Spirit Abigail by Just Play, Addendum: The Knee Breaking Is Common

I first noted the Spirit line in August of last year. Wow, these dolls have been on the shelf for a lot longer than I remembered! There were a variety of dolls and toy horses released for what was apparently a Netflix series sequel to the Spirit horse movie. There were three 11 1/2" dolls released of the three main human characters: Lucky, Prudence and Abigail. I was not the only doll collector who noted at the time that with the relatively nice-looking articulation, the dolls might provide good donor bodies. I'd been waiting for the dolls to go on sale, but that just wasn't happening, and finally I decided I'd pick up an Abigail doll to see if she'd make a good body donor.

I decided to take preliminary pictures of Abigail while she was still all in one piece. Little did I know that state of things would last for a shorter time than I expected....

This is how Abigail came, wearing a pink shirt, plaid leggings and some odd-looking boots. I'm surprised that none of the characters get helmets, except that the horses are sentient in the show and I guess would never throw their riders.

Here is Abigail with Petite Barbie, Teen Skipper and Made-to-Move Barbie. Without the giant head, Abigail's body is somewhat between Petite Barbie and Teen Skipper in height.

While in the process of getting Abigail's clothes off to get some pictures of just her body, I bent both of her knees, and when I bent the second one, I heard a crack, and suddenly Abigail's left calf was loose. She was still wearing her leggings at this time, so I didn't know exactly what had happened. I was afraid maybe her knees weren't meant to bend, but the right leg had bent just fine. When I got the leggings off, I saw what the problem was.

Abigail's leg *was* meant to bend, but the connecting post had just snapped. I did take some more pictures, for anyone who is still thinking about getting one of these dolls, but I got less and less enthusiastic the more I examined the doll, even after the leg snap. For one thing, the top of poor Abigail's loose lower leg looked rough and chewed on.

For another, the plastic of her legs made her look like she had burn scars and scratch marks. She also had staining on her leg. I'm presuming that came from the leggings, because the boots don't really touch her leg very much, plus the leggings covered her legs entirely.However, the staining is kind of angled, like her boots. Since the doll was already broken at this point, I don't think I cared very much how it happened.

Here is Abigail's right knee, with the intact knee joint. Sorry for blurry pictures. By this time, I was just taking pictures for posterity. I knew Abigail was going back to the store, and I just wasn't that interested.

Of course the other question when acquiring a new doll, especially for a rebody, is if the clothes will fit other dolls. Petite Barbie looked like the best option as far as size. I didn't want to try the leggings in case there was a staining issue, so I just stuck with the top. Unfortunately, Petite Barbie, while short, is still meant to be an adult female and therefore has a bosom, if small. Abigail is still supposed to be a girl, or a very young teen. Therefore, Abigail's top was super tight across the chest. Otherwise, the top would make a cute dress for our petite gal (who really should have a name this far into the post!)

There are also a couple of sewing mistakes on the back of the dress, which you can have with any doll, but which I wanted to point out.

Not even the feet were a good match for Barbie (or a similarly sized doll.) Abigail's feet are huge next to Made-to-Move Barbie, and they're also wedge shaped, being much wider by the toes. At least the broken leg made it easy to take comparison shots. XD

I suppose Abigail's big feet would be balanced out by her big head, if you were playing with the doll as is. And her boots are the same way, very large but balanced by her over-sized noggin. But they looked quite out of place on Barbie.

In the past, even if I've been iffy about a doll, I don't believe I've ever advised not to buy one. I don't think this doll is worth buying, even on sale. If you have a child who is really into Spirit, the dolls might be worth it, although I would still go with the smaller dolls because then you get all the horses too. If you were buying this doll as a possible body donor, on the other hand, I'd suggest you look elsewhere.

ETA: Based on a comment which somehow isn't showing up on this page (maybe the commenter deleted it?), I went and looked at reviews of the 11 1/2" dolls on Walmart's site. A full seventy-five percent of Lucky and Abigail's reviews said that the knees broke, and also mentioned the Prudence doll as having faulty joints. There were also mentions of little girl tears, which just makes me angry. The only super positive review was from a grandmother who *wanted* to buy them for her grandchildren, which wasn't helpful at all. I also discovered that Breyer made horse and girl rider sets from this series, so check those out if you want a set for a child.

Teen Trends Gabby

With encouragement from blog commenters, I decided to add another Teen Trends doll to the group. I was thinking it would be nice to add Kianna, but I found a Gabby NRFB and two NRFP outfits for sale, cheaper than the asking price for the only NRFB Kianna on ebay, so Gabby and the clothes came home instead. I'd still like to get Kianna, NRFB partially because of the low hair quality, partially to get her outfit complete, and partially because I have an OCD cleanliness thing.

Gabby comes tied down with coated wires and the little plastic tags. Her jacket, her necklace and her purse were also all attached to her shirt and pants with tiny little plastic tags. Annoying! There is a cover of plastic and cardboard that gets removed from her box, and then there are cardboard inserts that Gabby, her stand, and her accessories come attached to. Those get lifted out, and you end up with a cardboard wardrobe that holds the doll and her accessories, and has a place to hang her clothes. Extra outfits come with a hanger.

