ORCARA and Re-Ment

I'm sure at least some of you know about the great products that Re-Ment produces that are doll-size. They are made in Japan and apparently come with candy or gum. The detail and breadth of items that Re-Ment has created is incredible. I've picked up a few items here and there on eBay, and I'm going to share pictures of my latest set. But what I'm going to show pictures of first, is my new set of minis made by another company called ORCARA. I've read its products are Chinese. There's a lot fewer sets produced, but what they make is pretty nice. Please excuse the lighting in these pics. I was going to take them when there was more light outside, but when your daughter says she wants help cleaning her room, you don't want to turn her down!

The ORCARA items are definitely a better value than Re-Ment. I got this entire set, plus more, for about what I paid for the Re-Ment set, which you'll see at the end.

In the picture above is everything that I'm going to keep. The set is called Cooking with the Master. As you can see, there are pieces that enable you to "make" various items, although I wouldn't call grinding and brewing coffee beans, nor making a salad, cooking.

Some of the pieces are incredibly realistic. It really looks like a pottery bowl and a wood cutting board in this picture.

Most of the items can be taken apart. The lids come off of the coffee grinder and coffee pot. The flour and salad come out of their bowls. And there is a tiny molded plastic "milk" piece that can go inside the measuring cup. I haven't put that in for fear I won't be able to get it apart and I might want to do something else with the cup. And as you can see, the bowl that holds the pats of butter looks very nice on its own.

Considering that the toaster oven is relatively in scale, the flour and sugar canisters are unfortunately wildly out of scale. The sugar one might look nice on a tea table. The flour one would be useless in a real size kitchen.

The spaghetti, strainer and corked bottle of olive oil go nicely with a few Re-Ment pieces I've been saving for a long time.

There is something to go in the blue pot, and even a little dent for the ladle to rest in. It's a nice idea in theory, but...

Meh.

it doesn't look edible or appealing to me at all. Apparently it's supposed to be spaghetti sauce, which makes sense within the context of the set, but it really does look close to this shade of brown in person. To me it looks more like lumpy cake batter than anything else.

The finished spaghetti product also does not look like any kind of spaghetti that I've ever seen. The spaghetti and sauce pieces will be tucked away somewhere.

And here is my Re-Ment set, a bread machine with bread, oven mitt and jam.

The "glass" lid of the bread maker is a little wonky, but that bread looks good enough to eat. The metal baking pan also comes out. I tried looking up the name in English letters that is on the front of the bread maker, but could not find anything. Maybe it's two Japanese words combined into one.

Just for fun, I took a picture of the ORCARA and Re-Ment oven mitts together. The Re-Ment one is more realistic looking, and even has a slight opening for a hand to go, whereas the ORCARA one is sealed shut. I'd be afraid of breaking the doll's hand or the oven mitt if I tried to use it, however.

The other two ORCARA sets I have are still in their plastic bags. One is for making rice balls, the other for making soy milk. Neither of those interest me, so they're going on eBay.

What cute minis do you have?