Rainbow High Pacific Coast Simone Summers

 Another day, another Rainbow High doll. 

What can I say, they are currently the most interesting doll line on the market. 

I've been eying the Pacific Coast line for a while but at £35 for a bloody SWIMSUIT line, the price made my eyes water. (for reference, the regular dolls are between £30 and £35 with two full outfits so... yeah)

However, Simone was just too gorgeous for me to keep putting off getting. I had some amazon vouchers and she kept popping in and out of stock so I took the chance to grab the last one they had with the reasoning of "I don't want to miss out completely, she seems to be selling the best of the lot"

And I can't say I don't understand why she keeps selling out. She's absolutely gorgeous. 

Simone uses, I THINK, the same face mold as Daphne and Emi with almond shaped eyes and a cute little button nose. She has a mid toned tan skintone and pale purple eyes. 

Supposedly her theme is "sunrise" though nowhere on the box does it state this. 

The back of the box, like the other series boxes, features a shimmery image of the whole lineup. Pacific Coast features 6 completely new characters and one returning character in Bella. 

The theming on this set is mostly beachy but not entirely. Bella is just pink, so is the boy doll Finn. The blue girl Hali is supposed to be Aqua or something. The white one Margot is "pearl", Harper is "sand" and Simone and Phaedra are sunrise and sunset respectively. 

Simone's major is apparently photography. All of the dolls have a focus but I tend not to notice it because i'm unobservant lol. Also they're all over the place and feel pretty random. Most of them are fashion related which makes sense given Rainbow High is supposedly a fashion school right? (or is it an art school? I really don't understand American school systems) but then a few of them have like.. music or like.. computer animation (incidentally, that's what MY degree is in lol) and even journalism? so... is Rainbow High just a regular college? I wouldn't have put journalism as an "art" you know? 

Anyway, whatever, MGA's wierd ass school systems aside (they love their ambiguous specialist schools huh?) Simone's only personality trait that the box tells us is that she's big into photography.

Now yes, I KNOW there's a cartoon series, but i'm old and not the target audience so I'm not watching it. Deal with it. 

Simone is packaged much like earlier series dolls, with way too many tabs in her head and far too much crunchy product in her hair. Bleh. 

Not to mention the glued to shit box that the accessories are in that you kinda have to wrench off the backing card in order to open. 

She comes with an extra baggie containing instructions, her stand and extra legs which is a bit creepy. 

Simone herself comes packaged in a wierd ballerina pose (what IS this pose supposed to be? lol) with her sun visor half off her head because it constantly rides up her smooth head and pops off. 

The visor is tabbed to her head with far too many plastic staples too. 

 Poor girl suffers a bit from post box shedding and crunchy random chunks of hair as well as her high ponytail being squashed flat. 

She's gonna need a comb. 

Her hair colour surprised me actually. All the promo images had lighting that suggested her hair was predominantly orange but it's not. It's actually a soft pinkish tone (salmon?) with coral, yellowish and pinky orange streaks. I couldn't actually work out how many different colours there are in here because a lot of them merge into one another and mess with my eyes, but I counted at least 4 distinct tones. 

They really did manage to capture "sunrise" vibes with this blend. And like most of the Rainbow High dolls, this hair is very very soft once you comb the gel out.

Her makeup consists of shimmery pink lips, gold on the eyelids (it's glittery) and orange eyeshadow. 

She also has molded baby hairs that are painted pink, yellow and orange. 

Her pale eyes contrast nicely with her warmer coloured hair and makeup. 

She has a pink scrunchie in her hair which is really cute and looks and feels just like a real scrunchie, just teensy tiny. 

Simone's accessories in place of the second outfit the regular dolls come with are a pair of sunglasses, a vinyl feeling bag and a huge beach towel.

I expected to toss these straight to one side but the towel is really soft and the size of it is actually quite fun. I've never seen a doll towel this oversized before and i'm gonna admit, I had way too much fun playing with it. 

The bag is also really nicely made, I just kinda wish she had some stuff other than her towel to put IN it. A water bottle maybe? Some sunscreen?

But i do love that the towel is large enough to wrap around the doll. It brings back memories of the beach with those MASSIVE beach towels you could just hide in lol.

It looks so cozy! 

Simone's actual outfit, if you can call it that, is a simple but well sewn one piece swimsuit with a gradient pattern of yellow to peach with a decorative belt piece and a similarly gradiented wrap skirt.

The swimsuit feels like it's made of actual swimsuit fabric, which is pretty cool.

