Bratz Music Festival Vibes - Sasha

Eeee it's SASHA!

Okay let me compose myself.

So... back in 2010 when the first Bratz relaunch happened, it all looked promising in terms of diversity. The 10 "new characters" released as part of the celebration came in very varied skin tones.

Of the 10, there were 4 who had darker skin, and 4 outta 10 ain't bad.

Sadly it wasn't to last. Sasha was excluded from all cases shipping to the EU and none of the dark skinned 2010 characters appear to have gotten a second doll either.
So once the 10/10/10 cases were gone, that was it for ethnic diversity and Bratz in the UK.
It was frustrating, it was insulting, it was extremely baffling but according to US collectors, it all stemmed from the understanding that in some parts of the USA black dolls simply do not sell. And in other reasons they are in high demand. So MGA started shipping 2 cases. A case of Cloe, Jade, Yasmin (or in several cases, only Cloe and Yasmin) and a case of just Sasha.
the just Sasha cases made sense in heavily black populated areas where she would be most representative of the local community and thus most desired, but this resulted in the unfortunate side effect that stores overseas, given the option of the "assortment" case or the "1 character case" always opted for the assortment, hence the lack of Sasha dolls over here.

Now, in the UK, we're not really a big enough island for such divisions like there are in the states. We don't have areas where there are not ethnic minorities, well, unless it's a teeny sleepy seaside town of like 20 people. Our population is very diverse and really quite integrated.
But we didn't get toys that represented that diversity (which we as a nation should be damn proud of) instead we just got no black dolls at all, which was insulting as it implied there were no kids of colour who deserved representation. No white kids could get a doll that looked like their bff from school. The cases did not represent the multicultural society that IS the UK. To not see that represented in our toys was troubling.

I won't bore you with the politics, i've already spoken at length about this on social media. Suffice to say, doll segregation has troubling wider implications and a lack of representation in the toy aisle is unhealthy and unfair.




Anyway,

When new Bratz launched last year the UK collectors were all concerned about whether we'd see Sasha dolls again, and we were delighted when she did in fact ship in the same case as the other girls. That was short lived though, 1 season in and suddenly she was gone from shelves again, despite being produced in lines, she was back to being shipped separate and UK shelves were unsettlingly Sasha free.
More baffling, the Sweet line DID ship Sasha in the same case, but Music Festival Vibes, Remix and Selfie Snaps w2 did not.
"Here we go again" the Uk fans thought.
One friend reported his black friend had stated "it makes me feel alienated, like Bratz aren't for me any more."
And that is absolutely devastating.
Bratz made this whole diverse group thing well. a thing. Since Bratz pretty much every doll grouping has featured the same mix. The blonde white chick, the brown probably hispanic one, the chinese chick/black haired one and the black girl.
My Scene did it, Winx did it, WITCH did it, even Disney bloody fairies does it! It's the dolly standard nowadays. So Bratz SHOULD be the ones leading the charge for diversity and inclusion.... right?

Meanwhile, Mattel finally got it through their heads that not every kid wanted a blonde, blue eyed, skinny as a rake doll to play with and produced the new Fashionistas, who come in just about every colour, face mould and hair colour combo. And they're all shipping in mixed cases, there's literally dozens of darker skinned dolls to chose from, along with several oriental/asian ones who ordinarily get like 1 doll a year at most, there's even a few who look distinctly Indian and it's awesome.
I mean there's some serious diversity going on in the Barbie world, and then you look at Bratz on the shelf. 1 blonde, another blonde, 1 black hair, one faintly brown... it really puts MGA to shame.

