Sunday, September 23, 2018

Sunday Surprise: Hairdorables by Just Play!

Happy Sunday!  As I mentioned a few weeks ago, several of the comments here prompted me to investigate the latest blind box doll sensation, the Hairdorables!  These toys follow the lead of the L.O.L. Surprise dolls by offering a complex package-opening experience, with several little surprises to uncover along the way.  Originally, I intended to compare these dolls directly to L.O.L.'s most recent offering (the Under Wraps wave), but this post is long enough as it is, so I'll look at an Under Wraps toy in a week or two.

Hairdorables are made by Just Play (not to be confused with Jay at Play, the makers of the Boxy Girls).  I think the most recent Just Play toys I reviewed here were the Spirit Riding Free horses and riders.  I can actually see a resemblance between the dolls from that collection and these new Hairdorables:

Hairdorables "Bella Bunerina" doll, $12.88 .
Here's a reminder of what the Spirit Riding Free Lucky doll looks like, so you can see what I mean:

Spirit Riding Free Lucky doll by Just Play.
It's almost like they took Lucky's head and stretched it out to make the Hairdorables face.  I'm not sure I like the face in either incarnation, but I do think it suits the Hairdorables better than it suits Lucky.  At least the Hairdorables aren't meant to be realistic (or I hope they aren't).

For anyone who was worried, the Hairdorable Bella doll I showed in that first picture is not the doll I'm de-boxing today.  I would never give away the surprise like that!

I bought three Hairdorables in total.  I opened Bella first because I was too curious to wait any longer, but I managed to save the other two dolls for today's review.  

Here's Bella with one of my unopened boxes:

review

These toys are much bigger than I expected them to be.  Bella is about 7 inches tall with her hair and 5 inches without it.  The box is 8 inches tall, 7 inches wide, and 3 inches deep.  I was expecting something more like the size of a small card game, like Exploding Kittens or One Night Ultimate Werewolf.

Before I open the mystery doll, I'll share a few of my first impressions of Bella.


First of all, her face is not as relatable as I'd hoped.  It's better than the Boxy Girls faces, absolutely, but it's still a little too much on the goofy/strange side for my taste.

review

I think this reaction has a lot to do with the design of the eyes.  The irises are a pretty green color, but the pupil isn't pitch black (it's dark green) and the reflective marks are bright green.  This makes the whole pupil area look like it's floating in front of the iris...with a crescent-shaped hole at the bottom:


Given the name and slogan of this brand (Big Hair, Don't Care!) I expected to be amazed by the dolls' hair.  Bella's hair sticks up a lot because of the curls, but I'm not overwhelmed by the volume of hair.  It's not so different from other dolls I've seen.

review

On the plus side, Bella is articulated and could probably stand on her own if it weren't for the back-heavy weight of her hair.  Also, her clothing is made out of fabric and is pretty cute (much better than the plastic L.O.L. clothing).  The hair is soft and fun to arrange in different ways, and I like the purple streak at the front.  I had no desire to take that ponytail down, though, since curly doll hair can be hard to manage (at least for me).

Basically, I was intrigued enough to open another doll.

Here's the mystery box:


The box advertises 11 different surprises.  As with the Boxy Girls and L.O.L. dolls, some of these surprises are stickers.


The box is colorful eye candy.  

It's covered with cartoon versions of the Hairdorable characters.  I really like this rainbow-haired girl:


In fact, I think all of the cartoon drawings are really cute.  Cuter than my actual Bella doll, sadly.

The doll in the very center of the box has a blank face, but very distinctive blue wavy hair.  It's a funny combination:


The sides of the box are covered with decorations, too.  The right side shows four different characters while the left side has a few paragraphs of text and just one blue-haired girl, who I think is the main character:


There's my favorite rainbow girl again!


Here's a closer look at the text:


I guess the main character of the Hairdorables is a girl named Noah who likes to style hair.  Are girls going to co-opt all of the good boy names, I wonder??

