The UK is still being slow as all shit to get any new stuff in but thankfully we have all the european Amazons who ship to the UK for £5-6 which is more than reasonable thank you very much.
So with the UK still not having the Rainbow High slumber party or rock star lines, how long we'd have to wait for the core series 4 to hit was anyone's guess.
As it turned out, Amazon Italy got them in stock for immediate dispatch and the cost ended up being the same as i'd pay within the UK even after taxes and shipping which is honestly pretty ridiculous. It really shouldn't cost me less to import something from nearly 2000 miles away than from within my own country, that's nuts!
I ordered a few things from Amazon Italy in two separate transactions. First I ordered Rock Star Vanessa and she arrived within 3 days in an amazon box covered in customs forms and amazon stickers in Italian which makes sense right?
So then I ordered series 4 Meena and Daphne and that's where things get odd.
It took 9 days for them to turn up and when they did they had no customs labels, no italian stickers, instead they came in an English box with a return address for Amazon's warehouse in SCOTLAND and Royal Mail labels. This suggests that this parcel came from within the UK and never once got on a place.
So why on earth are Amazon Italy selling dolls from a warehouse in the UK while Amazon UK still have no listings for these dolls yet?
It's so wierd! I'm so confused!
Anyway, dolls are here so let's take a look at Meena first.
I admit I don't really love ordering things from abroad unless I have to because returns are a lot more of a headache if there's a problem. Add to that the language barrier and I was really nervous opening this box.
and it looks like I had every reason to be nervous because upon removing the doll boxes from the parcel it became clear both of them had issues.
Daphne was FILTHY with grey smears across her forehead, obvious marbling on one arm, black spots on her body and a big black blotch in her hair. I'm hoping it's just dirt and it'll come off.
Meena had issues too.
We'll get to that in a moment.
Meena's box only looked battered up because I opened it before taking this photo to check her.
It's the same as most of the RH boxes, nothing much more to say about it beyond "thank goodness it's fairly easy to open and slide the doll out to check for issues without destroying the whole box"
At first glance Meena looks okay. But even through the plastic of her box I could see she had some issues with her paint.
Her eyeliner is chipped, her glitter is shedding off in clumps and there's a line of paint running straight across her eyebrow.
DAMN.
I hoped that line was just a stray lash or something but alas, it's paint. Worse, it's so securely on there that I couldn't easily remove it without risking damaging the eyebrow underneath.
I can fix chipped eyeliner, I cannot fix a line where there shouldn't be one.
At this point I wondered if I should just put her back in her box and contact Amazon so I asked some others if this was "defective enough" to justify a return. They all said yes, so it's nice to know i'm not just being nickpicky. As it worked out, she actually has MORE issues than just this photo but this was all I was aware of at the time.
I contacted Amazon italy but the language barrier was a problem. Still they had two options for me. Return and hope they could get me one that wasn't errored, or simply ask for a refund in the form of vouchers and keep the doll. I opted for the second because I wasn't sure HOW to return her to a whole other country (even though she clearly came from Scotland according to her box) and the language barrier explaining how to do it just stressed me out trying to make sure I understood it fully.
I expected to have to send them photos but they didn't actually ask. So that was nice.
Once I had that sorted I felt a little better about opening her and seeing what I could do about her flaws.
Meena is our first Indian doll and she comes with a lot of little nods to that including the henna Mehndi on her hands.
Dolls of this ethnicity are SO rare, even in collector circles so getting a playline doll who's explicitly stated to be from India is really cool. Representation matters.
Her hands are sewn to her pants which is a bit wierd.
Meena is an unusual skin tone, a sort of milky brown, like chocolate milk. It has an ashy quality to it which contrasts nicely with her vivid hair. I don't know many people with such cool toned skin but someone else online said it matched their complexion exactly so that's pretty cool.
Her hair is messy as all hell, full of product and curled in fat ringlets. I'm not a fan. Usually I like curly hair but this just looks messy.
The front of her hair is no better. Her right side is CAKED in so much gel that it's hard and feels like it'll snap off if you touch it. The two pieces that are tied up are both unravelling all over the place, hair is shedding all over the place and her clips are all bunched up where i'm certain they aren't supposed to be.
She also has an obvious bald patch behind those clips.
Poor girl needs a spa day.
But before I do that let's look at her face.
She has reddish coloured lips but I wouldn't call them "bright red" like her wiki page does. They're more of a pinkish red in my opinion with a very white tooth painted between them.
