Shadow High Nicole Steel

Here is the third doll in my Rainbow/Shadow High collection. She's Nicole Steel, and she's cute as a button. Her eyes are the most luminous of any Rainbow High doll that I've seen, and her curls are super adorable.

This is Nicole's jacket from her first outfit. Since the Rainbow High students are Sparkle, the Shadow High students are Anti Sparkle. Fortunately, they seem to be moving past that theme with newer dolls. It was getting pretty boring. She has a motif on the left sleeve of her jacket. The cat is related to a band that is made of up three other Shadow High students. It looks very 1930s, and like it could have been on the nose of a WWII plane, at least to me.

This is Nicole's base outfit, minus the jacket. She's a basketball player, and her interest is in street clothes and sports wear. It's nice that the dolls have different fashion styles that they're interested in, but I think this outfit is pretty basic compared to the other dolls that I have.

The fact that these shoes have ties is a little annoying. Of course they come untied, and then they're difficult to re-tie. The backs of the shoes have a sort of lift, to accommodate the fact that these dolls' feet are made to wear heels.

When I took off her shoes to take pictures of her in her second outfit, I got an unpleasant surprise. There are holes on the bottom of her socks.

Nicole needs to learn how to darn.

Here's a picture of one of her earrings. They tend to fall out easily, and I have a short funny anecdote I will tell about them at the end of this post.

When I went to change her into her second outfit, I noticed there are two notches in what I guess is supposed to be a dress, that looks like a sports jersey. It's possible that I made those snips myself, when I was clipping out all the tiny plastic ties attaching the dress to the cardboard. It was still a bit disappointing to see.

Her second pair of "shoes" is really stretchy knit fabric on top of a plastic shoe base. I did find it a nice touch that the shoes had toe caps to slip the dolls feet into. They serve to keep Nicole's toes from showing through the fabric. They might help hold the shoes on better as well, but I haven't moved the doll around enough in these shoes to know.

Her jacket is the most impressive piece of her second outfit. It is a beautiful reflective silver on the outside, and features a faux zipper. The jacket actually closes at the back.

I guess the circles and triangles are supposed to mean something. They look like laundry instruction marks to me. :) When the jacket is closed, the pattern at the back becomes clear. The jacket technically has working pockets, but they are very small and tight, so not useful for much.

The jacket has a beautiful lining. I'm torn between admiring it, and feeling sorry that there wasn't more effort put into the stuff that can be seen. The jacket isn't reversible, and since it closes in the back, Nicole can't even wear it open to show off the lining.

I wish Nicole would have come with a basketball, to make up for the fact that her outfit is lacking compared to some of the other dolls. MGA chose to make a black and silver "purse" shaped like a basketball, that was put into one of the blind boxes that they made. Considering there were 27 different purses in all, buying blind boxes trying to find Nicole's would be rather a waste. Also, it's a purse, so she can't really "play" with it. I think this Barbie basketball is a bit small to look realistic. Just a bit? Other than the basketball, this is her entire second outfit. Good thing I didn't buy her for her clothes.

Also, I forgot to point out in my other posts about these dolls, that they have a "joint" in their upper thigh, so that their legs can be twisted around. 

So, this the second Nicole Steel that I purchased. I took the first one out of her box quickly, to enjoy looking at her. It wasn't until later that I noticed a flaw in her face makeup.

Oopsie

Since she came from Amazon, I just sent her back and ordered a second one. When I started to pack the first one up, I realized that one of her earrings was missing. I looked for it for several minutes, then sent her back without it. It was just as well, because the second doll came without one earring! I finally found the missing one, so she ended up with two earrings after all. The left one, where there was no earring originally, tends to fall out easily. It gets caught in her curls a lot, which is good, because it doesn't get lost, but bad because it takes a bit of work to work the earring out without messing up her hair too much. The right earring also fell out during this photography shoot.