The back of the box is covered with little square pictures of the characters.  I think these are actual photos of the dolls--or maybe enhanced photos: 


There's a version of my favorite rainbow character at the top:


And there's also a redheaded character!


The bottom of the box has a list of everything that's included--all 11 of the surprises:


So, I guess they're counting the collector sheet and the signature card as surprises?  That's a stretch.  If that's the standard, then pretty much every blind box toy ever made has at least two surprises (toy and collector sheet).  

I'd say that this box has four good surprises inside (doll, shoes, and 2 accessories).

To open the box, I had to first remove a clear plastic cover:


That caused the first "surprise" (the collector sheet) to fall out of the front of the box:


One side of the sheet has cartoons of the dolls (with Noah front and center):


I like Noah's ombré hair!  That would be fun to see in real life.

The other side of the sheet has a list of all 12 characters and their variations:


Noah is at the very top:


But my favorite character in this column is Kat.  She comes with, strangely, not cats, but little dogs!  They're all so cute:


I really want this one!


Bella is at the top of the second column:


The Bella I got is in the middle.  The heart symbol means that's her "signature look."  The other two Bellas seem to have straight hair:


A green diamond means the character is rare, a blue star would be super rare.  Ombré-haired Bella is rare.

The third panel has the redhead at the bottom (Brit) and a different rainbow-haired girl (Harmony) in the middle:


The last panel has my favorite rainbow-haired girl, Rayne:


There's even a rare, mystery Rayne doll!  That would be very fun to get!

The front of the cardboard box opens with a perforated pull-down strip:


Once the strip is removed, the two sides of the box pull apart in the middle!  This is cool:


There's even a little circle of velcro to hold the two sides together if you want to close the box again:


The two sides of the box swing out to reveal a flat cardboard scene at the back of the box:


The left side of the box has four perforated compartments (the accessories, shoes, and comb):


While the right side of the box has the actual doll:


The picture says to open the doll last, so that's what I'll do.

If I fold the sides of the box out even more, the inner edges of each side have a continuation of the scene on the backdrop.  There's even a little semi-circle of carpeting that folds down onto the ground.  It's like a little diorama!


That's a really nice touch.

I wonder if all of the scenes are the same?  I can't remember what Bella's scene was.  It would be fun if there were several different backdrops.  That would be a much better surprise than the collector sheet!

Ok, let's start opening up those compartments!


The perforated doors come apart really easily, and they reveal little plastic "drawers" inside:


Because the world needs more plastic.


The containers have pull tabs that make them easy to remove from the box:


This one has a picture of Bella (the exact Bella I got before!) and says, "just my style!"


Oh, gosh.  I hope this doesn't mean I'm getting the same Bella again.  There are a few complaints online from people who ordered several dolls from the same vendor and got all of the same character.  

That's the worst.

I peeled back the top of the container...


And it's a comb!


The comb has a molded braid at the top.  There's also a sticker sheet with the symbols for how rare each doll is.  It's probably so that you can mark the dolls you get on the collector sheet, just like with L.O.L. dolls.


The comb doesn't give anything away about the doll I'll get, and it's not the same comb as the one that came with Bella.  

All good so far!

On to the next compartment:


I poked the cardboard door open...


And pulled out the next container!


This one says "love is in the hair," which made me smile.


I peeled back the top...


...and found the shoes!


Wow!  Pretty nice shoes!

The shoes come with a sticker that's meant to be folded into a cell phone shape:

Hm.
The shoes are pretty great.  They're purple boots with green laces and pink soles.  They have a lot of detail for such tiny footwear:


The soles are not just pink--they're translucent pink!


That's a nice little shoe:


The shoe gives away which character I got, though.  This is a big problem with all of these blind bag toys.  If the companies would mix and match the accessories, then there truly would be multiple surprises.  As it is, there's one surprise that's uncovered in five steps.

However, when I was opening this box, I wasn't familiar with any of the characters yet, so I didn't know anything about the doll I'd get.  I certainly won't give it away for you!

