Ily 4EVER Fashion Dolls by Jakks Pacific

First of all, I want to thank Hannah for stepping in and reviewing the 18-inch ily 4EVER dolls last week! I've been learning the ropes at my new job (and bringing home rag-tag foster animals in the process...) and was grateful for a helping hand.  I thought it was especially fun to learn about all of the different face molds.  I love the newest Stitch face, and because that doll is a freckled redhead, of course I had to add her to my collection.  Her presence in the house will probably prompt me to watch Lilo and Stitch, finally, which is something I'm embarrassed to say that I've never done.  So thank you to Hannah for that enrichment, too!

Since we're on the topic of ily 4EVER dolls, I want to take the opportunity to talk about the newest 11.5 inch fashion dolls from that line.  For anyone unfamiliar with the brand, ily 4EVER dolls are characters dressed with inspiration from their favorite Disney character.  So they're not meant to be Disney Princesses or anything like that, just Disney fans.  Anyway, I reviewed the original Shop Disney version of these dolls already, but the new dolls, which are made by Jakks Pacific, are different enough that I think they deserve their own review.  I decided to focus on a doll from this collection who is inspired by a sweet character who stars in a movie that I have no desire to watch again, Bambi:

11.5 inch ily 4EVER Bambi doll by Jakks Pacific, $29.99.

I assumed that Jakks Pacific's release of these dolls would replace Disney's earlier version, but there's a new Christmas gift set for sale at Shop Disney, and those dolls have inset eyes and leg articulation like the original dolls:

Holiday 3-Pack, $89.99.

So maybe the plan is to have two types of ily fashion dolls going forward?  It's kind of how the Princess dolls are managed, I guess.  However, in this case the two groups of dolls cost the exact same amount.  So Jakks isn't offering a budget version, just a different version...and none of the options are budget-friendly.

There are currently four dolls in the Jakks Pacific ily lineup, and they all cost $29.99.  Here is the promotional photo of the Stitch-inspired doll:

Love her.

There's also a Mickey Mouse-inspired doll:

That jacket!!

And an Ursula-inspired doll:

Nice hair.

They all look great in their stock photos, and each comes with a full additional outfit, which is something we didn't get with the Shop Disney girls.

There's also a Cruella-inspired doll from Jakks, but I haven't seen her for sale anywhere yet:

And apparently there's a Target exclusive Mickey/Minnie Mouse character, too (thank you for the tip, Amy!).

I chose the Bambi doll because she was the most similar in coloring to the Jasmine-inspired Shop Disney doll that I still have kicking around from my last ily review:

11.5 inch ily 4EVER Jasmine doll by Disney, $29.99.

So today I'm going to review Bambi and contrast her to Jasmine.  This way we can see the pros and cons of each type of doll in a direct comparison.

Here's Bambi in her box:

Jakks Pacific ily 4EVER Bambi doll, $29.99.

The box is a large blister pack.  It has a plastic front and sides with a cardboard back.  There's a photograph of the doll on the right side of the box and a cartoon of Bambi on the left side:

The back of the box has photos of Bambi wearing different combinations of clothing, and smaller thumbnails of all four dolls in the series:

Here's a closer look at the small photos:

The basic layout and design of the Jakks Pacific packaging looks very similar to the Shop Disney version, but the Jakks box is a few inches shorter, a bit narrower, and has more plastic:

Shop Disney packaging (left) and Jakks Pacific packaging (right).

The colors and definition on the Jakks box also don't seem as vivid and clear.  For instance, both boxes have a photo of the doll on one side, but the Shop Disney photo is much brighter--and more artistic:

Shop Disney packaging (left) and Jakks Pacific packaging (right).

The same is true for the cartoon versions of each character that appear on the opposite side of the box:

Shop Disney packaging (left) and Jakks Pacific packaging (right).

Another notable difference between the two packaging styles is that with dolls like Jasmine, the backdrop slides easily out of the main box...and can slide right back in if that's what you want it to do:

I used this feature to my advantage during the last ily 4EVER review so that I could take clear pictures of each doll's face without permanently de-boxing her.

The newer dolls like Bambi are harder to de-box, and they leave behind wreckage that can't be re-assembled:

I was still able to extract the backdrop in one piece, so you can clearly see Bambi and all of her accessories:

She comes with a lot of stuff!