I told them this, over and over and over again. I freely admit, I harrassed the heck out of MGA because even though i'm not an ethnic minority, I have a great many people in my life who ARE and I see those kids every week at stay and play, at nursery, at school, in the toy stores. The look of delight when they find a doll that looks like them, I remember that feeling as a kid because despite being white, back when I was growing up ALL dolls were blonde, blue eyed, looked in fact just like my sister and nothing like short, frizzy haired, dark eyed me.
It bothered me I didn't have a "me" doll, and when I found one that had even the faintest resemblance, it was awesome. Like "she has the same hairstyle!" "her shirt is like mine!" "she has curls like me".
I remember my mother sticking her hand into every single Magic Nursery Baby doll box in the store specifically to find one with dark curls for me (their hair was covered with a bonnet as it was meant to be a surprise). Not that i'd asked, but she wanted me to have a doll that looked like me, even if the best she could do was the hair.
And even as an older teen or adult, I still find myself attracted to the frizzy haired dolls. Often though, this means the doll that looks most like me, isn't the white doll at all. Because to me, my defining feature isn't my skin tone, it's my black eyes and frizzy mop of curly auburn/brown hair.  So the dolls that look most "like me"? they're the black dolls, or the ambiguously brown ones, and as a result, they're my favorites. I identify the most closely with those dolls because I see myself in them, and I think that's fairly common particularly in kids. The favourite doll will usually be the minime. And the great thing is, these days it's a lot easier to find a doll that looks much more like your child. You don't have to settle so much for one that's "close enough" because the variety is there. And that's awesome! (though i'm yet to find a doll that's exactly "me" hah. It'll happen. I want a petite, curly haired barbie please)

MGA has been seriously lagging behind in this new relaunch though, their diversity which had once been so great just wasn't there, least not in the UK. And it was frustrating to see no Sasha, and the massively inflated price she was selling for on ebay or amazon from sellers who'd imported from the USA and knew there was a demand so were price gouging.
that's not fair, and it has to change.

So I annoyed the hell out of MGA for a few months ahem. I sent them a lot of emails, a lot of social media complaints, I was a jerk hah. But someone did listen, because you know what? She's here. She's finally bloody here.
Sasha is shipping to the UK at last, least...  I think she is as MGA have been advertising the hell out of music fest sasha on their uk social media and have a cache of them in the office they're sending out to contest winners and reviewers.
It makes me hopeful she's about to hit actual stores.

MGA sent me one mostly so i'd stop shouting at them *snort* and i'm sorry I was a jerk, but I get grumpy and passionate and ranty. To their credit, MGA's PR person is really good. Once something gets passed to her, she's very quick and very efficient at responding.
And they reassured me Sasha was going to be present, so I really hope they stick to that and make a more conscious effort to include her in the assortment cases. Even if she doesn't sell "as well", her inclusion is absolutely critical, you can't just pander to crappy parental racism, you have to fight it.

But of course, you probably don't care too much about the politics of ethnic diversity in toys lol, i'm an active campaigner for toy diversity both in terms of race and gender so i get pretty soapbox crazy, but you're here to see a review! Not have me rant politics.

so let's have a look at this gorgeous Sasha.

Honestly i've been umming and ahhing about ordering her from the US for weeks now, but the import fees were so high it was just not a viable option. I was looking at about £35 landed cost and that's mental.
These should retail for about £25 here.

We'll start by looking at her box again.

The new Bratz boxes aren't bad looking. they have this huge plastic display and a chunky rhombus sort of shape to them. It means they stack a bit oddly on shelves, but they're brightly coloured and i'm rather pleased with how little PINK there is in the whole franchise as a whole. I know it was a concious reaction to the over pinkification of Barbie, but I appreciate the multicoloured boxes, they stand out in the sea of pink and pastal tones that is the doll aisle.

The box is set out to display everything clearly, which means it's quite a large box for such a small doll. The dolls are packaged with their earrings, hats and glasses all separate from the doll so you can get a really good look at them but also it means they're less likely to be broken or cause damage to the doll itself in box.
The deluxe lines also come with a second outfit, usually a top and either pants or a skirt. Its nice to have an alternate outfit option and in many of the sets there's that mix and match element.

The back of the box features the rest of the line, strangely, Sasha is pictured in her alternate outfit in this picture while the rest are in their primary outfits. I wonder why.

All the dolls in this line have a music style linked to them, but I could find no evidence of this on the box itself. Looking at online listings it looks like we have Raya, who's retro swing. Yasmin is accoustic rock. Cloe is American country, Jade is Electro Pop and Sasha is Hip Hop.. apparently.