Let's see what's behind door number three!


It's pretty fun to open these little doors, but I was getting slightly dismayed by the pile of plastic garbage I was accumulating as I went.  In addition to what you can see, the purple containers are resting on another big piece of plastic that's inside the box.


This container has a purple-eyed girl saying, "there's more in hair!"


I bet Just Play had fun coming up with all of these hair puns.

What could this be?


As I peeled back the top of the container, I caught a glimpse of blue...


Could it be a little pet??


It is!  It's a little robot dog!


Oh, man!  I've always been fascinated by robot dogs.  When my kids were young, we had a few electronic dogs called i-Cybie.  They were really loud and ran out of battery too fast, but I thought they were fun.  I bet you can get some pretty amazing robot dogs these days!  I doubt my real dogs would be too happy about that, though.

Here's a better look at the dog:



He's really basic (no moving parts or anything), but I like the idea.

There was also a sticker in the container:

There's my rainbow girl!
Now there's only one compartment left on this side.  That was fast!

It's Rayne again!
This is the biggest container yet:


It says "queen of curls," which isn't very punny.


I was expecting something really big inside this container:


But as I peeked in...


I saw nothing!

So I peeked a little more...and then finally, at the very bottom, I saw some pink:


This huge container was holding one sticker...



...and a pair of glasses.


The glasses are made to look pixelated, like an 8-bit design.


Well, opening that side of the box was pretty fun, granted.

However, look at the pile of plastic compared to the pile of actual doll accessories:


I think we can recycle those containers curbside here in Maine, but still.

Here's a closer look at the doll accessories:


I really like the boots, the glasses, and the little robot dog.  Those suggest I'm going to get a techie character, which is awesome.

I tried to fold the phone sticker the way the directions said,


But it was too small for my ham hands to manage, so that went into the trash.

I bet some of you went back to the collector sheet and figured out which character I got at this point.  It's like a fun mystery to solve, with three little clues (the shoes, the glasses, and the dog).

Maybe those of you who've already collected a few of these dolls knew right away which one is the techie character!

I didn't know yet, so this part was exciting:


The whole front of this side of the box opens with a tab to reveal a single tall container:


Behind the container, the box is decorated like a little closet!


That's really cute:


Here's the tall container on it own.  I think that's Noah on the front, reaching for the edge of the plastic cover...


At first, I just pulled down a tiny bit:


I see purple hair!

Then I pulled down more, and...ack!


Oh, wow.  That's a very orange doll!


I don't really know anyone with terracotta skin.

I had the exact same problem with the Boxy Girls.  The black character, Nomi, has a very orange skin tone.

Once I got over my initial surprise at the skin tone, I started to appreciate some things about this doll.

review

First of all, her name is Kali (I love that name) and she's the tech wizard (I love tech wizards.  I'm married to one):


Also, I got the Kali Coder version...and I really admire coders!


The only bad thing is that Kali has the exact same hairstyle as Bella.  I was hoping to see some variety in the hair, since this is the big selling point of the brand.


Also, Kali is drawn with some very interesting earrings, but the doll has nothing on her ears.

Here's Kali with all of her accessories:


Kali has green, upward-glancing eyes and beautiful dark purple hair:


She can stand on her own--precariously--when she's wearing her boots.


The position of Kali's eyes makes it hard to get her to look at the camera:

review

I like side-glancing eyes on dolls, though, because they add a lot of character.


These eyes have basically the same design as Bella's eyes, but they're looking in the opposite direction and have a different mix of greens in the iris.


Here's a reminder of what Bella's eye looks like:


Kali has a wide smile with a thin band of teeth showing:


She also has little metallic gold triangles at the edges of her smile, which is an interesting design detail:


Kali is wearing a multicolored dress with a pixelated print:


The dress opens all of the way down the back with velcro and is easy to use:


The front is decorated with glittery decorative buttons and a ribbon belt:


Many of the edges are stitched, but the neckline and sleeves are unfinished:


Underneath her dress, Kali has a painted pink bodysuit:


I took the boots off so that you could see her whole body.  She has flat feet and five points of articulation:


Kali's head can only spin around (not look up or down), but the rest of her joints are rotating hinges:


The flexible shoulders combined with molded bent elbows give Kali a lot of fun poising options:




review

There are several different arm and hand molds in the Hairdorables collection, and I really like this one.  It's very unique.


