Throwback Thursday review: Shibajuku Girls Shizuka

Once upon a time, once when you were mine, there were these dolls called Shibajuku Girls.  They looked a lot like a poor woman's Pullip doll, with small bodies, big noggins, inset eyes, and brightly colored hair.  One minute they were here, and the next minute they disappeared from shelves.  As with the Rainbow High dolls (and indeed, most modern-day doll lines), these girls have/had their own personalities.

Yoko appears to be the goth of the group.  She enjoys tinkering around with hair colors, playing guitar, wearing "edgy" clothes, and wearing black.  She also mentions a fondness for spooky novels and spiders (yikes!).  Her guitar (which sadly was not included with her) even has spiders on it.  Yoko aspires to be a writer.
Koe is the animal nut of the bunch.  She loves nature documentaries and taking selfies (random, much?), and her dream is to run her own...habitat???  Must be the same thing as a wildlife sanctuary.  Koe also states that if she could be any animal in the world, she'd be a falcon.  Well, I wanted to be an albatross once, so I can understand Koe there.  Birds are nifty!
Suki loves colors and hair clips, though that's not saying much since all of these dolls appear to love colors and hair clips.  On the other hand, Suki is the only one who claims to have a collection of hair clips, plus bracelets and necklaces of varying colors.  This suggests to me that she leans towards the decora spectrum of harajuku fashion.  Suki also loves food, especially baked goods like donuts and cupcakes.
Shizuka likes to play with hair colors, just as Yoko does.  She's the quiet one of the bunch (fitting, since "shizuka" means "quiet" in Japanese), hopes to be a fashion designer (sigh, I always get the fashion lover), and is obviously fond of the color pink.
Namika is the reader of the bunch and loves science as well.  She claims never to get bored and loves to help out her friends at school.  Namika is unusual in that she appeared in both light and dark skintones.  Miss Emily had the dark one, for example, while Rachael had the light one.  Namika disappeared from the line in later waves.
Miki was a latecomer to the party, and she appears to have been Namika's replacement.  Miki is another stinkin' athlete (barf) AND a fashionista (double barf), who dreams of both being in the Olympics and traveling the world.  Good way to kill two birds with one stone, since going to the Olympics requires traveling to somewhere (usually abroad).  Her sport of choice is soccer, which I can get behind since soccer players don't get a lot of attention here in the U.S.  One of Miki's hair accessories is/was a ghost, so I wonder if she didn't also share Yoko's fondness for the spooky and the off-beat.

All of the names are Japanese names or words, and Rachael noted that the dolls' bios are pretty random.  While I commend Namika's love for science and Koe's passion for animals I have to say that I agree with the random bit.  Miki's strange sports-meets-fashion story and Koe's love for selfie-taking seem particularly hodge-podge.  And seriously, how self-centered can you get, loving to take selfies???  I can count the number of selfies I've taken on one hand, but then again I'm not exactly easy on the eyes.  Regarding the dolls themselves, Shizuka was actually my least favorite in the first wave.  She was blonde and pale, and her light pink outfit washed her out even further.  She did have mismatched eyes, but that didn't even the balance enough for me.  When the second wave rolled around, though...oh my!  Shizuka stood out!

Truthfully, if all five characters had been available at the time I wouldn't have bought Wave 2 Shizuka either; Koe was my favorite with her blue hair and her purple romper.  But Koe and Miki were not available at Dexter's Wal-Mart at the time, while Shizuka, Yoko, and Suki were.  Even though I have often complained about the overuse of pink in the dolly world, I grabbed Shizuka.  

It was August of 2017 when I first saw the Shibajuku Girls (I stole the above picture from that post, LOL), and at the time I noted that they were a lot like Blythe and Pullip.  Indeed, Shizuka bears some resemblance to both Blythe and to Pullip, as well as to the Cutie Pops, but she also has some differences too.

Jaylin, my factory Blythe, is shorter than Shizuka and has a smaller body, but she can move her eyes.

Candi also has a smaller body than Shizuka does, and her eyes pop in and out and her hair can be switched around.