She has a narrow face mold with large almond shaped eyes made to look ever larger and even more angled by her makeup. She has bold black cat eye liner ringed with a line of orange, then a line of gold glitter and then these fancy swirls of gold over a brown eyeshadow. These fancy eyes mean that her eyebrows are positioned higher than they would be usually which is a little unusual and can give her a bit of a startled or perhaps haughty expression depending on the angle.
Her eyes are brown. It's nice to see more brown eyes in the lineup.
In an attempt to rid the front of her hair of that awful gel I ran her under hot water from my sink tap. Not boiling water, no, hot water I could keep my hand under. This was enough to completely obliterate her curls which suggests to me they weren't set in any way as it SHOULD be harder to straighten doll hair than just getting it wet.
Unfortunately this also taught me that her gold glitter isn't sealed in any way either and most of it washed off without me even touching her face. Simply getting her wet was enough to remove her glitter. I wish it was that easy to remove glitter from other things, because damn. But it's frustrating her as the glitter was a large part of her makeup so to have it wash off and then continue to just flake away is really disappointing.
Be warned. Don't get her wet.
I also ended up redoing all her elastic bands to neaten them up and swapped the front pieces around so they'd actually cover that bald patch correctly. I feel like this was how they were supposed to go anyway, as it covers that partline properly.
I think her hair looks a lot better straighter anyway. I wouldn't normally say that, but those thick curls weren't doing her any favours honestly.
With the curl out of her hair (again, I stress, I did NOT straighten her hair, I literally rinsed it with water and this was the result) you can see how many colours she has in there. I count at least 4 if not 5 different shades. There's a blonde streak at the front on both sides, a reddish streak toward the back on both sides and then multiple shades of orange blended together. Her hair has a real shine to it that makes it appear to glow even more brightly in the light.
Her primary outfit consists of an orange satiny top with a single ringed shoulder strap and a large trailing piece of fabric coming from that shoulder, a pair of gold trousers with an odd folded over waistband and orange laced legs with a side slit, orange heels and a lot of bracelets. I like that she has some gold in her outfit, I definitely prefer the dolls who have a second colour in their outfits, I think it works better than monochrome colour blocking.
Oh and her pants have actual pockets, so that's cool.
Her earrings are large gold hoops with molded balls and dangles. They're molded all in one piece and a bit of a pain to get in her ears as the pegs are quite thick and the ball piece that sits against the ear is quite bulky. They don't quite sit flush.
She also comes with 6 bracelets and an upper arm cuff.
Interestingly, all six bracelets are unique which is a detail I didn't expect to see.
On one arm we have a large elephante that's painted to look enamelled, a bracelet made up of RH roundals and finally a chain bracelet with orange gems.
Her other wrist features a winding snake with orange gems, a chain bracelet with a RH dangling charm and a thick gold bracelet with elephantes engraved all the way around it.
Her shoes are orange and gold heeled sandals with a buckle detail on the heel.
They're made of soft vinyl but still can be a bit fiddly to get on and off.
While the top has a cool "woven" sort of look to it, her skirt is completely unlined and has a missed section of hemming right at the front where the machine missed a section so it sticks out.
Yet another error for the poor girl. *sigh*
It does have intergral panties though so it doesn't spin around on the doll. Lol.
It's a very soft skirt and MGA's obsession with that whole high/low hemline is on full display here. I'm just not totally sure about it because it feels a bit too "dolls of the world" rather than something a fashionable teen would wear. But maybe I just don't GET fashion. I AM old after all. Still if anyone knows what this outfit is referencing (usually the rainbow high dolls are wearing outfits referencing some fashion brand) i'd love to know. My searches are netting nothing.
incidentally, the flared shoulder piece of Meena's first outfit's top has this same gold pattern on it. It's just hard to see because all the folded pleats are stuck together from whatever fabric paint they used. Seriously I had to PEEL it open to see the pattern and didn't even realise it had one till I had finished taking photos.
A better look at that missed piece of hem. This edging piece is a quite stiff fabric as well so it sticks out and won't tuck back under unless I sit and sew it, which I can't be bothered doing right now as I haven't got a matching thread anyway.
Annoying.
