen had an outfit that doesn't work as well on a doll as it did on her human actress. There will apparently be more refresh dolls to match the first movie, but all we can do is wait and see.
However, even if I did collect dolls, I would not collect Monster High. I don't like it that much for some unknown reason (it's not Frankie).
The Rainbow High Project Runway dolls, featuring the original 6 main characters and their non-Bella friend in their canon looks. I'm amazed they didn't chuck Amaya (white/rainbow) out and replace her with Bella (pink), because Bella is in like, everything.
I like Ruby and I want to like Jade. Amaya is proper fabulous, but I'm just acknowledging the artistry that went into her rather than actually liking her. Violet is an absolute mess.
The first proper House of Surprises refresh line from L.O.L. O.M.G. . The first time around, they just re-released the original dolls with the no-Surprise packaging (so you could see them in display) but this time it's a proper Refresh. Like the original dolls, they come with a kind of fashion change element.
All of these outfits are bad, but some of the fashion change outfits are okay. Poor Neonlicious (two-tone hair) getting stuck with that first outfit. I want to like Swag (in red) but the assymmetry isn't working for her. I see they forced it on everyone but Neon (then again, her shorts) but it's just spectacularly annoying on Swag despite it just being one shoulder exposed (they should have just done both shoulders exposed).
I feel like O.M.G. is slowly cheapening to late Bratz level, which is sad. These outfits are lacking the expected quality, and you can tell they're trying to push what they have as far as possible, and it's only working sometimes. Like Swag having straight hair now rather than braids. I actually liked her braids, and her hair looks a mess now.
Speaking of, the upcoming Nails dolls have really, really cute looks.
If I had access, I'd probably cave and get all three, but I especially like Kitty K in this simpler look. Candylicious isn't bad either (three-tone hair? OMG, calm down), and that new girl whose name I don't know in the middle is extremely cute (I looked up her name, it's Pinky Pops, I'll keep pretending I don't know it).
Original Kitty K. As you can see, she came with two looks with a lot of thought put into each, but I prefer her new simpler iteration.
As you can see, if I were collecting any doll line, it'd be O.M.G., and I shouldn't be saying that because I'm like 10 seconds away from ordering the faux Britney Spears travel one basically all the time.
The fake Yasmin one (first) with the My Scene vibe is also pretty cute.
I mean, leave it to me to get into a doll line just as it loses popularity. The flagship holiday OMG lines used to come with two whole outfits and ridiculously dumb gimmicks, now they can barely pull off a fashion nails gimmick.
Unlike with the Skyler set, the fact that I'd never use half of this doesn't bother me. That's how much I like OMG apparently.
Meanwhile, unrelated to any of this, Barbie is releasing dolls based on some Telenovela????
They're extremely cute and definitely better than what we usually get from modern fashion Barbie. Very 2000s in style (I think the telenovela is old). I wish Barbie was like this more often.
I never pay attention to them because I mean, it's embarrasing enough that they exist, but I feel like looking into it now.
For some reason, the release of this doll was plagued with insanity after insanity. First of all, you could only order her off the Mattel Creations website and she had a limited quantity (hello scalpers!), but if you paid the Mattel Creations subscription fee (which is like $50) you could get her a day early.
Relatedly, this doll is somehow $300??? thanks to the Swarovski Crystals embedded in her outfit which apparently were also separately licensed on top of the American Girl and Barbie licenses. For a little contrast, here is the AG GOTY (Girl of the Year) 2023 Kavi Sharma set, which retails for $285.
Personally, I think this doll is kind of creepy for an American Girl with her red lipstick (very Toddlers & Tiaras) and OG Barbie vamp swimsuit, but apparently people broke their wallets trying to get one (Americans only, as not even Canadians can get her shipped).
She'll also only be shipping in a year, which is like, really? What is there to make even. At least some American Girl dolls have complex pieces to justify the process but those never come out a whole year later.
