Throwback Thursday review: Dollar General clone

I've been having technical difficulties again, this time with my phone, so these pictures are going to be all over the map.  If they're super-bad, let me know and I'll replace them.  That said, I've owned plenty of dolls from Dollar General, and they've been all over the board in terms of quality.  Last week I showed the best I've ever seen, and this week is the worst one.  This is Katya.

Over the years I've noticed that there is a continuum that all Barbie clones fall under.  Kari Mitchell falls at the extremely good end of the spectrum, Jennifer and Mariclare are solidly in the middle, and Katya is at what my family calls the "very poor, must be signed by parent" end.  Why?  Well...you'll see.  Katya is not the name that my doll came with; her package simply said "fashion doll."  To me she looks like a Katya, so that's her name.  Let's start with the hair, what hair she has.

The root job is all over the place, with big thin patches and even patches with no hair at all.

The hair itself is soft and smooth...but only because I cut it several years back.  Katya's hair used to curl up at the ends, but I brushed it quite a bit and it became impossibly tangled, so I cut it.  It's not so bad now, though it's a bit unruly due to neglect.

Katya's main saving grace is her face.  She's got a cute face...if a little vacant.  Please ignore Katya's unruly hair; I'm sorely tempted to give her a set of bangs.

Awww heck, she's no more vacant than Mariclare and Kari are!  Katya's eyes are blue, and she has very thick painted eyelashes and...ORANGE EYEBROWS???  Mmmkay...

Her lips are pink-red and show some off-kilter teeth.

Katya's cheeks are blushed, except for one patch on the left side of her head.

The paint faded there because of a mishap I had with some pollen shortly after I got this doll.  I got Katya too close to an Easter lily, and her left cheek got stained by some pollen.  I tried to remove it with fingernail polish remover, but all that did was turn the area AROUND the pollen white.  I should've been patient, because the pollen faded over time.  All that's left now is a white streak on Katya's cheek.

Oh yes, Katya's ears are also pierced, but as is customary for clones, no earrings are present.

If I were to ignore the hair this doll actually has a halfway decent head.  The paint is pretty even except for the teeth, and it forms an attractive face.  The vinyl is cheap but it feels nice to the touch; it's smooth and very soft.  It's faded over time, though; I certainly hope Katya will not end up like Mego's Candi and Brandi dolls, but it looks like that may be the direction she's headed in.

I'm not going to lie:  Katya's head is pretty good for a clone.  The hair could've been better, but the body is what makes her the worst clone I've ever picked up.  The overall shape is okay...

...but the molding is HORRID!!!!!!!!!!  When I first got Katya she had large tags of plastic hanging off of her feet, arms, and hands.  I trimmed the worst of it off with a pair of nail scissors, but Katya's hands are still pretty bad.

Okay...rough molding I can handle.  Lots of cheap dolls have rough seams, and some expensive dolls do too.  The thing is this:  Katya's body parts are molded unevenly, and so the joints don't seat right.  Look at all the gaps in her waist!

Katya is the only doll that I own, repeat, THE.  ONLY.  ONE.  that can't stand up straight, and it's all because of her crude molding.  Even P. Bo can stand up straight, and remember that her torso is deliberately tipped to one side.  Katya's uneven legs don't help much either.

In addition, Katya's posing is VERY stiff...

...and because her hips are cut at an angle her legs splay apart when she sits.

Her sitting is not as poor as the Lovely Patsy dolls that Dollar General sells now, but it's definitely not great.  Her feet are dinky little nubbins with no molding at all.  The lack of molding was no shock, but the size surprised me given the size of Katya's hands.  They're even smaller than Barbie's feet, and that's saying something because she's always had small feet.

Even the neck knob is rough.

Luckily the rough knob does not affect Katya's motion in that joint.  It's the only good joint that she has, frankly.

BAD BODY!!!  Enough said.

Regarding clothes, Katya is on the low end of the spectrum in that respect too.  She came with a red swimsuit, a pair of ill-fitting purple heels that melted when I tried to super-glue them to Katya's feet, and a sarong that raveled years ago.  I still have the swimsuit.

It's a little wrinkled because I often had Katya wear this underneath her regular clothes, but it's actually pretty good quality.  The hems are all finished, though the raw edges are fairly obvious.

Some of the rough edges are cut close, so they stick out and show.

That's all Katya came with!  She's a far cry from Kari Mitchell, folks!  It really is a shame that she didn't come with a better outfit, but given the quality of the doll herself (and the fragility of her other clothes) a larger wardrobe would likely have fallen apart at the seams anyway.   Clothes actually aren't a big issue, as Katya is the same size as a TNT Barbie.  This means that she can wear almost anything Barbie has.  Here's Katya in Cool Times Midge's garb...

...and in an old Barbie Easy Living fashion, which I didn't bother to review due to its simplicity.

Cool Times Midge's outfit doesn't flatter Katya's smaller frame due to it being roomy to begin with, but the Easy Living fashion looks okay.  For grins, here's what Katya and Midge look like together.  Midge is having to hold Katya up in this picture, but they still make a cute pair.

This is Katya's usual state of dress, an old Fashion Avenue outfit.  (OLD PIC!!!)

I would still have her in this, but the hat is buried in storage and I've been too busy to dig it out.  The hat adds a lot to the outfit, so I just put Katya in the Easy Living outfit and called it a day.  The yellow pumps that came with that outfit don't fit Katya's feet at all, though.  Too big.

Kari's replacement shoes don't fit either; they're too small to fit over Katya's thick calves.

Yeah, that's another weird thing about this doll:  her feet are tiny, but her calves are thick like an old TNT Barbie's calves.  Cool Times Midge's white tennis shoes fit though...or they fit Katya about as well as they do Midge.  Flat shoes always looked weird on Barbie dolls from the nineties.

This concludes the auction.

BAD
*Worst body I've ever seen on a doll, period.  The molding is rough, the pieces don't fit together properly, the motion is stilted...I could go on forever.
*Hair isn't great either; I had to cut it once, and the rooting is all over the place.
*Can't share shoes with Barbie; her feet are too small
*Rough seams are hard on some doll clothes; I didn't mention this above, but Katya's roughly molded seams destroyed one of my best pairs of Barbie tights.  That happened years ago, but it's still worthy of note.

GOOD
*Vinyl of the head is surprisingly durable
*Poor root job can be corrected by someone who knows how to reroot
*Can wear most of Barbie's clothes
*Has a cute face

And there y'all have it, the worst clone doll I've ever picked up.  If Barbie was a movie filmed by Paramount, Katya would be one filmed by the Erry Vision Film Company.  Well, maybe that's a bit harsh, because Katya is not quite as bad as Erry's sole flick (yes, mercifully they only did one).  There ARE good things to say, just as some folks have good things to say about Tales From the Quadead Zone, but unfortunately few of those things are in terms of quality.  Katya has a cute face and would loan herself well to customization (something that I'm not good at), and she's extremely good at modeling vintage Barbie outfits, which shocked me given her stilted poses.  Interestingly, the vinyl of Katya's head has taken a lot of punishment over the years, including exposure to fingernail polish remover (usually a stupid thing to do to vinyl), and yet the head is still holding strong.  So Katya does have her merits; obviously I must like her some or I wouldn't have kept her.  Don't bother trying to hunt one of these out though, unless you absolutely MUST have that cute face.  Yes, I actually have seen these dolls on eBay for reasons I'll never understand, and my advice is to skip these millennial Barbie clones and stick with what Dollar General currently has available...or just shell out the extra pesos for a real Barbie.

Cheers,
RagingMoon1987