Bratz Collector 2018 - Cameron

So for those who aren't aware, MGA rereleased Bratz again.

this time as "adult collector" dolls with a long time fan and fashion designer on board.

These came out before christmas but the eye watering price coupled with a really quite catastrophic quality control problem made me really reluctant to order any of them.

I've been watching them for all this time on Amazon (where they're an exclusive) HOPING they'd come down for their absolutely gouging £50 price tag and that the quality issues would be resolved but alas, thus far no such luck for the girls.

However, Cameron DID briefly come down in price a few days ago.

I already had some vouchers from Swagbucks and my dad but even with vouchers £50 was painful. Cam dropped to £45ish, which was still painful but with my Swagbucks voucher he was about £40 which was the absolute max I was willing to pay and nghh, you know Bratz Boyz are my weakness!

they're the first doll line I collected so they have a real place in my heart.

Buuut let's rewind a bit



Now I admit freely that I know jack shit about fashion and the fashion industry and don't follow designers like, at all, but I remember Hayden Williams from my old My Scene collector days lol.
He used to do a lot of art of fashion doll brands, it was fun.

He was a HUGE Bratz fan, so when a few years back MGA's CEO sent out a tweet asking him if he wanted to collaberate I was really really hoping something would come of it. A long time fan being asked to collaberate? Dream come true right? And SO SWEET.

Of course he said yes, because who the hell wouldn't?

A lot of people who followed Hayden a little more were pretty eager to see what he'd come up with because they were fans of his fashion designs, I was more delighted to see someone who'd spent years doing Bratz fanart finally getting to make that a reality. I love that kinda thing, as a fan of anything it's like the ultimate dream and it just makes me smile okay?

The designs were, it's fair to say, a bit marmite for many people. Especially old fogies like myself who as I said, know nooothing about fashion or people expecting something a bit more 2001.

I'm old so I haven't a clue what's fashionable these days, I mean seriously, the last time I went clothes shopping was... oh god... I can't even remember. I HATE clothes shopping, I buy almost all my clothing from charity shops or my mother makes me stuff or gives me stuff she bought, randomly decided wasn't "her" and instead of returning shoves at me lol.
I genuinely cannot remember the last time I actually went clothes shopping.

So i'm waaaaay out of the loop on what's trendy.

Hayden's artwork is interesting, very very uh.. fashion designer with the elongated limbs and sketched in hands with barely there fingers etc heh. It works for Bratz, I mean it's a damn huge margin better than that absolutely awful 2016 artwork, jesus, what even WAS that?

I admit, I still HATE Sasha's weird garter jeans. I think they look comical.

This poster actually came with the doll, I assume if you buy all 5 you get 5 identical posters lol. Kinda a shame, maybe having a large high res image of the character on the other side would have changed stuff up a bit?
but no, it's just white on the other side.

Anyway, these are the designs we got to see on instagram and twitter and of course people had a lot to say because people always do don't we?

Myself? I liked Yasmin's outfit for the most part. Was on the fence about Cloe's. Felt like Jade was kinda missing something around the shoulder area and looked very early 2000s, haaaated Sasha's jeans and couldn't stop making Macklemore jokes about Cameron's fugly fur coat.
eheheh.

I admit I was disappointed that all the girls had such similar hair. Long, straight or slightly wavy, kinda... boring generic fashion doll hair. I dunno, I mean, for an adult collector the whole ankle length princess hair for "hair play fun" felt rather childish and a bit dull.
I personally would have LOVED to see Jade with short hair maybe, really pull in some modern hair trends to this collection.
Give Sasha some natural kinky hair with some real volume to it, the few Sasha dolls in Bratz back catalogue with afro hair for example are very very sought after by collectors so how cool would it be to have something like that? also very on the pulse for what's sort of... you know.. a hot topic right now. With more and more dolls being released by various small companies to try to give kids of colour some body and hair positivity, it feels very uh... old fashioned? to have the black girl with the same straightened, next to no curl at all extra long hair that the white girl has.

I'd have liked to have seen, kinda like Cameron there, some modern, 2018/19 hair trends represented. Some ombre maybe, some asymetric cuts, just... something fresh and modern and new.
No offense Hayden, but the ankle length slight waves feel very... safe. Very playline.
And as an adult collector line, there's really no reason why MGA had to play it safe at all, or why they had to make such playline decisions.

Ankle length hair is for little girls to play with man, and personally, i've always preferred a doll with more realistic or interesting hair styling.

