Fail Fix by Moose Toys - the rest of em. (Mostly)

 So yeah... 

I liked them too much so I grabbed the other two Argos had.

They don't have the black girl in stock yet, she seems to ship in her own case which pisses me off. It's 2020, we shouldn't still be seeing dolly fucking segregation. 

*sigh*

anyway

Let's dig in!

I opened PreppyPosh on Youtube, you can watch me struggling with the packaging Here

And i had forgotten that the line had body variation which was a really pleasant surprise.

Then I was further surprised when I undressed DJ and found that SHE also had a different body.

Now, I ended up getting the Sparkle variant for Kawaii Q-tee, the "Evening" variant for Preppy Posh and the standard "day" versions of SlayitDJ and Loves.Glam.

Glam has incredibly beautiful coloured hair. It's a sort of plum colour and it shimmers in the light which is really very pretty. 

Her eyes are an aqua sort of colour, kinda bluish green and she has tanned skin. 

Her dress isn't brilliant but it's not terrible either. It's unhemmed and made from some sort of slightly stretchy thin fabric with printed on pattern and belt. It had a small sewing error where part of the shoulder was stitched to the bodice wierd so it wouldn't sit flat. I had to snip that thread which fixed the issue. 

She has little black ankle boots, a pair of triple drop earrings and a choker in yellowy plastic. I think they'd have looked nicer in actual gold but what ya gonna do?

Her instructions simply tell you to curl her hair with the curlers she came with. The curlers aren't terrible but there's only 2 of them so getting all her hair curled would take forever and who's got time for that shit? 

Besides, it's already curly once it's combed out. Or at least wavy.

Preppy Posh has curly blonde hair even without any effort. I literally JUST brushed this with the included brush. Unfortunately the instructions for her hair are extremely vuage and I couldn't work out what they wanted me to do with the butterfly clip. It says something about twisting the hair but I couldn't make any sense of it.

Her eyes are brown which is VERY unusual to see, especially on a blonde doll. 

This variant has a really pretty blue dress with gold plaid pattern with little intermittant bow motifs. The fabric feels like some sort of foil fabric. It's umhemmed and has no give in it, making it a little difficult to get on and off the doll. 

The collar on one side doesn't sit flat. 

Her accessories are a pair of pearly pink glasses that clip to her ears nicely and a pair of pearly pink teardrop earrings. 

Her shoes are bright pink and don't really go with anything else she's wearing.

DJ Slay has the most unique face of the lot with this molded lopsided smirk. It's pretty glorious. 

She has dark blonde hair and green eyes and a sort of rainbow inspired eyeshadow going on. 

Her dress has a foil printed shiny northern lights kinda colourway that ties into the eyeshadow and has these black sections that emphasise her figure. 

Her boots are semi transparent and pink and pretty neat. 

She has asymetrical earrings. One is a hoop, the other is a stud with a chain and ear cuff but the ear cuff doesn't really clip onto her ear despite looking like it should. Which is disappointing.

She also has a necklace with a sort of drop chain thing going on? All these pieces are a semi opaque silver grey colour.

Her hair was a nightmare to deal with. Unlike the other dolls her hair REFUSED to sit down once I brushed it out, it wanted to stick out in every direction and the instructions she came with are even more vuage and useless than Posh's. They literally say "create the style"

What the fuck is that!??

Like.. seriously? What... the ... fuck?

the pictures are little cartoons and show you nothing helpful either. I just couldn't wrap my head around HOW you were supposed to make her hair look decent like this. I tried, but this was the best I could manage and even then I ended up using an elastic band to band the first chunk of hair up.

Interestingly, DJ has a molded shaved section at the back of her head which is pretty neat.

And to remind you all, here's Kawaii again.

She's so cute but her hair is starting to get a bit wild.

The variants are facinating by the way.

POsh actually gets a differently cut dress for her evening outfit, it looks like a two layered skirt with a tight skirt underneath a flared sort of peplum thing and with short sleeves instead of the scalloped cap sleeves of her usual outfit. 

The pictures are so small it's hard to see the detail but it looks like Evening also gets some pretty amazing gold makeup including a sort of circlet affair which is super pretty. 

Sparkle looks to get a star or something on her cheek?

DJ's sparkle look gains a star and more rainbow makeup while her evening look features a really funky patterned fabric and this insane rainbow lightening bolt look over one eye.

Kawaii gets a pale blue lip for her evening outfit and either hearts or stars on her cheeks, i can't quite tell. The pale blue lip is very pretty with the purple hair though. Her dress has a cool pattern too. 

I didn't get a picture of Posh because I showed it in the video review. Her evening variant has hearts on her cheeks. 

So, with DJ's hair particularly defying me, I decided it was time to take the plunge. Or rather, for the dolls to take the pluge. Right on into some BOILING water bwhahaha.

And while i'm happy to report their hair handles heat very well, the colour the water turned as soon as I dunked one doll was.... not pleasant.

I poured some into a glass to better illustrate how gross this is.

and this is AFTER I combed the shit out of their hair.

Ewww.

The end results are well... sticky. I didn't manage to get all the product out of their hair but i'm hoping as they dry fully it'll stop being tacky and just go back to being like a mild hair gel/leave in conditioner situation.

I dunked DJ first as her hair offended me the most. Once she was dry I decided to ignore the instructions and do her faux hawk MY way. Taking inspiration from Monster High, specifically Dawn of the Dance Lagoona with her albeit kinda poorly done, faux hawk style.