There are plastic ties all over the place in this packaging, including several connecting Bambi's head to the clear plastic head support:

Here's *almost* everything that was in the box:

The purse for Bambi's main outfit fell out during the de-boxing ordeal and I didn't find it until later.

I decided to look at Bambi first and her accessories later.  

My first impressions were that Bambi photographs well, but she is not an easy doll to manage.  For example, her limb joints are stiff, and it took forever to get her to balance--even with those big boots.  The only way I could achieve an upright pose was to position her with one foot behind the other, as though she's walking:

Just a casual stroll. Nothing to see here.

Unlike the Shop Disney dolls, Bambi has painted eyes.  Her irises are painted in an upward-glancing position, so from a straight-on view she's never looking at the camera:

Focus, Bambi!

Here's a top-down view that shows her eyes a little better:

The eyes have the same crossed positioning as the inset-eyed dolls, but I don't like this effect as much with a two-dimensional eye.  There's a lot of bright sclera showing.

Bambi has long blonde hair that reaches to her knees.  It was a little messy right out of the box, but did not come with gobs of styling product (whew!) so it felt smooth and nice right away:

Behind the hair, you can see that both Bambi's shirt and skirt close with velcro:

But the outfit doesn't look very good from the back.  The knee-high pink boots have slits that get increasingly wide at the top:

And there was something funny going on with the back of the skirt:

A bustle?

On closer inspection, I found two plastic ties inexplicably tethering the back of the skirt:

I cut the ties out, but it honestly didn't make much of a difference:

The back of the skirt still rides up and isn't as full as the front:

The next thing I did was brush Bambi's long hair.  The hair feels great.  It's silky and smooth and is really fun to play with:

The rooting is good, too, and it takes some effort to expose the scalp:

This view shows the neat rows of hair a little better:

I tied the hair back into a simple ponytail so that I could get a better look at Bambi's face and outfit:

Bambi has an oval head with large eyes and a broad mouth:

Broad mouth, indeed!

Her lips look too thick and dark to me, especially at the edges.  The emphasis on that area of the mouth is clown-like.  It looks like a toddler got ahold of Mom's lipstick.

The lip paint strays outside of the designated area of the mold, too, especially on Bambi's right side:

Coloring outside the lines.

Bambi's eyes are vibrant, with two-toned blue irises and large pupils.  She has subtle silver eyeshadow with a hint of glitter, and four large dark eyelashes above her eyes:

Her medium brown eyebrows match the lighter eyelashes underneath her eyes.  The brows have some hair line detail that's just barely visible.

Bambi has a cute profile, with simplified, unpierced ears:

Her lips look overly thick in profile, too--especially that upper lip.

Bambi has a sweet, friendly face overall, it's mostly the lips that I wish were different.  And I would probably appreciate the face more if I wasn't missing the inset eyes and detailed face paint of the original ily 4EVER fashion dolls.  That said, Jakks did a decent job of replicating the size and shape of the inset eyes with these painted eyes.

Bambi's primary outfit consists of a long-sleeved graphic shirt and a velvety brown bubble skirt:

The whole outfit looks dated to me, like something from the 70s.  But the Bambi movie came out in the 40s, so I don't think that the vintage look is any kind of reference to the Bambi character.  It's probably just that brown is Bambi's signature color, and brown was more popular in the 70s than it ever should have been.

The details on the shirt are great.  It has a nicely-sewn collar and cuffs, and there's even some delicate gathering along the bottom:

The graphic of Bambi is sweet, too, and has a lot of detail:

The construction of the shirt is good, especially for this kind of jersey knit:

The brown skirt has a bubble style drape with a thick waistband.  The gathering that makes up the bubble effect of the skirt isn't uniform, though, so there are clumps of pleats in some areas:

The skirt has a partial velcro closure in back, and an interior ribbon to keep the waist from riding up:

With the skirt turned inside-out, you can see that there's a full liner and the stitching looks robust:

The pink boots that go with this outfit look a little odd to me, perhaps because they have so many molded creases:

The area around the knees looks especially funny, so I wish the boots were just a bit shorter.

Despite their impressive size, the boots are easy to get on and off, thanks mostly to that prominent slit.

In addition to the molded creases throughout the body of the boot, there are molded zippers and some stitching patterns:

Underneath her clothing, Bambi has a different body from the original ily 4EVER dolls:

Her torso is hollow plastic, as are the upper parts of her arms and legs.  Her lower arms legs are hard vinyl. 

