Hasbro Equestria Girls reboot - Applejack

I had an appointment at the dental hospital last week (I think I mentioned this in a previous review) and so I went to Smyths for the first time ever.
It was an.. experience.

Our nearest Smyths from home is like nearly 2 hours away so it's not exactly somewhere I can go to realistically, but I was in central london anyway so what was another 40 minutes to Greenwich?

Our local supermarket hasn't got new toys in for a while so this was the first time i'd seen the new Equestria Girls in person, and I had my pick of a whole case or two.

What was curious about the assortment was that while they had a good dozen or more on the shelf, they were mostly Sunset Shimmer, Twilight Sparkle, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy and a couple of Rainbow Dash. They had Two Applejacks and ONE Rarity. Wth?
Sunset shimmer seems to be the one easier to find and I admit, I was tempted by her. she looks cool but I decided to go with Applejack because I have a small collection of Applejacks (for some reason) and she was one of the scarcer ones.
Even Amazon when they listed these up didnt' included Applejack at first. Wth?

Since this trip i have seen her in stores a few times though, so i'm not really sure how the case assortments are shipping. They seem to be pretty random.




at £13:99 they are a bit expensive for a fairly simple slim box doll but as Barbie Fashionistas have now gone up to £11 and most everything else is close to £20, I think it's just inflation making dolls prohibitively expensive now.

but this is why I only grabbed one. £10 would have been too tempting not to grab a few  but that extra 3:99 makes me pause. I'm stingy okay? lol.

Anyway, I was eager to get a review of these because I haven't seen many in depth discussions about them.

I will preface this by saying that I am NOT much into MLP, never have been. Even as a kid I never really cared. I had a few sure, but I never watched the show or really had that much interest in them beyond "pretty things". In fact I once had a nightmare that involved mlps when I was like 7. It was dark man.

So as a result I have no idea what the characters are like or really anything about them.
I own a few Applejacks because many years ago when my eldest was still a baby I picked up a g1 Applejack in a charity shop for 50p purely on impulsive nostelgia.
I did HAVE mlps as a child, not many, but a few. Some were my sister's that I inherited, others were mine, but I don't remember getting most of them from stores, I must have been very very young.
I never had an Applejack, but I did have a flutter pony and one with a rabbit in a hat and another magic themed one with a like 3d pocket thing, a pegasus with neon yellow hair and even a baby one that was super adorable. And a talking one, oh god, I HATED that damn pony. I think she was a gift. She was pink and she talked in this annoying american accent and all she ever said was "comb my hair!" and "I'm pretty"
I hated her, I thought she was vapid and vain and loved to mock her and make her the bad guy in all things. I mean not only was she vain, she was demanding too! no please, just "COMB MY HAIR human slave!"
yeesh. What a horrible toy.

So of course, i've never watched the new mlp or the equestria girl movie. Husband tells me the series is actually quite fun but i've just never cared enough to sit down and watch it.

 But I did look at and have handled a few of the older equestria girl dolls and I did NOT like them in the slightest. Their strange oval shaped heads were offputtingly weird and their bodies were hollow, brittle feeling, cheap and junky. I mean i've handled clones that felt better put together than those things.
So I never bought any of them, because I thought they were ugly and poorly made. They had some fairly decent clothing sometimes though. Before they became all molded, but for what was being asked for them new, they were just not a decent product in my eyes.
I remember being so disappointed they didn't look like the artwork because the art for Equestria girls looked so much like the mlp customs people had been making from Monster High dolls and it was super cute.

I vastly preferred the little minis they released a few years ago and are still producing, the little 5 inch tall plastic molded figures look way more like the characters they're supposed to be and have a lot of personality.

THESE I would have played with a lot as a kid. they're cute and characterful.

Anyway,

I was pretty eager to get my hands on the new rebooted Equestria girls because it looked like Hasbro had taken all the criticism of their previous attempt and fixed it all. Actual fabric clothes, characterful faces, bigger dolls, actual feet instead of bratz pegs (they fixed this during the old EG run actually)

Oddly the boxes have pony art on them. This I find a bit confusing and odd.

I do like the style of hte art though, it's like a pencil sketch or something.

The back of the box says very little, there's some uh.. tickets... and a photo of applejack with pinkie pie.. and then a still from the animation and that's about it. No info about the character or anything.

Maybe they figure at this point everyone who cared would know these characters?

The box is the clam shell design that most modern dolls seem to be coming in and the amount of glue they used was excessive. It was actually quite difficult to get the plastic cover off t he backing card and as you can see, it tore the heck outta the card, ruining any chance of keeping that pretty pencil sketch of Applejack. *sigh*

Applejack comes with exactly 0 accessories, but does have a paper instruction sheet by her feet which just tells you she conforms to toy standards like the back of the box says.
Seems a bit pointless.

Applejack herself is held into the box with a few plastic ties and some more in her head which I admit, I destroyed the box more trying to get out. I hate those ties in doll's heads, they're always so close to the scalp that you run the risk of snipping hair trying to get them out. I HATE that stress.

Anyway, out of the box the first thing that struck me was how massive her head is, and how flat.

Look at this thing, she had a pancake head. It's VERY hard, like a Bratz head.

Still despite her oddly flattened skull she's quite pretty from the front.

She has large green eyes with a white "sparkle" in them, pink lips in a little smile and sassy asymetrical eyebrows.

