2020 Sindy by Kid Kreations

 

Back in July 2019 when new Sindy dolls were teased at Dollycon I admit, I like many others were skeptical. We'd had so many years of being told "new sindy" was happening and it being a lie. 

Sindy was SUPPOSED to get a relaunch for her 50th back in 2012-3, artwork was teased but that never happened and instead all we got was some bed sheets released only in Turkey (of all places)

I mean.. wtf?

So when we were told "2020 we'll do collector line sindy dolls!" I and many others thought "yeah yeah, we've heard this one before, play a new tune will ya?"

It didn't really help that there was no corperate annoucement (the only info came from a Sindy convention) and the "prototypes" were OOAK customised vintage dolls who's provinance was a little vague.

And the info kept changing. First they were going to make 4000 of each doll, then 3000, then finally 1963. They were going to be sold in Hamleys, no some other london toy store, oh no online only. 

And then delays hit. The release was pushed to September, then November due to Covid. 

Honestly I was starting to believe they were fictional. 

But finally solid information started to come out in 2020 including confirmation of the rumoured price (£79:99 each. OUCH) and FINALLY prototype pictures happened, real prototypes.

Can you spot the difference? 

One of the lineup was sneakily replaced with another white girl. *sigh*

Kid Kreations, who were producing these claimed the black doll was not made because production cost was too high and insisted it wasn't her skin tone but her accessories. To which most of us replied "then fucking change the accessories?" but nope. 

Instead we got an admittedly quite pretty ice skater but I resent her for replacing the afro girl who I loved the thought of.

Black Sindy dolls are very very rare, Pedigree only ever did one black sindy and Marx (their US distributor) did Gayle, both of which are pretty much the same doll just one has an active ballerina body and the other has a basic body.

And both sell for absolutely SILLY money and are way out of most collector's price range. 

Anyway,

We finally got a release date of "end of november 2020" and promotion began in earnest with social media pages popping up at last and the designer posting a lot of videos and photos of the prototypes she'd recieved which was nice.

These dolls were designed by a couple of Sindy collectors and by the sound of it they had a lot of say in how the dolls came out.

FINALLY we were actually going to get modern 11 inch Sindy dolls!? 

How exciting.

I ummed and I ahhed and I saved like hell because at £80 a pop they were NOT going to be cheap, but I knew i'd kick myself if I didn't get a couple for my collection. I always regret I could only get one Tonner Sindy.

The release was a bit chaotic, on the morning of the presale a lot went wrong with the site and payments and it took hours for a staff member to turn up and resolve things but it WAS resolved. Within days we'd had our refunds for duplicated postage and similar issues and to their credit, Kid Kreations have never really handled collector line stuff like this OR something aimed at adults rather than kids anyway. They make Designafriend dolls (18 inch American Girl/Our Generation style dolls) and that's really about it. 

Anyway, my dolls finally arrived today and I was eager to get a good look at them. 

I ordered three to get free shipping, because otherwise shipping was £7 per doll. 

The dolls come in a white outer box with the Sindy "S" logo all over it.

Inside the box there's a pale pink and silver box that's very fancy and VERY shiny.

The boxes are all slightly different and apparently if  you got all 6 they'll stack together to create a large Union Jack in pink and silver. 

Which is cute but also really space consuming because these boxes are about the size of a shoe box each and you'd have to stack them two high to get the effect which is... well it'll take up a lot of shelf space. 

The back of the box is just grey with generic copyright text in several languages. It's boring. 

inside the box lid is a cute illustration showing the vintage inspiration for the particular outfit (in this case the classic Weekender) and the updated 2020 version. 

Weekender is the outfit Sindy was originally sold in and it's absolutely iconic for Sindy. It's been reimagined a couple of times over the years so it's cool to see a modern version for this line. 

Also the art is quite cute.

inside the box there's two flaps of s printed tissue paper concealing the doll. 

(this girl is Sleepytime and we'll get back to her)

Inside the box the doll is held in the box with a few plastic straps around her ankles, legs, her waist and both arms. There are no staples in the head, the hair is simply held in place with elastic bands and that's it.

There's also a clear plastic stand and a pink card which serves as a certificate of authenticity and which number in the 1963 run she is.

