Minikane/Paola Reina Imani review

Sigh...the Moon Girl has been a sad Moon Girl lately.  Mama and I are still away from home (both our places are gonna need some renovations), so I'm away from my animals.  Oh, I go in twice a day to feed them and spend time with them, but I haven't been able to snuggle with them in bed and I miss that.  Then last week Lola, one of my cats, grew a tumor the size of a golf ball in her belly and had to be put to sleep.  She went from being mildly chonky and bouncing around to skin-and-bones and lethargic in a week and a half, so losing her was quite the shock.  We haven't heard from my sister since September, and I personally am getting sick to death of that.  Mama ended up signing her life away to pay bills.  And at the moment it looks like it'll just be me, Mama, and Uncle Man-Child for Thanksgiving.  So I've been...oh, I'll say mildly depressed.  Not enuff to spend my life in bed, but just kinda sulky and pouty and "oh, leave me the f@%k alone."  So being the escapist that I am I've turned to my dolls for comfort.  After reviewing Abigail and Mar, I think it's only fair to review Imani, the baby of the Paola Reina bunch.  Like my other Paola Reina girls, "Imani" is the name she came with.  It's an Arabic name that means "belief" or "faith," and it makes me think of David Bowie's wife (LOL).

I've had Imani quite awhile and she's been in and out of the blog more than once.  She's interesting in that she's created by Spanish toy company Paola Reina, but she's distributed by Minikane, whom I think is a French bunch.  As a result Imani and her Minikane cronies can't be found on Paola Reina's official website, but they can be found on secondary sites like eBay and Etsy.  These Minikane babies come in their birthday suits, and as such it's our job to dress them, kinda like it is when we actually give birth.  The Minikane bunch is a lovely, racially diverse lot with both boys and girls, and word of warning:  the dolls are all anatomically correct.  Being thirty-six, this doesn't bother me much, but it might bother some of the more lily-white people in this world.  Anyway, the Minikane lineup includes boys and girls, with hair and without, in black, white, and Oriental tones.  Imani stood out because she's dark-skinned with bluish-gray eyes, kinda like Sayuri in Memoirs of a Geisha.  I'll show y'all those when the time comes, but size comes first.  Imani is thirteen inches from head to toe.  When seated she's close in size to my old booty call, So Surprised Suzie.

Mar and Imani are WAAAAY out of scale. 

Most of the Minikane babies have a lot of hair, probably more than babies their presumed age should, and Imani is no exception.  She has a full head of curly black hair.

The gap pictured above is the result of me trying to find/make a gap!  It was not easy, but I was finally able to dig through and find the rooting.  The rooting is pretty good, with plugs that are thick and tightly spaced.  The fibers are curly and feel surprisingly natural, though they do have that synthetic feel that all synthetic hair has.  You can't avoid that.

It should be noted that not all of these Minikane babies have this much hair.  Some of 'em have it short and molded, and that's fine too.  Indeed, I kinda prefer molded hair on baby dolls, since young babies tend to have thin, wispy hair or no hair at all...unless they're like my sister and me, LOL!

Eyes are going to be of some importance in the weeks ahead, as the dolls I'm fixing to review have very pretty eyes.  But then again, Paola Reina eyes tend to be pretty as well.  Some Minikane dolls have sleep eyes and/or big smiles, but Imani's eyes are fixed and her expression is neutral-happy.

Here's those eyes I was tellin' y'all about.  I don't have too many dolls with eyes this color; they're either unquestionably blue or unapologetically gray.  Imani's eyes are right in the middle.

They're ever so slightly metallic in appearance, just like Abigail Witch's eyes are...

...and like Mar's eyes aren't.

Last week I gave Mar a hard time about her eyebrows, but Abigail's are even darker than Mar's are, AND they still look kinda cheap.  Imani doesn't have any eyebrows at all!  Pardon the eternally present dust.

Babies tend to have wispy, faint eyebrows, so I'll let Imani's lack thereof slide.  Like most Paola Reina dolls Imani has big lips that are both detailed and painted a lovely color.  When I complain about Barbie and her bubblegum lips, this is usually what I have pictured.

Oh yeah, Imani's cheeks are also blushed a little.  Kinda fitting for the weather we've been having lately:  mild, but with a fairly sharp breeze.  Anywho, I'm not gonna lie, I don't like Imani's face as much as I like Mar's or Abigail's, but it's very nicely painted and has just the right expression for a young child.  And as I insinuated heavily above, I love Imani's eyes.

