LOL Amazing Surprise by MGA

Okay, before we start, two disclaimers.

first, my camera broke. By which I mean it works but the view screen is busted so I can't actually SEE what i'm photographing is in frame or not blurry or washed out till I get the photos up on my computer and by that point it's kinda too late to go back and do it again.

So, be aware some of these photos won't be up to my usual crappy standard but will actually be crappier. Some pics that would usually end up on the cutting room floor will need to be used and i'm SORRY!

secondly, this set is fricken HUGE and as a result there's gonna be a bajillion pictures and a lot to say.
this will be a long review so go pee now, grab a drink and come back.

you good?

we all settled?

strap in guys and girls, this is gonna be .. long.

There had been a lot of complaints on Amazon about them not sending the set covered in anything and thus spoiling the surprise for christmas so it's nice to see they seem to have actually taken note and wrapped these up.

The box is HUGE so I understand why Amazon have no boxes it'll fit in.

Also this was a warehouse deal so was sold with "minor cosmetic damage"

I think that means the very very small crease on the front of the outer box. Because honestly I can see no other issues.

The box is pretty simple to be honest. there's two cityscapes in bpink and blue with a black road down the middle with zippers instead of curbs. random.

It makes several claims, there's supposedly 70 PLUS surprises inside.

I'm dubious, particularly as the contents is set and not in any way random or surprising.

14 exclusive dolls and 2 playsets.

hmmm playsets huh? I'm also not convinced about that given they claim the cardboard changing rooms of the regular dolls are "playsets" and not just fucking packaging.

the other side of the box is the same just in english, french and german rather than whatever is on the side I showed first. (Spanish, Italian... er... yeah i'm not good with languages, sorry.)

Yeah blurry photo alert, I'm sorry!

the top of the box has two sets of silhouettes. The pink ones are presumably the "uptown" family.

1 OMG, 3 LOLs, 2 pets and 1 Lil.

And the black ones are the "downtown" family which again is 3 LOLs, 2 pets, 1 lil and 1 OMG.

so 14 dolls all in.

It's worth stating at this point that the rrp on this set is £129:99 which is a LOT until you actually tot up the contents.

LOL OMG are £30, the lil's are about £7,  the pets are about £10, the boys are £10 and the regular LOLS are anywhere between £10 and 15 these days.

So let's do some quick maths here.

30+7+10+10+10+10+10 (lol) is £87 just for one family. I mean let's round down and assume £85 x2 that's £170 worth of LOLs buying em all separate so the price point is pretty good value.

I got even better value by taking advantage of Amazon's sale and warehouse deal on top so this set cost me £85 with free shipping.

Score!

Inside the outer box is another box.

I'll say at this point, this is NOT a light box. It's actually quite hefty. I felt a bit bad for the amazon guy having to manhandle it to my door lol.

And again i'm SORRY for this photo!

Anyway inside the box is a cloudscape with a few boxes popping UP out of the clouds. It looks like a few of the boxes are set at a different level to the rest, though I don't really know why other than because why not.

There's also a plastic bag containing some paperwork and (unpictured) a brown cardboard sheet that fits over the top of all this to presumably protect it all in transit.

Apparently there's a grand opening... of... something. It doesn't really elaborate.

I mean i ASSUME shop based on the cityscape and context but yeah, the text is pretty vuage.

The other side of this has a grid for the stickers.

I appreciate that they're numbered.

There's also two of these. One in english, german and french and another in several more languages. I am.. not sure why they couldn't just print it all as ONE thing but whatever. It's multiple pages all identical.

It just talks about the features of the different dolls. The girls can cry, spit, piss themselves or shoot water out their ears (well that's unsettling)
the boys can also spit, cry and pee all over themselves (and be strangely cheerful about it. Wth?)
the pets cry, spit and pee (there's a theme huh?)

the lil's apparently have a colour change gimmick (phew, no more pissing)

and the OMGs have their wierd chair stand i'm yet to figure out how to make NOT be a teetering disaster. How the hell can you make a chair for a doll who doesn't have jointed KNEES!? COME ON MGA!

It also talks about the closet (ooo fancy) which appears to take keys to open. Super fancy.

And finally there's this pamphlet which has a little map of the city on one side.

And instructions on the other.

I don't think i've ever had a toy that needed 52 instructions just to open the damn thing before. Damn.

It's just the same thing printed over and over in different languages.

