Throwback Thursday review: Munecas Geli

I've had such a hard time gathering source material for this week's review that it's been put off a number of times.  Yeah, I think I say that about all of my dolls at some point.  But now I'm ready...more or less.  Today's doll belongs to a group called Munecas Geli, a title that I think translates to "Geli Dolls."  Geli dolls...jelly dolls?  Jelly babies!  LOL, these dolls are Mexican, and that's about all I know.  Well, that and there's apparently a large store in Mexico City that shows the selection...and apparently the selection of dolls is HUGE!!!  Some of the dolls are gorgeous, some are plain, and some...look like my poor little Lucy.  There are even a couple'a bears.  Either way I ran into one of these dolls on Failbook and fell in love with her little face, so I snagged one for myself.  She's pretty different from the one I saw on Failbook.

Boy howdy, that hair's gonna be fun!  Munecas Geli are Mexican, and apparently more readily available in Latin America than they are in the U.S.  While my doll is an older one, Geli is still making dolls, and apparently they're pretty pricy, ranging from fifty on up to a hundred ten bucks American.  They come in a huge range of sizes and styles, like this one for smaller kids, and this one that's clearly for older kids.  The dolls sometimes come with names, but I don't know what my doll's name was at one time (or if she even had one) so I've been calling her "Renata."  Renata is eighteen inches like American Girls, but she has a soft body and can't stand unassisted.  Here she's leaning against the door (and Rita Cheryl, LOL).

Let's start at the top as always, with Renata's hair.  Her hair is dramatic, but it's not at all fun to monkey with.  It's sandy brown and is both very curly and very frizzy...frizzy???  Hell, I may as well call it tangled and be done with it.

That's Darlington Raceway hair if I ever saw it, kids.  I have four other dolls with hair like that (Meygana, Kikki, Dulcie-chan, and Madge), and of those three I was only able to control Dulcie's hair.  Oh yeah, Walda's hair was pretty bad too, worse than Meygana's or Kikki's, but I was able to just rewig her.  I think that in Renata's case the less done the better.  She does have two little braids in all that mess, kinda like Madge did.

The braids are fastened back with an aging rubber band.

As wild as this hair is, I may tie that off with some thread to make the braids semi-permanent.  In the meantime that ugly rubber band is covered with a large powder blue hairbow. 

Atta girl, Renata.  Respect the bow, even if it is a little grungy and decrepit-looking.  A night in THE PICKLE JAR OF DESPAIR can probably fix that stain.  Since Renata's hair is so matted it was hard to get a good idea about her roots, but I gave it the ol' college try (without painting my nails, LOL).  Along her forehead Renata's hairline is tightly rooted and looks halfway decent.

The back hairline has wider spaces between the plugs and doesn't look as good, but her hair is so thick that one can't see the roots anyway.  Not all Munecas Geli are this lucky.

Usually a week passes between Throwback Thursday reviews (duh, every Thursday, LOL), and in the week that's elapsed between Aimee's review and Renata's I bit the bullet and washed her hair with lukewarm tap water and a few squirts of Dawn.  While her hair was still wet I worked my fingers through the worst of the tangles.  Renata's hair still doesn't look great, but it's shinier now and smells nice.  It's also wanting to lie flat again, so I guess I'll leave well enuff alone.

Underneath the smooth top layer the hair is still incredibly tangled, and to make matters worse the fibers are coarse and don't brush smoothly even when clean.  I suspect that this hair may be low-end nylon like Meygana's and Kikki's, which is never good on a play doll.  Overall this is...not the absolute worst hair I've seen on a doll, but it's pretty darn close.  I was tempted at one point to cut it all and rewig Renata, but I decided against it.  The hair wash did help some.

Regarding the face, Renata has an intense gaze that some might find off-putting.  She doesn't look as put-out as some of the Global Girls (Miss Emily's Vivienne was particularly moody), but her gaze is soul-piercing enuff. 

It's mainly the eyes; I've seen other Geli dolls with faces...kinda like this, and their gazes are not as intense.  Areli is a good example.  On the other hand, this little doll (coincidentally also named Renata) is smiling and still has an intense stare.  Again, I think it's mainly the eyes.  As for my doll, the eyes are what drew me to her over other Munecas Geli that were available on eBay.  Well that, and a lot of the others that I found were ugly (LOL).  Indeed, as I noted above I found quite a few that could've passed for D'anton Jos Rotten Kids (examples HERE, HERE, and HERE), but Renata is thankfully not one of them.  Anyway, the eyes are a unique shade of brown like Zoe's and Salome's are, but it's also a very, very different shade from either Zoe's or Salome's.  Zoe's eye color is this unusual chocolate milk shade.

Salome has golden eyes.

