Sunday Surprise: Mini Fashion and Real Littles!

I was disappointed that I couldn't quite get last week's review done in time for a Sunday Surprise, so I decided to try really hard to get a quick surprise-themed review done for you today!  

My progress was slowed down a little bit this weekend because I finally hit a breaking point with my work space.  I've been writing reviews almost non-stop since October, and I forgot that if I don't take a day or two every now and then to stop and clean up my mess...well, things can get very out-of-control!  On Friday, when fetching the doll for my next review felt like an obstacle course, a death trap, and a game of hide and seek all wrapped into one, I realized that it was time to pause and clean up.  But now my room is beautiful and clean again and it's such an amazing feeling!

As I was tidying and sorting through my stash, I realized that I'd accumulated two different surprise-themed toys that involve purses or bags of some kind: Mini Fashion by Zuru and Real Littles by Moose Toys.  I thought that these two brands might be fun to compare and contrast.  Lina was excited about this idea because she's been pestering me for months to de-box the Mini Fashion sets.  She knows that they contain high-end purses that might be just her size!

Barbie Lina with a Surprise Mini Fashion ball (Zuru, $9.99).

To keep Lina happy, I'll look at the Mini Fashion toys first.  These sets are part of the 5 Surprise line.  Other products in this line include Mini Brands, Toy Mini Brands, Unicorn Squad, and the original 5 Surprise balls.

Most of the 5 Surprise toys that I've looked at come in plastic balls that open to reveal five orange-slice compartments, each sealed and holding a treat.  Here's an example from my Toy Mini Brand review:

The Mini Fashion sets also include five surprises, but the packaging doesn't have the orange slice design.  Instead, everything is enclosed within a hollow plastic ball with a double plastic wrapper:

The Mini Fashion packaging looks a lot like the L.O.L. Surprise packaging (L.O.L. came first).  But it's nice that at least this ball is made from recycled plastic.

The ball boasts "40+ real fabric fashion bags and accessories to collect!"  

However, I'll tell you right up front that there are only 11 possible purses, which makes that 40 seem a bit less impressive.

These balls are ridiculously hard to unwrap.  Just like on the L.O.L. balls, there's a perforated area decorated to look like a zipper, but that area doesn't pull apart smoothly at all, and it doesn't really help with the inevitable struggle that comes trying to get the two tight layers of plastic removed:

I had to use scissors and even then it was hard.

After I'd conquered the plastic wrapping, the de-boxing was easy.  The ball opened to reveal two plastic bags and a collector's sheet:

Lina pounced on the collector's sheet to see which purse she might get!

She was pretty excited about the two rare purses:

Here's a closer look:

I want the diamond ring!

The bottom section here shows some of the smaller accessories that are available--like stickers, perfume bottles, and nail polish.

I was pretty excited about the pet Chihuahuas...maybe because I have three Chihuahua mix dogs in my house:

Since this is pretty casual and we're just hanging out on a Sunday, I'll show you one of my favorite pictures of my dogs.  This is my granddog Wiggles (left), my Chihuahua rescue Zeno (center) and my little full-bred (?) Chihuahua Bucky (right).  My son says it looks like a movie poster:

The Jersey Boys.

Sadly, none of my dogs like to ride in a purse.

The other purses that are available in this collection are shown at the top of the sheet:

They all look great, but I really love the green one in the bottom row--and the pink one right next to it.

I would have drawn out the purse surprise a bit more and shown you the smaller accessory bag first, but Lina couldn't wait another second, so I opened the up the larger bag first:

It's a lovely imitation leather bag with a rainbow "MF" (Mini Fashion) design and pink accents:

The "MF" branding could go a completely different way.  Samuel L. Jackson agrees.

I didn't expect the purses to be this detailed!  It's pretty amazing.  The strap buckle is metal (and works to adjust the strap) and the different colors of leather are all stitched meticulously together from small pieces.  It's made just like a real purse!

The best thing is that the flap closure has an actual magnet in it!

I'm blown away.

The strap is a little short for Lina, even when it's extended, but she loves it anyway and I don't blame her:

While Lina was strutting around admiring her new purse, I opened up the smaller bag:

This bag had a sticker (bo-ring), a makeup brush, a compact, and a golden jar of something:

The brush is remarkably detailed for something so tiny.  It has two-toned bristles and a sparkling red handle:

The compact is made out of gold plastic and has a molded pattern on the top:

It opens to reveal a blush-colored sticker and a working mirror!

The jar is also made out of gold plastic and has "MF" emblazoned on the top:

This opens to reveal some molded pink cream!