STOP!

the box tells me I need to read the instructions, or i'm gonna do it all wrong and ruin everything! OH NO!

So back to the instructions.

It says uh.. ind the box labelled "start here"

It took me a while to find it because i'm not very observant.

Box 1 sticks up from the clouds along with one of the other boxes, there's 5 tantalising boxes to open on this layer.

Looks like the whole thing is set onto a plastic tray. This box was easy to remove, it just slid out.

The box isn't sealed at all, which I appreciate. No selotape.

inside is a small sticker and a pink bag.

It's sticker 9, lil prim! (the number is on the sticker which i'm very grateful for)

And here she is. She's TINY!

Like omg so small.

When in my hand I noticed her stockings kept changing colour in contact with my skin. So warmth makes her stockings disappear and cold makes them come back.

She's a static figure with only one joint which is her neck, allowing her to turn her head side to side.

Give how teensy tiny she is I get why she's made like this.

though.. it occurs to me how freaking WIERD it is for her to be wearing stockings/tights UNDER her nappy/diaper.
Er... what?

Maybe it's just really short shorts that look underpantish.... I... I can hope right?

Next is box 2, which i'm told to lift a flap to reveal. Why? I dunno.

There's a lot of this silly extra stuff with this set.

I do think it's cute that in most cases the numbers actually sort of blend into the scene either as shop numbers or as signs, but it can make them really difficult to find.

The instructions do come with a little picture that shows where the different numbers are but it's a bit confusing too... or maybe that's just me.

This box has a blue bag in it.

And contains... a pair of OMG shoes...

that feels a little premature as the two biggest boxes which presumably contain the OMGs are box 50 and 51. Yes, there are over 50 boxes for only 14 dolls, 12 of which fit in the palm of my hand.

why? because MGA!

honestly I feel like this set was specifically made for deboxing videos but even that's flawed because it takes time to find each numbered box to see which one you open next and there's no order to how things are boxed so you end up with a pile of random stuff before you get a doll to put it on.

So the OMG shoes need to go to one side till the end when i get the doll they go on. Hmmm. I don't know why they wouldn't have just had her shoes IN her box with her.

wierd.

Three has a little card over the top that you need to slide out first.

why?

the instructions say "lift box" and i'm like "HOW?" because I can't grip it. There's nothing to grip onto.
Turns out that under the clouds there's a little tab which I assume isn't supposed to be tucked UNDER the cloud but rather be sticking out so you had a little tab to pull.

I have no nails so I had to use my scissors to fish the tab out from under the cloud and get the box out.

There's another box underneath it, labelled 34.

wow... this is gonna take a long time to debox huh?

So here's box 3 and the pointless card that was covering it. The card goes on the trash pile I suppose.

Inside is a camo print bag. I'm starting to think the bag inside the boxes aren't in any way related to the colour of the box or the pattern on the sides. Hmm.

Inside are some shorts on a little plastic shell.

With the benefit of hindsight I can tell you, these are City Boi's or City Slicker's shorts.

Does that heart shaped pizza have lightening bolts on it?

Another blue bag!

But they have nothing to do with the previous blue bag. These are in fact Prim's shoes.

Okay?

5 looks tantalisingly like it might contain an actual doll!

It's raised like box 1 and it's twice the size.

But huh.. underneath is a hollow with a blind bag in it.

I suppose i'll open that first.

It's City Boi's shirt!

so... he must be in the box right?

r... right?

The instructions actually told me I should have opened the box first and THEN the bag under the box but this number 6 is, imo a little ambiguous. I mean you pull it OUT before you can see the 6 and the 6 is pointing at the box opening tab so my assumption was that it meant "this is number 6"

You can see how that might be a bit unclear right? or am I just odd?

Inside box 5 or... 6... whatever... is a red bag and a sticker.

wait... that's a dog.

He's called Wooftown (what the hell kind of name is that?)

And sure enough, it's a dog.

It has a butthole ahahahahahah ahahahahah *mature*

so... so wait...

i've opened 6 bags now and i've recieved a lot of pretty random stuff.

Dog, baby, the top and bottoms for one character, the shoes from another and the OMG shoes.

er... what?

Would it not have made more sense for Prims shoes to be City Boi's shoes and the dog to be City Boi himself?

okay fine whatever.

that's layer one opened.

So the instructions say that NOW we're allowed to unzip.

good good.