Since I love pounding points until they beg for mercy, my Cuddle On Delivery doll, Marta Angela, also has eyes that are a unique shade of brown.  I think Mel Birnkrant called this color "butterscotch."

I'm a Girly Robyn's eyes are also kinda unique.  Unlike the other girls above, her irises look very two-dimensional, but the color is still nice.  LOL, my mama likes Robyn!

As I've noted before, brown eyes are hard to render properly on dolls, as they look lifeless if they're too dark (Crissy, Julie) and possessed if they're too light (Aimee!).  Renata's eyes are light brown like Salome's, Marta's, and Robyn's, but they look more luminous, like real amber.  Not just amber the color like Salome's eyes are, but honest-to-God fossilized resin.  One of my all-time favorite gemstones.  They don't look as gemstone-like up close, but the color is there.

Since these eyes are so unique I worry a little that they might've faded from another color...and that they might continue to fade to some other color, like the red that older My Twinn dolls sometimes acquire.  With a face as serious as Renata's, red eyes would NOT be good!  By the way, look at how skewed Renata's left eyebrow is!  They're almost as bad as my Little Miss Revlon's eyebrows.

No eyeshadow here, there, or anywhere, nor was I really expecting it since Renata is a child doll.  These eyes are sleep eyes, but they have rooted eyelashes that interfere a little with her eyes closing.  This would've driven me crazy as a little kid; I HATED it when the few dolls I had couldn't close their eyes all the way.  Now I just use it as an excuse to say my sleeping dolls are playing possum.

Underneath the eyes Renata has a flat, fairly wide nose, round, blushed cheeks, and an apricot-colored mouth that's molded and painted in a serious expression.

For some reason Renata's mouth reminds me of my Bitty Baby's mouth (left).  The shape and paint job are different, but both are delicately molded and have soft, neutral colors, and they're both the teeniest bit asymmetric.  Kiara appears to have developed some crud in her mouth, LOL.  Y'all know babies and how unpredictable they are!  Anyway, the shape and expression of Renata's mouth reminds me of my MiM doll, Hailey, who always looks eternally worried about something.

Solemn little mouths, rather.  Oh well, not all dolls have to smile to be pretty!  As an aside, Renata's vinyl is fair but kinda peachy, sort of intermediate between very pale Aimee and very tan Sasha.

That'll give y'all an idea bout Renata's skin tone.  Underneath her mass of hair Renata has your typical ears, and very well-molded they are!  Her little lobes have earrings that I don't think are removable (I've tugged on them and they didn't budge).  They look like pearl beads strung on straight pins.

These dolls are marked on their necks with what I assume is the Geli logo.  This is raised rather than sunken in like the logos on Mattel dolls.

The molding on this head is pretty darn good, but the vinyl feels hard and lightweight, kinda like a doll you might get at Wal-Mart.  I haven't looked at the molding on the limbs yet, but since it's time for body talk I'll be getting to that soon.  I'll start the body by showing this sticker, which I found on Renata's back when I was undressing her.  Unsurprisingly it's all in Spanish, but I can read the gist of it.

Basically you handwash her body in cold water and...Suave soap?  Never would've thought to use regular shampoo for a doll!  The clothes can be washed the same way, and they may need it, but again, we'll get to that.  Renata's head appears to tie like American Girl heads do...

...but when I fumbled with that knot I couldn't get it undone, so when I washed Renata's hair I had to do it the hard way.

Now!  Now let's do nitty-gritties with the body.  A lot of these dolls appear to be of the soft-bodied lapsitter type, and Renata is no exception.  Her composition is similar to that of a porcelain doll, with head and partial limbs sewn onto a soft body.  

Renata doesn't have an armature inside her body like the My Twinn dolls do, which is too bad.  As soft as Renata is she'd have been able to pose well with an armature.  But since she has none and her posing is pretty much nonexistent, time to look at limbs.  Renata's arms are vinyl from mid-humerus down, and are made of the same vinyl as her head.  Same peachy complexion and all.

Her fingers have some sort of crap on them that I had to chisel off with my thumbnail.  The molding on the back of the hand is so-so...

...but her little palms have creases!  Not many dolls have palm creases this distinct.  

The left hand has even better creases.

Otherwise the molding is average.  The knuckles have creases, and the fingertips have nails, but nothing else noteworthy. 

Similar to arms, the legs are vinyl from about mid-thigh down.  Same vinyl, same color.  Second verse, same as the first.

Some Munecas Geli have bent knees and some have straight knees, depending on whether the doll is a baby or a child.  Since Renata is a child she has straight knees.  Her feet are...kinda short!

Renata's toenails are a bit more well-defined than her fingernails, but otherwise the molding is about the same.