It was also disappointing to learn that the girls were all reusing shoe sculpts and that while the girls were getting jointed arms, they were still having clicky rubbery legs (rubbery legs are SO HARD to get tight fitting clothing onto omg, and they never bend enough to really have the doll sit realistically or efficiently) and Cameron, poor afterthought Cam, wasn't even getting jointed arms. Because MGA have NEVER given us a jointed boy body. *sigh*

Poor neglected boyz.

Anyway,

I ordered Cameron on Friday when his price dropped to a point that only made me flinch a bit. I used regular free postage and he dispatched Saturday, turning up unexpectedly on Sunday, ahead of schedule.
Impressive Amazon.

I was nervous.
VERY nervous.

Now, Cameron, being a boy doll has less layers of face paint, no makeup layer, no blush, less to screw up, but having seen the errors cropping up on these dolls on social media not just with serious facial flaws but staining, holes from hats being stapled to the heads, unravelling clothing, badly sewn pieces etc, I was pretty anxious about whether this doll would need to be returned or not.

I was hoping like hell i'd get a good one, one who was at least tolerable. Because jesus, a lot of the photos coming up online of the girls were NOT promising and MGA was remaining pretty damn hush about it all.

when they did finally release a statement they were pretty unhelpful. "return to amazon for a replacement", ignoring the fact that many people had done just that and gotten flawed dolls in return over and over and over again. Some people had returned for a replacement 5 times already!

The errors were errors that even in playline wouldn't be acceptable, for a high priced collector doll, it was frankly unacceptable.

£50 and dolls with smeared lips and holes in their foreheads? Wtf are you doing MGA?

So when I opened the box and found Cam in this wierd baggie I was more anxious. Was he a return?
what's with the dolly condom Amazon?

Thankfully he doesn't seem to be too bad. He has a small faint black smear on his nose and his flocking is a bit wonky and messy but he looks okay.

Phew.

These collector boxes are... yeah a bit not that special imo. They're a little holographic on the edge and they look nice enough but £50 nice?

The back of the box has the two bits of artwork Haydin did for Cameron. His primary and secondary outfits. It's nice they come with two outfits like the original dolls did, full outfits at that, complete with shoes.

It is however worth noting that in the artwork Cameron has wavey hair, his doll does not.

I suppose it was too difficult to curl short hair? I dunno.

One side of the box has a little blurb about the designer in four different languages.

We have the silly handles for this line as well, this one is an infinity symbol in gold plastic.

I admit, it makes me giggle that Cameron's box still says he's one of the "girls with a passion for fashion" lol. The lack of attention to detail there. COME ON Mga. The original Bratz Boyz were "the BOYZ with the passion for fashion", they used to actually put effort into changing that one word.
It's another little detail that makes me suspect Cameron might have been a late addition to the lineup.

Those super dark brows, is this a hint that Cam's been bleaching his hair all these years? hehehe.

Okay let's talk boxes. Anyone who reads my blog knows I have a real hate for MGA boxes and I was kinda dreading opening this one. I was totally justified in that, this box is a fucking nightmare.

I mean mga, can we have a serious talk for a moment? This is supposed to be a COLLECTOR doll right? So uh.. do you think it's maybe reasonable to assume people might want to ooo, I dunno, remove the doll and be able to return him to the box for display?
No?

Becuase this is a playline fucking box design. You have to slice the tape holding ALL THREE sides of the box and then the whole plastic front folds down like a lot of the modern playline dolls i 've reviewed of late. It's a method that runs a very real risk of destroying the damn box but also makes it really hard to then remove things from the backing card because you have the whole plastic front of the box in your lap.
-_-

and holy shit... MGA love their plastic staple things huh?

So Cameron's shoes are in a little plastic shoe coffin of their own which you have to snip the tape behind to get off. Then just about every bit of him is fucking STAPLED TO THE BOX.
Both arms, his bag in several places, his HEAD had at least 2 staples in it (WHY? It's fucking flocked! this leaves obvious holes assholes!) and a plastic thread around his neck which you can't easily cut because it's tight against his throat and the fur collar of his jacket is in the way so unless you wanna snip the coat or scratch the doll, you gotta go in from behind and holy shit they were SO TIGHTLY in there I couldn't get much give to actually snip one side anyway.
it took a lot of effort to remove just the doll from the goddamn box.

I took a break from removing the rest of the shit.

Cam's default outfit consists of a pair of dark denim jeans which are actually made of very thin denim stuff like old Bratz jeans were and has real chains (like old bratz clothing did), a blue and white checked shirt, black very simple boots and this really drag race feeling fur lined plether jacket that sheds fur everywhere omg.