The sides of the box are orange and this sort of deep fushia colour, it's a little shimmery. There's all these little doodles that are music themed, including some bunny eared headphones lol. Cute. The whole box is also covered in hashtags because "kids thesedays, with their facebook and their myspace" hahaha.
I'm so old.

When I reviewed Study Abroad I mentioned about the really wasteful plastic decorative handles, it looks like MGA actually had a rethink about them because the music fest handles double as a "bracelet for you". I like this, see, if you're gonna go for a fancy handle, make it something the kid can USE. I always thought it was a missed opportunity the sleepover line didn't do like a kid sized sleep mask, they just covered the handle in flannel fabric with a teeeny sleep mask too big for the doll and too small for a person. But here we have a festival bracelet and that's cool. It's thematically appropriate and though most of the time these little "gifts for you" are a bit crap, at least the handle now serves a purpose once you open the box.

I feel pretty hahaha.

The handle/bracelet is actually just a piece of shiny ribbon with a cardboard Bratz logo on it and a toggle. But it actually extends to quite large, so an adult can totally fit this thing hahaha. I don't think it'll hold up to much play but you know... it's cute.

It was kinda awkward to remove. the instructions said to "push the perforated line" but that didn't work. I had to cut the line a little and then it would push. But it wasn't too difficult.

Excuse my fat hands, but here's the other side of the bracelet to show the pattern. it's like a wave pattern with lines. The ribbon is a bit shimmery so the camera didn't like taking photos of it.

These boxes are beautifully simple to open. I really like that MGA has fixed their dreadful overpackaging problem. The side of the box opens, you slide out the whole backing card and then you can easily snip the plastic ties and staples. Her hair was sewn in as standard but a few snips and it came out, and the plastic around her feet actually came loose quite easy too (it's taped at the back but the tape isn't very sticky so you can peel it off and voila, the feet are free). Likewise all the accessories though blister packed in place had a little tab so you pull the tab and the plastic lifts off. This is awesome because I had a real struggle getting the teeny accessories out with the last season dolls, they didn't have little tabs to pull and it was awkward.
So yay MGA!

It used to take me like an hour to open an MGA box, I would complain the whole time "curse you MGA" but it took me less than 2 minutes to get Sasha and ALL her accessories free.
She wasn't glued in, she wasn't sewn in, she only had 2 staples in her head and the only awkward bit was getting the bag off as it was really tightly elastic banded in place. Had I snipped the elastic it would have come out easy but I like to keep the bands so I had to unthread it which took a while.
Still, the Music fest dolls are really quite easy to open, so big thumbs up from me there.

She comes with a whole load of stuff.

There's her hat, which is a beautifully made knit fabric, it's really thick and very soft. My only concern is the printed letters, which already look like they're cracking a bit. Hmm.
Isn't this the hat her "Hi My Name Is" doll was meant to come with?

She comes with a yin yang bag which sadly doesn't open, though the strap detatches so you can put it on easier. I'm not sure WHY it's a yin yang, what does that have to do with Hip Hop? Or why it's blue when nothing else she's wearing is blue... um..
Whatever.
Also, pretty sure it's a recolour of Study Abroad Cloe's bag which made sense in her set. I dunno, maybe they couldn't think of anything and had a load of these laying around. 

she also has a little festival bracelet of her own, a phone with case and a pair of sunglasses.
the sunglasses are a little tight but they go on.

I love the matching bracelets, though I can't help but wish there was slightly more detail on the bratz one, like a sticker for the event. It's so cute and teeny though and really does look just like an actual festival bracelet.

Her mobile phone is cream coloured and has a sticker on the front while there's the bratz lip logo and a teeny camera lens on the back. I like this, it's a detail you'll never see once you put the phone into its case but it means it looks complete even without the case.

It fits into the case but it's a little loose for mine. I elastic banded the whole thing to her hand anyway so it's fine but worth noting, the fit could be a fraction snugger. The phone may come out of the case very easily resulting in a lost phone and upset kid. So my advice would be the elastic band it in or pop a teeny bit of pva/craft glue  or blue tack in the case before inserting the phone, that'll peel off but might give it a bit more stick.