These accessories were enough to distract Lina from her purse for a few minutes:

And of course because the purse opens and closes, it can easily hold all of the accessories:

The quality of this toy was way higher than I expected it to be.  I know somebody here recommended these purses to me, and I wish I could remember who it was (BlackKitty, was it you??).  Whoever you are: thank you so much!  Good call.

In fact, I loved the purse and accessories so much that I bought another ball.

This time, I opened the small bag first:

To my surprise and delight, none of these smaller accessories are duplicates of the first set!

I got a pair of sunglasses with black rims and tiny gold accents:

Sadly, there's a little speck of gold on the lenses.

The best thing about these glasses is that the ear pieces fold up!  Most Barbie glasses do not have this feature.

And they fit Lina perfectly:

Barbie Lina wearing Surprise Mini Fashion sunglasses.

This perfume bottle is the least impressive item in the set.  It doesn't have much detail and there are no moving or removable parts:

The last item (other than the sticker, which I ignored), is red lip gloss:

This container opens to reveal a tiny little lip brush tipped in red!

Unfortunately, the scale of the lip gloss is way off for Lina.  It's enormous:

I guess I understand why they didn't make it smaller, since it would have been super-tiny and easy to lose.  A smaller size might also have made it difficult for the container to open and close.  But still, I would have been happier if all of the items were in the same scale.

Next, I opened up the larger bag...and could see right away that I didn't get a duplicate!

Yay!

This sack-style bag is so attractive; it's the type of thing I would use:

It has real metal grommets and a pull cord that can actually cinch the bag closed:

That pull cord is made out of extremely thin imitation leather, though, so I used extreme care when tightening it.

The bag is constructed really well, though, with neat stitching and solid-looking seams:

Look at how nicely that strap is put together!  It's very impressive to me.

This bag fits Lina perfectly:

It even goes with her outfit!  Speaking of Lina's outfit, I'm still searching for shoes that have good balance and match her outfit (her original shoes are way too unstable).  This has not been an easy quest, and so Lina almost always ends up barefoot.  Sorry, Lina.

I like the second purse and accessories even better than the first!

I actually opened two more of these sets (yes, I got a little bit addicted).  And this is what I found in the third ball:

The compact and perfume are repeats, so that was a bit of a bummer, 

Although the perfume is a different color.

The wallet was something I hadn't seen before, though,  This is made out of neon pink vinyl and has a flap that can open and close:

The flap stays closed pretty well, which was a pleasant surprise.  Many of these cheap vinyl accessories are not designed well enough to function as intended.

Sadly, there's no opening inside this wallet--it's just solid vinyl.

And the color hurts my eyes.

The purse in this set is great. It's made out of embossed metallic pink imitation leather that has a lot of stiffness and body:

All of the gold accents are real metal, and the construction is great:

The handles are made out of solid plastic, which reminds me of purses with thick wooden handles.

There's a little metal charm on one handle that has a key and a heart:

Very cute!

The fourth Mini Fashion ball that I opened had this same pink purse, the same sunglasses I showed you earlier, another jar of cream, and another lipstick.

I definitely got greedy wanting to open so many of these balls, so it serves me right to get all of the repeats, but the purses are so great.  I really love them...and so does Lina!

Once you start to get repeats with these, the best option is to go to eBay or Etsy and buy the specific purse or accessory that you want.  For example, I could get the green purse that I was coveting for about $15 on eBay:

...which is a popular solution, given the 192 sales that this vendor lists!  I'm not at all surprised.

I wanted to compare these wonderful Mini Fashion sets to the Real Littles sets that I've seen cropping up at Target over the last month or so.  The Real Littles bags are in a much larger scale than the Mini Fashion purses, and I was hoping that they could work with 18-inch dolls like American Girl or My Twinn.

I browsed the offerings at Target several times before I finally committed to buy.  The selection was always picked-over, and I didn't see anything that really tempted me.  But then, finally, one day this particular bag showed up, and I knew the time was right:

Real Littles Disney Cinderella bag by Moose Toys, $9.99

The idea with these toys is that you can choose the bag you purchase, but the contents of the bag are a surprise.

The Cinderella bag can come with any seven of the following items:

I really wanted the magazine and the phone.

The packaging here is very simple.  The purse is attached to a cardboard backdrop with one (and only one!) plastic tie, and then the backdrop is enclosed within a clear plastic box.

Both sides of the purse have a picture of Cinderella that changes when you look at it from different angles.  From the far left, Cinderella is in her rag dress with magic starting to swirl around...

Looking at the image front-on, Cinderella has raised her hands above her head and you can start to see the outline of the ball gown:

And then from the far right, the transformation is complete!

Here's a little movie so that you can see the whole image progression:

The bag is about the right size to be held by an 18-inch doll like American Girl or My Twinn Annie:

18-inch My Twinn holding a Real Littles handbag.