Apparently a base American Girl doll is like $115 and frankly ever since Mattel replaced the core BeForevers (which they named as such because they didn't even have to have a name before since they were the American Girl line) with their modern GOTYs the line has faced loss after loss following social justice trends* (I'm really not kidding here).
The fact that they also added a "Truly Me" line meant they have to release like 50 dolls a year so they can cover a range of skin and hair tones which take away from the actual character dolls (which, frankly, not being BeForevers, don't even matter).
The many, many Truly Mes.
*It's telling that the more money the brand loses, the more willing they are to cave and make the GOTY a caucasian blond girl every other year at least. To be fair, I do like that even though Kavi Sharma is of Indian descent, they didn't stick her into random sherwanis and made her (and her personality) look just like a typical "American Girl". MGA did not do this for their Indian Rainbow High dolls and it was kind of funny to see.
For example, the fact that the full Kavi set is still up after her year is nearly over (even as the new GOTY for 2024 is rolled out) means sales weren't great, and Corinne Tan (2022s GOTY, who had a "Stop Asian Hate" theme (because that's definitely what you want to be discussing when you spend $150 on a doll) was (famously, apparently) deeply discounted this last Black Friday.
Frankly if I cared about 18 inch dolls, I'd be an Our Generation convert by now, because they're much cheaper and have no cultural cachet (since they were originally an Own Brand line from Walmart which was literally "Fake American Girl" till they were taken over by some Chinese company called Battat that does not even do marketing at all).
The accessory sets are also not $40 a pop.
I was actually kind of shocked, given the current climate, that Our Generations two "Classic" dolls for next year (ie their equivalent of GOTY) are both blond, blue-eyed girls. Similarly,
every single boy OG doll has been caucasian, and all but one are blonde (and very adorable).Huh, apparently I'm wrong.
(A ridiculous array of OG boy dolls new for 2024).
I do think that maybe I do have to interrogate this overly intense idea where the less diverse a doll line is, the more honest the toy company is. Of course, there's a lot of fake intense diversity drives that lead to lots of MGA dolls shelfwarming even though they know better.
However, I also personally have always had a 40:60 preference in terms of styles of dolls for the blond haired caucasian one and the brunette vaguely latino one and also I guess I like Asian characters somewhat so I don't exactly benefit from hoping every line is just blond haired blue eyed characters.
(Some more definitely not blonde and blue eyed OG dolls).
I do see why people prefer American Girl. The quality on OG is kind of bad, especially with the shoes being plastic versus AG's actual shoes for each doll.
Relatedly, this is a brand with a ready made theme song in my head, though given the content of the brand you'd expect a more bluegrass/folk song.
Anyways, the new dolls look not all that great buy are mostly okay (except Amaya, they're ruined her and there's no going back). This concept is basically harking back to MGA's wildly unsuccessful (but somewhat long-running) Project MC2 dolls, which came with a doll and a science experiment thing. At least these will each come with a pet that can be used as a toy after the initial experiment thing is done for.
I can't say I didn't see a stop coming. Rainbow High started to remind me of late Gen 1 Monster High in it's later years. With big, massive, extremely unaffordable doll releases coming fast and loose (I mean, 9 whole Rainbow Vision dolls with those wide boxes and giant accessories? What was up with that? That Skyler Project Rainbow set is also really very insanely big) without store buyers actually stopping to think "Will people really keep spending $55 dollars per doll for their kids?"
So now they're stuck with shelf-glut and MGA has to scramble to convince them that "No! This isn't that thing we've stuck you with that's not selling! It's somewhat new" (ie G2 Monster High).
Personally, aside from a pipe dream of getting all 5 Rainbow High boys, I basically don't care much about Rainbow High, so I'm fine with this. I won't get any of the new ones anyways. I'm more excited to see what next year's Bratz Babyz reboot brings us (yes, this will apparently be a thing).