Kali's hips are also rotating hinges:


She can do pretty good side-to-side and front-to-back splits:



She can also sit on the ground:

review

As reluctant as I was to let Kali's curls down, I decided that I needed to do it in order to present a thorough review.  I mean, these dolls are all about their hair.  We need to know how good the hair is!

The color of Kali's hair is great.  It's a nice rich purple overall, but it's made up of two different shades evenly mixed together:


The rooting pattern is fine, especially for a small doll with lots of curly hair:


Here's how Kali looked when I first let her ponytail down:


She had a lot of trouble balancing on her own with her hair down.

But this is really big hair.  There's no denying it now!


review

I actually used the little pick comb that came with Kali to see if it would work for smoothing out her curls a bit.  It worked pretty well!  I think this might be the first time I've ever used one of the plastic combs that came with a play doll.  Momentous occasion.


It ended up being easiest to pose Kali against the diorama of the box.  This kept her upright and added some fun scenery!



Her big hair tends to block out all of the scenery, though, which is a bit of a problem.  

I asked her to stand off to the side here so that you could see at least part of the desk:


Putting Kali's hair back up into a ponytail helped, too:


Her upward-looking, side-glancing eyes are cute...


...but they make it hard for her to look at her robot dog friend!  This was the best I could do:


The glasses don't look great on Kali (she's staring straight into the upper part of the frame) but I added them for this last picture:


One of the best things about the Hairdorables is how the box can be used as scenery for doll games.  I love this idea.  The edges of the box look a little ragged after it's been opened, though:


The right side of the box is ok because it's doubling as a closet (although another velcro latch there would have been amazing!), but that left side looks messy.  The perforated doors are fragile and probably wouldn't last through too many play sessions.  They're perforated all of the way around, so they eventually fall off completely.  A slightly more robust design on that side would have made a huge difference.

I also think a variety of scenes on the backdrops would be outstanding.  Since I can't remember anything about Bella's backdrop, I was eager to see what scene was inside my very last Hairdorables box!

I won't do a fully detailed de-boxing with this doll.  Instead, I'll focus mostly on whether or not the doll is a repeat, and what the inside of the box looks like.

Let's go!


Well, the first surprise was over really fast: it's the exact same office scene:

Bummer.
After opening this box, I cheated and looked online for pictures of other people's Hairdorables boxes.  I saw a few different scenes (yay!) so I just got unlucky with this particular repeat.

So, let's scratch the collector sheet as one of the surprises and replace it with the backdrop scene!  It's a much better surprise.

To find out the other big surprise from this box (which doll it is), I might only have to open one compartment.  If it's a comb I recognize, then I probably got a repeat.  However, if it's a new comb, then I'll have to open one more contained to find out who I got!

Are you ready?

Here we go:


Oops, sorry: hair we go!


I peeked in and saw...


A new comb!  It's not a repeat!  Hurrah!

So, this is it, folks.  Which doll did I get?  Could it be rainbow girl Rayne??

Please, please, please, please....
The suspense is crazy!


It's a pair of shoes!


Definitely not a repeat.  And not Rayne, I don't think.  I've looked at pictures of her enough to know that she has green boots or roller skates.

Oh, well.

I'll skip ahead and show you all of the accessories:


With those clues, maybe you want to see if you can figure out who I got?

I kept the suspense as long as I could, avoiding that collector sheet until the very end.


It's not Rayne, but look at this!


It's very long, very straight, very RED hair!  It's Brit!  