The bag has a sturdy metal snap closure that opens to reveal a white plastic bag:

I'm glad there's only one bag to conceal and contain all of the surprise items.

I cut open the bag, and a lot of light blue things toppled out!

Here's everything that I got:

All in all, there were twelve different items crammed inside that bag!

I'm not sure if this is technically a surprise, but one of the items is a blue metal carabiner that could be used to clip the purse onto a child's outfit or backpack:

I also got two emory boards or nail files:

I *cannot stand* the sound of fingernails on an emory board.  It's like nails on a chalkboard to me, so I immediately put these things aside.  No, thank you.

The next item is a clear vinyl pouch.  I'm not sure what this is supposed to be used for:

What would fit in there?

The box describes it simply as "pouch," which isn't helpful.

The pouch has a clock face design on one side, with the time set just before midnight:

Tick, tock, Cinderella.

Another one of my surprises was this small sheet of metallic stickers:

I also got this glass slipper attached to a loop of string.  It's like a Christmas ornament--or maybe a zipper pull?

The shoe doesn't really fit any of the dolls that I have laying around my house.  It's way too big for Lina:

No Prince Charming for you, Lina.

I was thinking that maybe it'd be compatible with the larger Disney dolls, like the 17-inch singing Princesses?  But it's too small for that:

Disney 17-inch doll shoe (left) and Real Littles shoe (right).

I know that Disney didn't manufacture this toy, but it would have been cool if the shoe was in scale with one of the Disney Store doll sizes.  Maybe it is, and I just don't have the right doll?  Since there's only one shoe, it hardly matters.

Update: Ryleigh suggested in the comments that the glass slipper might fit a Rainbow High doll.  So, I tried it on Jett Dawson:

It fits pretty well!

The shoe is made out of soft vinyl, so it has some flexibility.  This helps with the fit quite a lot.  You can see when the slipper is on a Rainbow High foot with no sock, the shape of the shoe's sole is flatter than the shape of the foot:

I'd love to know if other Real Littles shoes fit Rainbow High feet.  But that's a mission for another day.

The next surprise was this small plastic brush.  It's plain silver on one side:

With some simple blue decorations on the other side:

The brush is pretty unremarkable overall, but it's about the right scale for Lina:

The surprise that I was most excited about was this little cell phone and its two covers!

The phone is made out of plastic and has a sticker screen showing a text conversation between Cinderella and her prince.  The phone easily slides into one of two soft vinyl covers.

One of the covers has an outline of Cinderella's face and the world "dreamer" down one side:

The other cover is blue and has a picture of Cinderella's castle:

The last two surprises were a pair of sunglasses and a glasses case:

Like the Mini Fashion glasses, these have ear pieces that fold in and out:

The glasses are made out of blue plastic and have painted white rims with little molded jewel shapes.

  The center of the white area has yellowed and doesn't look great.

I love that these have moving ear pieces, but overall they look kinda cheap.

The glasses are way too big for Lina:

And they're way too small for an American Girl-sized doll like My Twinn Annie:

I don't have any of my 17-inch talking Disney Princesses left (they were all given away before we moved), but I do still have a 17-inch Limited Edition Belle doll, who is incredibly unpopular and didn't even sell when I listed her on eBay a few years ago.

And the sunglasses are just about right for this girl!

Just a little crooked.

She can make the cell phone work, too:

Since I opened so many of the Mini Fashion sets, I wanted to explore one more of these Real Little toys--just to be fair.  Lucky for me, I found this awesome unicorn backpack on one of my trips to Target!

That's right up my alley.

The back of this package doesn't reveal any of the surprise, but shows the other backpacks in the collection:

I love the mermaid one, too!

The backpack is made out of shimmering iridescent silver fabric, and has ears and a golden horn to make it reminiscent of a unicorn.  The zipper on the front sort-of looks like a mouth, too, which lends a very silly expression to this bag!

Drunk, cheesy unicorn.

The back of the pack has a handle and two shoulder straps, although the straps are not adjustable:

The front pocket of the backpack has a sturdy working zipper with a tiny compartment:

Buuurp

And the main part of the backpack opens to reveal the surprise--with, wait for it, no plastic bag!

Yay Moose Toys!

This is literally the only mass-market, surprise-themed toy that I've ever seen that didn't include at least one plastic bag.  Incredible.

Here are all of the items that were inside:

That's exactly seven things, including the carabiner.

The construction of the bag itself feels very sturdy, with covered seam edges and neat stitching:

This bag came with a shiny purple carabiner:

That's useful for kids who want to clip these bags onto their life-sized backpacks or jackets, but it doesn't feel like much of a surprise at this point.