Too bad Candi didn't come with any cute hair barrettes.  She could've shared them with both Shizuka and Jaylin.

Shizuka's hair is rooted and very long, falling clean down to her knees.  Most of the fibers are about fifty percent hot pink and fifty percent pale pink.

The styling is minimal, just a center part without bangs.  The root job is...not the greatest.  Along the hairline and the part the rooting is fine...

...but try doing pigtails and/or multiple braids.  The part doesn't look good in the back.

Shizuka's stock jacket has a hood and thus covers most (but not all) gaps, but there are times when I'd prefer that she NOT wear the hood.  When she's without her jacket the only hairstyles possible are all down or a single ponytail or braid in the back, like so.

Since Shizuka has so much hair I usually tie it back.  The cute pink hairbands that I used for this job came with a future doll, and they do their job very well.

Below the hair is the face, of course, and these dolls are a little moon faced!

Ha!  Maybe a more than a little!  Having a moon face is a common problem for dolls with large heads, so I'll let it go.  Shizuka's dominant feature are her eyes, which are large and inset with rooted eyelashes, silver and mint eyeshadow, and black eyeliner.  Her simply-painted eyebrows betray her real hair color (LOL).

Shizuka has complete heterochromia, sporting one green eye and one blue eye.  I thought that at one point another of the Shibajuku Girls had heterochromia too, but a quick perusal of the stock photos revealed that my memory was mistaken.  Dolls with heterochromia appear to be more common than people with heterochromia...unless I haven't looked close enough at the people around me!  The eyes are opaque, glossy plastic, though in certain lights they can look metallic or translucent.

I'm not in love with Shizuka's lip color.  It's a nice shape, but the shade of pink fades into her already-pale vinyl.

At the same time I appreciate the subtle blush on Shizuka's cheeks.  It's so light that it's hard to detect, but it's there.

Let's take a gander at ears right quick, since I look at a doll funny if she doesn't have any.  Shizuka's ears are big and simply molded like her head is, and they have no piercings.  Pierced ears would've been cute on this doll line, but long hair tends to get caught in earrings so Hunter Products made a good call here.

Body talk now!  Shizuka's body is interesting.  She's got a mature bust but almost no curves otherwise, and she's got multiple joints.

Here's what Shizuka's skinny little arms look like; they're jointed at the shoulder, elbow, and wrist.

The joints here look delicate, and they ARE delicate.  I definitely would NOT subject Shizuka to my "throw her across the yard and see what happens" test.   The joints have decent rotational and hinged movement, though; Shizuka can reach across her torso, like so, and she can rotate her arms outwards as well.

Her elbows can also bend the wrong way to some degree, though I'd prefer that she not do this.  It looks like a serious dislocation.

Her mostly curveless torso has no joints, and neither do her teeny-weeny ankles.

Seriously, these are some of the dinkiest doll feet I've ever seen!

As small as Shizuka's ankles are it shouldn't be surprising that there are no joints there.  Her knees are jointed though, with hinged and rotational movement.  Her knees are flexible enough that she can sit cross-legged, for example. 

She can also sit like this.  Cassandra and my rebodied Takara dolls are my only other dolls that can sit like this.

Shizuka's hips are ball-and-peg jointed, and they're the only joints that feel pretty robust.  Shizuka can perform almost full side-splits, like so.

She can accomplish front-back splits too...

...but I have to move her back-pointing leg aside due to the cut of her hips.  A front-back split thus looks awkward for Shizuka, especially when viewed from above.

As I've said before, I almost never pose my dolls like this anyway, so who cares?  LOL

As I noted above, Shizuka's ensemble is almost all pink.

The front of the jacket has a skinny zipper that actually works, though the bottom is sewn together so the whole thing doesn't come undone.

Here's the aforementioned hood.  It has a large slit in the back to accommodate Shizuka's ample hair, plus a pair of rabbit ears.  

No bunny tail in back, though (bummer).  Here it's possible to see the sparkles on the fabric, the kind that rubs off if the fabric is handled too much.