More specifically, it's signature look Brit Braids:


She's pretty cute:

review

She also has green eyes that are looking up and sideways:


Here's a comparison of all three of the green-eyed styles I got:

Bella.
Kali.
Brit.
I like Brit's eyes the best.  Looking at the photos, above, I think Bella's eyes are printed incorrectly (the iris and pupil decals don't line up).  Also, I like the dark shade of hunter green in Brit's eyes better than the chartreuse green of Kali's eyes.

Brit's accessories are a hairband and a pink soccer ball:


She's wearing a two-piece soccer uniform to match!



Her red hair is striped with pink and tied back into two huge braids:


I took the hair down to get a better look:


The braids have made the texture of the hair really wavy.  A good boil wash would probably make a big difference with this doll!

The rooting pattern is the same as it was with Kali:


The hair is actually good for helping Brit to balance on her own!

Toy Box Philosopher

Toy Box Philosopher

The pick comb that came with Brit was not very effective at brushing her hair, and my wire brush made it even more crazy!


I've seen so much doll hair like this: nice while it's still in its factory hairdo, but a bit of a nightmare when you try to re-style it.


The yellow headband helps tame the hair a little bit:

review

Overall, Brit's hair is not especially nice.  It's not terrible, but it's smooth at the top, coarse at the ends, and hard to style...like so many other mid-level play dolls with wavy hair.

That leads into my bottom line: for a collection that's named after hair, the hair isn't good enough on these dolls.  Bella and Kali's curly hair is soft and looks cute, but it's hard to style and tangles easily.  Brit's hair is smoother, but once it's out of the original braided style, it's almost impossible to keep it looking nice.  I'm not sure what kids will be able to do with it.

For a blind box toy, though, the Hairdorables are better than most.  They're nicely-sized dolls with decent articulation and adequate balance.  They have really cute arm molds that add a lot to their sassiness.  Their large heads and character faces don't appeal to me very much, but they definitely have personality.  The dolls come with fabric clothing that's reasonably well-made and easy to use.  Some of the accessory items are lame (like the sticker "phone"), but other things, like the shoes, the robot dog, Bella's wings, and Brit's soccer ball, are fun little items that build each character's persona and add value to their play potential.  All in all, these are dolls that can definitely be played with after they're opened.  Seems like a low bar, I know, but a lot of surprise toys are basically throwaways.

The packaging is fun to open, but it's also pretty ridiculous.  The waste-to-toy ratio is one of the worst I've seen.  That said, the plastic containers and the cardboard box are probably recyclable in a lot of areas, and the box has the bonus of doubling as a diorama-like backdrop.

I guess the real bottom line is that I'm getting weary (finally) of the surprise-themed blind box doll craze.  For any child who'd be happy with just one or two of these dolls, I think they're fine.  Each part of the packaging would likely be used and enjoyed as a novelty.  However, the dolls are clearly marketed for collecting--meaning buying as many of them as you can.  This is where the whole concept falls apart in my eyes.  First of all, there's a chance of getting a duplicate doll...and these are $13 dolls.  If you get three duplicates, that's almost $30 that you could have spent on a different doll.  I've gotten used My Twinn dolls for less.  Also, there's a chance of getting a duplicate backdrop on the box, which eliminates the appeal of that feature.  Then, of course, the more familiar you are with that collector sheet, the less of a surprise the whole thing is.  One or two containers into the opening process, and you might already know which doll you got.  That's not much fun.

I guess I'm ready for the next big doll craze to center around a doll that has something creative and new to offer on its own, not a decent, predictable doll that's marketed in creative packaging.

review

17 comments:

  1. Could you have saved the plastic drawers taken off the perforated doors and used the other side for a dresser?

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    1. I did this with the box mine came in. Trimming the plastic edges down a bit makes it easier to get them in and out, and overall it works pretty well! I added a wood skewer to the doll side and put more clothes on hangers in there.