We're ready now!

Underneath the clouds is... a city scene with some bits missing already lol.

So the instructions say find box 7.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to find box 7.

<_< >_>

Inside is... Proper's top!

Box 8 is the lake and those ducks are cute, but GIANT if you consider the scale here.

This box is glued in so that's new.

Inside are some glasses. I dunno who's these are. They look LOL sized.

Box 9 and conveniently underneath box 10. (random aside, I love the cozy coupe in the carpark)

Wait... aren't these City Boi's shoes?

So... we now have his full outfit but haven't found him yet.

10 it turns out has an alcove underneath too.

So is this technically 11? I don't even know.

It's some wierd glasses.

While inside the box are two barette/hair clip things. They're shiny silver and actually say "yass" and "queen"

They're OMG accessories so they go into the pile of random OMG stuff that has to wait till the end to be used.

So uh... do MGA just want kids to lose shit during this process? Parents, I highly reccomend you get a little cup or something to put these teensy pieces into during the deboxing process so they don't get lost. Or put them into the boxes again.

12 on the book shaped shop is another glued in box.

And contains... a hairbrush.

seriously?

well that was a waste of a surprise.

13 is another big one, this has GOTTA be City Boi right?

oh.. but the bag is pink...

And it's.... Proper?

Erm....

I mean she's cute but the only part of her outfit we have is her shirt so far...

Also this was in an alcove underneath making it uh... 14?. It's a very fancy bottle.

The missing pet poster on it I didn't even see till I was editing these photos lol. It's such a dark blue that picking out that detail is just not easy with the naked eye.

Well here's a wierd one, this one sort of hinges OUT to open it. Underneath is a bag.

Which contains this... thing....

I think it's a wrist cuff but I honestly have no idea.

Box 15 contained Downtown Doll's shirt but the photo is not just blurry it's impossible to see anything in so yeah, sorry about that. You'll get to see her shirt later on anyway.

Box 17 has a plastic strap over it and SLIDES out.

And it's still not City Boi.

Wait wait.. Yuppy Puppy? that's a DOG!??

It looks like a cat!

Apparently these are both dogs.

uh.. okay.

Corgi maybe? I don't know my dog breeds man.

Hmm so far we have one little diagonal line and now the pup... do you think the next one we open will be 008?

18 slides out on a drawer into the space left behind by box 17

And it contains.. a fancy blue key! This is, according to the instructions, neccisary for the final step.

19 lifts out to reveal another bag underneath. It isn't a box, it's more like a lid.

Inside are some white shoes which are uh.. Preppy's

Box 20 is pretty chunky.

And contains.. a skirt?

well colour me bewildered.

So at 20 boxes opened, let's recap what we've got so far shall we?

I have 1 lil, 2 pet dogs and Proper who needs pants and shoes. (not very proper lol)

I also have City Boi's outfit but not his doll. Downtown Doll's shirt and skirt and Preppy's shoes and several OMG accessories.

Um... what?

21 is another drawer.

And contained proper's skirt!

now, at this point I foolishly assumed the shoes i'd opened near the start MUST be hers as she was the only LOL girl i'd opened so far.

Oh ho ho, I thought MGA were actually being in some way reasonable.

Joke's on me right?

22 has a boy!

but... it's not City Boi, it's City Slicker.

Okay now you're just taking the piss MGA.

He has "LOL" on his cheek and a lightening bolt under his other eye.

And he has a penis ahahahaha.
and testicles! and a little pee hole

this amuses me way too much.

His sock paint is a bit messy.

But bang goes my theory about any sort of pattern emerging here.

Under 23 is this shirt, which is City Slicker's! (so 24?)

He still has no pants.

He's all dick's out right now ahahaha.

Oh.. oh no wait.... do the shorts from earlier go on HIM? 

Inside box 23 are a pair of OMG glasses in red. The photo of these failed. Sorry!

25 is Preppy's pants!

So I have his shoes and his pants thus far. Well... that's something.

Under 26 (#27) are a pair of red shoes. (Downtown Doll's?)

Will 26 be City Boi?

Oooof course not.

It's Preppy.

Who is freaking adorable with pale pink hair and big blue eyes.

The rest have pretty straightforward hair but I loved the texture of the cropped part of his head okay?

Hmm looks like a new pattern is emerging.

so 008 or 003 next?

28!

Which interestingly is another lid box rather than a full box.

underneath is 29.