The jacket is not lined, but all the hems are finished and look nice.  The bottom hem is even trimmed with white knitted fabric that looks like the bottom part of another shirt.

Shizuka's skirt is also pink and sparkly, though the sparkles are real glitter rather than printed stuff.

Two tulle layers with scalloped edges, plus an opaque bottom layer that preserves Shizuka's modesty.  She also has a ribbon "thong" thing to keep the skirt from riding up.  It reminds a little of Sunflower Burst Cyanne's skirt, both in style and in construction. 

The waistband is made of sateen and Velcros shut in back.  Oh, Velcro...not a smart thing to use with tulle.

As I noted above Shizuka's jacket zips, but who wants to go around with their jacket zipped all the time?  And for that matter, who likes it when their chest gets rubbed by the backside of a zipper?  Never fear, for Shizuka is wearing a white crop top underneath.  It's just your simple little crop top, not high and not low.  The hems are short, but they don't fold out when Shizuka is wearing it.

Shizuka's knee-length socks are made out of the same material as the top, and they along with the shoes are the weakest part of her outfit because they don't fit the greatest.  The socks are fairly well-constructed, with seams along the back...

...but they bag around Shizuka's dinky little feet.

Shizuka's shoes are simple pink vinyl mary-janes with thick soles.  They have slits in the heels, which in this case was unnecessary. 

I understand why these shoes are big, as they likely wouldn't have fit over the socks otherwise, but they like to randomly fall off.  This has led to great amusement for my cats on at least one occasion. 

Normally this is where I'd segue into clothes sharing, but I finished this blog in a rush last night so I didn't get to that part.  Shizuka has a thicker torso than those of Monster High, Ever After High, Blythe/Licca-chan, Cutie Pops, La Dee Da, and Bratz, so all of them are out.  But her body is smaller than Barbie's so I doubt that would work either, except for maybe the odd petite piece.  I'll have to readdress that and get back to y'all.  Anyway, part of the fun of a fashion doll is dressing and redressing them, and since I haven't seen much yet on Etsy for these dolls I turned to eBay instead.  They delivered with these.

Based on the artwork on the packaging I'll guess that these outfits were intended for Yoko (left) and Suki, but beggars definitely cannot be choosers with this line.  Yes, I foolishly stuck to character-specific clothes during the days of Monster High and thus missed out on some cute clothes as a result.  Won't make that mistake with the Shibajuku Girls, though!  Here's how Shizuka looks in Yoko's outfit (left) and in Suki's.  I kinda wish Yoko's ensemble came with some new shoes, but since Shizuka has pink hair her shoes don't clash too terribly.

I like how these two ensembles contrast, by the way.  Harajuku fashion is all about mixing, matching, and having fun with one's clothes, and with Yoko's all-black ensemble and Suki's sparkles-and-rainbows set I'll be able to do that easy-peasy.  Indeed, pairing Yoko's jacket with Suki's skirt is like an outfit I'd have thrown together during high school.

I wouldn't have gotten away with showing that much boobage, though.  Good thing Shizuka has that white blouse.

That's better!  I'd have layered on a couple of necklaces and some goofy earrings, and then I'd have been good to go.  Alas, earrings are a no-go for Shizuka since her head is too hard for ear piercing, but I can still make a couple'a necklaces!

Oh yes, how could I forget the clips???  Shizuka came with four clips (the star, the cat, the bow, and the pink flower-thing), and the other two (the planet and the ice pop) came with the extra outfits.  They come in enough colors and shapes to make Suki's heart sing (remember that Suki loves hair clips).

Heck, they make my heart sing too, as I'll top my hair with goofy clips if I'm not in the mood for a goofy bow.  Regarding quality these are okay.  They're mostly made of stiffened felt and other fabrics, though the first wave dolls were all accompanied with at least one metal clip.  I kinda wish some of Shizuka's clips were metal, as these softer ones are prone to bending (the cat and the ice pop are the main culprits there).  The metal ones also slide easier into the dolls' hair easier...I think.  Metal clips slide into my hair more easily than clips built like this do...