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  2. There's been a troublesome trend. Anything stereotypical girly is basically shunned. Makeup is shunned for not being STEAMy enough, sewing is shunned for not being STEAMy enough (I freakin' dare anyone who holds that view to debate me--I will school you on how even chemistry is involved in sewing until you're red-faced and humiliated). Pink princesses are seen as bad, feminine names, etc. It's like the old issue of mid-late century feminists who insisted that the way to be a proper feminist was to not stay home even if you wanted to, which was no better than the patriarchal system that said to not work outside the home even if you wanted to. Both extremes issued orders and ignored that some women may genuinely want to stay home, or work outside the home, just as some girls may genuinely love pink princesses (I really hoped my daughter would abhor pink and love blue, as I do, but she loooooves pink princess stuff and makeup, and her favorite school subjects are science and Spanish class). The hard push for girls to have names like Braden, Noah, Shane, Cody, and Kyle, all names that some women I personally know have given their daughters, is a continuation. Anything feminine is seen as bad, and this is actually not helpful. How can we say girls are fine when we're specifically shunning girly things? That sends the clear messages that femininity is bad.

    At this point, the only real upside to blind bag dolls is that kids are more likely to get skin tones they wouldn't have picked on their own, which increases diversity. But it's really adults who are more likely to be into these. Take a child like mine. She'd go crazy for the Bella doll, but not care so much for a doll with a soccer ball. Soccer just isn't something that interests her. There's a pretty decent chance of getting a doll she just plain wouldn't care for. $13 is a lot to risk wasting. For the older collector, it's fine since the goal of collecting is different than the goal of getting a doll with accessories you like playing with. Back when Magic Nursery Babies were the thing, the surprise elements were on par with each other. Girls had dresses, boys had rompers, and only the fabric patterns were really different, and then things like does your doll have an innie or outie for a belly button, and what color hair? The variety was enough for interest, but not so drastic that there was a risk of getting something you wouldn't want to play with.

    Like you, I'm also concerned with how much waste there is. The plastics used aren't the biodegradable kind, and many curbside recycling tosses the number on these packages. Add in the toys themselves, which many Goodwills won't even take anymore because of lead laws (yet there are no cadmium laws) and liability.

    That series of dolls with the notes was really cool. There aren't things so different that a kid wouldn't be interested in some while interested in others, yet those notes were intriguing.

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  3. Feeling lucky to get to read 2 full posts in such a short period of time.

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  4. The faces on those dolls really creep me out. There is something... sinister in their smiles...

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  5. I was so excited to see a diverse doll line, another one!

    But that quickly died at

    A 13$ price tag.
    The amount of plastic waste.
    Getting two Britts instead one a brown doll.

    So I just stopped trying.

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    1. Yeah, that's why I usually buy the surprise doll I wanted on eBay. Sure, the price isn't cheap ($22.99 for Fanime, for instance,) but at least you get the doll that you want, with the bonus of few to no waste associated with the surprise doll.

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  6. I think the 11th surprise is their specific outfit/which version of the character it is, not the collector's list. The rest are all fair points though, especially since giving a rarity to the alternative backdrops limits their retention value (and the velcro spots need more glue to stay on properly.) But a youtuber I watch, MyFroggyStuff, created a cardboard mini dollhouse and was able to reuse two of the backdrops for it, which is a pretty cool idea. I'm considering doing the same with the one I have but getting up the motivation to craft is essential. XD

    Anyway, I also like Kat a lot and I'm tempted to get a few more boxes in the hopes of finding her and Willow, but maybe I'll follow Anon's lead and go the eBay route. I think the dolls will go down in price overall as more people buy and open them since there are only a few rares (and on my first and only one so far was the rare version of Neila though I would've been happy to find one with that cosmic dress instead.)

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    1. The packaging is pretty clear that the doll/outfit is one. "doll in outfit," list, comb, 4 stickers, shoes, accessory 1 and 2, and card, total 11. We're in an era where a scrap of paper with a little puzzle counts as a "surprise." I'm surprised color of the plastic bags isn't counted yet.