I pulled multiple small segments up and tied them with the elastic bands these dolls all came with, tucked the front under the second and fiddled with it all till I came up with something that kinda resembled her box art.

Glam lost a lot of volume to her hair in the quick rinse she got. I didn't want to lose her curls completely so I didn't do a full dunk for her. I used the rollers to recoil several sections but I think I could do better. I tied the very sides of her hair back so her earrings could be seen. What's the point of fancy earrings if your hair covers them?

Kawaii's hair straightened nicely with a simple boil rinse. Again I ignored the instructions for her cutie buns and tied the sides of her hair up like I did with Glam so they had something to "bite" into.

And finally Posh got her hair tied back in a ponytail and the giant clip just shoved into it because it's the best I could manage.

I love how varied their faces all are.

Kawaii and Glam both have slightly parted lips while Posh has a closed mouth and DJ has a smirk. 

I think they're all UV printed, their face paint is VERY well applied. It's even, it's vivid, it's shiny but in a pleasant glossy kinda way. If you look extremely close you can just make out tiny dots but unlike Mattel's grainy as shit UV printing, this is actually GOOD stuff where it looks extremely professional even with your head centimeters from the doll's face. 

It looks just like the technique Moose used for the Capsule Chix, though that does mean these could be extremely difficult to remove the paint off of. I know people really struggled to wipe Capsule Chix, that printed face is on their VERY securely. 

Another interesting thing I noticed was the face masks. Now, I believe the face masks are, on the outside identical for each character regardless of which of the three variants you got, however, my two "default" girls came with masks reading C1 and E1 while Kawaii, who is the second variant, came with a mask that reads D2 and posh, who is the third variant has B3 on her mask.

(I assume that either the black girl or the playset doll must be doll A in this) 

But this is facinating because why would they need different masks for different face paints? Is it simply some factory thing so they can remember which doll is which? but the number is inside the face plate so that doesn't make much sense.

I just... I don't understand the purpose of this number if the masks are otherwise identical.

Has anyone else got a different version with a different number on their fail face mask? It's molded between the eyes on the inside. 

See?

Now I will say, the boxes still SUCK to open. I found an easier method which is to ram the scissors into the edge and sorta use them as a lever to pry the overly glued backing card off but it's still a lot of work and effort and honestly way overkill. 

I'm left with a lot of plastic tat including the very large bubbles of plastic that go over the doll's faces and behind their heads which are really way bigger than they needed to be. While i'm thankful for no head staples, I really would like to see less plastic waste you know? 

and i'd also like to see better instructions for styling the hair. If you're gonna force kids to style the doll's hair with your stupid sticky gimmick, at LEAST have the decency to give more fucking guidance than "complete the style" with a single tiny cartoon picture that gives absolutely no clear direction at all. 

Better yet, ditch the stupid hair gimmick and just give us dolls with their hair already STYLED.

You could keep the different outfits and the hidden makeup, but the crunchy gel encrusted hair is not a gimmick that's particularly enjoyable and results in a product that needs work to get to look its best. It's like.. intentionally crippling yourself. 

Cleaned up the dolls are beautiful, really very stunning dolls, but in the box they look AWFUL and the lack of any real photos of the product on the packaging is NOT going to inspire confidence in the product. 

I just honestly feel that much like capsule chix, who Moose also make, they got too bogged down with a gimmick and didn't really bother to consider how offputting that gimmick may be to parents and indeed the kids themselves once the intial novelty of the first one wore off. 

They forgot that you can sell toys on their own merit, they don't NEED bells and whistles and to be frank? I really do think the Fail Fix dolls could have sold exceptionally well without the hair gimmick. They'd have looked better in the box, there would be less doubt from customers about whether they could get it looking decent, you'd have less waste because you wouldn't need the extra packaging or the instruction sheet... 

I mean shit. I spent the evening combing out two doll's hair and then boiling washing all four of them and redoing their styles. My fingers HURT from the tiny clips and elastics and they're sticky from the residual gel in the doll's hair. My dolls look pretty, but my hands hurt and it took HOURS.

Honestly? I'd have rather they had come as they are now. 

Will I get the last one to complete the set when she comes into stock? You bet your ass I will. 

Because despite my gripes about the gimmick, they ARE very pretty dolls. They're a nice size, their hair is pretty soft and pleasant to my touch, their eyes follow you so they photograph awesome as they're always looking at the camera and they have so much personality in their little faces because they all have different looks. 

DJ is honestly the first time i've ever seen an asymetrical smirk on a playline doll. I mean shit, that's just... incredibly unique. I dig it. 

I wish there weren't two blondes but at least they're different shades of blonde and for once, there's no blue eyes. Which is really interesting. I think the playset doll has blue eyes, but she's the only one. Huh.. go figure.

Their outfits are simple in construction but they do the job. They're a little more interesting than the half print sack dress Barbie's been sporting for the past 5+ years at least. I'd say Glam's outfit is, in my opinnion, the weakest of the bunch. The two variant forms are likely substantially better than her default outfit which just feels a bit... flat.

But we have at least three face sculpts, three body sculpts and four shoe molds represented here. And that suggests Moose actually put some real investment into this line. I hope we see more from them on the doll front because apparently Moose can make damn good dolls. (have they ever done a fashion doll like.. a proper fashion doll before? usually moose are like.. small collectable toys aren't they?)

Anyway, let's close out this review with a before and after shot of my little gang of cuties.

It's amazing what a simple dunk in boiling water can achieve.

and you know, an hour of arguing with DJ's faux hawk. -_-