She may not balance very well on her own, but she does better than the earlier ily fashion dolls with their weak ankles.  She also has an impressive thirteen points of articulation:

On her back, there are molded Disney and Jakks Pacific marks, but no date:

Bambi's pink underwear also has a sequence of ily heart logos molded into the waistband:

Her neck has good flexibility, at least from side to side:

The up and down movement of her head is less impressive, though.  She can look up a little bit, but she can't look down very much at all.

Her shoulders are rotating hinges, but she can't lift them up past 60 degrees:

They can spin around to achieve other positions, though:

Both the elbows and the wrists are rotating hinges.  The elbows can bend to 90 degrees, but the inward movement of the wrists stops short of that:

So Bambi can't touch her mouth, but she can rest a hand on her hip and touch her forehead:

Maybe that explains the lipstick?

She can also almost cross her arms:

Bambi has hips that allow for spectacular side-to-side splits!

Go, Bambi!

But her front-to-back splits are incomplete because of restricted backward movement of the legs:

Good effort.

However, she can sit in a chair really well...oh, wait:

I was unable to get Bambi's right leg to bend at the knee at this point.  It was stuck permanently in the straight position.

After several attempts to bend the leg, and several times when I thought I would break the leg, I got the joint to bend.  I think the difficulty in movement is in part because the upper leg is plastic and the lower leg is vinyl.  In particular, the peg that attaches the lower leg to the upper leg is vinyl, and so it is flimsy and hard to push against.

But at least Bambi can sit nicely in a chair!

Impressive for a doll associated with Disney.

She tends to lean back and look up when she sits, but hey.  I can't complain.

Bambi's knees are rotating hinges, so they allow her to kneel on one knee:

And on two knees:

It's hard to show this in pictures, but despite having leg joints that look really good on paper, Bambi's legs are awkward.  They don't bend easily, and it's as if they're always partially bent--like the knee can't fully straighten.  I think this is why she doesn't balance well.

Here's Bambi showing off the rotation in her knee joints...which looks a little unnatural:

The rotation in her knees allows her to sit partially cross-legged, though, which is nice:

The ankles also have hinged rotation, and they do not collapse easily, which is great.

As some of you might recall, I had a terrible time getting my ily 4EVER Tiana to stand on her own because of extremely weak ankles:

A typical scene for Tiana.

Bambi might have some problems, but weak ankles isn't one of them.

I want to compare the different ily 4EVER bodies side-by-side, so this is a good time to go back and de-box Jasmine the rest of the way:

Jasmine retails for the exact same price as Bambi ($29.99) but she comes with fewer accessories.  Here's everything that was in her box:

Instead of a full extra outfit, Jasmine comes with only one extra piece of clothing: a collared shirt.  She also has a purse, a notebook, and a balloon with a surprise accessory inside.

Here's Jasmine on her own:

She stood up pretty well at first, which surprised me.  It must have been a fresh-out-of-the-box fluke, though, because it didn't last.

Jasmine came with a gold bracelet on her left wrist:

And she's wearing fancy Mickey Mouse ears on her head:

I cut the thread that was holding the ears in place and removed them.

Jasmine has wavy blond hair that's pulled back from around her face:

The pulled-back section is held by four different elastics to hint at Princess Jasmine's classic hairstyle:

This hair came with a lot of styling product and felt pretty stiff and gross right out of the box.  It was a stark contrast to Bambi's silky-smooth hair.  

I figured I'd have to boil wash the hair at some point, but before I did that I wanted to get a few close-ups of Jasmine's face.

The biggest difference between Jasmine and Bambi is the style of their eyes.  Jasmine has blue inset eyes that are slightly crossed:

She also has silver eyeshadow, but there's no glitter in it.

Jasmine has more detail in her face than Bambi.  Her lips are better proportioned, and they even have a darker liner around the edges and some line detail on the lower lip.  Her eyebrows also have nice line detail:

Here's a GIF comparing the two faces:

I like the soft colors in Jasmine's face, and her inset eyes are sparkling and nice.  To me, Jasmine has both a more unique and a more attractive face than Bambi.

In profile, Jasmine has similar ears to Bambi, but they're pierced:

After looking at Jasmine's face, I decided to try and brush her hair.  

It did not go well:

Indescribable hairstyle.

The hair turned into a frizzy mess.  And brushing did nothing to make the hair fiber feel better, either.  It's still coarse, dry, and hard to manage.