Off with the clothes now, and here's where things get a little fun.  Minikane dolls are anatomically correct.  It's not a huge deal; indeed I kinda like it when baby dolls are anatomically correct, but that can make it a little awkward when one reviews a doll on a blog (LOL).  Interestingly, even though Imani is all-vinyl she is not a drink-and-wet doll.  She probably could've been, but Paola Reina elected not to go that way and Imani is probably better off because of it.  Drink-and-wet dolls can run afoul of mold if they've got water in them often enuff.  Anyway, here's the usual front/back/side stuff.

It probably goes with out saying that Imani cannot stand.  Few of my baby dolls can.  Like Mar and Abigail, Imani has five joints that rotate but do not pivot.  She can turn her head to look at me...

...she can wave and reach...

...and she can kick her feet.

As y'all saw, she's also very good at sitting.  Regarding molding, Imani has more to see than Mar and Abigail did.  Indeed, if she were a boy doll I'd say she's got moobs, LOL!  Oh well, lots of babies have moobs whether they're boys or not, LOL.  At least Imani isn't a shar-pei baby.

The backs of her elbows look like they're smiling.

Imani has appropriately chonky little hands, with thick, short fingers and creases on the knuckles and at the wrists.

Imani's palms have more definition than Mar's and Abigail's do, complete with suggestions of head and heart lines.

Being a baby means that Imani has curved (bowed?) legs and can't stand on her own, but her legs make up for it with more nice molding.

Since Imani's feet are not designed for balance she's got decent molding here too.

That's a pretty fine little foot!  I think her little toes are funny, though.  They're round like little grapes, and they remind me of the scene from Superfudge where bratty Fudge Hatcher tries to pull his baby sister's toes off.  I don't understand why Fudge's parents don't just bust his a$$, by the way.  My sister and I NEVER would've gotten away with some of the shenanigans that little pistol pulled.  Spankings aside, Imani came in her birthday suit, so it was up to me to dress her, and spoiler alert:  she's been wearing this same outfit for about a year now.  It was closing in on winter when I bought these items, and now it's closing in again.  That said, I wasn't expecting to unpeel Imani like an onion.  Her sleep sack, cardigan, and hat are visible, but under that she's got more pieces!

<sings off-key>  I feel winter creepin' in/I'm tired of this town again, yeah...wait a minute, that's summer that's supposed to be creepin' in.  They BOTH tend to creep in, and I tend to get tired of both seasons very quickly, but with the right clothes winter is tolerable.  Imani will demonstrate.  Here's the cardigan set; it's made of soft gold yarn and has one of my favorite stitches, the bobble stitch.

Or maybe that's the popcorn stitch.  Either way I love the way it looks.  The buttons thread into actual buttonholes, and I like that too since so many buttons on doll clothes are decorative only.  I think these buttons are wood, but I'm not sure. 

Since I bought the cardigan set I didn't want something else to cram over Imani's arms.  At the same time I DID want something to layer over her legs, and this sleep sack fit the bill perfectly.  It's reversible, though I like the the purple the best.

Of all the little garments that I've bundled onto Imani, this is the only item I've got that is tagged.  Notice that the straps also snap together.  They're plastic snaps, but they hold up nicely.

I kid y'all not, I dressed Imani immediately after I got her and I haven't changed or undressed her since.  As a result I completely forgot that she had this little hedgehog sleeper underneath the sack and cardigan.  

A year under wraps has left this pretty wrinkled, but I can fix that.  The neck stretches, but getting it over Imani's stiff little arms is a challenge.  All the more reason to leave it on her for an extended period. 

Underneath it all Imani has a lemon-printed diaper.  This fastens at the sides with Velcro. 

Diapers don't sound very exciting, but I'm always excited when my baby dolls get one to wear.  Baby dolls kinda NEED that sort of thing, and since they don't mess themselves it's okay to put them in something cute.

All the items pictured above are from various shops on Etsy (I've long since forgotten which ones), and they're all impeccably sewn.  Minikane dolls can wear specially made clothes that are sold on Etsy, and also stuff from Paola Reina.  They can also wear Waldorf clothes if the size is right; my Zlata is a bit too big to share clothes with Imani, but a slightly smaller Waldorf doll could share with no problems.

Since I'm biased towards Paola Reina dolls anyway I'm just gonna skip my usual good/bad spiel.  I like Imani.  Not as much as I do Mar, because I prefer fashion dolls to baby dolls, but I do like her.  She has all the good qualities of the brand, and admittedly a few of the bad (stilted posing).  I also appreciate how easy it is to find clothes; finding clothes for the other sizes isn't the simplest thing in the world.  So if you like baby dolls one of these sweet-smelling all-vinyl pets might do well in your nursery.  As I said above, they come in a wide variety of ethnicities and hair colors, and they come as both boys and girls.  Just be forewarned that they are anatomically correct, LOL.

Cheers,
RagingMoon1987