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  7. I'm surprised you got into these dolls, but thank you for the review. I love reading about surprises but I hate buying them, and the whole concept of surprise toys. I'm very picky about my dolls!

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  8. You have the same points I made about waste, I was shocked by how much plastic crap was left when i'd done deboxing ONE. It actually made me rather angry. Here we are discussing banning single use plastic straws and toy companies are taking the piss by producing such massively wasteful packaging. The box could be half the size and still serve its purpose and there's literally no reason the dolls NEEDED to be blind packaged anyway, they're a similar size to shoppies and the same price, and Shoppies sell just fine without the blind gimmick. It also strikes me that given a lot of governments are talking about Loot Boxes in video games (which they argue encourges gambling in children) why on earth are we tolerating blind boxes that are this expensive? Surely they're the same thing? A box you might get something good out of but more than likely will get something you don't want.

    Apparently there's a disproportioante number of Noah's too, seems she's 1 to a case, least she was 1 to a case of 6 in Claires. This means people have 2, 3, 4, even five of the damn same doll! which is ridiculous.
    they've made no real effort to reduce the risk of duplicates and at £15 a pop (yes, fifteen pounds here in the UK) they're too expensive for that gamble after you've bought 1 or 2. As a result, already, 3 weeks into their launch in this country, i'm seeing a lot of parents saying "nope, we're out. I'll buy only opened ones" which isn't a good sign.

    I feel like Just Play may have shot themselves in the foot with their pricing and not having some sort of "tell" to allow parents to reduce the risk of duplicates (like how lego minifigures have codes on them if you look really closely)

    the hairdorables DO have codes, but they appear to be utterly meaningless.

    I really want Harmony Rocks though, short neon green hair? yes please. But she's not out over here. Another thing Just Play decided to do (idiots) was release all 36 in TWO waves without actually telling anyone they were doing so. So they advertise there's 36 to collect, but this is in fact a blatent lie as there's only half of that number currently available and the second grouping has only just started to turn up in the USA.

    Not impressed. They're cute dolls and I think they could have been great if they'd done away with the gimmick and just sold them as DOLLS on their own merit. Certainly you'd have far less disappointed kids (and toys should make kids smile, not make them sad) and far fewer grumpy parents who don't want to buy any more because they're sick to death of getting sk8tr bloody Noah.

    Oh oh! I asked Just play what the surprises were btw! As I only counted 10. The card and the collector sheet ARE their official "10th and 11th surprise". The card? that tells you what doll you got? hardly a surprise there and the collector sheet? COME ON, that's just dumb.

    I got 4 cheap yesterday (£8 each on offer) and not a single one did I actually want. Which doesn't bode well does it? So i've official given up. I'll buy Harmony rocks when she hits ebay, but beyond that, nope.

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    1. Considering that the compartments are already separate, and the doll's in the other side, they could have had the individual surprise element without the excess waste simply by not putting them in plastic when they were already concealed. I agree with the straw-ban, despite personal inconvenience (if they're needed for medical reasons, then they're a medical device, and it's not the responsibility of stores to provide medical devices), and think that there should be some packaging reduction act. The size of a lot of boxes is also just plain too much. Do single Barbie-size dolls really need to be in 15"-tall boxes that are 18" wide just to have some fantastical background?

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  9. I would switch heads. Body is cute head is massive! Maybe on a bigger doll I dont know. I just know that I wouldn't keep her as is.

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    1. Some people have done that, and I like the dolls/heads much better that way. I think I've seen the heads mostly on Ever After High/Monster High dolls.

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  10. I was kind of excited when I first heard about these, since I like dolls with a lot of hair, but I think I'll just take my $13 and buy a nice wig for one of my other dolls.

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  11. The "story" of these dolls printed on the packaging made me cringe so much. ("Hello influencers!" "YAAAAS!" and the unrelenting hashtags) Does their target audience even use social media? My little sister joined social media last year at age ten, after she grew out of dolls. So what are they trying to do here? Feels very "how do you do, fellow kids?" to me.

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