As a review, this one doesn't have a lot of high points. If you're a big fan of sports/play them yourself, you might find her clothes at least a bit more interesting than I do. Except for the jackets, they still aren't as detailed as other dolls, even the rest of Shadow High Series 1. Luna Madison's prime outfit is a bit... interesting, but I like her overall looks better than Nicole's. I bought Nicole because she is just such an endearing doll, not for her clothes. It's actually why I got her third off my list of dolls I'm interested in, just so she has other stuff to wear. I am working with a dress pattern that I have for her, too.

Next up is going to be the doll that I received for Mother's Day. Since it may take me a while to get the doll and all of her clothes out of the box, I'll let you know ahead of time that is Emi Vanda, who is about as different from Nicole as can be. :)

Total dolls: 85

And Then There Were Two

Yes, I picked up another Rainbow High doll. Well, technically this doll is part of the Shadow High line. Shadow High is Rainbow High's rival school, and the first dolls in this series varied in skin tones and clothing from mostly all white to mostly all black, with shades of gray in between. Shanelle Onyx is the doll who is mostly all black, except for a white streak in her hair, and she's the doll we're looking at today.

This is the way she came, fresh out of the box. I like her outfit for the most part. Her lace socks and strappy heels with black fur looked cool in the YouTube show, but they look a little odd in real life.

Fortunately, she comes with a change of clothes and shoes. I like her second outfit too. There is no slit or clasp on either of her pairs of shoes, so they have to be worked on and off. I don't like that her clothes mostly fit *very* tightly, meaning you have to really pull the sides together so the Velcro can meet. With the black belt that comes with Shanelle's dress, I feel like I'm not getting it closed all the way; I can't get all the Velcro covered by the other end of the belt. At least her hands can come off, similar to the way Monster High/Ever After High dolls' hands could. It makes it a lot easier to put on things like the jacket with ruffled sleeves in the second picture below.

I like her makeup. Her hair is silky soft, with only a little crunch on the end of some of her hair at the bottom of her ponytail.

Her body has some marks and scratches, but those don't bother me for some reason. Also, these dolls have an "unrealistic" knee hinge, which again, doesn't bother me, but I thought I'd show those of you who don't have one of these dolls. 

These dolls have their own names, with personalities and story lines you get to see in the show on YouTube, but the dolls seem mainly designed to display the clothes. As with Mila's dress, for example, Shanelle can't sit down in the black and silver houndstooth skirt. Of course, lots of kids just hold their dolls in the air and make them "talk." This also reminds me that the dolls do come with color-coordinated stands, and a comb. I talked with Dana about whether these clothes would fit curvy Barbies, and the answer is: no. I have a picture of a curvy Barbie/Shadow High doll under the fold.

Mother's Day Doll Gifts!

This year, my two daughters were kind enough to give me dolls for Mother's Day! I got the Ever After High School Spirit two pack of dolls, and a Mattel Belle doll with no real articulation, but lots of accessories. This won't be a real review, because all these dolls have been out for quite a while, but I did want to share some of the fun details of the dolls.

First I'll show pictures of Belle. The design choices they made for her ensemble were... interesting, as you'll see. She comes the way a lot of Mattel dolls seem to have been designed lately: no bending arms or legs, molded on top, detachable fabric skirt. Since she is a Disney Princess, her top has the addition of loads of glitter.

 

Her hair style has rolled bits on the sides to provide a good place to hide the ends of a tiara or headband. It's also nice and soft.

My daughter knew that Belle is my favorite Disney character, but she also knew enough to know that I would love all the accessories that came with this doll, which was sweet. She came with two tiaras, a hat headband, a necklace, three pairs of shoes and a little purse.

This little hat-on-a-headband looks strange with a ball gown.

I might add some paint touch-ups to these.

This necklace might look better on Apple White. It doesn't match this dress at all.

I think all the detailing on this pair makes them especially awesome.

This rose purse is cute, and appropriate to Belle's story, even if this color doesn't match Belle's dress.

However, not only is it small in height, it's not very wide. As you can see from my finger, Belle is shedding glitter

And that's Belle. I've put the Ever After High dolls below the fold, although I don't have as many pictures of them as I took of Belle, because they didn't come with as much stuff.