28 contains Preppy's shirt!

WHOO!

So Preppy is now fully dressed!

He's the first full sized LOL to get his whole outfit thus far.

that's... kinda wierd.

Remember Proper doesn't have her correct shoes yet.

29 is a drawer... I lifted the bag out and AIEEE WHAT IS THAT!???

It's a dead bug.

it's a VERY dead bug. It is in fact decomposing INTO to cardboard, pretty much flattened and just... ew.

How the hell did that get in there?

I emailed MGA who are, naturally all *shrug* "not our problem" and i'm like dudes... dudes...

this is gross.

I'm for once glad the bits here come in plastic bags because I don't wanna pick mummified bug bits off my dolls.

Once I recovered from the first genuine surprise MGA have ever managed to pull on me, I opened the bag. Inside is a belt thing. It seems to have no clasps and I am assuming is OMG.

 

Having composed myself, I opened the next box but I admit, i was now nervous about finding some other dead thing in here.

Thanks MGA. Thanks.

Another doll!

It's still not City Boi, but it is his sister Downtown Doll. 

So maybe I was right about the pattern and the next one WILL be 008.

I had all of Downtown Doll's clothes, horah! 

City Slicker is still chilling pantless. 

She's cute. She looks like she SHOULD have some sort of colour change gimmick but that's not listed on the instructions so uh... 

Box 31 is another glued down one.

Hey look! it's 008!

Lil Downtown Doll!

She's in a static standing position which I find far less endearing than Lil Prim's seated pose.

Also honestly? I know she's supposed to look like she's winking but to me she just looks like she poked herself in the eye.

Poor baby.

But it means there WAS a pattern look! I called it!

So... that means we only have 4 more till we get to the two OMGs. 

So will it do the two other pets together or the two other lol kids together? or one of each?

Oooo the mystery, the suspense!

Disclaimer: I may be giving the impression i'm actually enjoying this deboxing but the truth is, i'm already finding it extremely tedious and my back hurts from sitting on the floor. I have a pile of trash beside me from all the bags and shit and a pile of as yet unused pieces and accessories and i'm kinda just wishing for it to all be over already.

Box 32 is some OMG shoes.

Box 33 is a doll! OR is it a pet?

This one is a long drawer which means 15 has to be sort of hinged out of the way. it's a bit wierd.

Uptown Meow. Oh so THAT'S a cat

I ... can't see the difference... 

The human hair on these pets is super bizarre imo. 

So... the "dog" is smaller than the cat but otherwise they both totally look like cats to me. 

So.. i'm gonna call it now.. the next one is gonna be EITHER the last pet OR it'll be 004, City Boy.

This is a terrible photo but I think it accurately expresses my opinnion of this "surprise"

It's literally a sticker.

yes, a WHOLE BOX for a fucking STICKER

35 isn't quite as disappointing but still not overly exciting. It's the Downtown lot's bottle. 

Big whoop? Honestly I never use the LOL bottles, they just take up space. They're huge and the dolls can't hold them properly anyway.

Actually that bottle was probably 36 going by MGA logic. it was in a bag under box 35.

Inside box 35 is a top. This is Prim's shirt.

37 is.. omg.. is it finally... 

It's PROPER'S SHOES!

It's only taken how many boxes to get to a point where she has actual footwear? We opened her in box 13 and found her outfit in boxes 7 and 21. 

Here we are at box 37 before she gets shoes.

just... what?

Okay so thus far we have fully dressed Proper and Preppy and Downtown Doll. City Slicker still has no shoes and we haven't even found Prim or City Boi yet.

Honestly at this point after 37 boxes of random bits i'm starting to get very confused and disoriented.

Under box 38 is... OMG glasses. 

they're a bit OTT aren't they?

And shoesssss

Oh wait, these are  City Slicker's shoes!

He has shoes at last too!

so that's 4 good and dressed.

I haven't found Prim OR City Boi yet.

40 is another wierd drawer.

And that's gotta be another doll or pet

Yep, that'd be our last pet. Downtown Hop.

I... I don't understand the references of these names.

She's a giant pigtailed bunny that's inexplicably larger than both dogs, fact she's the same height as the children! and seems to be bipedal.

I'm scared. 

Cute lil bunny tail though.

Unlike the dogs and cat this bunny has no butt hole so i'm gonna go out on a limb and assume it cannot piss everywhere.