You might notice that these shoes are NOT heels. No, these are flat shoes. Meena comes with two sets of legs like the Pacific High girls do so she can wear heels or flats. Like the pacific high dolls, I don't think this was as elegant a solution as MGA thinks it is. Articulated ankles or faux flats would have been a better idea and it's not like they don't already have the tooling for articulated ankles, Jett had them but they've not used that body since. Nor have they never done faux flats. A lot of series 1 and 2 have them.
Like with pacific high, not only does the extra unneccisary plastic annoy me, it also is a pain in the arse to swap these leg pieces out. The joint is really stiff and it takes a lot of force to get the leg to go on. I'm an adult and I found it really hard and at times really painful swapping the limbs, I cannot see a child being able to do this on their own and as a parent lemme tell ya, I do NOT want to be swapping bloody legs every few minutes as a kid tries to pick an outfit for their doll to wear today. It's really really annoying. If the kid can't do it themselves is it really a kids toy?
Another thing to consider with these flat shoes is compatibility. As it stands the only dolls who can wear these flat shoes are the pacific high dolls and a couple of the series 4 dolls. Nobody else can wear these flats, which is severely limiting when it comes to mixing and matching. it's the same problem Mattel has with Barbie having flats and heels and different sized feet, inevitably you end up with pieces you can only use on one doll or unable to use your favourite bits on your favourite doll.
Cut this shit out doll companies.
Work out a better solution.
Anyway, these shoes are really cute and quite cleverly designed. They have soft rubbery straps that the gold thread feeds through allowing them not only to lace but to be loosened and tightened like real shoes. I don't think i've ever seen a pair of playline doll shoes actually behave like real shoes before. The flex in them means you don't have to fully unlace them to take them off or put them on, you just untie, loosen the laces a little and the whole foot slips out. I love them. In fact i'm kinda annoyed only TWO of my dolls will be able to wear them because of the stupid flat foot situation. -_-
Meena's original top and second outfit skirt are probably the same fabric, or as close as possible.
At this point Meena's original top started to lose stitching around the ring piece at the shoulder. Another big sigh.
Her second shirt and gold pants I don't think look as good together honestly.
I definitely prefer the first outfit so back onto that she goes for a "orange girls" photo. Have I mentioned how much I love the colour orange before? I do. And it's a colour you really don't often see in "girl" toys. But Meena is definitely even more unique with her orange being a substantially darker shade and with no pink at all in her hair. Poppy had bright orange with streaks of pink giving her tutti fruity hair, Georgia's hair is peach toned and Simone's hair is honestly pink, just lots of shades of pink.
Meena's hair is very clearly orange.
Not only is it a darker orange, it's also a lot glossier and shinier than the older dolls. Poppy's hair is very matte while Meena's has an almost metallic sheen to it in places.
I would call this Irn Bru orange.
I HATE Irn Bru but it's a glorious "am I really gonna drink that?" shade of luminous orange. Meena's hair reminds me of that, but also Saffron and Tumeric and other such dried spices which I suspect was more the intention.
When I first saw Meena I wasn't enthused. Her strangely proportioned face, her ashy skin tone and her defects all made me uncertain about my purchse but I will tell you all now, having handled her for a while and posed her for photos, she's won me over.
Yeah she's a rather unique looking girl with her high eyebrows and massive eyes but she's endeared herself to me, and not just because she's the first actually out and out stated "from India" doll i've ever actually seen. (no i'm not counting all those Barbies in saris, that was just Barbie in a sari).
It's unfortunate that she has a load of little flaws, they add up fast and frustrate me a lot. I feel like MGA's current plan is to flood the market with dolls so that their competators can't get any shelf space, but this rush to make MORE MORE MORE has resulted in a huge slump in quality control as they speed to get things out.
Looking at Amazon reviews, there are a fair few reports of defects and general grime on the dolls and that's such a pity because if MGA just slowed the fuck down, we'd get some really nice products here.
Like guys please... please slow down.
We've had an absolute avalanche of Rainbow and Shadow High products from MGA the past few months and it's just too much too fast. It's stressful for consumers to keep up, difficult for stores to display all their stock (this may be why a lot of places are slow to put the new stuff out, they haven't got space and haven't sold the old stuff yet because it only came out a few weeks ago!) and clearly it's difficult for the factory to keep up with a hectic and frankly ludicrous schedule of releases.
It took me several hours of work but I did eventually get most of the ink mark off her face. I had to use acetone, a veeeery light hand and a teensy tiny pair of sharp tweazers to scrape scrape scrape and hope it didn't gouge her face or remove the paint underneath. I didn't get rid of all of it, it's really engrained in there, but I got it faded enough that you can barely see it in photos so it'll do.