She also comes with a pair of slightly heeled slip on shoes with a funky square pattern on the sole and "rainbow" branding on the strap. 

I have to admit though, even though all these pieces are really nicely made, I feel like for the price I would have really liked her to have come with a casual "off the beach" outfit as well you know? Day/night outfits maybe? Beachwear during the day, a cute tee and shorts for hitting the bars and restaurants after. I mean, you're not gonna head home IN your swimsuit are you?You get changed before you go home right? 

Instead of a useful extra outfit, MGA decided a pair of extra lower legs was the choice. Their reasoning? So the doll could wear flats or heels. 

You know how else you could have done that MGA? ANKLE ARTICULATION LIKE JETT HAS YOU FUCKING MORONS.

Ahem. 

Or you know, faux flats like several of the previous Rainbow High dolls already wear (Georgia's sneakers for example, Jade's various shoes and so on) 

Was anyone really clamouring for a flat foot option? Like.. really?

So instead of a change of clothes the Pacific High dolls have a hiked up price point because MGA decided to do swappable legs and make more plastic crap that'll just get lost in the toy box. -_- 

They swap by tugging the leg and detatching it at the knee. Then with a little force you can ram the new pair on.

Now there's a problem with this feature beyond the point that it's pointless and nobody was asking for it. It fucks up the stability of the knee joint. 

You can see here that bending the already stiff knee puts a lot of strain on the upper leg, see how the seam is opening up? Every time you bend Simone's legs that seam opens up a bit more and it worried me. Over time that's going to split open. 

The knee also just feels way more fragile than the previous dolls did. Rainbow high dolls always have stiff knee joints but with a regular doll you feel like it'll survive the pressure required to loosen it up. With these detatchable legs you can feel the strain being put entirely upon that peg that slides into the lower leg piece and it feels like it'll snap if you push too hard. 

I'm not sure how the original dolls are constructed but I suspect they have either a thicker peg or a longer one that gives that joint a little more stability and strength.When you bend the leg of a regular Rainbow High doll the tension feels like it's focused more evenly across all the pieces in the mechanism, while with the Pacific Coast leg it's ALL on the lower leg peg piece. It makes the knee harder to bend as well, as you don't have decent leverage from a balanced hinge. 

Put simply, MGA sacrificed a working joint in favour of a gimmick nobody asked for. -_- 

WHY mga? Why? 

You fucking idiots. 

As an aside, Simone has funky nail polish. Yellow, Orange, peach and pink. Cute.

But like.. ultimately, what the hell is she gonna do with extra legs? I mean I know when I pop to the beach I always pack the essentials. Sunglasses, a sun visor, a towel... my spare legs. 

*eyeroll* 

I do think it's amusing they fit into her bag though. The towel doesn't, it's too bulky. 

Her sun visor is also a pain in the arse. It has a velcro strap on the back but it's slightly shorter than it probably should be to go around her big head and has no stretch to it. The visor strap is made of a thick vinyl feeling fabric like her bag and there's no elastic segment which would have helped a lot. 

As a result if you put it over her hair is slides up her forehead and eventually pops off and getting it to do up UNDER her hair involves a lot of faffing about to get it to sit correctly. Even then, I found I had to keep forcing it down as it really really wants to slip upwards. 

Now anyone who knows me knows I cannot stand "event specific" outfits for my dolls. Swimsuits, prom dresses, sports wear etc. I find them too limiting, I like my dolls to be in everyday clothing as often as possible thank you very much. 

So I had to find Simone a new outfit so she could leave the goddamn beach at last and go grab a coffee. 

(in the wise words of ice cream company Tip Top: "If you're out of sight of the water, you're in your underwear" )

So Simone got Georga's little knit strappy top and Kia's shorts. The colours almost exactly match the colours in her visor and scrunchie which is fantastic.

I still wanted to retain her beachy vibe but without the whole... stuck forever in a swimsuit thing. 

I love her. 

Despite her flaws (those stupid legs) she's a gorgeous doll using my favourite of the Rainbow High face molds. It doesn't hurt that orange tones are some of my absolute favourites too heh. 

I think she may stand out now as my favourite of the Rainbow High dolls released thus far. 

I just really really wish she'd come with a set of alternative not swimwear clothes instead of those stupid extra feet that only screw up her knee stability. 

And what the heck am I gonna do with extra legs? Make a macabre necklace outta them? Wear them as earrings? I mean come on, they just go in a box and are forgotten about. 

It's pointless plastic waste and it pisses me off. 

and no, i'm not gonna stop whining about it.