Quick Look: Moodles by Sunny Days Entertainment

Happy New Year!  As one of my New Year's resolutions, I decided to add a different kind of review to the mix.  I'm going to call these new reviews Quick Looks, and the idea is pretty simple: once or twice a month, I'll post something shorter than normal.  This will offer a faster reading experience for you, and a better turnaround time for me.  I also think it'll encourage reviews of products that I might not normally consider--simpler dolls and toys, or maybe little projects and updates that I want to share.

My original intent was to limit myself to only fifty photos for each of these reviews, and call the series Fifty Photo Friday or something like that.  But the reality is that a specific photo limit is too prohibitive.  As an example, I tried to keep today's review to only fifty photos and ended up needing sixty five.  That's not bad for me, though, considering that my typical reviews have about two hundred pictures.  

To kick off the Quick Look concept, here are sixty five photos of some very silly and unusual little dolls called Moodles:

Moodles Zoey by Sunny Days Entertainment, $24.99.

I stumbled upon the Moodles during one of my visits to Walmart, back when I was shopping for the Woof & Co. dogs.  I found an unusual-looking doll called Aria on the shelf, sitting all by herself:

The Aria I saw had a ripped-up box and her body was dirty, but I still found her intriguing.  

The idea with these dolls that they have face panels that spin around to reveal different expressions: sleepy, silly, angry, etc.  The dolls have open-front boxes, so I was able to experiment with changing Aria's expression in the store.  This was quite entertaining, and the faces are cute.  I especially like the angry face.  It's rare to see an angry doll! 

I'm reminded of the fun tines I had with Fab Faces Kennedy back in 2012:

Another angry doll.

Okay, but now I've added two additional pictures, which brings the total up to sixty seven.  I need to focus or I'll defeat the whole purpose of this review!

I didn't purchase Aria that day, mostly because of the condition of the doll, but also because I was already making other purchases.  However, as the weeks went by, I couldn't get her out of my head.

So, I searched around online and discovered that there's another Moodles character named Zoey (who has unicorns and rainbows on her outfit!) and also some very cute mood-changing pets.  I managed to find Zoey on sale for $17.99, so I grabbed her.  I also bought a Dalmatian dog that I'll show you a bit later.

Zoey came in an open-faced cardboard box with lots of colorful decorations:

Moodles Zoey, on sale for $17.99.

The bottom of the box has the Moodles name, and the slogan "oodles of moods to share:"

That's cute.

The left side of the box has all six of Zoey's different expressions: sleepy, happy, angry, sad, silly, and surprised.

Zoey and the six dwarves.

The sides of the box hint at the mechanism by which Zoey's expression can change:

There's a twist & flip feature to change the mood.

The back of the box has pictures of the six different faces again, and a big wall of text in the middle:

The text says: with the help of adorable Zoey, kids will love imitating Zoey's facial expressions to share their different moods.  Zoey is also a wonderful friend to kids learning to verbalize and communicate their emotions.

That's poorly worded, but a neat idea.  I hadn't thought about the therapeutic value of a doll like this, but it makes total sense.

Okay, my mind works in strange ways.  Somehow transcribing the words on the back of Zoey's box just now reminded me of something that I need to show you.  Nobody else in my life will understand.  Remember during Lena and Ian's Christmas post how I was trying to translate the text in the tiny Mini Brands books?  I've looked at several more pages since then, the vast majority of which were nonsense, but I also came across this:

Feels kinda true lately.

Freaky, right??  

I also found this, which is less ominous, but equally weird:

I am not comfortable with you.

Somebody is getting their kicks from hiding secret messages in these books, I'm sure of it.  And now it's my mission to find all of them.

And...I've gone and added two more pictures.  Sorry about that.

Let's get back to Zoey.  She was attached to her box with four cable ties that were fairly easy to cut:

Lying flat like this, Zoey is about 13 inches tall from the top of her bow to the soles of her shoes.

The big reason that I wanted Zoey and not Aria is that Zoey is wearing a pink hoodie with a printed design featuring suns, flowers, rainbows, hearts, and unicorns.  It's adorable and uplifting:

The whole world is not full of poison!

Zoey doesn't sit up very well on her own, which is disappointing.  Her head is heavy, and her body is stuffed with lightweight filling, so she tends to tip over backwards.

I was able to get her to sit up briefly by tipping her head way forward:

Otherwise, she has to lean up against something.  I found the box for a LULU Pop doll that worked nicely to prop Zoey up, and it even coordinates with her outfit:

If these dolls had been given heavy bean bag bodies, I think they'd have more stability and be more fun to play with.  I might add some pellets to Zoey's bottom later; it's not a hard thing to do.

Zoey came packaged with her sleepy face showing.  I think this is cute.  It's like she's resting up, getting ready to play with a child.  Or getting ready to be photographed by me, as the case may be:

Sleep while you can, Zoey.