He also has a really nice but quite fragile feeling bag which is made from some sort of very soft plether or vinyl and if i'm honest, while gorgeous (it really opens) feels like the fabric will tear VERY easily.
Which worried me.

I also couldn't get the strap to adjust at all.

The fugly coat appears to have a sort of faux snakeskin effect on it? I don't like this coat, it's a bit effeminate to me, a bit 70s hooker. I dunno, fur trim, it makes me think of the whole Macklemore Thrift shop video hahaha.
I can't stop humming "what what? what what?" at him.

*snicker*

Now of course we reach stage 2 of MGA packaging fuckery.

His bag was stapled to his jeans but it was a small little tag and easily came off without tearing anything.
However, these assholes, these fucking assholes, decided one big ass plastic staple wasn't enough to secure his jacket pointlessly shut (why does it even have to be shut?), no no, TWO big ass plastic staples. The sort they usually ram into doll heads, you know, those ones that leave fucking massive holes?

slow clap for MGA will ya?

And because they're very very tight, you can't pull them out away from the jacket or fur to cut em. Oh no, that'd be waaaay too sensible. So I had to pray I wouldn't snip the fur on the bottom staple and anxiously whimper as I cut the VERY tight one holding the whole damn thing shut.

thankfully I didn't cut anything else in the process but I was NOT happy about this in the slightest.
there's absolutely NO reason for these thick plastic tags to be here.

Under that awful coa it's nice to know Cam has full length sleeves.
He also  has a little necklace of uh.. i think they're supposed to be beads? It looks like one of the older Bratz Boyz necklaces.

The button up front is a false front, the shirt unfastens at the back with velcro.

There's a big fricken hole in it where that stupid staple was rammed through it -_-

Cameron has some staining on his hand and weirdly his wrist (UNDER the shirt sleeve) from the fur but it's very minor, hard to photograph but definitely there so be aware, the jacket clearly isn't colourfast.

Cam also has two piercings in one ear which I like. I like pierced ears on boy dolls sometimes, it's cute and modern and a bit alternative and very "Bratz" hah.
I'm pretty sure we've had boyz with piercings before but I couldn't be bothered digging through my collection to find one. *shrug*

You can see his flock on this side is a little wonked so it doesn't come fully down in the sideburn, there's an unflocked painted bit?
The other side the seam is a bit messy there but all things considered, i'll take that as a flaw over say, a smeared up face or something.

His secondary outfit was tagged into the box with those smaller tabs that generally break with a light tug.
What was awkward was the whole outfit is for some reason ALSO on a plastic shell manniquin thing. Presumably to help the pieces keep their shape but it seems a bit redundant with the boxy shaped boy clothing and makes it harder to get them out the box as you have to carefully undress the plastic shell thing to get the shirt and then jumper (which velcros up the back) off without tearing the plastic shell OR the fragile card piece it's attached to out of the backing card.

But it was waaaay easier to get this piece out than the doll and his stapled together fucking clothes eugh. Still salty.

I definitely prefer the white jacket with this outfit to the fur one.

The secondary outfit consists of brown boots, torn jeans and a fisherman jumper.

They're all pretty nice pieces. The torn bits of the jeans are nice and realistic and feel like they won't continue to fray and the sweater is actually knitted and has a warm chunky kinda feel to it.
All these pieces remind me a LOT of early Bratz stuff. Realistic miniatures with accurate little details.
I like that.

2010 Cameron looks silly in the coat as well. Seriously, the coat is just... gonna take some work to find something I like it with heh.

But you can see how different Cameron's new face is. It's utterly unique. His eyes are almost grey rather than the bright blue they usually are, narrower and his eyebrows heavily angled into full on "bitch" brows which I think is why everyone's saying he looks like he's finally come outta the closet hahah. No straight man has that much eyebrow sass. *nod nod*

His hair is also platinum rather than the usual sort of dirty blonde. I quite like it being so white, it's striking.

Though I don't look at this doll and think "yep, that's a skater boy" which is Cameron's character (it's even still on the back of his box lol)
He looks more like he should be writing a scathing blog and instagramming his perfect beautiful life.

2018 Cameron uses the old 2003 boyz body, with painted red and white tighty whiteys ahahaha.

What's interesting I think is that the plastic of his body is quite different to the older Bratz bodies and even the 2010 era ones. It's matte and smooth but also slightly lighter. It feels quite pleasant.
Ahem.. <_<

The lack of shine makes his ridiculous over sculpted 8 pack all the more obvious. Oh Bratz Boyz... your ridiculous body shape was always so delightful.

