Stardoll, a... um... online community where you dress up a paper doll avatar and do all the crap you do on all online communities?
I dunno, i'm not a tween girl so what do I care.
What I do care about however, is the dolls Mattel came out with back in around 2012.
Mattel teamed up with the website to create dolls of some of their designs, which was neat. New face moulds, new fashions, new shoes. Suffice to say, it was exciting news for doll collectors. A new doll line based on a website that was built around the whole idea of fashion? That would seem a match made in heaven right?
And initial promos were very promising.
The starting lineup featured 8 dolls, all in mix and match fashions with unique shoe sculpts and a range of skin tones, face moulds and hair colours.
they looked great!
Unfortunately however, there were a few problems. Ultimately, they didn't sell as well as hoped and disappeared off to failed doll line heaven.
I got a few of these when they first came out, but TRU has a huge sale on right now so they've ransacked their warehouse and found a lot of really oddly old stock to put out on shelves for pretty cheap.
Knowing Stardoll clothing fits Barbie and similar dolls, I sent husband to go look for the one I never found when they were in Argos... Bonjour Bizou brunette.
I wanted her clothes damnit, did from the moment I set eyes on her (she's the one in the blue jacket and the shorts in that image above) but I never saw her in the UK.
Now, the UK stock of Stardolls was the first nail in their coffin in this country. Argos was the only retailer to bother to carry them (tru started to get them in later, but muuuuch later when they were already a dead line). Now Argos is a nightmare for exclusive lines, mostly because being a catalogue store you cannot SEE the product on a shelf, you only see a promo photo in a catalogue and either have to buy blind, or queue up and hope they'll allow you to view before you buy. This involves a lot of waiting around and a lot of repeat trips trying to find the ONE in any line you're trying to find, because they don't bother to split assortments by character, ooooh nooo...
in Stardoll's case they split them by their "theme"
There were 4 themes. Fallen Angel (the gothy looking ones), Bonjour Bijou (I have no idea what links them.), Pretty 'n' love (um.. the girly frilly pink ones?) and um.. doll space? (again no clue what links them)
there were 2 dolls for each theme, but argos being argos, they never bothered to split them so you had a 50/50 chance of getting the one you wanted. Well, less than that actually because it seems no argos ever got the second Bonjour Bijou or Pretty 'n' love dolls. Just masses and masses of ONE of each.
This was, understandably, very very frustrating.
Now, the second nail in the coffin was price.
In the US, Stardolls were retailing about $21, here in the UK? £23... yes... twenty.. three... pounds. The fashion packs were an eye watering £16:99 (the same price as a monster high doll, wth?)
Suffice to say, the price was ludicrous.
Of course the final nail in the coffin was the dolls themselves. for reasons known ONLY to Mattel, they decided this new fashion doll didn't need to be able to sit.. or move her legs at all in fact. Instead she would have a frozen body with completely static legs that couldn't even move at the hips.
Being unable to sit a doll is absolutely crippling to play. It was a really dumb move and made these super expensive dolls little more than mannequins, not dolls.Even 1959 fucking Barbie had better articulation!
I never reviewed the first few I got (I got them on clearance! No way was I paying full price no matter how pretty the face and clothes. Crappy bodies are unacceptable) but hey, better late than never huh?
The boxes are plastic prisons that fill me forever with the fear of shredded fingers. thankfully this box is actually super easy to open. You cut the tape at the top and the whole inner card slides out.
I appreciate when a box is easy to open.
You can see here the dolls came with this gold card with 50 star cash or something. It was a code for the currency on the website, but it expired in 2013. Dum de dum.
As it was, I remember visiting the website back when I got my first ones, and I spent about 10 minutes on the website trying to work out how to leave my room ahahahaha, i'm so old.
I didn't find dressing up a paper doll hugely engaging I have to say, clearly i'm just not tween girl enough.
Anyway, ignoring the gold card of expired bullshit...
The back of the box tells you about the website and so on. There's also images of the other dolls in the line in their "website" forms. I think you can actually buy these outfits on the site or something, but whatever.
It always kinda annoys me when boxes use illustrations instead of photos of the other dolls available because damnit, I wanna see the REAL thing not the no doubt far more detailed artist rendition.
Out of her outer box, you can see they come with a stand. It's a nice addition, stands are always useful for a collector but not so much for a kid who's gonna play with the toy.
Do tweens really have a tendency to display their dolls on shelves? I dunno, mine lived in a suitcase when I was a kid.
The backing card is a wardrobe with some honestly pretty unattractive garments. That pink dress is just horrendous! What the hell is that? Grandma's closet? Damn.
The Stardolls used 3 or 4 face moulds across the range, but different makeup and hair and skin tones really mixed it up. This girl has tanned skin, shiny brown hair, brown eyes and stuck on eyelashes.
Her nose is straight and a little sharp and she has very big lips. I like dolls with interesting faces. She's pretty in her own way without being "blandly pretty".
Her hair is rooted without a clear parting at the front which makes it look a bit sloppy to me. it kinda just sticks out everywhere.
Her outfit consists of a pair of black strappy heels, knee high semi opaque stockings with splotches on them (I dunno what they're meant to be, someone got sloppy with some bleach?), denim shorts, a grey singlet top and a blue striped cardi/jacket.
She also comes with a bag with flowers on it.