She also has these enormous earrings. I don't really care for the way MGA does dangly earrings, with the hook. I understand WHY but i'd prefer fully moulded hoops and studs purely for practical reasons. The hooks often snap and the dangly pieces come off way too easily on most of these designs, it's really annoying particularly when a doll has long hair. You brush her hair out of her face and oh dear, the dangly earring piece flies off.
With these being so massive, you move the doll's head and the earring flies off the hook. Bleh.
Thankfully the hoops are so massive they're not gonna get lost, but I worry the hooks will snap pretty quickly with play, i've had a lot of mga dolls with these sorts of dangly earrings and they break quite often. It's a real bummer.

Now Sasha herself has this huge mane of hair, i'll talk about that in a moment but first let's look at her faceup.
The rebooted Bratz faceups are pretty simple but honestly i actually quite like them. I really dig the thick eyebrows on the deluxe lines, I think they have a lot of personality in them and as a girl with big ol' caterpillar brows, I approve. heheh.
Sasha has a very soft little bit of blush on her cheeks and vividly pink lips, they actually photograph a lot paler but they're a similar colour to her festival bracelet. Proper bright barbie pink. It contrasts nicely with her dark skin.
She has these lovely hazel eyes and very very subtle neutral kinda.. brownish green? (Khaki?) eyeshadow. It's a really natural look and I think it's quite appealing.

Her hair is HUGE, and it's very very curly. This is seriously, no joke, exactly what my hair looks like. Blonde streaks and all heh.
She has 4 or 5 chunky blonde streaks through her hair and a lot of styling product in her hair. Honestly, I finger combed it because putting a brush anywhere near this sort of hair fibre is going to result in FRIZZ craziness. No way, don't do it. Just run your fingers through and it should sit mostly down. it's always gonna be BIG hair, it's just so curly.

Here's the back to give an idea of the tightness of that curl. I really like it when dolls have properly curly hair, particularly when black dolls get afro styled hairdos, because so often it's all straight straight straight and that's not just boring, it's yet more of this "curly hair isn't pretty" rubbish that I just want to punch people over. Grrr grrrr.

Her hair is problematic though. It's very thick and very bushy, which many people will HATE. I am not convinced it'll be at all helped by boil washing either. I assume it's nylon purely because Saran won't hold a curl like this, it's too dense and heavy to do so. Her hair has a slight coarseness to it and some of the curls aren't very well formed, particularly the blonde streaks on one side which have unravelled from their ringlets are just look like frizz now. I'll have to try to carefully recurl them but for the time being I tucked them under the rest of the hair to hide the ratty ends heh.

Her hair is also quite uneven at the bottom as you can see. Some of the curls are tighter than others which results in a bit of choppiness.

Also she sheds like crazy. This is just the hair that came off finger combing it. Due to the density of the hair fiber, any loose pieces are sort of caught in the curls until you comb something through, then they unravel and it's a bit scary having a huge long piece just come away in your hand. However, I don't believe it's from her rooting, it's just loose fiber stuck in the forest of hair.

I think you'll either love or hate this hair. It's done a little better than some previous curly haired sasha's who's hair is basically just frizz out the box, at least there are defined curls present right from the start, but her hair will turn to that level of frizz if you touch it too much or mess with it. Just.. leave it alone! Kinda the advice with real curly hair on humans, don't touch it! hahah. Seriously, don't brush it too often, don't mess with it, leave it alone and it'll be fine (I brush mine every 3 days or so, and even then it's just a sort of surface comb through and get the tangles and smooth it out again. Otherwise it turns to this nasty frazzled looking frizz.)
Sasha totally has my hair, it delights me. But there's those who hate curls on dolls, if you hate curls, just don't get this doll. Give her a pass, buy a different Sasha because her hair is VERY curly and you're likely to damage it trying to straighten it out (think like Monster High Honey Swamp, where straightening it causes it to look a bit damaged and oddly textured)
Personally, I think it's fine but then I never was hugely bothered by doll frizz. She's certainly nothing as bad as Bratzillaz Meyganna.

