Throwback Thursday review: Hasbro Aimee

We're going back to 1972 for this one.  The Oakland Athletics won the World Series that year, "Rocket Man" made it to #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart, Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington both got hit by a tornado (rare in that part of the country), and Jon Pertwee reigned as the foppish Third Doctor.  From this...admittedly boring-sounding year the doll world got Aimee, a Hasbro entity whose big gimmick kinda failed her.  Indeed, my initial intention for poor Aimee was to rob her of her clothes to see if they could fit any of my dolls, but I ended up taking pity on her.  As y'all can see, she doesn't photograph very well.

Take that back:  Aimee can look cute if done up the right way.  I thought she looked adorable with that band around her head, for example.  Indeed, for some reason she reminded me a bit of Walk Lively Steffie with her hair like this....even though Walk Lively Steffie didn't have bangs.

Hair band or no, Aimee is not the looker that Hasbro claimed she was.  However, after handling her I gained some respect for the product Hasbro was trying to make, and I decided to review her.  Aimee represents the early 1970s and is seen by some as Hasbro's answer to Ideal's Crissy.  Indeed, Aimee is a hair play doll like Crissy, but she went about the hair thing in a completely different manner.  Instead of having "hair that grows and grows" like Crissy did, Aimee had hairpieces that could plug into her head.  Yeah, y'all heard that right:  PLUG into her head.  I've discussed two other dolls in the past with hair pieces that plug in, Cutie Pops Candi and Wild Hair Sindy...and I guess my LIV dolls count too since their wigs are held in place with pegs.  Either way, Aimee had hair that plugged into her head, and she also came with items that could be bobby-pinned in place.  I unfortunately can't show how this is done because I've been unable to locate any of Aimee's extra hair.  Aimee herself is not hard to find, but her extra outfits and accessories are trickier.  I have been able to find one of Aimee's extra outfits, the red velvet dress that would be nice for fall or winter.

In the matter of the doll herself, Aimee is supposed to be an older teen or possibly a young adult (unlike the preteen Crissy), and as a result all of her extra outfits were of the formal or semi-formal style.  NONE of them were slacks or pantsuits, which surprises me a little since it wasn't out of the question for women to wear pantsuits to nice occasions in the seventies.  Also surprisingly, none of the outfits came with extra shoes, meaning that Aimee is stuck with her plain black open-toe sandals, but that's not a huge deal since black goes with just about everything.  In general, online opinions of Aimee are fairly lukewarm, citing her "dress-up" gimmick as awkward and her face as unattractive, but we'll cross those bridges when we come to them.  Aimee is eighteen inches tall like an American Girl, but her measurements are about as different from Rita Cheryl's as night is from day.  I also threw in Crissy, who was also available in 1974 (though starting to fade in popularity) and sometimes gets compared to Aimee.  These two are pretty different at first glance, I can tell y'all that right now. 

Aimee has black/dark brown hair, and she wears it...in sort of a mullet!

Y'all probably can't see it, but the upper layers of Aimee's hair are drastically shorter than the lower layers!  I've said in the past that a mullet can look nice if done right, but this ain't it.  It's not terribly obvious, though.  The lower layer of Aimee's hair is worn to the shoulder and is curled up at the ends, kinda like Lucy Van Pelt's hair, or Lindsey Bergman's, take your pick.

I had Aimee with Rita Cheryl for a brief period during the beginning of the summer, and I noticed that their hair is similar.  I put them together to see just how similar.

The results reminded me of the time I compared Lindsey's hair to Rita Cheryl's.  When she's alone Aimee's hair looks Hesston tornado-level black, but under the proper lighting it's easy to see that that's not the case.

Regarding the fibers, since they're short the fibers are easy to brush out, but they still have a mind of their own.  This is most prominently seen in Aimee's bangs.  She apparently had them either parted or squished at some point, and they've stayed parted.  I've had only limited success in trying to brush this out, though the elastic band helped some.

Hopefully the fibers will remember that they're not being shoved under a wig.  Yes, in order to accommodate some of Aimee's hairpieces, her bangs had to be pushed back under her wig.  I don't see what difference that makes, but anyway...Aimee's root job is pretty thick, and her scalp is painted black.