J-Dolls Maroseica Street

This is probably the first time I have been majorly disappointed in a doll. I recently bought J-Doll Maroseica Street, although I hadn't played with her much. At last, I'm able to review her, renamed as Mari.

So, I read a review of Mari at the Doll Grotto. From that I expected that her shoes might be an issue, even though Heather said shoe problems were unusual. But sure enough, Mari's shoes were falling apart before I took them out of the bag.

This does not bode well.

 And the shoes fell to even more bits after I took them out of the bag. They're useless.

From Heather's review, I also learned that Mari's black underwear might stain. It did, but this is the best picture that I could get of the stained part. Basically it's right along the seam between Mari's bum and her hip joint. Not bad, but just another problem.

Mari herself is beautiful, and the reason I bought her was because her red hair and green eyes are unusual, maybe even unique, in the J-Doll line.

Mari's body came wrapped in plastic, and the foam pieces holding her arms up from the box were stained, so I did have warning that her outfit might stain. She hasn't worn it since I took her out of the box; I dressed her for this review. She has a black net petticoat trimmed with silver lace, but it doesn't do anything for the dress, and I never got around to taking pictures, for reasons you'll see soon.

The dress itself is unusual but not unattractive. It's made out of a green suede-type material, with sewn on lace, beads, small metallic looking decorations and narrow chains.

Heather's review warned that the trim around her doll's sleeve frayed, and mine did as well. The other sleeve didn't have a problem only because that hand popped off easily, so the sleeve fit right over the arm. I had thought that the left hand didn't pop off, or at least not easily.

Another problem was that this dress kept wanting to fall right off of Mari. And the Velcro closure in back did not fasten for the entire piece when I tried to shift this so it was covering her chest more. Like they hadn't measured in her chest when they put the Velcro on. If it wasn't for the fact that the otherwise detached sleeves are sewn by a small seam to the side of the bodice, the dress might very well just slide off.

At this point, I was going to put on Mari's headpiece and take some pictures of her in the dress and headpiece. But then I discovered that after wearing the dress for about only ten minutes, the dress was already staining the doll, so I pulled it off quickly.

Below is the damage done to the arm; when I took Mari into the bathroom to try to get the stains off with a Magic Eraser, I discovered that her left hand was also slightly stained as well. But when I went to scrub that, I discovered that it did indeed pop off, and it went right down the drain! :O I'm hoping Mr. BTEG can rescue it out of the trap when he gets home.

Here's Mari wearing the headpiece. I didn't get any more pictures because the headpiece fell off when I tried to rearrange her for another picture, and I was pretty tired of the whole thing at this point.

Heather tied the headpiece's ribbon in front, under the doll's chin. That might be more stable, but since this doll was named after a Russian street, I thought perhaps they were going more for a look like these headpieces worn by Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana Nicholaievena. As you can see, there is a veil in the back and you can also make out a ribbon bow. Without the matching dress, Mari's headpiece is not very exciting however you arrange it.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Olga_%C3%A9s_Tatj%C3%A1na_in_court_gown_1913.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Olga_%C3%A9s_Tatj%C3%A1na_in_court_gown_1913.jpg

Heather said her J-Doll had three looped-up braids; mine has four, two on the sides and two in the back. I might redo this style if I get inspired with another idea, but it's fine the way it is.

So this is the first doll I am going to have to give a overall bad review for. Mari's shoes disintegrated, her underwear stained, and her dress stained. What can she wear that headpiece with, besides the dress it came with? Her stockings, like other J-Doll stockings, don't have any memory stretch to them, so they'll very likely start sagging after a few times of being taken on and off. So what you get is a doll, and a pretty uninspiring black net petticoat which I had to use a seam ripper to get off because the petticoat doesn't come with any fastenings. So basically, you get a doll. Even after knowing ahead of time that there might be issues, my doll ended up with more problems than Heather's did, since mine can't even wear her dress for pictures. I'm glad I paid less than Heather paid for hers, and if you're interested in one because you like Mari's face, I wouldn't pay more than $20 for one.

Update: Mr. BTEG succeeded in retrieving Mari's hand.

Body Staining

I'm a little discouraged at the moment. I have a couple of the Madeline dolls by Eden that were popular around 2000. One doll I bought used. She was washed and now I should probably get some braid spray to soften up her hair and set it nicely.

The other one I bought in the box. I have had her for a couple of years, but between a couple of moves, I'd never taken her out. I've decided I'm not thrilled with Eden's outfits (they have big tags on the back, on the outside) so I was going to sell most of it. Unfortunately, Nicole's outfit stained her body and chin. And it seems like it was the cotton blouse that did it. Kind of unusual for cotton to stain, I thought. So now Nicole has to endure the indignity of being propped head down on my window sill with benzoyl peroxide on her chin and shoulder. And I will probably not get very much for her outfit. Not that it was worth a huge amount, but every little bit goes toward getting more dolls or outfits or furniture!