He has clicky knees but that's all. Which I think is a shame. A bit cheeky for MGA to charge the same amount for him when he's not articulated like the girls and has just as many pieces as them.

Sure tooling a new body would have taken more time but man, we've been waiting since 2003 for articulated bloody Boyz MGA!

Of course because he's on the old style body he fits older Bratz Boyz stuff absolutely fine, which is nice. Even the shoes clip on nicely, which is more than I can say for the 2015 Bratz shoes.

His hair is full of gel which makes it a bit crunchy. I haven't had the energy to sit and try to comb it all out.

His hair is actually quite thickly rooted in the middle which is nice, it means it can be restyled in a few different ways. This sort of undercut style with it all swept up the middle and with it swept to either side as well.

He also has these glasses. I always liked Bratz glasses, they're nice.

Super bitchy Cam is ready to savage your business online. "Do you know who I AM? I'm the motherfucking Blaze, because I WILL BURN YOU BITCH!"

I'm totally pairing him off with Braden, if only because his nickname is "the Bear" and that makes me laugh and laugh and laugh.
Ahem.

I'm a bad person.

 All in all, he's a nice doll. I like his unique face, he's unlike any other Bratz Boy in my collection and believe me, I have a LOT of Bratz Boyz. He looks like a whole new character, so much so i'm not gonna call him Cameron at all, he is Hayden. I mean come on! He even has Hayden's hair!

So in honour of his designer, that shall be his name.

To be honest, there isn't much about this doll i'd call "collector quality" but what you do get is very nostelgic. His clothing is very much of a standard you got back in the early 2000s with Bratz, even down to the chains and buttons and buckles. I have always been absolutely astounded by the quality of early Bratz clothing and accessories and this feels just like those.
In this day and age, these clothes are spectacular. I mean if you've only ever known Fashionistas and such, these are super deluxe but if you're old as shit like I am and remember 10 years ago when dolls weren't shit?
These dolls feel on par with what would have been playline 10 years ago and isn't that fucking depressing?

£50 is WAY too much. Hell, the £40 I paid is WAY too much but I suppose we're paying a premium for 2 reasons. 1: the designer's name, which honestly I don't quite get because good as Hayden is, he's no household name and 2: Brand nostelgia. MGA know they have a lot of adult fans rabid for new Bratz, absolutely chewing at the walls for new Bratz, and will pay literally anything.

I don't think these should have been as expensive as they are, but then, I don't feel like a lot of playline should be as expensive as they are. We live in a time where tiny shoddily painted baby dolls like LOL are selling for £15 ffs!
Mattel is charging about £40 for their shit printed clothing movie tie in dolls.
The doll industry right now is a massive ripoff. Sure it's become more expensive to produce these things, but not THAT much more. These companies wonder why sales are slumping? there's your reason right there, you're charging too fucking much assholes.

I feel like at about 30, maybe 35 these new Bratz would have maybe been tolerable. Expensive for sure, but tolerable, but £50? especially with no guarentee you'll get one that isn't wonky and smeared up with big holes from the plastic staples? Hell no.

Much as i'd have liked a few of the girls to review, I cannot justify that sort of money. I think of all the other better value things I could buy for that kind of money and just... it makes my gut hurt.

Sadly, as often ends up the case with the Bratz fans particularly, on social media those voicing this sort of opinnion are being yelled at by others telling us we should "be grateful for what MGA is giving us". It's this sort of attitude that is the reasons companies aren't trying and it pisses me off.
there was NO excuse for the quality issues on this launch, none at all, and MGA's "talk to amazon about it, it's not our problem" passing the buck is a symptom of a far greater problem where toy manufacturers just don't have the passion, the care, the actual drive to produce the best thing they can any more.

these collector dolls deserved better.

I was lucky, I got a Cameron who wasn't borked but he's not perfect and for a "collector line" doll that costs £50, he SHOULD be perfect.

If i'd gotten one of the countless girls who've been sent out seriously flawed? You can bet your ass I would be MAD.
they should never have left the factory like this.
More care should have been taken.

Which is precisely why i'm not buying any others till the price drops, IF it drops.

I love Bratz, but i'm not blind and deluded. I earn only a small amount of money a month, I have to be able to justify it, I have to be able to budget it. £50 is a huge chunk of my monthly doll fund, if i'm gonna blow that big a load, I may as well buy a rarer Living Dead Doll or a secondhand Makie or something.

He's a nice doll, but he's massively overpriced.
My advice would be unless you desperately NEED one of these new bratz, wait till the price drops.

If you want one, you can buy him Here via my affliate link. You know.. if you want.