VIP Hair Academy

 In terms of toy lines I expected a doll spinoff of, I cannot say VIP pets was one I would have had money on. Then again, I wouldn't have put money on that line getting a reboot either but there you go.

So for those not aware, I "heart" VIP Pets are a line of small plastic dogs with rooted hair who's whole gimmick revolves around hair play. 

the first line was released way back in 2014? Ish? They got a few releases and then disappeared without really making any sort of splash in the toy world. They did however make excellent hybrids with doll bodies. 

And yeah, I don't think they look much like dogs either. But apparently they ARE supposed to be dogs.

This was one of my hybrids on a Monster High body. She's kinda fun.

Anyway, 

IMC decided to reboot this toy line a few years back but this time with a blind box gimmick, a water play wash off to reveal makeup gimmick and more dog-like sculpts. 

But largely they're the same toy. A small static dog body with an oversized vinyl head that can turn and a whole lot of rooted hair. 

Unlike the first generation, these newer ones really go all out with the hair play aspect, all of the dogs seem to have over-long hair and come with several hair accessories. 

They also have better hair than the g1 dolls. 

But they are still odd little things that only ever appealed to me from a hybrid standpoint. 

And it seems I wasn't alone, as a lot of people started putting these heads onto other bodies, including Barbie and Rainbow High to great success. 

So when IMC said they were going to do a doll line, a lot of us assumed they'd been inspired by those hybrids and we'd be getting anthro dolls, a bit like Pinkie Cooper or the Catwalk Kitties or something.

I have to say, I did NOT expect what we did get.

 This is VIP Hair Academy. 

Who honestly look more like the Cry Babies dolls than they do the VIP Pets. 

But let's take a closer look. 

I actually had to import these dolls from Spain as Amazon UK wanted stupid money for them via a third party seller and nowhere else in the country seemed to get them in. 

A few of them were on clearance while others were close to full price, no idea why. Mia was about 18 euros plus shipping. 

Her box is a pretty odd shape that's way bigger than it needs to be. This seems to be a trend of late. 

The back of the box details the contents which I do appreciate, she has a lot of random beads and clips and a bead tool of some sort.

There's also art of the characters from this first wave. Mia and Giselle were on clearance and Lexi was still full price so.. uh.. okay? 

They all look to come with hairdressing accessories like scissors which is a cute thematic touch. 

One side of the box ties into the VIP Pets line. Apparently Nyla, one of the characters from that line, is Mia's pet. Okay? but um... aren't the vip pet dogs like... sentient? They wear clothes and use tools and stuff. I'm disturbed at the thought they're pets to humans. Best not to think too hard about it.

The other side details what they're counting as accessories which I REALLY appreciate. 

The beading tool and beads are counted as one thing, while I KNOW a lot of other companies *cough cough MGA* would count each individual bead to artificially inflate their count.

So we have a bead tool and beads, a comb, a butterfly clip, some smaller hair clips and elastic bands, a little scissors and combs accessory, earrings and shoes. 

I'm not totally sure the bits of her outfit she's literally wearing count as "accessories" but ahh well, whatever. 

It's a more honest count than most of these. 

She's tied into her box with the strangest plastic ties i've ever seen, they're bobbly! what on earth? This means they're rougher and more snag-prone than the normal plastic ties. Don't like. And she had so bloody many of them. 

I didn't enjoy the deboxing process at all.

Mia has a cute little face but she does look extremely worried with those eyebrows. 

She has little pink flowers across her cheeks. All the dolls seem to have a thematic decoration across their cheeks like this.

She has an absolutely gorgeous dark skin tone that's really quite rich and contrasts beautifully with her soft purple hair. I DIG this colour palette.

She has inset eyes that are done a bit like Rainbow High or, more accurately, the Cry Babies BFFs. They're a flat image with a plastic dome over the top to give them depth. 

Freed from her plastic prison, her hair is longer than she is tall. I think it's saran, it feels slightly greasy and is very very pleasant to run fingers through. 

They're quite petite dolls, standing only about 10-11 inches tall. They're taller than Bratz but significantly shorter than Barbie or Rainbow High. 

Cry Babies BFF definitely have similar eyes. Quite different proportions though.

My VIP Pets/Rainbow High hybrid also has similar inset eyes, albeit much larger. 

which is another thing about these dogs being the girl's pets. Look at how big their heads are compared to the human! Even on their original body they'd end up close to waist height with a good 60% of that being head. They just don't go together proportionately at all. 

I believe these two dolls have the same hair fiber, it has that same soft slightly greasy texture. 

What's odd is that the VIP "celebripets" who have the inset eyes come with false lashes too, while the doll doesn't. Curious there.

Mia's hair has several tiny little braids in it but she suffers badly from box hair with her hair all scrunched to both sides, this didn't resolve with just a brush either. The visible bald patch is not a good look, particularly not for a hair play doll. 

To be honest, her hair while very long, isn't that thick anyway. It's fine, but it's certainly thinner than the pet doll's hair.

The front part of her hair is held in its own little hair tie to pull it up and forward. It feels coarser than the rest of her hair but that may be whatever they did to it to make it curl.

Her hair is three different colours. A pale purple, a brighter purple and a vivid pink.

She has a sort of flat profile which is quite common with modern big headed dolls. 

As I was stripping her off to get a better look at her body her shoe disintegrated in my hand. Looks like there was a manufacturing error, perhaps an air bubble or something? But yeah... not overly impressed. 

Her shoes are hard plastic too, which makes them a pain in the arse to get on and off. I wasn't being rough, but I don't think these were designed to be really removed if they're this fragile.

Her outfit is quite simple but it's cute. The top has a mesh overlay and a bow in the middle. It's a nice shape but the sleeves are unhemmed which concerns me regarding longevity. 

Likewise her skirt is made from some sort of woven material without a proper hem at the bottom and you can see it's fraying just out of the box simply due to the nature of this sort of material. 

Much as I appreciate them using textured fabrics here, I do wish they'd finished them properly because these will NOT withstand play for long.

The skirt has two pockets which is neat. Inside one is this one piece accessory. It was plastic stapled into the pocket but I snipped that ugly thing off. It sits inside the pocket okay without but I might be inclined to loop a little bit of thread into the scissor gap and sew it into the pocket. 

This piece works well enough sticking just out of the pocket. It gives the illusion of all those little tools without the issue of lots of tiny easily loseable/swallowable bits. 

Her body is petite and reads as teen to me rather than a fully adult body. She has a very small bust, a little bit of hip but overall has a degree of immaturity which is nice to see when most dolls go for a much more mature shape. 

Her body matches her face I feel, in that she doesn't have that Betty Boop baby face on a grown up body thing LOL OMG suffer from. 

Her proportions are a bit odd though. Her arms seem too long.

She has a really nicely sculpted back. That thigh gap though, lol. What is up with that?

Her legs have no knee joint but she has a surprising amount of mobility in the hip. She can cross her legs over like this....

Or splay them out like this. 

I mean, i'm not sure how that'll aid play in any way, but it surprised me none the less. 

Her arms DO have an elbow and wrist joint but the engineering sucks. Her elbows barely move due to poor design which makes me think "why even bother?". The wrists are better, but for some reason IMC decided not to give her removable hands, so dressing her is a bit of a pain. 

Her articulation pattern made me think of LOL OMG, but of course, her body is substantially less mature than their body. 

She's slightly taller than both OMG and Rainbow Junior High, but is a lot more slender than the junior high body.

Mia wears the OMG clothing pretty well but the same cannot be said for the reverse. The OMG torso is a lot shorter and so the clothing all bunches up around the waist. Also the sleeves are too long.

In my head the VIP doll looked more like the Fail Fix dolls than they actually do. The failfix eyes are so much more detailed. The failfix dolls are also absolutely tiny.

G3 monster high looked like they might be a similar size though.

While Clawdeen is taller than Mia, her jeans fit really quite nicely. The top was a bit tight and I couldn't get the jacket on because it wouldn't go over her hands. 

More interestingly though, the SHOES fit. 

Which I did NOT expect. 

The VIP clothes are a bit big on Clawdeen.

The regular Rainbow High body is clearly much broader but the general shape of it is very familiar. So many modern doll lines are going this general shape with a small bust and wider hips. I do like it, but it's interesting to me how influential this body has been. 

I wish companies would copy more than just the general shape and take some damn engineering notes. I'm tired of poorly conceived joints. 

While I had the rainbow high body down I remembered that G3 Monster High and Rainbow High can share shoes. So if the MH shoes fit Mia, RH should too. 

And they do. Some of the high heels are a little too tight I feel, but it's a YMMV situation. Certainly boots worked nicely.

Then Mia cursed THIS pair of shoes too.

Damnit Mia, what do you have against shoes!??

At least this was an easy fix.

Now being a hair play doll, Mia came with instructions. 

Unfortunately either these instructions are really unclear, or i'm really stupid. It could be a little of both honestly. 

I tried to make sense of this but step 3 absolutely stumped me. Step 4 may as well have been "aaaand MAGIC!" because the hair clip thing isn't a clip, it's a very large bead and it does NOT stay in the hair without either braiding it in or wrapping it in a lot of elastic bands. 

It also took me an embarrassingly long time to realise the doll actually came with elastic bands. I spent ages cursing them for not including any, only to finally notice them tucked into one of the smaller clips.

*headdesk*

that said, they only gave me 3 which is pretty shit.

Honestly I feel like this needs to be a video tutorial or something because I just... can't. 

There's too much going on and the pictures are so tiny. I understand i'm supposed to braid it, but then it wants me to wrap other bits and then stick beads in and arghh. to much. 

I am bad with hair. 

I mean I didn't even learn how to tie a plait til I was in my twenties! 

I fought that butterfly piece for so long. I argued with it, I pleaded with it. Eventually I resorted to tying the two braided strands together and then elastic banding the whole lot for good measure. 

By that point I couldn't face the rest of the "tutorial" so I just tied the rest of her hair back out of her face and called it a day.

but not before I "fixed" her shoes by cutting the ribbons off them both and salvaging part of the broken piece into a little necklace.

She also stole one of my Crybabies BFF's bags which matched her colour scheme nicely. 

For all I struggled with this girl, she DOES have a very sweet little face. But by the time I got her hair tamed, her shoes fixed and got her dressed I was feeling grumpy and annoyed. So the overall experience wasn't as enjoyable as I may have hoped.

As you can see, elastic bands everywhere. 

Overall, I do think she's a very cute, very characterful doll but she's quite a flawed design. 

her body engineering SUCKS, those elbows offend me because they're so bloody useless. 

Her clothing is unfinished and rapidly unraveling. 

Her shoes broke as soon as I took her out of her box and they're really hard plastic so difficult to get on and off anyway. 

The textural elements in her hair, though they look nice, undermine her hair play element by making her hair more difficult to brush. Because she has tiny braids scattered throughout you can't really use a brush on her, and the comb thing she comes with has such wide teeth you may as well just finger comb and get the same result. Also those instructions SUCK (or i'm just dumb). I can picture the frustration of a child trying to figure out what the hell they want you to do with that butterfly.

Now I didn't photograph it, but the little bead stringer tool, the thing that looks like a bead/braid gun (what the heck were those called? they were big in the 90s.) It's just plastic, it has no mechanical element but the little hook on the end of is is quite effective at what it's supposed to do. You grab a bit of hair, you tuck it around the hook and then you can easily thread beads on no trouble. Just make sure you hold the end of the hair or the beads will fall straight off again. 

I don't know if it's really a necessary tool though. Threading large holed beads onto tiny thin strands of hair isn't exactly difficult to do with your fingers but I may find another use for the hook. Certainly that element was kinda satisfying and it was quicker to thread multiple beads at once than using my fingers would have been. 

*shrug* 

She also came with little clips. I used a couple of them but they're really small and they don't really hold very well. 

I didn't use any of the beads. I just couldn't face trying to braid those in. 

Perhaps i'll make a little bracelet out of them instead. 

Overall, while looking at her a few days later with fresh eyes, I do acknowledge that she's got a really endearing little face and I like her petite size, i'm not convinced she works as what she's meant to be. A hair play toy. 

And I do feel like her inability to sit the fuck down due to having no knee joints does rather undermine that too. Because surely you'd SIT in the salon chair to get your hair done? Wouldn't the kid want to sit the doll down to do her hair? 

I dunno. 

At full price I would say these dolls are massively overpriced. They're a similar price to the g3 Monster High dolls, to Rainbow High, to Barbie Looks and Extra. I just don't think they're bringing anything new or deluxe enough to justify that. The clothing is "just okay" but being unfinished it won't survive. The doll body is "just okay" but ultimately barely poseable. The accessories are nothing to write home about. 

They're competently made, but that's about all I can give them. They're "okay". 

Which is honestly rather damning for a toy to be. 

I have Giselle here to open as well but i'm just not feeling the motivation to do so. Mia is cute, don't get me wrong, I do like her little face, but my experience with her was so full of frustration that i'm just not sure I want to go through it all again with Giselle. The end result just isn't special ENOUGH. 

Ultimately, i'm left feeling kinda "meh" about this line. 

If you like their faces and you can get them on clearance, i'd say go for it. But at full price they're absolutely not worth it.