She's a sort of apricot colour, like her pony form, quite unlike any other doll I own. She's not as orange as Monster High Toralei, and not as yellow as Luna or Heath, she's apricot, and it's quite striking and different.
I LIKE when we get oranges and yellow in dolls, it's very uncommon to see these warm shades because for some reason toy companies seem to think all girls want is pastel cool shades like pink and purple and blue and mint green.

Her outfit is all individual bits. A cotton tee with printed green stripes on the shoulders and a foil apple (I wonder how this will stand up to play long term), a denim effect skirt with printed on stitching and pockets and a red belt.

It's a simple outfit but it looks pretty nice.

The skirt is printed from some sort of fabric which has a texture to it, but it still quite thin and soft. It's somewhat like the modern Barbie fake "denim".

She also comes with a pair of cowboy boots that slide on and off nice and easy.

They have the EG logo on the underside.

This is all you get for your £13:99, it's not much when you think about it, which means i'm unlikely to buy more of these at full price. Maybe in a 342 deal huh?
Not that the price is bad, it's just the upper end of what I think is fair for what you get. Any more expensive would have been taking the piss, so i'm glad Hasbro were sensible with their pricings here.



All her clothing does up at the back with velcro.

Applejack's hair is pulled into this long side ponytail for some reason. It's not like that in her animated form so i'm not sure if this is an intentional style or just a packaging thing.

I think it's Nylon but it's decent quality, very very shiny and pretty nice to run your hands through. It feels a bit plasticky but not dry and crunchy like the newer Monster High dolls hair.

It also doesn't seem to frizz too badly.

I took it out of the ponytail out of curiosity. There's one small braid to one side and the rest just falls quite naturally around her face. She has a half parting just at the front which works quite well with her flat pancake head.

I think she looks softer and prettier with her hair down.

Her hair is blonde but because it's so shiny it tends to reflect a little of her orangey skin tone as well.

It's very softly wavy.

This is her hair after I brushed it through with a plastic doll brush, so I  think it's going to withstand a fair bit of brushing before it becomes a frizzle frazzled mess.

Her rooting pattern is okay. It's not very thick at the back but it's also not overly thin. There's decent coverage in most styles and I believe a lot of the thinness stems from her head being so flattened at the back anyway (seriously she has a super bizarre shaped head)

Applejack has jointed elbows but no wrist or knee joints. I'm not totally sure why companies do this. I'd argue that knee joints are more useful for play (allowing a doll to sit down properly in a chair or in a car) while arm articulation is more useful for collectors (what collectors really display their dolls sitting? they pose them with their arms positioned, standing, right?)
Just a simple elbow hinge though? it's not very useful for anything but I guess means she's not stuck with robot arms at least.

This is the limit of her elbow movement, as well as her leg motion.

She can do a full front/back split, but can only splay her legs this far.

Her body is hollow, with a similar sort of weight to the modern Fashionista Barbies. It feels decent, better than the cheap flimsy feeling limbs of the older EG dolls but i'm not sure those elbow joints will withstand a lot of play as their lack of motion makes them more frustrating any anything. They're quite stiff to move and it involves a little more force than i'd like to get them to straighten again.

Her arms will rotate fully though and her head can tilt down but not up. Honestly I find her head feels a little loose and insecure on her neck, which worries me a little bit.
She can however manage some quite cute head tilts.

She sits okay actually. The elbow joint means her hands don't get in the way so much when you sit her down so maybe Hasbro were onto something after all.

The older EG were a similar size to Monster High, these new ones are a lot chunkier and quite differently proportioned.

They're still smaller than Barbie though.

She's smaller than the Disney Decendants but a similar size to the Hasbro Disney dolls, which is interesting.

in fact Applejack and Rapunzel can share clothing quite comfortably. Just not shoes.

Rapunzel's hips might be slightly wider but it all looks good enough to me.

Clawdeen's pj pants fit only because they have a fully elasticated waist. The top is way too tight. it looks okay from the front...

But barely does up at the back.

High School Musical stuff was slightly big in the bust but looked okay to my eye too. The old HSM dolls were Skipper sized, so some skipper stuff might fit too.

The Equestria girl feet unfortunately are not compatable with anything else i've seen so far.

She has a very slender little foot.

Decendants (on the left) has a huge heel and means the foot is quite thick. Disney Princesses (on the right) have rather fat feet.

Meanwhile Monster High, though similarly slender, have this enormously high heel shape. So no go there either.

The way Applejack's eyes are painted is very reminiscent of g3 MLP, even down to the little star "sparkle"

I ended up putting Applejack's hair into the loose ponytail pictured in her armwork. I quite like how the hair frames her face, i think it's pretty. It also hides the pancake nature of her big flat noggin well.

she stands quite well on her own, with no need for a stand which I appreciate. She stands better with her shoes on that barefoot of course. The big flat toe of her boots really helps balance her.

Unfortunately i'm not actually sure where my Applejacks ARE, I suspect they're in storage upstairs.

But here's Applejack with some other ponies. Who are a bit scruffy because my kids keep stealing them and I keep having to dig them out of toy boxes.
My youngest loves to steal my toys.

The g3 blue pony is still scented, mmm, she smells delicious.

These two imposters came from tesco, they're Tokidoki blind bag unicorns.

They're surprisingly chunky little things.

Anyway, that's Applejack.

I give her a solid 8 out of 10 pancake heads.

I'd improve only two things. Knee articulation please, so she can sit in a chair without kicking the table over, and a lined skirt because the white inside of that printed skirt is glaring and makes the whole thing look cheap.