I know I'm not supposed to brush curly doll hair.  Promise.  I've had enough bad experiences to learn this.  But I like to see what might happen to dolls like Jasmine when they're in a kid's hands.  Kids are going to brush their doll's hair because it's fun...or not so fun in Jasmine's case.

The rooting is good, though, and comparable to what we saw with Bambi:

I've reviewed this style of ily doll before, so I don't really feel the need to go through all of Jasmine's outfit and accessories in huge detail, but it's nice to have an example of Shop Disney's auxiliary items in this review so we can draw some direct comparisons.

Jasmine's outfit includes a black graphic tee shirt and a pair of denim shorts:

Little bits of the white backing on the black knit fabric of the shirt show through, but overall I think it looks nice and the picture of Jasmine has some good detail:

The construction is very basic:

I think the shorts are really great.  They have working belt loops, stitched pockets and fly, and some shiny gold detail at the bottom:

The shorts have a fine net lining inside and a velcro closure in back:

The shiny detail has two components: there are some gold accents glued onto the fabric, and there are also panels of gold sequined fabric behind the small rips in the denim.  You can peek in through the bottom of one leg and see the sequins:

Jasmine also has a pair of brown sandals with blue accents on the outside of the ankle strap:

Here are the shoes on their own:

With Jasmine's clothes out of the way, now we can take a good look at the two dolls side by side:

Jakks Pacific ily 4EVER doll (left) and Shop Disney ily 4EVER doll (right).

Several things about the two dolls are identical.  For example, they have the same torso shape (with different underwear patterns), and the same hand mold:

They also have the same foot mold:

These similarities are important because it means that the dolls can share all of their clothing and shoes perfectly:

Ily 4EVER Bambi wearing Jasmine's outfit.

Despite perfect clothes-sharing, there are some critical differences between these two dolls.

One difference is that Jasmine has a plastic torso, but her arms and legs are made entirely out of vinyl.  This has its disadvantages, like the tendency for the limbs to warp, but it also makes Jasmine feel heavier and more high-quality than Bambi.  

Another difference is that the joints are not exactly the same between these two dolls, so they don't move in the same way.

First of all, while both dolls can look up to some degree:

Jasmine can look down, but Bambi can not:

Eyes up, Jasmine.

Remember how Bambi can only lift her arms up to about 60 degrees away from her body?

Well, Jasmine can do the full 90 degrees:

The dolls have very similar arm movement, although Bambi might have slightly better elbow flexibility:

Here's Jasmine's equivalent pose:

A difference that I can't photograph is that because Jasmine's arms are made completely out of vinyl, the joints feel more secure and move more smoothly than Bambi's joints.

Bambi can do perfect side-to-side splits:

Show off.

And Jasmine can not:

And even though Bambi's front-to-back splits aren't that impressive...

Better than mine, tbh.

At least she doesn't lose her legs in the process:

Indescribable feeling.

Bambi's kneeling poses were pretty good:

But Jasmine's are better:

However, Jasmine's double-jointed knees have no rotation, so while Bambi can sit very nicely in a chair:

Jasmine struggles to keep her composure:

While I like Jasmine's face better than Bambi's, my preference between the two bodies leans in the opposite direction.  Bambi's body isn't perfect, though.  Her balance is bad and the movement of her legs feels stiff and awkward.  And of course my doll has a knee joint that wouldn't even work at first, and remains stiff to this day.  But I prefer the hinged rotation in Bambi's knees to Jasmine's double joints--only because there's no rotation associated with those double joints.  And I'm glad that Bambi doesn't have collapsing ankles or legs that fall off!

The only thing left to look at with Bambi is her extra accessories, and then I can compare those to the items that come with Jasmine.

Here's a reminder of everything that came with Bambi (minus that one purse):

The elements of the primary outfit that we haven't looked at yet are the pink cowgirl hat and the purse that I left out of the last picture.

The cowgirl hat is made out of soft pink vinyl:

It has a brown satin ribbon tied around the brim:

The ribbon is stitched in three places with brown thread that goes through holes in the hat's vinyl:

The hat fits on Bambi's head a lot better than many of the doll hats I've encountered.  It looks good, too:

It casts shadows on Bambi's face, but that's only a problem if you're a doll photographer.  Kids won't care in the least:

Here's the purse that I forgot to include in the box contents photo:

It has an adorable molded and painted design on one side, featuring a little deer and some flowers:

The back has only a molded zig-zag pattern and the ily logo:

The strap of the purse has a peg connection, and so it can move into different positions:

There's even a slit opening in the purse, but the vinyl is too rigid for this to be useful:

The purse looks absurdly short on Bambi's shoulder, but maybe I just don't know the current trends in purse size:

More of a clutch, perhaps?