Better take it easy on the hair dye, sister, unless you want to die of lymphoma like one of my mother's friends did.  Scientists and doctors haven't definitively linked hair dye to lymphoma, but when it comes to chemicals it's always best to err on the side of caution.  Usually in a doll's case a painted scalp is usually better than a bare scalp shining through, but in Aimee's case it also made her gimmick notoriously hard to use.  Remember when I said that a lot of her hairpieces plug into her head?  The holes that accommodate those plugs are very hard to find.  I did eventually find a couple, but I had to go through Aimee's hair like I was picking out cooties.  This one is on Aimee's right temple.

Some of these holes have hair rooted in, making them even harder to find.  I think this is what one of those holes looks like; it's located right in the middle of Aimee's forehead, just inside the hairline. 

Compare those to the holes in Wild Hair Sindy's head (seen below) and Cutie Pops Cookie's head (linked doll belonged to Miss Emily; I never photographed the holes in my Candi's head, but they're just like Cookie's).

Cutie Pops didn't have any rooted hair, so their holes are impossible to hide without a hat.  Sindy, however, has a full head of rooted hair, and even though the holes in her head are large they can be hidden and found again with ease.  Since Aimee has thick, dark hair bigger holes would've been possible, but I guess Hasbro didn't think of that.  Either that or they just didn't want to make them bigger.  Either one is a possibility.  My point is that Aimee's holes are hard to find, and Crissy and Beth adds that the plug on Aimee's wiglet doesn't fit in the hole well (the plug is teeny-weeny and the holes are even teeny-weenier).  The Bold Doll confirms this.  So right out of the gate Aimee's main selling point is rendered difficult to use.  How difficult I do not know, but it reminds me of my What's Her Face review, the one where you could stamp the doll's face on.  What's Her Face's big selling point was her big downfall, and while I can't confirm this with Aimee, I'm reading that the same is true for her.  Her rooted hair, though?  It's nice enuff.  My doll may need a hair washing to get the fibers to calm down, but that's about it.

Now, to quote the Wizard of Oz, COME FOREWARD!!!

Look at that!  Look at that!!!  <sobs wildly>  I WANNA GO HOOOOOME!!!  LOL, okay, Aimee's face isn't that bad.  She's not stunningly beautiful either, but I don't oft run into dolls that are stunningly beautiful.  Some Aimee dolls are prettier than others since they went a little easier on the eyeshadow, but my Aimee...looks like I did back in high school, minus my Egyptian-themed eyeliner and woolly worm eyebrows (Aimee's look penciled in and overshadowed by eyeshadow, typical of seventies eyebrows, while mine tend to look like Xenia's).

When it comes to eyeshadow, chica, less is more.  Unless you're Jem and the Holograms or Barbie and the Rockers, that is.  Further, I think some other color would've fit Aimee better since her eyes are a very unique shade of brown.  Very, VERY unique, in fact.  Many a time I've seen blue doll eyes that throw back a lot of light (usually said doll is a Madame Alexander doll), but this is the first time I've seen brown doll eyes do this.  Usually I'm griping about brown doll eyes being too dark, but...well, I'll ask y'all.  Which is better/worse:  Crissy's too-dark dead-looking eyes, or Aimee's glow-in-the-light eyes?

Y'all gotta admit that they look cute together!  I myself will admit that I like Aimee's eyes quite a bit; the flash from my camera overexposes them and makes them look weirder than they really are, but IRL they're not so bad.  Kenner Blythe had this same problem, by the way; her brown eye chips have a nasty penchant to look orange and possessed, especially as she ages.  Must've had something to do with the type of plastic used back then.  Regardless, Aimee's eyes sleep, and her thick eyelashes don't interfere with opening and closing like they do with some of my other dolls.  Notice though that her eyelids don't have any eyeshadow.  Y'know, where shadow is SUPPOSED to go.

I wonder if Aimee would've been more attractive if she'd had painted eyes?  Two of Crissy's friends, Dina and Brandi, had painted eyes rather than sleep eyes, and I have a few dolly friends who say Dina and Brandi are the only members of the Crissy family that they like.  I myself have Cinnamon, who also has painted eyes, and...again, I'll ask y'all.  Which do y'all prefer:  the sleep eyes of Crissy (left) and Velvet (right), or Cinnamon's painted eyes (center)?  Cinnamon's eyes aren't that red IRL, I promise!