Most of the Geli poppets I've run into are well-dressed, and Renata is no exception.  But boy, how nineties can a dress get?  I had a couple like this when I was a little kid.

LOL, I can remember wanting to wear them to church in the wintertime and being mad when Mama said flowers weren't for winter.  Strangely, I almost never got to pair my flowered dresses with a hair bow.  I don't know why...yeah, I do.  For the first eleven years of life I had to wear my hair short.  It looked cute until puberty hit and my hair started curling on its own, and by seventh grade I was rocking braids.  I looked a little like obnoxious Eliza Thornberry, but I was a lot happier.  But ANYWAY, Renata's dress takes me back.  Not only is it similar to my childhood dresses, but it's also similar to the dress of my lost Cabbage Patch Kid, Honoria.  For the record, Honoria's dress looked like this.

We all saw what happened to Aimee's dress when I forced it on Crissy and Velvet.  Thus I'm NOT going to try this dress on my Cabbies due to their thick arms.  LOL, anyway, the first thing I found of note was the Geli tag...plastic-tacked to the front of Renata's dress.  Yeah, plastic-tacked.  I'll be cutting it off and using it as a necklace.

Right!  Regarding the dress itself, it has full, slightly puffed sleeves with gathered cuffs.

Here's a closeup of the print.  It's your standard pastel floral print, nothing super-duper special, but still pretty.

The dress has a big, floppy collar that fits Renata's throat closely by virtue of Velcro.  Instead of one long strip, there are several square-shaped tabs.  Again, just like the dresses worn by my Cabbage Patch. 

Oh look, there's the tag!  I wonder what it says?

Yep, brand and laundry information!  It's in Spanish, but I can make sense of it.

Since this fabric is a bit loosely woven the hem has some loose ends showing, but the hem itself feels strong.

Around her waist Renata wears a pale blue sateen ribbon that serves as a sash.  It's made of the same stuff as Renata's hair bow, but it's cleaner.

The ends are a little ragged, as ends like this will be as time goes by.  I can fix this if I choose to, believe it or not. 

Imagine my surprise when I took the dress off and this tumbled out from underneath the skirt!  

I probably SHOULDN'T have been surprised, because Renata's skirt held its shape very well when I moved her around, but I had a brain fart and didn't put two and two together.  But the petticoat IS present, and it's quite pretty.  It's made of white embroidered eyelet.  I'm very fond of eyelet.

The hem is trimmed with a wide band of lace.  Not cheap, scratchy lace that a lot of my porcelain dolls have, but soft cloth lace like the stuff I usually had on my childhood dresses.

Most of my dresses, mind y'all.  I did have one dress that had a coarse tulle petticoat, and it itched like mad.  Anyway, the hem here doesn't look great, but again it's holding up pretty well. 

Under the petticoat Renata wears white sateen bloomers.  The legs of these are trimmed with lace that does look scratchy.  The seams on these are well-executed. 

Underneath it all Renata wears thigh-high white socks that are a bit grubby but otherwise unremarkable. 

Over her socks Renata wears off-white shoes with oval holes cut in the toes and sateen laces.

I wasn't able to get those bows undone, so I had to pull the shoes off Renata's feet.  Luckily they slip on and off with no problems. 

Overall I'd pronounce Renata well-dressed.  I will note, however, that all those layers of underthings were a bit hard to place!  The dress itself also needs a nice laundering, but nothing major.  

That'll do, Moon.  That'll do.

BAD
*That hair...I seem to have done a lot of dolls with bad hair in recent times.  But yeah, this hair is...I won't say it's unsalvageable, but it would take more work than I'm willing to put into it.

GOOD
*Uh...everything else?  

Seriously, Renata is a nice doll except for that hair.  Since all Geli dolls are different I can only speak for Renata, and she's got a pretty face, she's well-dressed and well-constructed, she's suitable for both young and old collectors...but that hair.  I didn't even try to comb it, not with a brush, not with a fork, not with my fingers.  It looks better now that I've washed it (and trimmed it, I admit it), but my Lordy, who ever dreamed of giving a small child a doll with hair that curly???  'Cause that's the only way I can explain that mess.  Yeah, curls LOOK good on a doll, but in the hands of a kid they're just waiting to become a nightmare of tangles.  Now...now I'm just assuming that Renata was a toy at one time.  Maybe she wasn't meant to be a toy but was used as one anyway, and if that's the case then I can understand the hair a little better.  Based on that I advise caution when shopping for these dolls, especially if they're intended for a child.  Best get one with short hair or straight hair, but then that's true of any doll.  Otherwise Renata is a fine little doll.  She made my mama smile more than once during the summer, so she's served her purpose.

Yours truly,
RagingMoon1987