So a new trend has taken doll collectors by storm. Defa Lucy dolls, named for the Chinese company that makes them (something Defa co.). Basically they're extremely good quality Barbie "knockoffs", or maybe at this point you could just say they're fashion dolls competing with the Barbie brand.
This might be because they're more easily accessible, because you can get this line on Temu, and because Barbie has been particularly bad lately (the Fashionistas quality is really at the point where they might just give them painted on clothes in the next wave).
Personally, I don't like the faces, they're very Integrity Toys and meant for adult collectors, even the Barbie Top Model faces weren't this stark. As for the clothes, they are quite amazing, but these dolls are prone to leg warp since they have full plastic legs rather than the sturdy somewhat hollow legs actual Barbie dolls have (and also the lack of QC*).
*Okay, yes, Barbie dolls have major pixelface nowadays, but at least their legs come out the way they're meant to.
In the meantime, Monster High I guess has decided to keep being ridiculously annoying, because apparently G3's Ghoullebrity doll will be Literally RuPaul.
At first, Dream Besties (I liked it better when it was called Dream Teens) Barbie reminded me of My Scene Fab Faces Kennedy when she made this face.
But then I realized she's basically a reworked Apple White from Ever After High!
I hate Teresa and Renee's outfits, and I hate that the Dream Besties body appears to be incompatible to the typical Barbie body, so they don't have many clothing options. I do love Brooklyn's bag though. It's cute in a special way.
Anyways, I won't lie, I'm pretty excited for the Barbie and Brooklyn dolls. I love Teresa, but nope, even the callback to Barbie Style Teresa re:the sunglasses is not working for me. I do like Renee's face though, but her heart shirt is the worst thing ever (okay her egg toast purse is also pretty bad).
Also there are a ridiculous number of dolls lately who wish they were Musa from Winx Club, including some L.O.L. doll from a while ago.
She's about 6-7" tall, which is abnormal for dolls (I guess aside from Bratz Kidz and L.O.L. Tweens and Hairdorables), but these dolls have a somewhat interesting history.
Spirit Untamed was like some sort of prequel/sequel movie to Netflix's Dreamworks Spirit Riding Free cartoon, which is one of those cartoons about a girl and her horses that I've personally never really understood the appeal of.
Anyways, the original Spirit Riding Free dolls were made by Just Play (makers of Hairdorables), and they were made in two scales; normal doll (11") and the 7" scale the later Just Play/new Mattel dolls used.
(The original 11" Pru)
The new(er, this was like 3 years ago now) dolls were made by Mattel.
(The smaller scale Spirit dolls from Just Play, versus the Mattel ones. The Mattel ones clearly have better faces, but worse clothes)
Mattel actually seemed to have this period where they let go of all their licenses and didn't really seek new licenses, preferring in house lines, but nowadays they seem to thrive on both in-house products (which frankly is just Barbie and Monster High, but that's still a lot) and licenses (Disney Princess, Disney Zombies, and probably the upcoming Disney Descendants 4, frankly I can't wait to see those dolls, there's actually a cool new Disney Princess Belle set I've seen in videos online that I sadly haven't been able to find in stores online).
Anyways, these dolls from Spirit Untamed sure have that "ah, Mattel" thing going on. The shirts are laser cut and all the details are printed on, and I'm basically just lucky they didn't get pixel face (then again, dolls with large heads avoid pixelface since you can print them more accurately regardless of painting style).
I did actually have one doll set crom this line previously, the small Lucky (main character one) and her playset thing with the toy horse. Gave it away, kiiinda regret it now...
When Just Play lost this license, I guess they couldn't just let go of the sweet sweet horse doll money so they reused the smaller body molds (with new faces, obviously to create Winner's Stable, which was noticeably pinker.
The faces were also better in my opinion. Sad the dolls didn't go anywhere, though I could do without the horses.
Speaking of horse dolls, who could forget the hybrid action figure disappointment that was the oone and only wave of Horseland dolls, based on the old DiC cartoon.