There's also 3 card boxes along the side which contain accessories. 

So here's Weekender out of her box.

She's the only blonde in the line and she went through a few changes between her prototypes. Her hair was originally in a sort of short retro flip curl and then it was made longer in chunky curls. Eventually they compromised and gave her a slightly shorter style which suits her far better. 

Her hair is a sort of ashy blonde colour and strangely rooted. It has a clear part at the front and then a very vuage part for the rest of the hair which appears to be rooted to sweep backwards, presumably specifically to accomidate her headband but it means her scalp shows through when she hasn't got the headband on and sticks up funny too. 

Her hair is very soft high quality nylon with a nice sheen to it. 

Her outfit consists of a striped tee with tiered ruffles at the bottom, a pair of jeans and white sneakers topped off with a red fabric headband.

Her face was inspired by the dolls of the 80s with her fat little hamster cheeks, side glancing eyes and rooted lashes. 

She has blue eyes and bright red lips and thicker eyebrows than her vintage counterparts. Her head is very hard and on a very strange joint that looks like a long peg with a small ball at the end. She can sort of tilt her head a little but it doesn't like to hold position and her head spins rather freely on that peg so she keeps doing a bit of an exorcist emulation whenever I pick her up. 

So wierd.

Here she is alongside her inspirations. The blonde is a 1985 Sindy doll while the brunette is a 1960s Made In England Sindy wearing the original Weekender. She's lost her headband (which was originally red) and her sneakers (which were white)

I feel like the Kid Kreations Sindy fits in pretty well. In fact, she actually reminds me a bit of the Danbury Mint Porcelain Sindy with her colouration. 

(can you see the family resemblance?)

Weekender's hair is curly and supposed to be in fat ringlets which are massively out of scale for the doll. she's suffering a bit of "box hair" even after finger combing it to be less flat and clumpy.

Apparently the new dolls were heavily inspired by the 80s ones and it honestly looks like they may have duplicated the head sculpt rather than done a new one as all the shapes look pretty spot on. Same nose, same jawline, the only real difference is paintwork. The new girl has thicker less arched eyebrows, her eyes are painted larger, her lashes are significantly thicker (but she IS new) and her lips are painted larger but I feel like these heads are actually extremely alike if you see beyond the paint and look at the sculpt itself. I'd say that's a fairly good reproduction of a 1980s Sindy head.

The shoes on these dolls are made of fabric, in most cases a sort of faux leatherette stuff and beautifully made. Weekender's have red and blue strips on the back of them for a little extra detail.

Her jeans are made from light weight denim with a red ribbon stripe up each leg and red contrast stitching while her top is a cotton fabric and her headband some sort of stretch knit.

Her earrings are metal, gold coloured bows with a very very long pin holding them in. They're fairly easy to remove if you want to but the long pin means they won't come out accidentally. 

She also comes with a leatherette red bag that zips open and has a metal chain shoulder strap. I didn't get a picture of it on its own, sorry.

Inside the first of the little card boxes comes these three items. A little pink plastic heart charm, a pamphlet explaining if you get 6 of them (that is, buy the whole set of dolls) you can send away from a charm bracelet (which is a reference to the giveaways from back in the good ol' days where you could send away heart tokens cut from the boxes for things like charms or whole dolls. Such fun.) and finally a very thick doll scale magazine.

It's a full little booklet with lots of pictures and writing and it's SO TEENSY TINY and has so so many pages to read through. It contains a little blurb about the history of Sindy, her fashions, the designs for the new dolls and inspiration notes and so on. It's cool.

Box two simply contains the "accessory" which in Weekender's case is her headband.

while box three contains this lovely shopping bag which had her handbag inside of it. 

Sadly Sindy can't really HOLD this bag without a loop of elastic but it's still a fun accessory. You can pretend she just went shopping for a new handbag or something lol. 

Next up is Shopping Look, inspired by the 1960s outfit "Shopping in the rain" which features a black plastic mac and headscarf. Though i'd argue this updated outfit with the mac is far far closer to the 1980s "Rainy Days" outfit which also features a camel coloured trenchcoat style coat. 

