Another New Doll

Boy I have been buying dolls a lot lately it seems. It all started a couple of weeks ago when American Girl announced they are retiring Ivy. That announcement reminded me that I have been wanting to add an Asian doll to my collection. Ivy does fit that but I have never been in love with Ivy. With the price of American Girl dolls I really feel like I have to love a doll to buy one of theirs. I have two of the AM dolls: Alison (My American Girl #53) and recently retired Molly. I really do love both of those dolls. There is another My American Girl doll that I am hoping to get in the near future but we will wait until that time comes to talk about her.

Since I don't “love” Ivy I set out to find a doll that I did love to fill that spot in my collection. I have found her but she is not what this article is about. You see that doll is not available yet, hopefully by the end of summer (according to the last word from the makers of the doll)

In the meantime all this doll shopping opened my eyes up to a couple of dolls that I did decide I wanted to add to the collection. I talked about the 2 Our Generation dolls I got at the Target sale a while back in another blog post. I still need to work on their hair and if I do solve the hair issue I will do another post about them.

I was at Walmart the other day and of course I had to take a trip down the doll aisle. I came across the display for the My Life dolls that Walmart is currently selling. I had not really looked carefully at them before. In my looking at them this time I ran across one doll that I found appealing. I decided that she should join the rest of the collection.

Kati in her meet outfit

As far as I can tell she didn't actually have a name, she is referred to as “outdoorsy girl” on the box. I find it kind of funny the way I name dolls, sometimes anyway, they just seem to tell me what their name should be. As soon as I had her out of the box I just knew her name should be Kati. This same thing has happened with a couple of the dolls, I just knew when I saw them what their name should be.

One thing I found interesting about the packaging of this doll, in place of all those wire twist tie things I am used to seeing holding dolls in the box this doll was tied in with what appears to be a paper twine. I saved it, I am hoping to figure out a craft project with it.

paper twine from packaging

The first thing I did notice when I got Kati out of the box was the odd odor she has about her. It was very strong at first but dissipated after about a day to being just a bit noticeable. I am hoping with time it will go away entirely. If not I have a solution to try and if it works I will share it on the blog later.

My biggest concern about this doll was the hair especially after the hair disaster that I am dealing with on the Our Generation dolls. I brushed out Kati's hair with my regular doll hair brush (actually it began its life as a dog brush at Dollar Tree I bought it to use with the dolls and labeled it as such) After a brushing her hair looks great, it is soft and shiny. Not the superior quality of dolls like the American Girl but still nicer than some other dolls at her price point. The thing about her hair I don't like is that when you touch it, it feels dirty. I can't think of another description for it. If I had picked this doll up at a thrift store I would assume that it felt this way because it was really dirty but this doll is new out of the package. I will leave it as is for now but I may have to resort to washing it to see if I can get it to feel nicer to the touch.

Her hair-do is a very straight to just below the waist with a cute braid on each side. For now I am going to leave the braids as is since I like the look. I may take them out later if they interfere with styling. The back of her hair is not cut straight however so that will need to be dealt with soon. It bothers me every time I look at her from the back but I wanted to leave it for pictures for this blog post. A quick trim should fix that though.

Back of hair needs some work

One of the things that drives me nuts on some of the dolls on the market is the color the manufacturers use on the lips. I was so happy that this doll has fairly natural looking lip color. That is actually a thing that will stop me from buying a doll once in a while. As for the rest of Kati's face, she is a really pretty little girl. Her face is not “made-up” so she looks clean and fresh, like a little girl should. Looking at her face it is almost heart shaped which I find very appealing, I think it gives her a more innocent look. She has beautiful brown eyes that open and close- they seem to work perfectly- along with nice lashes that seem in proportion to her eye size. 

She has a pretty face

 

She is made by the Madame Alexander company so we do expect a certain degree of quality and I think it is there.

This is a doll with a plastic neck/chest area. As I stated in my post on doll measurements I am torn about which body style I prefer. The advantage of the plastic neck/chest like Kati's is that necklines on clothing look a bit nicer. There is the downside of a weird caved in area where the cloth body meets the plastic part. At least on Kati that is not too noticeable.

The outfit she came in is really nothing to be excited about. She is wearing a butterfly printed tee-shirt that velcros up the back. It is not very well made and the facing on the neckline shows (it did on all the dolls in stock at the store) She also has blue shorts made of a denim looking fabric. These are also not well made and I don't think they would stand up to a child playing with them. Her bright pink high top shoes are surprisingly cute even though they are made of plastic.

cute shoe

One of the “selling” points of these dolls is that they are poseable, as far as I can figure out the only extra moving parts are the knees. The problem is the leg flattens out in a very strange way when you bend the knee. I also worry about the plastic on the legs not holding up to the bending. I think I will probably just pose her like the other dolls in my collection and skip this “feature”

Other than having slightly longer legs than my American Girl dolls she is the same size as they are. This will make dressing her much easier than some of the other dolls I have.

Because of the way I use my doll collection, primarily I want to have dolls to use as a story telling medium for my blog posts. I need to be able to fit them into the story of my dolls in order to justify buying them. In other words if I can't come up with a reason they are in the group they don't belong. Kati will be showing up in future blog posts and I am sure her story will come out over time. In the meantime I hope you have enjoyed the photos I took of her and got some helpful information from this post.