Zoey's construction is unlike anything I've ever seen in the doll world.  Her huge head is hollow plastic, covered with a very slightly padded (and non-removable) fabric hood.  The hood has little animal ears on each side and a big plastic bow on the top:

Zoey's body is soft, and almost completely made out of fabric.  The exceptions are her hands and feet, which are vinyl.

Here she is from the back:

The hoodie has working front pockets, which is nice, but it's not removable.  Underneath the unicorn print fleece, you can see that most of the body is made out of the shimmery purple legging fabric: 

Zoey's bright pink sandals are removable, and underneath she has cute little vinyl feet:

The sandals have lots of molded detail and look like mini Crocs:

Zoey's feet are attached to her purple body with cable ties around the ankles:

Look at her little nubbin toes!

Her fingers are a bit longer than her toes, and this doll has some dark staining on the tips of a few of those fingers:

There's a dark spot on the back of the hand, too:

Okay!  Now let's take a look at Zoey's face-changing mechanism.

Wakey wakey, Zoey!

Each pair of faces is printed on a rotating disc.  When the disc spins, you can peek into the hollow head and see some of the other faces:

It's like all of Zoey's emotions are rattling around inside of her head:

I don't know what to feel.

On the opposite side of the sleepy face is the surprised face:

Where am I?

The face is very effective at communicating the emotion of surprise, but the features are printed in a simplistic way.  The irises are all blue, with no pupil, the nose is composed of four lines and two dots, and the open mouth is just an oval of dark pink with lighter lip lines around it.  The hair has some nice depth, though:

There's also some faint staining on this face, up between the raised eyebrows.

In order to access the other four faces, the purple plastic bow on the top of Zoey's head (which is actually a knob) has to be turned in one direction or the other:

A literal knobhead.

Turning the knob causes the entire interior of the head to spin around, exposing another face disc:

I find this knob quite easy to turn, but it might be harder for little kid hands.

This time we have sad Zoey:

You called me a knobhead.

Sorry, Zo.  I didn't mean it like that.

Again, this face is very expressive, with simple lines and some faint staining on the forehead:

On the back side of the sad face is the happy face, so Zoey can be cheered up quickly:

I'm thinking about unicorns.

The happy face has squinty, smiling eyes and a toothy grin:

One more twist of the head knob reveals the final pair of faces, first of which is the angry face:

My head hurts from all of this spinning!

And Zoey's not messing around!  She looks really angry:

Yikes.

But with a spin of the face disc, she can forget all of her woes and be goofy...or maybe a little unstable.  Changing emotions so quickly can take a toll:

Hahaha!  Ooooh....oh.  Argh!  What the... *sob*

This face makes me giggle, with its lopsided eyes, scrunched-up nose, and exposed tongue:

With another twist of the head knob, Zoey's expression rotates back to where it started.  So now she can get some much-needed rest:

Ah.

For some size perspective, here's Zoey next to Petra:

Wow, you're tall.

The idea here is clever and the execution is good.  I found the faces easy to manipulate, and each one represents a very clear emotion.  I can picture kids having long conversations with these dolls, changing the facial expressions to meet the moment.  It's a bit like having a sympathetic friend.

My only complaints are that Zoey's body is lightweight and can't support her head very well, and my doll has some faint staining on several of her faces.  I was not able to wash the stains away with soap and water.

As much fun as I had with Zoey, I was even more excited to check out one of the Moodles pets.  As far as I can tell, there are three pets to choose from.  There's a grey cat, a brown bear, and a Dalmatian:

They all have the same $24.99 suggested retail as the dolls.  That's quite expensive for a plush animal, but the unique face feature helps justify the cost.

I chose the Dalmatian, and found her on Amazon for normal retail price.  She came in an open-faced boxed that's very similar to Zoey's:

This doggo is called Pawster Puppy, which is an odd name:

Is it a play on words?  If so, I can't figure it out.  Looking for some kind of theme, I decided to look up the names of the other two pets.  Apparently the cat is called Purr Kitty and the bear is Cuddles Bear.  Those are pretty boring.  The names Aria and Zoey are so pretty, I expected better names for the pets.  Oh well.  It's a small detail.

My nephew has a Dalmatian named June, so I'll steal that name for this little pup.

The side of June's box shows the twist and flip mechanic:

And the back has all six emotions and some text:

The emotions are the same as Zoey's, and the text is almost identical to what we saw on her box.  It says: with the help of adorable Pawster Puppy, kids will love imitating Poster's  facial expressions to share their different moods.  Pawster Puppy is also a wonderful friend to kid learning to verbalize and communicate their emotions.

Don't worry, I won't translate any more ominous Mini Brand pages right now.  I do have an aside, though: I actually learned something new because of these toys.  The changing faces on the dolls are meant to help kids with MESH skills.  MESH stands for Mental, Emotional, and Social Health.  We could all use some of that right now!