At some point in production the doll lost her umbrella accessory and neither doll ever had heels that high or stilletto-like lol.

but here she is!

Her hair was sticking up like crazy when I got her out of her box, it doesn't want to actually sit down at her scalp so I ended up tying two strands behind her head to try to FORCE the rest of it DOWN rather than sticking up in this bit poof. 

Her outfit comprises a pale greyish sand coloured trenchcoat with a separate belt, knee high black boots and a neckscarf. 

She wears a plain black slip dress underneath and has a little diamante necklace which refuses to sit centered.

She has pale green eyes and bright red lips along with chestnut coloured hair that's styled in curls like Weekender, though Shopping Look's hair is far more unruly around the scalp as it desperately wants to puff up and seems to resent the part line existing. 

Her earrings are little diamontes which for some reason are actually designed to sit proud of her ears which I think looks a little strange, like they're a bit too big for her or something. 

Her neckscarf is actually a sort of half human sized silky hankee which I believe can double as a headscarf should you wish to struggle with that. it isn't easy to tie around her neck and I believe trying to get it around her head would be even more of a pain.

She comes with a black leather effect bag and her leather effect boots zip up at the back which makes them very easy to get on and off. 

But let's get to the actual meat of this review shall we? 

So finally Sleepy Time, who is based on a 60s doll of the same name.

Now usually I don't go for dolls in limited outfits like this. Bathing suits, bedtime wear, formal wear, that sort of thing I find too restrictive and prefer my dolls in everyday clothing as I don't really redress them once i've settled on a "look" for them. 

However, Sleepy Time was the ONLY doll in the lineup who wasn't white. She has a mid toned brown complexion and dead straight dark brown hair with big brown eyes. She's beautiful and to me looks like she's maybe South Asian or "British Asian" or whatever. Which feels very appropriate for a British doll. Also you really don't see nearly enough dolls that represent this ethnic group. 

In the case of Sindy, she's never come in this skin tone so it's utterly and completely unique.

Which of course meant I really really wanted her in my collection.

Her hair is in a complicated high ponytail with hair wrapped around it, it looks like it's specifically rooted to be in this style so i'm not sure it'd look at all okay if you took it down and there's no way I could get it back into this style myself, i'm incompetent when it comes to hairstyling. 

In her prototype her hair was streaked with blonde but it doesn't appear to be the case with her final doll. 

Her lips are a beautiful magenta colour and her eyes are brown.

My girl has a little scuff on her forehead but you can only see it in certain lights and I couldn't get a photo no matter how hard I tried. 

Her earrings are a rose gold colour and little hearts. simple and cute.

Under her satin robe she has a pj top and little shorts of the same fabric. The top has teensy little black buttons and the whole ensemble is beautifully made and tailored. 

Her shoes are simple little slippers with a hard plastic sole and a little strap of fleecey fabric. 

Sleepytime's bag is a little toiletries bag containing a brush, a mirror, a er... curler... apparently it's a curler... not a rampant rabbit <_< >_> and a hairdryer. 

She also comes with a little black fabric bow headband.

Sindy's new body is completely new with the exception of the hands which are 1980s Active Sindy  hands. 

She has rotational joints at her shoulder and hips which have quite a good range of motion and simple hinge joints for her elbows and knees. She also has a waist joint that can spin a full 360 if you so desire lol. 

She has molded on panties.

Here we have a 1987 active body doll (she's a hasbro doll but they use the exact same body as the pedigree sindys from a few years prior) and a basic 1985 Sindy.

The new doll is a touch shorter, in part due to her feet being flatter. She has the same pinched in waist and wide chest of the vintage dolls but has substantially more realistically sculpted shoulders with an actual molded clavical.

She has also got more realistic boobs. Vintage Sindy has very pointy boobs lol. The new doll has a very differently shaped bust that feels more natural and less conical bra.

The new feet have molded toes with toenails and are narrower and flatter than the vintage feet. She also has a more slender ankle.

The hands are definitely modified 80s active hands, they have the same splayed pinkie finger.