The extra outfit in this set includes a shirt, a skirt, a pair of boots, another purse, and a necklace:

The second outfit is a little hard to get on.  Not the skirt--that was easy.  But the shirt was really difficult to pull on over Bambi's splayed fingers:

We had quite a tussle trying to make this work:

In the end, I decided that it must be possible to remove the hands, no matter how hard that seemed at first.  And, sure enough, with a lot of determination and a bit of worry, I was able to pull the hands off:

It's always a little frustrating when a play line doll requires hand removal for the outfits to work.  But at least everything works.

The boots that come with this outfit have a lot of detail:

I don't know if the spotted pattern on the boots is supposed to resemble the spots on a fawn?  It doesn't quite conjure that reference for me, but I like the boots anyway.

What I was really hoping was that the boots would help Bambi balance better, but they did not:

I eventually got her balanced, though, and she didn't even need to be in a walking pose:

This top also feels dated to me, like a Christmas sweater from the 80s:

The skirt is made out of a sueded fabric and has different geometric shapes in brown, pink, and tan:

I like how the shapes are all outlined with brown stitching.  It gives a quilted effect.

I also like the little Mickey Mouse head that's peeking out of the right (non-functional) pocket:

The necklace that goes with this outfit looks nice, with its tiny little deer head pendant:

But it doesn't really compliment either outfit, and it won't lay flat:

With both shirts, the graphic design diminishes the impact of the tiny necklace.

Here's the necklace with the primary outfit:

Also, the necklace doesn't grip Bambi's neck very well, and falls off extremely easily.

The purse that comes with the second outfit is cute:

It has large cartoon deer features on the front:

And the ily logo on the back:

The flap of the purse opens, but doing so stresses the stiff vinyl considerably:

The gold strap has a more conventional length, so the purse hangs down to Bambi's hip:

The last accessory is the Mickey Mouse ring.  It is caked with pink glitter and has a flexible clear vinyl base:

It doesn't fit me, but might be a fun accessory for a child.  I like the surprise balloons on the original ily dolls better.

Because Bambi comes with so many different outfit items and extra accessories, I wanted to pause for a minute here and play around with the different options!

The pink hat pairs well with the secondary outfit:

But Bambi's hair is so nice, I prefer her without the hat.

The second top also looks good with the brown bubble skirt:

But my two favorite pieces of clothing are the Bambi shirt and the geometric sueded skirt:

With the pink boots and hat to pull everything together, I think this looks nice!

The full extra outfit is a really fun feature of these newer Jakks Pacific dolls.  I like how all of the pieces coordinate with each other, so that mixing and matching is effortless and rewarding.  I also like how the accessories can work with any combination of clothing.  The only disappointment is that flimsy necklace.  It doesn't go well with any of the tops and falls off way too easily.

Now, let's quickly compare Bambi's accessories to Jasmine's.  Here's a reminder of everything that came with Jasmine:

Jasmine's purse is turquoise, with a molded chain strap...and looks a bit like a stomach:

Makes me think of haggis.

There's no opening in this purse, and the decorations are only on one side.  There is a soft golden tassel hanging from the strap, though:

The purse is very small and stiff, and hangs awkwardly on Jasmine's arm:

It looks like it was made for a different doll.

She can carry the purse in her hand, but it's not a very useful accessory:

My favorite extra item is the tiger shirt:

It ties in front and has decorative golden buttons down the right side.

I really like the bright turquoise color and the tiger print:

The tiny tigers are very realistic:

The construction of the shirt is basic, but looks reasonably sturdy, except for some areas along the bottom hem, where the fraying edges of the fabric are really close to the stitches:

The shirt looks good with the rest of Jasmine's outfit, and it's fairly easy to get on--even with the tied waist:

I also really like how this shirt coordinates with the headband:

I like the style and color palette of Jasmine's outfit better than Bambi's, but of course there's no mix-and-match potential here.

Jasmine also has a little notebook, or I think that's what it's supposed to be:

It hinges open (with some effort) to reveal a blank white area:

Jasmine isn't really sure what to do with this thing, but at least she can hold it:

The last accessory is the mystery balloon!

