Ginny Weasley by Mattel, the Mysterious Case of the Odd Body

I've been looking forward to the new Harry Potter line of Mattel dolls, although only for doll rebodying, as the dolls looked well articulated. I honestly couldn't care less about the Harry Potter story itself. What I was hoping for was an articulated body that was similar to the modern day Stacie or even Skipper body. I have no idea why or how Mattel ended up with the body design they did for Ginny. Let's look at it, under the fold

Here's a line-up of dolls that I own that I feel could have or should have been close to the Ginny body. Notice that Ever After High's Madeline Hatter is also pictured. Her body is the one that actually turned out to be the most similar to Ginny.

Older Stacie, Maddie, Ginny, current Skipper, petite Barbie body

For starters on comparing Maddie to Ginny, let's look at the hands. Mattel seems to have straight up just used Ever After High arms and the left hand, for the new Ginny doll. Ginny's right hand is molded so that she can hold her wand. That is sensible from a play standpoint, but although the two hands may have the same actual proportions, they don't look very well together, in my opinion. Perhaps it's because the knuckles are so well defined in the posed hand, but hardly visible at all in the regular hand. For that matter, it would have been fun to have a regular right hand and a posed right hand to swap out, although that would have just tacked on to the cost.

Ginny top, Maddie bottom

The left hand is one of the most obvious similarities between the EAH and Ginny bodies. The knees are another. There's been a slight adjustment to the rotation post. Although the lower section of Ginny's leg has a new sculpt, the way the leg is articulated and attached to the body looks pretty much like EAH.

Ginny left, Maddie right

And although the new Ginny torso is not exactly the same as an EAH body, it's closer to Maddie's than to any of Barbie's family or friends. Ginny has the same curved back as Maddie, although not as pronounced. She also has a nipped-in waist, similar to the adult Petite Barbie, but also similar to Maddie. Ginny can even wear EAH clothes, whereas the dress of one of the Babysitting Skipper and Friends line kind of sags on her.

None of this is necessarily a big issue, although if you're like me, and expected a body that fit in easily to the current line of Barbie family and friends, you might be disappointed. The real issue starts when it comes to shoes. They have a slight arch, unnecessarily, I think, since the girls appear to be wearing simple, flat Mary Janes. They're close to the length of EAH feet, but Ginny's feet are wider, and nowhere near as arched. They're kind of close to modern Skipper, except they're a bit too long.

Ginny's feet are enormous compared to Petite Barbie

Ginny's feet are close to modern Skipper

But Ginny can't wear modern Skipper shoes

Also, since Ginny's feet have that weird-arch-for-no-reason, modern Skipper can't wear Ginny's shoes either. This picture is me trying to stand Skipper up in one of Ginny's Mary Janes. However, Skipper just can't stand up straight in these shoes, because of her flat feet. Her body gets pushed forward.

Oddly enough, modern Skipper can wear Ginny's school uniform, although the sleeves are short.

Foxy Belle on Flickr has put two Skipper friend heads onto girl Harry Potter bodies, and in their school uniforms, they look cute, and they will make good additions to a setting with the original Harry Potter dolls. However, in my opinion, if you try to move a rebodied Skipper head into modern Skipper's world, it's not such a great match.

The new body is just so tiny! Not to mention shoe choices are so limited. I'm really unhappy with Mattel about this. How often have collectors said they would like better articulated Stacie and Skipper bodies? This was Mattel's perfect chance to articulate Skipper; instead, they designed from scratch some weird body more like Ever After High, with feet that can only wear the shoes that come with the doll. Maybe collectors will only keep these dolls in the box, but girls may very well want to redress their dolls, to do something else. You know, use their imaginations, take their dolls to new places.

Since we're talking bodies here, I'm also going to mention that I'm really frustrated about getting my hands on the new articulated curvy body. Mattel is already sold out of *all* the floral yoga dolls on its website. I can get the darkest skin doll on Amazon for $15.99, but the curvy one is currently $46.99. And to add insult to injury, the two featured dolls from the 2018 Barbie Convention both have the articulated curvy body. Sure, shove it my face, Mattel, that I can't get my hands on a freakin' play doll.

I'm going to buy the darkest skinned yoga doll; I'm going to get at least a white skinned articulated curvy body to rebody one of my curvy dolls when I can find one, and I'll keep picking up Ever After High dolls if I find one that I want but don't have. Other than that, I'm done with Mattel, at least for now. I don't know whose money they want, but it's not mine. I was inspired to make this meme showing the frustration of a lot of collectors trying to find better bodies for their dolls.

If only I though Mattel cared that much. As for me, I'm going to look for other sources to rebody the heads that I have, and be happy with those. I wish that I could find another affordable doll line that I could move to collecting instead.