Unfortunately the jointed knees and elbows are VERY limited in their motion. This is as far as they can bend. Neither can manage a full 90 degrees which would be more realistic and allow the doll to sit down more gracefully. The main problem here is that there's no cutout in the upper part of the arm and leg to allow the hinge to rotate more, so as soon as the lower limb hits the plastic flange of the upper it stops and can't go any further. A shame as a little more thought could have made a huge difference. 

That said, the limbs are all hard plastic like the rest of her which makes dressing and undressing the doll a breeze! The old dolls are a nightmare to dress because their rubbery limbs CLING to the clothing and make getting anything tight on near impossible. You also can't get boots on the old dolls without a lot of force and talc. It's a huge chore so these new ones are so much more enjoyable to dress.

Sindy's hip joint is however pretty fun. It's a ball rather like the old dolls only with plastic pins holding it in place rather than elastic (to go with modern construction standards). It means she can do the splits. 

And much like a vintage doll her legs can spin fully around, as can her shoulders providing hilarious poses. 

I'm sorry sindy! this is so undignified.

Shoes are not compatable, least, not fully. I know some collectors did manage to squeeze the fabric shoes onto vintage dolls but when I tried it I got too anxious about damaging something as the vintage doll feet are a LOT chunkier. 

Likewise the mules I tried on the new doll just fell off. You can see here how much wider the shoe is. 

Something like the boots might stay on because they're long but i'd say they'd still be a bit loose. 

YMMV but imo the shoes are not compatable.

The rest of the clothing however is, for the most part. 

Getting the pants onto a vintage doll is very difficult thanks to the rubbery legs. I managed to get Sleepytime's outfit onto an active doll but i couldn't force Weekender's jeans over the rubbery legs and eventually gave up. With force you might be able to but I decided it wasn't worth the fight and risk of damaging the jeans. 

But to be fair, getting ANYTHING tight onto a vintage sindy doll, even clothing made FOR her and stuff she actually was sold in is absolutely horrible. 

Rubbery legs are horrible. I hate them.

I redressed Sleepy Time in Shopping Look's outfit because I thought she'd suit it. I love this look on her. The little black bow is hard to see against her hair but it ties in the bag and boots well I think. 

And then I gave Shopping Look a liv dress because it fitted her so much nicer than it fitted the vintage doll it was on. I bought her some fabric boots off ebay and the accessories are from a Fleur fashion pack. 

I ended up tying her hair back because it just will NOT stop poofing up at the scalp. I think it needs a boil wash to convince the fibre to sit the hell down. 

But having it tied back meant it didn't get caught on her wierd earrings too. 

All in all, i'm very happy with my three girls. I actually like Weekender far more than I expected to as I tend to find blonde dolls a bit bland. 

All three of them are stunningly beautiful and to me look VERY Sindy. Their faces are to my eye spot on. I only wish they had better engineering so they could touch their face and sit the hell down properly. 

a little refinement to the joints and fixing the head connection so they don't spin around all crazy and can actually tilt their heads properly would be great. 

The outfits are gorgeous, beautifully made and very detailed. The hair is soft and doesn't shed badly. Their lashes are securely rooted in there and their bodies feel fairly sturdily made even if they are quite lightweight.

From the perspective of someone who collects playline modern dolls, these feel about on par with a lot of modern stuff in terms of construction, really ultimately we're paying a premium for the very fancy outfits and shoes, the metal jewellery and fabric bags and the fancy boxes. 

I say that, but when you consider that an LOL OMG doll is £35-40 each and Rainbow High is £30, £80 for a collector line doll doesn't really feel that horrible. I mean yes, it's far more than i'd LIKE to pay for a doll but I don't feel cheated by the end product. 

Tonner Sindy ended up costing me a similar amount and had issues right out of the box with her lashes falling off and all that, and while she was substantially heavier and made of a dense textured deluxe feeling plastic, mine came wearing a bikini and that was it. Wheras Kid Kreations have given me for the same money a doll that comes in a full outfit with accessories, a stand and shoes (my tonner didn't even come with shoe). When you consider that the dressed Tonner dolls were well over £100 each, I think Kid Kreations didn't do too badly. 

I hope they do some fashion packs. 

All in all, I give this set a solid 9 out of 10 dubiously shaped hair curlers.