Her primary outfit has a camo jacket with what looks like a tank top and a high waisted skirt. the skirt is made from cotton like t-shirt material and cut completely asymmetrically. It's long at the back but also angled at the front.

The top and skirt actually isn't a top and skirt at all, it's a dress with a sort of peep hole for the tummy. It velcros up the back as one piece.
This works fairly well to keep the skirt in place, but it's a little disappointing as it really limits the mixing and matching with the alternate outfit. Basically you can put the jacket on each, which isn't really mixing and matching.

The jacket is made from some sort of stiff fabric and unlined. The lack of lining is a little problematic as the way it sits on the doll means you see the unfinished inside. A little patch of fabric just on the inside front panels would have fixed this.
The sleeves are a little messily sewn but that's mostly a side effect of the doll's hands. New Bratz fingers are a lot squishier than old but they still push on the inner seams when going through sleeves, resulting in pretty rapid wear on the sleeves.

The sleeves have a thick cuff which looks nice, i'll have to snip the fraying excess thread though.

It also looks like there SHOULD be pockets but I was disappointed to learn they were fake pockets, they'd have been just the perfect size for her phone!

The dress is made from a sort of black and silver shot fabric for the bodice and the tshirting for the skirt. The stitching on the skirt hem is a little sloppy in places but the rest looks fine. There are little black ribbon straps which like to twist.

The little jacket is a cute item, it's a nice shape but it could be a little better sewn or lined or something. It looks nice on the doll, but it's a garment i'm not convinced will stand up to play longterm.

the dress on the other hand is really easy to get on and off, it has very wide arm holes for the hands to slip through and the way it connects at the back is quite sturdy while retaining that peep hole effect at the front. There are some loose threads but otherwise it's fine. The skirt is really soft, I can't stop touching it lol.

The last part of Sasha's outfit are these utterly impractical high heeled sandels. Oh they're pretty with a gold anklet piece and a super high heel but are they festival wear? No.. no they're not. Nobody in their right mind would wear heels, let alone open toed heels to a music festival. I think it's a shame because a pair of cute character specific wellies would have been SO ADORABLE like omg. Can't you just imagine them all with these clompy wellington boots in their signature colour with the little animal faces or something on them?
An oversight.
I mean they're nice shoes, but they're utterly inappropriate for the theme of the line. These are shoes you wear out on a date, not shoes you wade through muddy fields to get to the next stage in.

Sasha's alternate outfit is a pair of 3/4 pants with a zipper motif and this weird denim tank top.. thing.
the top has a working pocket, but it's too small to put anything into.

I like the pants, but i'm not sure about the top. It looks like someone cut the shorts part off a pair of dungarees. I dunno, it's weird.
I'm also not convinced the blingtastic formal shoes really go that well with this look.
Still, cute pants! One of my Clawdeens may end up stealing em.

So here she is with all her STUFF. The sunglasses don't really fit that well on top of her head but eh, that's where they're staying just to have somewhere to put them.

I really wish she could put her phone away, either into her bag or her pocket. poor girl has the hold it constantly which is a bit irritating.

Overall thoughts?

Despite a few niggles and missed opportunities, I really like this doll. I think she's adorable and I do rather dig her primary outfit. I like dull neutrals and you don't see them often on dolls, i'm a big fan of greens and browns and such, and I think they complement Sasha's skintone and eye colour really attractively. I WISH she came with a pair of wellies included, that would have been adorable. And I wish her jacket had working pockets so I could put her phone in them.
I feel like perhaps her earrings should be a bit smaller too, they're a bit ridiculous being as big as her head and they do get in the way a lot.

I love her hair, I like her hat, I actually do like her shoes even if she is going to break an ankle walking in em. I love her faceup, she's a really friendly looking doll and that endears me to her.

So... what does she get? A solid 8 snapped heels out of 10. Just tiny details that could have been improved upon, but overall, a really lovely doll.
A solid Bratz release.
And i'm delighted to see a curly haired Sasha done well rather than given a ball of frizz for hair.

So cheers MGA, she's gorgeous and she's gonna hang out on my desk for a while. She may even have managed to dethrone Hi My Name is Jade as my favourite reboot Bratz release thus far.