As much as I love Crissy, I have to admit that I like Cinnamon's eyes the best.  But let's face it, Cinnamon's just a cute doll, period.  This is one of the few dolls that my mom all but begged me to get.

Oh yeah, Cinnamon also can't get mold in her eyes.  The reason why Crissy and Velvet are currently staying with me and thus available for comparison is because I'm doctoring them (and God knows who else) for mold.  Velvet is the one that brought it in, but I thought it would just spread to Crissy and I could treat them both.  Yeah...do not pass Go, do not collect $200, go directly to jail.  Chatty Cathy is sick and Kissy is sick (much to my mother's chagrin), the Little Miss Revlon crew is sick and the Gerber baby is sick...I could kick myself.  I'm just glad I learned before I moved Sandy into that room (so far I've kept it contained to just one room).  The fix is easy...but I should've just fixed Velvet right then and been done with it.  Live and learn, dang it.  

Oh yes, I also overdid it with the rubbing alcohol.  I put too much in Crissy's eye sockets, and...well, the glue that caused the mold has now come undone.  It's not uncommon for me to find Crissy looking like she overindulged on magic mushrooms. 

Poor dear, it's a good thing Crissy and Beth has tutorials on how to fix eyes!  And now I know what NOT to do when I work on the rest of my sickies.

Spleen vented, let's look at the lower part of Aimee's face.  She has shapely nose and a watermelon-slice smile with nude lips.  The lips are a nice shape, and the paint is even, but as usual I'm not a huge fan of the color.  Something a little darker might've done better.

This is another case of the promotional pictures looking different from the real deal.  The prototype had...well, it had slightly darker lips (plus a completely different head), but...well, we see what we got.  Aimee isn't hideous, but like I said once or twice above she's no knockout.  I wonder what she'd have looked like with darker eyes and with darker lips.  As an aside, both the Bold Doll and Crissy and Beth note that Aimee's box illustrations looked a LOT better than the doll herself did.  I wonder why that is?  Anywho, both sites also say that Aimee's face has a charm of its own, and I have to agree.  While not beautiful, she's not really ugly either.  She looks...well, kinda like your ordinary person, and she looks darn happy to be that way!  As another aside, the Bold Doll notes that Aimee had a black self, and her face was significantly more attractive than that of the white version.  The Bold Doll wonders how Aimee would've performed in stores if her white self had been sculpted the same way.

Oopsie, I forgot ears!  Aimee's ears are ordinary-looking ears, complete with heavy-looking bangles.

I admit it, I'd have worn 'em like that once, but if they're heavy nowadays, FORGET IT!!!  Anyway, Aimee's earrings can come out...

...and they're a bitch to put back in!  Crissy and Beth warned of this, but I had to try anyway.  Aimee did have extra earrings that came with her new wigs, but I've been told they're no easier to insert than her stock earrings are.  The Bold Doll further warn that many of these earrings ended up broken because they were so hard to put in.  Indeed, my dolls' earrings are bent at the top, and I don't think they're supposed to be that way.  I'll have to see what I can do about that; hard as they are to use these earrings do add a lot to Aimee's overall look.

Being a fashion doll, Aimee's build is semi-predictable.  She's got a developed chest, a comparatively narrow waist, and long, graceful limbs.

For comparison's sake, here's what her build is like compared to Sasha (right) and my victimized Crissy.

Aimee has six joints:  the usual five plus a waist joint.  She can turn her head but she can't tip it.

Her arms are rotational, meaning that she can move them up and down but not out to the sides.

The waist joint is where things get interesting.  It can tip from side to side, like so...

...and it can also spin 360 degrees, though I didn't show that.  This here looks painful enuff!

I was able to get a teeny peek at what this joint looks like up close.  Basically the upper half of Aimee's torso fits into a slot in the lower half like so.  That allows for side-to-side motion as well as rotation.

The waist has no back-and-forth movement, but that's NBD because Aimee's hips move back and forth very well.  She can do full splits, like so.

I wanted to get a better look at these arms because they're...kinda noodly.  The molds are not mirror images of each other, though that's hard to appreciate here.

Aimee's hands are delicate and well-molded (nails and knuckles and the like), but they're also a little clawlike!  I was also kinda bummed that Aimee doesn't have any nail polish.  A fashion doll normally has painted nails.

During Crissy's review I talked about Crissy's dainty hands, so here's what they look like next to Aimee's.  I also threw in Sasha's mongo paws.

Because I like dolly feet, here's what Aimee's feet look like.  She's got ten little toes with visible nails (which again are not painted).

Aimee's heels are elevated, not much, but enuff that she can't stand without her shoes.  Aimee and Crissy have that much in common. 

Again, here's what Aimee's feet look like next to Crissy's and Sasha's.  I always thought Crissy had dainty feet, but compared to Aimee she's pretty well endowed.

Not a bad body!  That waist joint has the potential to be fragile, but right now my doll's joint is holding strong.  Crissy and Beth warns that eventually these dolls do get floppy due to aging of the plastic, but for now my Aimee is fairing pretty well.

As I stated above several times Aimee is supposed to be a fashion doll, and her dress screams seventies.

How hippie can y'all get!  Aimee was supposed to be a glamour girl rather than a hippie, but if you're from the seventies you can't escape swirly colors.  There's a lot of foliage in there, and the leaves appear to be blue rather than green.  The other dominant colors are red, pink, and black, with gold serving as a nice accent color.  The fabric itself looks like plain old cotton, but since this WAS the seventies it could also be polyester.

The neckline is...I think that would classify as a mandarin collar, but I'm not 100% on that.  The collar, the waistline, and the bodice are all decorated with this loopy gold trim.  The bodice is trimmed diagonally, sort of like the seam on a kimono, except that if it were a kimono it would be wrapped the wrong way.

Aimee's sleeve cuffs are also decorated with this gold stuff.

The cuffs of these sleeves are extremely fitted, and I was dreading taking them off over Aimee's hands, but then I found that the sleeves have snaps.

In fact, so does the back.  These are still sewn pretty tightly, unlike the snaps on Little Honeymoon's dress and on Crissy's dress.  I'm thankful for the snaps because Velcro and that gold trim would not have gotten along.

The hem of the skirt is neatly done (the skirt is maxi-length), though I do see a few raggy ends that I'll need to trim.  These ends are from the raw edge of the fabric, and not from a sloppy seam.

To my delight, the dress is tagged on the inside.  There'll be no guesswork about who owns it.

Not a bad dress overall!  I love the colors, and my mom just likes the dress, period.  LOL, she probably remembers when styles like that were trendy!  Now Aimee's shoes, I do not get along with.  They're black vinyl high-heeled mules that go with everything...

...but in order to fasten them you have to run this...well, this phallic-looking little tab on one strap through the hole on the other.

That wouldn't be a huge deal, except that the tab is so soft that it bends rather than going through the hole.  So add that to the list of items that are frustrating about Aimee.  The hair plugs don't plug, the earrings don't slide in easily, and now there's these shoes.  Oh yeah, and Aimee's underpants got caught in her waist joint.  Getting THAT untangled was fun!  Yep, Aimee's got little white drawers underneath.  They don't fit her too well.

So my Aimee is mostly complete, at least in terms of clothes.  She's missing her extra wiglet, the braided headband, and the side curls that would've accompanied her fresh out of the box, and I have had no luck replacing these items.  I hope one day to find these so I can say for certain if styling her hair is the big pain that Crissy and Beth says it is.  CB is a pretty good resource, but I still wanna see for myself.  Except for those frustrating shoes Aimee is well-dressed.  Don't pull too hard on that gold trim and her dress should hold up for another forty-plus years.

Now...since I have Crissy, Velvet, and Sasha on hand, I'll play Dolly Dress Shuffle with them though I have my doubts about all three of them.  Indeed, Sasha is already politely bowing out.  

She says her huge hands would never go through those narrow sleeves. 

Crissy, however, is bound and determined to try.  With her eyes being out of whack she doesn't have much to lose.

Well, I did get Aimee's dress ON Crissy, but that was as far as I got it.  It bunches up at Crissy's waist and cannot be fastened.  Even when unfastened the shoulders were too tight for Crissy to move her arms.  Hence the slightly zombie-ish stance.  Aimee looks halfway decent in Crissy's dress, but the waist is too big.  Not that anyone can really tell, LOL.  Shoe sharing is out of the question for these two. 

Velvet's measurements are similar to Crissy's except for height, so I'm expecting more of the same.  Velvet's current outfit is a B.F.C. Ink outfit, by the way, so that will be what Aimee tries on.  Before I started dressing Aimee and Velvet up I noticed the difference in their hands.  Velvet has shorter fingers, but her hand is thicker overall than Aimee's. 

Alright, let's trade clothes.

Velvet is smaller than Crissy, but Aimee's dress was even tighter on her than it was on Crissy.  It's also too long, but why worry about length when the shoulders are way tight?  As for Aimee's, to my disappointment the B.F.C. Ink outfit was too big for her willowy frame.  So much for having modern-day clothing options. 

When I took Aimee's dress off Velvet,  I discovered that an underarm seam had busted.  I can fix that, but it still pissed me off.

Under normal circumstances I'd hop on Etsy and dig up a few custom-made fashions for a doll like Aimee, but unfortunately there's no such thing to be found.  I found plenty of Hasbro dolls on Etsy (most of whom were NOT Aimee), two loose Real Baby dresses that I promptly snapped up, and even some things for Crissy, which shows y'all that I'm not the only collector to associate Crissy with Aimee.  But there were unfortunately no handmade fashions for Aimee herself, and the store-made clothes are also hard to come by. 

Yes, extra clothes.  Hasbro did have Aimee covered there, though the extra outfits are proving tricky to come by.  Aimee had six admittedly lovely outfits, all utilizing long sleeves and heavy fabrics like velvet or brocade.  I consider myself very, very lucky that I found the red dress.  

Okay, it's a very deep shade of cranberry, but I'm still calling it red (indeed, the package called it "red velvet gown").  Like I said in the beginning, this would look awesome for a Christmas gala or something of that stripe.  For the record, Gold Clinger is my favorite of Aimee's extra outfits, and I'm keeping my eyes peeled for that one.

BAD
*Aimee has some of the craziest eyes I've seen on a doll.  Not everyone hates them, but not everyone loves 'em either.
*The extra hairpieces that this doll had were hard to put on, as were the earrings...AND the shoes.
*Very hard to find clothes and accessories.  Aimee herself is easy, but her accessories are not.
*To add insult to injury, she can't share clothes with any of the dolls I own!

GOOD
*From what I can tell, Aimee is well-constructed.  Both she and her clothes stood up well to my use and abuse...until I shoved Aimee's dress on Velvet, that is!  Don't do that if you have both Aimee and Velvet.
*Online images suggest that once Aimee's hairpieces were in place she was a decent-looking little dolly, but I can't test that yet.

Poor Aimee, she had a good idea, but the execution was sadly not very good.  Even though I've heard horror stories about Aimee's fall and wigs being hard to use, I'm still dying to find some of the pieces so I can see how my doll looks.  There sadly aren't many owner pictures showing Aimee modelling her stuff, just a few images on Crissy and Beth and some stock photos provided by the Bold Doll...and we all know how unreliable stock photos can be!  Crissy and Beth suggests that this doll's concept might've been lost on children, as it largely consisted of "glamming up a rather plain doll" for some sort of formal event.  I give Beth that, because unless their parents were filthy rich most kids never saw adults dress up super-fancy for a night out.  But then again, I loved to play dress-up myself when I was young.  Tomboy that I was, I did love the idea of princesses and balls and the like, so a doll like Aimee might've gotten my attention.  That said, the gimmick apparently was not easy to use.  I had a terrible time getting Aimee's shoes to fasten, and her earrings did not want to go back in once I took them out.  Like the What's Her Face dolls, Aimee's big gimmick was her big downfall, and that's a shame, because Aimee herself is a well-constructed doll with well-constructed clothes.  My particular doll also gets along well with her peers, big or small (LOL), and she hopes that one day there will be more clothes to wear.  I hope I can keep her eyes from molding over!

Much love,
RagingMoon1987