...so I figure the same is true with doll hair.  Seriously, I hate it when clips and bows have blunt attachments like this, as they make a mess of the ponytail they're being shoved into.  But these are super-cute, so I just go slow when I'm shoving them into Shizuka's hair...or I just clip them to her hood.  That works too.

I think that wraps it up.

BAD
*I didn't discuss this above, but Shizuka's joints are very loose.  Her knees are particularly prone to collapsing.  This doll could've done with a stand, but Hunter Products didn't give her one.
*Hair could potentially become a nightmare if it gets tangled, and the roots don't allow for many styles.
*Face is very pale.  This is true of almost all of the Shibajuku Girls.
*Shoes (and socks) come off a little too easy for my taste.
*My particular doll has a LOT of pink, though I have no one to blame but myself for that.

GOOD
*Can't beat inset eyes, especially mismatched ones!
*Hair is a fun color and handles well during styling.
*Stock ensemble is well-made and has BUNNY EARS!!!  You can't beat bunny ears!
*Jointed.  The joints are loose, but they ARE joints. 
*Clothes are well-made and can be mixed and matched if one has multiple dolls or multiple outfits.
*HAIR CLIPS!!!

LOL, I like the hair clips just a little, even though they're sometimes hard to place.  Overall the Shibajuku Girls were a cute line with a cute, simple idea, but I think they may have fallen victim to what I like to call "Blythe syndrome."  Blythe was alienating to children and their parents with her large head and staring eyes, and I think the Shibajuku Girls may have been the same way.  I THINK, now.  I don't know that for a fact, but that's the best explanation I can hypothesize for the line's failure.  Collectors of Blythe and Pullip might like these dolls though, since they have the same aesthetic as Blythe and Pullip.  Indeed, that's why I picked Shizuka up, as I saw her as a sort of poor woman's Pullip.  If you're a fan of the big-headed, big-eyed types then Shizuka is worth owning, but I'd recommend getting a stand for her so she doesn't go falling off the shelf!  I'll have to follow my own advice for both Shizuka and Candi, as they're too big to store in my doll box!  Anyway, I urge my followers to pay close attention to the next few posts, as the dolls I'll be addressing bear some important similarities (and a few differences) to Shizuka.  Stay tuned!

Much love,

RagingMoon1987

lll

Modern crap, part 1: CookieSwirlC Lotta Looks

Behold, I got my phone to work long enough to get this post up this week!  I got the others that I promised complete too, but I'm just going to string them out over the month of April to make things last.  But before we get going, I've got to let my eccentric personality show through with a little bit of non-dolly blather.  As I've stated in the past I'm a tornado buff, and I also love coincidences.  On March 28th Jonesboro got hit hard (rating was an EF3), and on the same day a place in Iowa called Oelwein got hit too (their storm was rated an EF1).  I wouldn't be noting this, except that both towns got clobbered by violent tornadoes on the same day in 1968 as well.  Eight people died in Oelwein in 1968, and Jonesboro lost a whopping thirty-five people.  No one died in either town this time, but the damage is insane in Jonesboro and both towns are having to deal with sheltering newly homeless citizens during this coronavirus mess.  My prayers are with Jonesboro and Oelwein, and with any other communities that got hit over the weekend.  This has been a rough spring...and it ain't over yet.

Now that that's out of the way, these first four days in April will be quite busy here at the blog, with three modern dolls making their debut here and one old doll being revisited.  I'm willing to bet that quite a few of y'all who blog also like to watch YouTube...okay, I admit that I'm assuming, but I know that I like YouTube.  My favorite toy-related channels are PS Toy Reviews, My Froggy Stuff, and CookieSwirlC.  All of them provide upbeat but honest reviews of blind bag dolls and toys (and higher-end toys in the case of Froggy's Smart Dolls), and all of them provide cheerful conversation to go with the items they're examining.  Froggy is my favorite of the three since she also provides tutorials on how to make doll-sized clothes, furniture, props, and dioramas, but I enjoy the others too.  Recently both Froggy and CookieSwirlC were immortalized in the doll world (Froggy as a Fresh Doll and Cookie as a Barbie), and while I did see Cookie's Barbie set in the stores they were pretty pricey.  So I didn't get Cookie Barbie, but I did find these.

I should probably warn y'all that all this together was pretty pricey.  But...I'm awesome and I deserve it, LOL.  Anywho, these are Mattel like Barbie is, they have the CookieSwirlC label on them, and they're called "Lotta Looks."  They're a little goofy-looking, and their oversized noggins remind me of Blythe dolls, so I grabbed one.  Her name is Candy Cub (apologies for the flash glare on that plastic).

Good Lord, is that the third or fourth doll that I own named Candy???  Seems to be a bit of a popular name for dolls, yes?  Anywho, Candy and her shelfmates Chocolate Chip Chill and Rainbow Sugar Rush revisit a concept that...sadly flopped a few years back, with facial features that can be swapped and switched around.  The back of Candy's box shows some of your options (there are plenty).

There's also a brief glimpse of Chocolate Chip Chill, whose mismatched coloring reminds me of my first Hairdorable, Dee Dee...

...and three outfits, or "Mood Packs" in the shapes of various animals.

There's a rabbit, a cat, and a dog.  Of course I like the cat set the best, but I didn't see that one at Wal-Mart.  I did see the rabbit set, and I picked the dog set, or "S'mores Pup," as they call it.

I like dogs, so I can live with that.  The back of the S'mores Pup set has a rehash of what this line contains.

Lastly I got a blind bag set, which I assume holds more mix-and-match pieces.

I thought the back of the box might give some idea about the contents, but instead it's just another rehash of Candy Cub and Chocolate Chip Chill.

The blind bag pieces are not advertised anywhere on any of these packages, and strangely enough, neither is Rainbow Sugar Rush, the third doll in the series.  That surprised me since Rainbow is a more deluxe set with multiple pieces that neither Candy Cub nor Chocolate Chip Chill have.  All three of these dolls come with a hair extension, for example, but Rainbow's is real hair...or it looks like it is in the Amazon pictures.

Right then, let's get started!  Despite being ensconced in plastic Candy's package was not hard to open.  Just slash some strips of tape and you're in.  Here's what she looks like when free of all that shiny plastic.

Hmmm...she's got a peace sign hand just like my Capsule Chix figure does!  For some reason when I look at Candy in this position I want to start singing "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough," but these eyes don't suggest that kind of vibe.

Yikes, that's more of a "Bully" vibe!  Yeah, I took that from disco to hard rock in a span of about five seconds, LOL.  Anyway, these eyes have little frowny faces painted in the rather ample pupils.  Were it not for those I'd just say that Candy has a resting bitch face like me and let that be that.  Luckily for me (and Candy) those attitude-filled eyes can be switched around...just like another Candi that I own, Cutie Pops Candi.

Yes, Lotta Looks have facial features that pop out and can be swapped around, very much like the Cutie Pops.  In order to do this effectively she should have a few more face pieces, which I believe are concealed in this little box.

The back of Candy's main package reveals what these pieces look like, so why the pieces are concealed in a blind box is beyond me.  But they're all here, which is more than I can say for one of my L.O.L. Surprises.

Uh-oh, those eyes are crying pink goo, and the mouthpiece is clenched teeth.  Doesn't look like Candy is any happier with her new face than she is with her current one.  Indeed, it looks like she's descended from fairly strong irritation to spiraling despair.

As I like to joke on Facebook, paint her blue and she could sing "Ride My See-Saw," she's so moody!  So let's look at Candy a little closer before playing with these pieces.  She's another small doll with a big noggin like Blythe and the Cutie Pops are, but she's shorter than both of them by quite a hair.  I love their differing expressions, by the way!  Neither Candi nor Jaylin are having any of Candy's attitude, but they ignore her in completely different ways.

She's taller than Na! Na! Na! Surprises, Emerald the Enchanting Witch, and Moondreamers, but that doesn't seem to impress Candy much either.  Unlike Candi and Jaylin, Whimzee is a hair afraid of this temperamental new doll, though she need not worry with Emerald on her side.