And I can see the value.  If kids look at happy dolls all of the time, they might feel that their more complicated emotions aren't valid.  So a doll that can be angry, sad, or goofy might be reassuring.

June started out very happy:

Yay!

As you can see, June sits upright better than Zoey, and doesn't topple over.  I think it's because her legs are designed to be in a sitting position.  Her feet stick up in the air when she's lying down instead of lying flat:

Another difference between June and Zoey is that while Zoey's flat face is passable from the side, June's noseless profile is really weird for a dog:

Dogs need noses.

Excuse me?

Okay, Dalmatians need noses.  Is that better?

Here's June from the back, where you can see a cute black embroidered heart just above her tail:

She also has crinkly plastic inside one of her floppy black ears.  That seems more suited to a baby toy, but maybe toddlers enjoy that kind of tactile sensation as well.

June's head design is just like Zoey's, but her face plates are covered with white furry fabric and have embroidered features:

The fuzzy faces are nice for three reasons.   For one, they match the plush body.  Also, they make June more cuddly overall.  And last, the soft edges are less likely to pinch a finger as the head is being manipulated.

I really like the exposed red tongue on the happy face, but I find it strange that there's an embroidered white spot over June's right eye:

Why does she have a white spot on white fur?  I guess a black embroidered spot would make it hard to see the all-black eye, but then why not have no spot at all?

Anyway, let's spin this face around and see what's on the other side!

Notice as the face is rotating that there would be some room in there to have a three dimensional nose of some kind.  I think that would make June's profile more appealing.

Anyway, dang.  We went from happy to sad really fast:

I wish I had a nose.

This face really tugs at the heartstrings, doesn't it?

Dogs don't cry from emotion, but we'll ignore that.

On this face, the embroidered white spot makes the tear easier to see, so perhaps that was the rationale.

Instead of a bow-shaped knob on her head, June has a flat white star with a smiley face on it:

This knob is harder to turn than the bow, but it's also less obtrusive.

June's next face is...

Aw.

The sleepy face!  And that spins around to reveal a cute laughing face:

Haha!  I was fake sleeping.

I think this is officially the silly face, but it looks like laughing to me.  It's not as silly as Zoey's equivalent expression.

I turned the head one more time and got the surprised face, which also works as a worried face:

Did my ear just crinkle?

And for the final face we have...angry dog!

Grrrr.

And she's pretty angry.  At least her teeth aren't showing.  Maybe her growl is worse than her bite.

I introduced June and Zoey to see if they would get along.  Everything went well at first:

Hi Zoey!  Hi June.

But then Zoey started to complain about how she can't sit up straight, which caused June some distress:

I have to bring this stupid freakin' backrest along with me everywhere I go!

June got scared by Zoey's outburst and started to cry:

Oh, Junie.  I'm sorry I scared you!

So Zoey made some silly faces to cheer June up:

Blah blabablaba!

That made June laugh!

Hee hee hee!

And the two friends were happy again:

This is fun, Zoey!

But then Zoey decided to take a nap:

Zzzzzzz...

Which made June angry!

Hey!  Are you just gonna fall asleep and ignore me??

But, in the end, Zoey looked so peaceful and happy, June decided to have a little nap for herself:

Ahhhh.

Bottom line?  What fun.  I think both Zoey and June are delightful.  I had a great time changing their expressions, especially once I had the two of them to interact.  I'd love to give one of these toys to a young child and watch what kinds of interactions would ensue.  I can picture some hilariously fun games, and also perhaps some serious moments where actual buried emotions come out.

I was a little frustrated with Zoey, mostly because her lightweight body doesn't support her heavy head.  She can't really sit up on her own without support.  A bean bag body or other source of weight would have helped with this.  It was also discouraging that several of her face plates have faint, permanent stains on them.  But her unicorn hoodie outfit is cheerful and soft, and it's nice that her well-made little sandals can be removed to expose those cute nubbin toes.  Most of all, I like Zoey's range of expressions-- especially her skewed silly face and her scary angry face.

I like June, a.k.a. Pawster Puppy, even better than Zoey.  It's nice that she has fuzzy face plates to match her plush body, and all of her embroidered expressions are great.  That sad face really gets to me, though!  I'm confused by the embroidered white spot on the faces, but it doesn't take much away from the overall look.  I appreciate that June can sit up on her own, making her easier to play with and a better conversationalist than Zoey.  And June is surprisingly cuddly, especially given that her head is so large and hard.  The one thing that throws me off about this dog is that her faces are all perfectly flat in profile, which is very un dog-like.  I think the rotating face design could have handled a small protruding nose, and that would have looked better.

And that's a wrap for my very first Quick Look!  I hope it's one of many more to come...and I hope that next time I do a better job at keeping the picture count down to fifty.  Let me know what you think of this idea, and if you have anything in particular that you'd like me to look at...quickly!