The bag is a piece of crap. It's cute and all, but it's a solid chunk of plastic that doesn't open (this I can tolerate) and the strap is freaking MOULDED into a curled shape so it can't actually be held in a way that doesn't look stupid.
Surely a long strap like that you'd wear satchel style? Or have a short strap for holding. The folded up strap is what my bag does when I fling it across the hall as I enter the house. It's the shape of a bag when it's ON THE FLOOR now when it's being held or worn by a person. Wth?
I don't get it. Had the bag just had a proper straight strap it would have been a really cute little accessory but as it is it's pretty much useless except as set dressing for "messy room" photos.
The stand is a stand, it's clear and the base is a bit over sized but it works fine. It can also fit Barbies and such.
Her hair is soft and a bit flyaway, and frustratingly style-less.
I love that her outfit is all individual pieces. Her jacket/cardi comes off revealing a nicely finished sleeveless tee.
All the outfit pieces are finished to a high standard, made of various fabrics that make sense for the item they are (the tee is made of tee-shirt fabric, the cardi of knit, the shorts of denim etc) and it's all nicely tailored.
This is what doll clothing SHOULD look like. Not stitched together, not half arsed no hemming, not bizarre lycra masquerading as denim.
I love her outfit. I loved all the Stardoll outfits. They were all very nicely made.
It's a nicely sculpted body, i'll give it that. The hands and feet are particularly graceful with painted nails and beautifully curved fingers.
Her feet are mostly proportionate, meaning the stardoll feet are much larger than Barbie's hooves and she has moulded and painted underwear. A nice pink strapless bra and simple panties.
I don't mind painted on pants when they're designed so as not to show under the clothing, so strapless was a good move here.
However, though the sculpt is nice and rather reminicient of the Model Muse body, it isn't particularly dynamic for posing or at all practical for play.
Her arms are just sorta hanging there at her sides, and they only move at the shoulders so getting her arms into her clothing sleeves is a pain in the arse.
Her legs are totally static, they're locked into her hips which cannot move. She can't sit, she can't kick ken in the crotch, she can't move her legs at all. They're solid, hard, immobile.
Yes it makes putting pants on super easy, but it means she can't DO anything. Playwise, she can't drive, she can't get on a horse, she can't sit at a table, she can just stand in a corner looking like a pillock.
Poor girl.
Also, her head is wobbly. ALL my Stardolls had kinda wobbly heads. God knows why but all of them felt a bit weak around the neck joint.
Girl needs a body upgrade STAT.
My others I put on various bodies. One went onto a Fashionista body, while another onto a Liv. Neither were ideal options. Liv shoulders are built like a linebacker's, so the small Stardoll head is made to look even smaller. Dressed it's ok, but nude it's a little ridiculous.
Fashionista necks are way too long resulting in a strange giraffe neck girl situation.
You can see two of them here. The redhead with the neck scarf and the brunette in the red dress and boots.
The fashionista body isn't perfect, but it's so much better than the original body.
But I didn't have any fashionista bodies lying about this time... so I had a dig through my box of spare parts.
And I found this. An Ever After High Briar I had picked up in a charity shop for a few quid. i'd been waiting for a head to put on it, I really like the Ever After body with their pear shape, but hate hate hate the heads and most of the outfits. I'm just not a princess sort of gal.I had to cut the top of the connector off to make it short enough to fit inside the stardoll head, but that took only a few seconds.
The Stardoll shoes fit Ever After High and Monster High really well, they're slightly big but only slightly. (they also fit Sindy, though the heel is a problem with non ballerina ones)
Briar's head... yeaah... not convinced.
However the Stardoll head on the EAH body though bizarre makes me smile.
The layered outfit helps to balance her shoulders a bit better. She's a giraffe necked girl, but in this case the proportions are exaggerated enough I think it works.
The skin tone match is almost perfect. Briar isn't very dark skinned at all, she's actually almost exactly the same skin tone as a conventional whitey white Barbie. Depressingly she's the darkest skinned non wooden EAH character right now. Yes, generically brownish tan is as ethnic as Mattel is willing to go with EAH, but that's a rant for another time. Bah.
As for her original outfit, well, Jian stole that pretty quick. Even the shitty bag.
Leaving me with a fun hybrid too.
I didn't expect to end up keeping the actual doll, she was cheap enough that just buying her for her clothes was justifiable so the hybrid girl is an added bonus really.
The last lot I got when they were previously clearanced I never kept, I could never find anything fun to do with the heads. I'm delighted by this new doll though, she's so fun to pose and she's got such a personality in that little face.
I really like the Stardoll heads, they have interesting faces and a lot of variety. The outfits are also really nice, well made and full of mix and match potential. They fit a wide range of dolls too, and more shoes for Sindy/Monster high/Ever After High is always a bonus.
But the bodies SUCK, they're just utterly unforgivably shitty. For a doll they were asking £23, you don't expect a manikin who can't even sit the fuck down.
The price was way too high, the bodies were terrible and their availability in the UK was ridiculous. It came as absolutely no surprise to anyone when the line failed, Mattel completely screwed the pooch with the Stardolls. They could have been a great fun addition to the Barbie family, but they needed to have jointed hips at LEAST and the price needed to be a hell of a lot lower.
But at least with them being super cheap it's a great opportunity for people to grab some for hybrids or just for fashion packs. God knows modern Barbie could desperately do with some non pink glittery clothes.
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