So we have both lil's, all four pets and four of the six LOLs.

there's only 9 regular boxes left and then the two big ones.

41 gives us the other key!

42 is another drawer. (and I gotta ask, how is that shop simultaniously number 32 AND 42? Did they accidentally order the wrong doormat?)

Oooh THESE are City Boi's pants! They have a butt flap, ahahahahah.

43 is.. omg... is it... is it finally... 

It's CITY BOI!

Oh christ... we found his shirt back in box freaking 6!

He has a broken heart and a 13 on his face. 

Argh so blurry.

but this means we only have Prim to find now!

We're in the home stretch! Prim's ultra short shorts!

45 is wierd.

It's the only box that has this slot in the side of it that you have to reach into to drag the bag out of.

Why?

Also 45 mph speed limit in the middle of an urban metropolis? are you insane?

Sorry about the pic

the uh.. slot? contained a pair of gold earrings. One has a padlock hanging from it. 

Underneath is a magazine.

Well I say magazine. As with all doll magazines it's more a pamphlet

As it only has two entries.

Also, "fierce o clock" and "half past chic" are not times, good luck having nobody at your grand openings because you thought it was "cute" to be obtuse about times.

Idiots. 

they also were vague about location.

these girls cannot run a business.

47 is... another fricken sticker -_-

Stickers are not surprises.

Grand opening, wait, is this Downtown BB's shop? Number 48?

Underneath are some OMG earrings. Thewy're big pearls with bows on.

Uptown girl was here ahahahah.

Seriously man, I still maintain that this implies 49 is inside the box, not under it.

Whatever the case, here's Prim!

She has interesting stockings, they're not fishnet, they're more like.. dotted lace?

Her outfit is kinda ridiculous. Honestly it brings to mind Britney Spears with the tied up shirt exposing her belly.

Which brings us the only 2 boxes left, the big ones!

Here's the 12 regular LOL sized dolls. 

Uptown family has two sisters (twins? they certainly look very alike) and a brother, a dog and a cat and a baby girl. 

Downtown has two brothers, one sister, a dog and a rabbit and a baby girl.

Interesting. 

I appreciate that there's 3 boys and 3 girls in the standard size. I like that they opted for a second brother for one of the families. 

So now we only have the two big boxes left to open. Let's see what the instructions say!

50: lift box 50 cover to reveal playset.

Link keys together to unlock playsets.

Okay.

You know what? I'm actually impressed by this little case.

It's pretty hefty, sturdy feeling with a nice little handle on it, great for storing your doll safely and taking about the place.

It's a pale blue with a quilted effect.

Keys combined. I hurt my finger doing this. Ouch.

The keys feel a bit flimsy, i'm not sure how well they'll hold up with an over enthusiastic child but the lock isn't hard to open.

One gentle twist and it's open.

Inside is our first OMG, Uptown girl!

She comes pretty stapled into the box. I was annoyed to learn that MGA decided head staples wasn't enough, they had to selotape OVER the back of the head staples so you had to pry that off before you could snip it (I don't like snipping anywhere near the hair for fear of cutting the hair itself)

She comes with a blue transparent stand, a sticker, a bag containing two outfit pieces and the doll in her "undergarments".

In Uptown Girl's case her undergarments make me think of a magician's costume. She has these adorable little lace shorts, a sleeveless blouse with a big bow tie and lace stockings with ankle socks worn over the top. The socks even have a teensy bit of lace at the tops of them.

how adorable!

Her hair is CAKED in product unfortunately so while it's soft enough to touch, it is not in any way pliable and there's a lot of flyaways.

She has sky blue eyeshadow and very dark blue eyes. There's a little beauty mark under her lips which are a deep fushia pink. 

Her fingernails are painted blue to match her suit.

 

The inside of her case has molded details featuring a closet layout. There's jewellery and handbags, even a fur coat.

How cool. 

It has little shelves along the side and even, this is important, a RAIL FOR THE HANGERS!

Rail rail rail!

this made me way too happy. 

But i've been moaning about it my past two OMG reviews.

Inside the bag are her two extra outfit pieces. A pleated skirt and a matching jacket.

they're beautifully made and have a texture that feels like suiting or something. it's very thick and textured. 

Much like a real suit.

I LOVE how MGA is using such a variety of fabrics for their dolls right now, particularly as the OMG outfits really do feel like miniaturised human outfits even down to the fabric choices in many cases. 