Here's the range of items that might be inside the balloon:

With Tiana I got the rice cereal treats, which are cute.  I think the most realistic item is the pretzel, so I was really hoping to get that.

Instead, I got another plate of rice cereal treats:

Oh, well.

Jasmine looks happy to have the treats, though, so that's good.

After I'd finished looking at her accessories, I decided to try and fix Jasmine's hair.

I boil washed it, but a lot of the waviness remained, and the texture at the ends stayed very coarse and un-brushable.  So I also cut off about an inch of length:

Flashbacks to Meygana Broomstix.

The hair looks a little better now, I guess, but it still feels pretty bad, and the ends are still dry and coarse.  It feels like the kind of hair that will be a matted mess after only a short period of time.

I wanted to get the two girls together for a few final portraits:

And they posed nicely together for a millisecond...

And then, of course, Jasmine's weak ankles gave out and she fell down:

I thought perhaps Bambi's boots, with their ankle support, would help Jasmine to stand up for longer.  So the two girls swapped shoes:

Thankfully, this gave me enough time to snap a nice shot!

Bottom line?  I'm not really sure why there are two different versions of the ily 4EVER fashion dolls.  They both have the same suggested price, and are both available at retail stores like Target, Walmart, and Amazon.  I assumed that Disney would switch from their version of the dolls over to the Jakks version, but the recent Christmas gift set contradicts that assumption.  So, if we can expect to get offerings from both manufacturers in the future, which is the better choice?

For me there's a simple answer, but it makes things complicated: I like the Disney dolls' faces better, but I prefer the Jakks Pacific bodies.  A head swap might have offered an easy solution, assuming some of the skin tones matched, but the problem with that is I also think the Jakks dolls have significantly better hair.  At least between Jasmine and Bambi, there's no comparison: Bambi's hair is wonderful and silky, and Jasmine's hair is a coarse nightmare.  Bambi also comes with a better collection of accessories.  While I might prefer the basic style of Jasmine's outfit to Bambi's more dated ensemble, it's really nice to have a full extra outfit that coordinates with the primary look.  And Bambi's clothing feels comparable in quality to items from the Disney ily dolls.  So Jakks has definitely improved upon a lot of the things that were lacking in the first collection, but the newer dolls have a few issues of their own that I should summarize.

First of all, the new bodies have the style and number of joints that I like to see in a doll, but those joints do not behave as well as they could.  For starters, my Bambi came with a knee joint that would not bend at all.  I eventually built up the nerve to apply enough force to move it, and was lucky I didn't break the leg off in the process.  But that knee joint is still stiff.  In fact, several of the joints are stiff.  This is good for the ankles, because they don't buckle under the weight of the doll, but other areas feel awkward.  Bambi's knees are perhaps the worst offenders, and I suspect this is because of the plastic-to-vinyl transition that happens at that joint.  The vinyl peg that connects the lower leg to the upper leg feels flimsy, and does not allow the knee joint to fully extend.  So Bambi can never make her legs perfectly straight, and this impedes her balance.  That said, at least she can sit in a chair nicely.  And her balance, while not great, is certainly better than the original ily dolls.

The other problem with the newer dolls is their faces.  The faces are cute, but they are lacking some of the detail, subtlety, and charm of the earlier dolls.  Jasmine's face is full of character, with intricate detail in the lips and eyebrows.  She also has lovely inset eyes that give her a lot of character and make her feel special.  Bambi's face is fine, but her eyes are overly large and bright, and are always looking up.  Also, her lip paint is too dark overall and too thick on top, and it doesn't match the contours of the face mold.  There's just not as much originality in the new faces; they don't stand out from the crowd.

I can't help but imagine a doll with Jasmine's cute face, Bambi's long, silky hair, Bambi's body, and Bambi's collection of accessories.  Ideally, this doll would be packaged in Jasmine's easier-to-manage and easier-to-recycle box, too.  That would be an awesome doll, wouldn't it?  In the real world, though, with the choices available, I'd say that if you're looking for a doll that will be played with, the Jakks Pacific version is the best bet.  But if you're looking for a doll that will be primarily for collection and display, then the original Disney dolls are the right choice.

Keep in mind, though, that whichever doll you choose, you're gonna need a doll stand!  I tried to get one last picture with Bambi in her hat and Jasmine wearing her Mickey ears, but of course Jasmine went splat almost immediately:

And Bambi didn't last much longer:

Like dominoes.

But with a bit of persistence, I finally got the closing shot: