I do enjoy a good clone doll. There's something charming about them. I don't mean the cheap copies of an existing doll just made with inferior materials, I mean the ones that actually put effort in and while clearly knockoffs, have a particular heart to them.
and so today we're going to talk briefly about my latest acquisition. B&M Rainbow High clones.
So, B&M for those outside the UK are a bargain store that sells a bit of everything. From packaged foods to home furnishings to toys and everything in between. They're one of the big "whatever" stores that plod along selling nothing online and using their web presence purely to advertise what they MIGHT potentially have in store if you should just pop in and have a look. It's a rather strange thing not to have an online store but they seem to do fine without one.
Anyway, they often sell random cheap clone dolls. Most of the time they're those boring soulless barbie ripoffs with the half bald heads and the melty looking face paint, but every so often they have something interesting and odd.
About 8 or 9 months ago they got in some Rainbow High clones rather dubiously named "dazzling dolls".
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| Photo from Reddit user Teatimeknight |
The art is certainly a choice, and in no way related to the dolls. Which is always funny.
I also love that they elected to make the I the lightening bolt rather than the somewhat more obvious Zs. Unless they're Dazzlzng dolls.
"Adult supervision required at all times whilst children play with this toy" I don't think i've ever seen that on a doll box before. That's a bit concerning. "Small parts may be a choking hazard" yes, but never "don't leave your kid alone with this doll". Will she whisper bad things to them? Will she teach them bad habits? Is she actually full of lead and razor blades?
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| Another Reddit photo |
On the shelf they look like this.
But mine didn't come from B&M and they long since removed the listing for them from their website.
Mine came from Vinted, from a seller who'd been trying to sell them for a while.
I paid £5 for two of them which as far as I can tell, are the only two variations. Certainly I couldn't find any others when I searched but clones can be tricky to research. Even modern ones.
I did find a tiktok video showing the two variations and their original price of £8
Anyway,
For simplicity's sake, i'm calling this one "Blondie" and the other one "Pinkie".
I didn't get a picture of Pinkie before I beheaded her so i'm sorry.
Anyway,
Blondie comes wearing a pretty uh... interesting outfit. It consists of a pair of sparkly pants which are super unflattering, a mermaid top made of shimmery material and a very soft fur coat. It's quite the combination.
The top isn't bad. I mean it's competently made and it fits her well enough. It's also shimmery which is pretty.
The pants are also competently made, though the velcro on the back is poorly stitched and loose. The material is sort of stretchy and extremely sparkly. They're alright pants, they're just really damn ugly in their fit on this doll.
The coat is unlined and unhemmed but it's super soft and really pleasant to touch. I keep touching it lol. I feel like it could be quite a cool piece for a doll honestly.
Her shoes are Barbie sized and white quite detailed, look a lot like most Barbie clone shoes i've seen. They're not badly made either, they go on and off easily and don't feel like they're going to tear or break in my hands.
The label simply says these dolls were made exclusively for B&M and were made in China. They also assure me they have CE, UK and CA certifications. I don't know what all those are, but I know they're important for toy safety.
Pinkie's outfit on the other hand is... well... I don't know how to describe it.
It's half fur and half some sort of material that's shot with gold foiled thread. So it's shimmery and then all like.. furry and sequined too.
It's bewildering.
The ribbon waistband says "Just for you" which makes me think they just used gift ribbon from somewhere.
It's two pieces, a top and a skirt. Both are hideous.
the skirt's one redeeming (maybe) feature is that the fur flap seems to be just that, a flap sewn to the waistband. Unpicking it would likely leave you with just the purple striped skirt which could be substantially less garish.
the top sadly is literally half fur so there's no saving it.
Her shoes are identical sculpts to Blondie's, just in a pearly purple instead of a matte aqua.
Their bodies are an interesting mishmash. They have very Rainbow High inspired torsos with the similar shaped waist, hip and bust area but the neck is a lot narrower, the arms are completely different and the legs are unarticulated with Barbie sized feet.
The body itself is made from very hard hollow plastic. It doesn't squish when you squeeze it, but it's very lightweight. The seam of the torso is quite delicate too, I managed to pop both legs off when trying to get pants onto Pinkie here because the torso split in half at the crotch. Whoops! Thankfully it's a really simple fix because it all just slots together with little pegs. But it's definitely a weak point.
It's a fairly nicely sculpted body with a toned stomach and decently shaped limbs. The hands are sort of wide and stumpy though.
The neck knob is just this short little piece which means the doll can look around but can't tilt her head at all. It also means the doll heads are a bit loose feeling on this joint and they get the exorcist head spins pretty easily. Like as soon as I pick them up they wanna play at being owls.
The actual hole is quite narrow with this rim which seems like a strange addition that adds nothing.
However, it's very different to the rainbow high heads which have a sort of lip which allows their head to sit lower on the neck.
A combination of the hole being too small and there not being a proper indented lip means that the head sits too high on the Rainbow High neck. But it SHOULD work with modification. I SHALL get this to work.
It's not perfect. It took a lot of shoving, it took carving the neck hole bigger, it took wrapping the neck hook in string to bulk it out enough for her head to sit at the right height and now the head indents around the neck which deforms things a little, but her head is nice and tight on there, she can look around and she can even slightly tilt her head (as much as first wave rainbow high necks allow anyway, which isn't much.)
Blondie kept her original body, Pinkie got a random Willow body I had laying in my stash box.
They fit Rainbow High clothes fairly well. They're a little big in the waist but overall not terrible.
Both shed hair badly, whenever I try to brush it whole plugs come out of somewhere but I can't find any bald patches. Both are pretty decently rooted honestly. Though Blondie's hair is more what i'd expect from a cheap clone, coarse slightly frizzy nylon. Pinkie's hair on the other hand is really soft and smooth. It feels not as silky as the Kiwi nylon Rainbow High uses, but it's not as coarse as the regular nylon so i'm not sure what it is. It's surprisingly nice though.
their faces are also surprisingly nice. I really like the way the eyebrows were painted.
Blondie has slightly peachier lips than Pinkie and yellow eyeshadow with brown inset eyes. There's soft brown eye makeup around her eyes as well. It's subtle but nice.
Pinkie's lips are a more pink pink and her eyeshadow is a soft purple with yellow around the eye.
Their skintones are identical, as are their face sculpts and their eyebrows.
I'm actually surprised they bothered giving them different makeup, but happy they did because it's a nice little detail.
They definitely have a Rainbow High look to their noses and lip sculpts, but their eyes throw me off.
Hali's sculpt seemed the closest in terms of eye shape and even then, the jaw line on the clone is much rounder. Blondie here looks like an overenthusiastic kid sister to the long suffering Rainbow High doll lol.
Unlike Rainbow High, the clone girls don't have inset lashes. Their painted lashes are pretty effective though, some of the most detailed painted lashes i've seen on a doll.This does however make their eyes a bit wider, giving them a somewhat more excited friendly look to them.
Back to the clone body, their articulation isn't brilliant. They can bend their elbow precisely this much. It's pretty similar to the articulation the LOL OMG dolls, which their unbending legs and articulated arm combo very much remind me of.
The hands come off for easier dressing which is a feature I always appreciate.
the hands are remarkable simple, they don't even have fingernails.
Which means they fit, but the wrist looks too bulky for the dainty little hand.
LOL OMG hands are even closer in terms of the peg size.
And again fit, but the wrist feels too bulky for the narrower hand.
But damn both these hands put to shame how simple and stumpy the clone hand is huh?
but you know, they're fine.
They're very cute dolls but putting Pinkie on the Rainbow High body really helped bring her to life (so to speak)
and they haven't started whispering bad things to me yet... so maybe that warning about leaving them alone with children was a bit overstated. Or they only encourage small children into heinous acts.
All I can say guys, is if a video tape shows up of me being horribly murdered by my own child like that movie Sinister, you know who to blame okay?
It was the evil urging of the Dazzling Dolls.
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