I like that.

FINALLY those shoes from box 2 (was it box 2?) can be worn!

They're a little fiddly to get on. 

Earrings, shoes, glasses, hair clips and jacket and skirt on, she's all ready for her grand opening.

Another detail of these cases which I find absolutely adorable is the windows on the door of the case.

It's the window of the shop from inside, with a view of the street outside.

My favourite bit is the backwards shop name and the reverse of the "we are open" sign (sorry we're closed)

SO CUTE!

Okay I will conceed, these aren't what i'd call a play SET but they're a really damn nice closet/case combo and I really like them. 

The red one contains Downtown B.B who is posed rather more dramatically than Uptown was.

Notice her lopsided pigtails? One of them hasn't been done correctly so it's unravelling.

I had to spend some time fixing her pigtails. 

Her case also has a quilted effect but it's got barbed wire instead of little pearls. 

She comes wearing what looks like athletic gear. Knee length bicycle pants and an asymetrical crop top with fishnet sleeve. 

Her fingernails are painted white and black, one white, one black, one white... and so on.

Her hair is multiple shades of blue, there's at least three shades. a very very dark navy, a brighter deep blue and then a bright sapphire blue for her bangs and streaks. 

Her bag has positive graffitti on it which is cute. It says "different is beautiful", "can't stop, won't stop" "Dress like you are already famous" and "big city"

it's sort of adorable.

I am disappointed that to get the clothes out you have to tear these bags. I'd rather like to be able to reuse them easier as clothing bags. 

Downtown's two outfit pieces are a sporty knit jacket and some camo pants with elasticated cuffs. 

Her stand is transparent red.

Her earrings are the big gold hoops, her glasses are the red narrow lensed ones I couldn't photograph earlier and she has mismatching boots.

I didn't know who the cuff belonged to and as this girl had one bare arm I opted for giving it to her instead of Uptown who has long sleeves.

Interestingly, her camo pants have a real belt on them with a snap clasp and working belt loops. 

It was NOT easy to get on over her bike pants and it doesn't fully do up at the back due to the bulk of the pants underneath. So hmm. Bit of a design oversight there.

She has a tiny broken heart on her cheek, two slices out of one of her eyebrows, red eyeshadow, dark brown eyes and black and white lips. 

She reminds me of several old Bratz lines. 

The inside of her case is different than the blue one with different clothes and accessories. I do appreciate that attention to detail. 

I'm still delighted by the clothes rail. 

Downtown also has her shop window display, though for some reason I didn't take a photo of it.

What a sweet couple they make.

I THINK the belt thing belongs to Uptown Girl as I couldn't find anyone else who could wear it. It doesn't seem to clasp though, so it's a bit strange.

And look the sticker sheet is finished! 

WHOO.

Though it's interesting the scale here that has the LOL regular dolls being half the height of the OMGs when in reality they're about 1/4 of the size and the Lil's are effectively the size of a newborn baby in comparison.

I admit, I actually find the scale discrepency between the LOL standard line and the OMGs really really distracting. The OMG are TOO TALL to be at all in any way in scale and it looks wierd to my eye. 

I've also honestly never been a huge fan of the trend in toy lines to have a 10-15 year age gap between older sisters and their little sisters. It's not overly realistic and leads to the unfortunate teen mom look which is you know... a bit uncomfortable.

Barbie had the same problem with Kelly/Shelly and Krissy.

I prefer to keep the two lines quite separate. LOL OMG are teen fashion dolls and I like them as teen fashion dolls. I do not however like them as LOL dolls because I don't feel like they really fit aesthetically in without it looking super wierd.

I'm also not a fan of the animals. The human hair makes it look like someone put a wig on the animals and it just wierds me out. Also their scale is all over the place. Why is the rabbit the size of a toddler? Why is the cat the same size as the dog but the other dog smaller than the cat? I mean cats aren't that big and i'm pretty sure yuppy puppy isn't supposed to be a chihuahua right? Aww shit... maybe it IS.

but in that case, what the hell is the other dog supposed to be? And how small are these toddlers if the Chihuahua is half their height?

Basically the scale is all over the place (the kids can freaking RIDE the cat ffs) and the wig look is bewildering.

I dunno, I think the pets would have been cuter without human hairdos.