I also filled in her missing eyeliner and spent quite a bit of time fixing her hair right at the start of this review. It needed to be washed and both tied sections needed completely redoing.
I also elastic handed her arm cuff to stop it slipping.
But I can't fix her shedding and missing glitter unfortunately.
And here's the thing, this is a brand new £35 doll. I shouldn't HAVE to spend my whole evening getting her looking presentable out of the box. I shouldn't HAVE to repaint sections of missing paint or carefully remove overspray. I shouldn't have to redo the factory hairstyle because whoever did it at the factory didn't do it properly the first time. I shouldn't have to rinse so much gel out of the doll's hair that my hands feel sticky for hours even after scrubbing them with soap. I shouldn't have to resew clothing the DAY I got them. (have you noticed she's also lost a gold stud from her top too?)
I've had 60 year old dolls come to me needing less work ffs.
this frankly isn't acceptable.
I will accept small flaws in dolls. I don't mind having to repaint a tiny chunk of lip or eye paint, or having to comb out box hair, but I get very very pissed off when I have to sit and resew things, have elements of embellishment just drop off from gentle handling and have makeup literally coming off on my fingers as I move the doll's head.
It's not okay MGA. It really isn't OK.
Meena's a beautiful doll and I love her hair colour especially. But she's a very very flawed doll. I feel increasingly less guilty about requesting a refund from Amazon for her, because the more I handled her, the more flaws I found.
I feel like MGA have gotten a little complacent here. They know they have a big seller, but at the same time for a while now quality has been slipping and MGA's customer service attitude has become more and more "sucks to be you" about it. I don't even bother contacting them here in the UK anymore because I know they'll just repeat the same robotic reply "return to the store, it's not our responsibility"
well MGA, it IS your responsibility. You made these dolls, you're the ones rushing production and not doing appropriate quality control. Stop passing the buck to your customers because ultimately, if the dolls continue to come flawed, people will just stop buying them. £35 is a lot of money and we're in the middle of a huge cost of living crisis here in the UK. People are literally unable to pay for their heating or hot water ffs, if they're gonna treat their kid or themselves, they're gonna want a product that feels worth that money.
I feel like right now, people are going to be MORE critical of these flaws as belts tighten and money becomes harder and harder to get.
And maybe that's another reason MGA is rushing this wave out. They know that soon people will stop buying frivilous little treats. Gotta get those sales while people are still feeling like they can buy their kid a toy and still eat that week.
In terms of a review? I wouldn't buy this wave blind. If you can go into a store and pick them out in person, do so. And be aware that there are sewing issues you may not be able to see till you debox. Have a needle and thread handy.
Can I recommend Meena at full price? not really. Like Pacific High a large chunk of her price tag is those stupid extra legs rather than more fancy outfits or accessories. Both her outfits are nice, but neither of them are overly fancy when you compare them to other rainbow high dolls. She gets a lot of bracelets and some earrings, but she only has 4 garment pieces which is a lower count than most of the Rainbow High dolls we've had thus far who usually come with a jacket or some other over layer. She feels a lot more basic than several of the dolls who've come before her, just like Pacific High does, despite that deluxe price tag. She also has less pieces than Delilah does again, because Delilah doesn't have extra legs. Sorry but i'd rather have a little pashmina or something over a pair of stupid extra legs. Much as I love Meena's sandals, there's so many better ways to do flats for dolls. The wastefulness of those legs and the extra cost they tack onto the doll budget just pisses me off.
I'm sorry Meena, you deserved so much better.
I think this happens with a lot of doll lines. An initial release of five sells out. So a second release of 5 new c h characters plus the orig. 5 in new outfits is planned. Then they repeat that pattern at smaller and smaller intervals until they reach market saturation.
ReplyDeleteAt that point they dominate the doll section but there are too many releases for even the most rabid collector to keep up with. Buyer fatigue kicks in, shops don't restock with new dolls until old dolls sell out. Buyers don't buy because they can't find the doll they want.
Then you company says "We're disappointed in our customers. Initially each doll was selling x units. Now each doll is selling a fraction of that. We need to discontinue this line as it's no longer economically viable."
I don't know if this is just companies getting excited, companies trying to get a toy through it's life cycle before the next hot thing comes out, or just companies trying to make as much money as they can, while they can.