The first two surprises were this miniature notebook and working pencil--both with golden unicorn decorations:

I also found a tiny tape dispenser that has real glitter tape on it:

The tape is hard to dispense and there's not much of it, but the idea is cute:

Another one of the surprises was this little sheet of stickers:

The rearing unicorn is pretty!

My favorite accessory is this tiny unicorn eraser:

My least favorite accessory is this little cardboard star ornament.  I'm not sure what its purpose is, and it has a sandpaper texture that reminds me of an emory board.  Shiver.

These accessories are more underwhelming than the Cinderella accessories.  The notebook, pencil, eraser, and stickers would be fun for a child to play with, though (I loved mini notebooks when I was a kid!).  I think the notebook is in a good scale to work with American Girl, which enhances its value dramatically.  Kids could write out little stories for their 18-inch dolls!  However, the other accessories feel dismissible.

The real question for me was whether or not the backpack itself would work with 18-inch dolls.  It looks good when Annie is carrying it:

It's small, but a lot of kids have mini backpacks these days:

The bigger problems is that it doesn't even come close to fitting over Annie's shoulders.  One of the straps can loop over her arm, but there's no way it would ever fit completely across her back.

The pack is a better fit for 14-inch dolls like this Glitter Girl:

The pack can slide over both of her arms and fit on her back:

However the fit is extremely tight and the whole pack crumples in the middle from the strain:

I don't keep a huge stash of de-boxed dolls in the house anymore, or at least that's one of my goals, but I was able to try the backpack on this Paola Reina Las Amigas girl who is part of an upcoming review:

The pack fits over her shoulders pretty well, and the scale seems about right, but it rides up really high on her back for some reason.

I also tried the backpack on my Smart Doll Monday, who's still hanging around waiting to see if I'll ever finish a comparison review.  The pack looks good on Monday (everything looks good on Monday), but it only fits over one of her shoulders.

I also tried the pack on Jett Dawson.  It fits very nicely over her shoulders, but the size is too big:

Whew!  I got the review done in time for Sunday!  I honestly wasn't sure that would happen, but here we are.  I really enjoyed looking at both of these brands, and it was a perfect project for a hot holiday weekend.

The Mini Fashion purses are extremely stylish and well-made, and they fit Barbie dolls well.  I'm not a purse fanatic in real life (I have one dog purse that I will use until it falls apart), but I found myself addicted to these mini purses.  The purses themselves feel like they're worth the $9.99 price tag all on their own, especially on today's market.  But some of the accessories are real gems, too, and make the price tag seem even more reasonable.  The tiny makeup brush, with its real bristles, is wonderfully realistic, and I also love how so many of the items (sunglasses, compact, cream jar, lipstick) have moving or removable parts.  Because so many of the accessories work perfectly with 1:6 scale dolls like Barbie, I wish Zuru had kept this sizing consistent.  The huge lip gloss is pretty jarring.  Also, I wish the quality had been more consistent throughout the different accessories.  Getting the sunglasses was awesome, but I felt let down by things like the perfume bottle and the garish vinyl wallet.  Overall, though, the only problem with these toys is that repeats become inevitable, and at $10 a pop, that can be frustrating.  After treating yourself to a surprise or two, I'd recommend hand-selecting the purses and accessories you want from some of the online resellers.  I'm seriously considering that $12 green purse on eBay...and Lina is desperately hoping I cave!

The Real Littles bags are also great.  I love the changing picture on the Cinderella clutch, and I think the unicorn backpack is well-made and has a very cute design.  However, it's not so clear how these bags can  reliably interact with the doll world.  I suspect Moose Toys designed the bags to be cute as miniatures in their own right, without any thoughts about dolls.  The carabiners, in particular, suggest that the bags are meant to be clipped to a full-sized backpack as a novelty decoration.  That's great, and I would have enjoyed playing with a toy like this when I was younger.  However as a doll lover, I'm left wishing that the bags had been designed to be compatible with some kind of standard-sized doll (American Girl being the most obvious).  It wouldn't have taken much tweaking to accomplish this; some adjustable straps on the backpack would have done the trick.  The accessories in the Real Littles sets are not as appealing to me as the Mini Fashion items, either, and I suspect this is also because they're not intended to be used with dolls.  And even if I evaluate them strictly as miniatures, some of the items are better than others.  I like the notebook, eraser, and pencil because they're all adorably small while also being functional.  But other things, like the emory boards, strange dangling objects, and tiny stickers, are harder to appreciate.  I won't buy any more of these bags for myself or my dolls, but they would make great little gifts for kids who enjoy tiny things for their own sake.

I've tried to be diplomatic here, but Lina wants me to tell you, for the record, that she thinks the Mini Fashion sets are the best toys I've ever reviewed, and she's seen a lot of stuff.