LOL is one of those lines where i'm sort neutral at this point. I have a few, I like them well enough, but they have a fair few things that annoy me. I hate blind bags with a burning passion that gets more firey the older I get and the longer it continues for a start. But I also intensely dislike urinating dolls and i'm not overly keen on the spitting thing either. 

I also don't really like how they do the clothing, in many cases it results in a bare back and it looks terrible.

Clip on clothing always suffers and I think i'd have honestly preferred molded on clothes at this scale, maybe just with slip on pants/skirts like the bigger Polly Pockets Mattel did in the 2000s

It's a fairly good haul of toys for the money sure, but it took me over an hour to debox it all.

Depending on your kid that could be a good thing. Keep em occupied for an hour on christmas day just opening boxes lol. 

I really like the two cases, however, they will NOT close with the doll stand fully assembled so you need to take the stand apart to put the doll into the case, that said, ALL the family fits into the case which is nice. 

this is the waste left behind after deboxing, and after taking the time to put ALL the boxes back into the tray.

It is honestly rather a lot of mess and plastic waste which i'm not so pleased about.

on the plus side, nice of MGA to provide a trash bag in the way of the plastic bag all the paperwork came in lol. 

Honstly though, i'm not sure what to do with the box. It's huge, far too huge to fit into the recycling bin and that bothers me.

The little boxes are quite nice but I can't see why i'd ever use them, they're just small cardboard boxes. 

Maybe a kid could repurpose a few of them to hold accessories or something but the vast majority of this is going in the trash and well all know it is.

Considering everything literally fits into the two cases, there's no reason for the box to BE this big. There's also really no reason for them to have scattered out all the parts as much as they did. 

to be frank, I think this set would have been far less frustrating had they had one doll per box rather than each piece split out pointlessly and scattered to the four winds.

One LOL would fit into most of the individual boxes here, you could totally have constructed a box that featured each doll and maybe have a series of little boxes that opened in different ways but had a little cartoon on the inside that introduced each character? like "hi, i'm X!" with a little waving cartoon of them. 

I think that would have been way cuter than searching through 20 boxes to find some pants for your doll.

There would be far less waste and less frustration, less risk of missing parts or worse, losing parts while deboxing. 

But it would still have a surprise element of which box contains who and how do they open? What will their little cartoon speech bubble say?

I think that'd be really cute.

Hire me MGA. 

All in all, I didn't really enjoy opening most of the Amazing surprise. About half way through the novelty had well and truely worn off. 

However, what is quite adorable is that as soon as they got home from school my two youngest saw the cases and wanted to play with them. 

While youngest spent the next half hour playing with the CASES themselves and unlocking them over and over and putting random things in them, middle son spent that time playing with the dolls themselves.

It was very sweet to watch. Most of the time my kids don't really care too much about dolls I bring home and certainly the OMG don't interest them at all, but today they both wanted to see what I had. 

So well played MGA. It's always nice when you bring home a toy that actually attracts the attention of kids in the target market age group. 

In summary:

Pros: 

• Good quality toys
• Bargain price for what you get
• Beautiful detailed outfits on the OMG dolls
• The cases are well built and bound to be quite useful

Cons: 

• Opening takes FOREVER, the novelty wears off fast
• Because there are 51 separate little bags there's a high chance of factory error resulting in missing or duplicated items
• the individual pieces are tiny and easy to lose while deboxing
• There's absolutely no logic to the distribution of the pieces so you end up with a pile of orphaned pieces for ages till you find the doll they go onto.
• Leaves an enormous mess and a lot of waste
• It's a lot of money to part with all at once 

Overall, I knew going in that the deboxing was going to be annoying. I hadn't really estimated how tedious it would become though.

I also didn't really expect a gross bug. Thankfully I didn't find any other bugs in the box but yeesh.
sort out your factories MGA, sheesh.

I really do like both OMG though and they're honestly what I bought the set FOR.

and I like the cases far more than I thought I would. I expected to be quite snarky about their "playset" claim but i'm pleasantly surprised. I'm very very happy to see MGA finally gave us a bloody clothes rail to hang all those hangers from.

Now we need clothes for the rail hah.

I just don't know what to do with the key...

if you put it IN the case the case locks closed so yeah, don't do that.

I could do with a key alcove or something on the outside of the case heh.

thankfully if you DO lock the keys inside a case pressing the little latch with something like a screwdriver will open it up again but yeah, be aware, you can totally lock the keys inside the case.