Her hair is hot pink, is all one piece, and it comes off.

Sort of like Monster High's Create-a-Monster sets.  This...wig?  Hairpiece?  Whatever it is, it has three holes in the top.

The holes are to hold these.

Bear ears and a hairpiece.  These are all made out of hard vinyl and are semi-flexible.  The hairpiece also has two holes that can accommodate this bow.

I usually leave it on the hair extension since I love bows, but it too will fit into the holes on the hairpiece.  I don't usually do that though, because it lies flat and looks more like a weird little flower than a bow.

These can be switched around, just like Candy's other pieces can.  I can also take off Candy's hair completely, though neither she nor I are in love with this look.

"Gimmie back mah hair!"

I will in a minute, Candy.  Since your hair is off I can get a better look at your profile.  Candy has a hard plastic head in a medium-light fleshtone.  Under the glare of my camera it looks sparkly, but I think that's just some the way the plastic reflects the light.  The head is a weird shape, something like an M&M or a Skittle.  It's wide, but it's also flattish, sort of like a Blythe doll's head.

Now back to the front, where Candy's got her grump on.

LOL, she looks a bit like a baby that I know, one who gets her grump on when things don't go her way.  The eyes are detachable and are made of semi-flexible vinyl, and their attachment points are shaped like this.  Notice that they are marked "L" and "R," for left and right, of course.

The corresponding holes in Candy's face are shaped like closed eyes, meaning that it's possible to leave this doll eyeless without her looking too bizarre.

Compare that to Candi's eyes, which look like THIS when her plastic eyes are popped out!

Yeah...I've always wondered if that wasn't part of the reason why we didn't have the Cutie Pops very long, as those painted eyes with the empty hearts are just a tad disturbing.  Granted, they're better than no eyes at all, but they're still a hair disturbing.  Anyway, Candy has a little button nose which is also designed to hold small facial features, and her mouth is small and open.

The mouth also accommodates face pieces; their backs look like this.

Here's what Candy looks like with her face unadorned.  She looks blank but relaxed, like she just went to sleep.

I sleep with my mouth open too, chica.  I wonder if Candy drools in her sleep, LOL!  I like this blank face, but I do sort of wish she had a little paint around her lips.  That way the mouth wouldn't look like the hole that it is.  But then again, painted features don't always look the best, as we saw with Candi, so Mattel probably made the right call here.

Candy's body is made of plastic and vinyl, and it looks a little something like this.

She has joints at the neck, shoulders, wrists, waist, and hips, and she has...well, she has reasonably good mobility in all of them.  She can turn and tilt her head...

...and she can move her arms both out and around.

The arms can't move closer to the body though, which is a bummer.  I would've liked to have posed Candy with her hands together, like she was fooling with her phone or somesuch as that.

Candy and her Lotta Looks sisters take a page out of Monster High's book with detachable hands.

As a result they bend, but they also swivel around like so.  Candy can cock her hands back, like so...

...and she can also flex her hands downward a bit, though not a lot.

As I noted above, she can also rotate them around their point of attachment.

The hands are a little softer than the rest of Candy's body, but they don't have a lot of detail.  They're just big, cartoon hands, one of which is molded to hold a small cell phone.

I don't know how well that hand would hold the phone without the rubber band in place, so I left the band for now.

Candy's body is light pink from the waist down (to simulate tights, I presume), so it's a little tricky to see her waist joint.  It's there though, and it swivels like so.

In fact, it turns all the way around.  Yee-OUCHIE!!!

Regarding legs, candy has joints at the hips but not the knees or the ankles.  The joints have superb lateral and forward movement, meaning that Candy can do side splits...

...and sit...

...but due to the cut of her hips she can't swing her leg back.  Front-back splits are thus out of the question.

Candy's feet are big like her hands are, but they're a bit more elaborate.  She has ten toes and well-defined arches.

I never have understood why doll companies want to put such well-defined toes on a doll with molded tights.  Anyone who wears tights or socks on a regular basis knows that these items obscure the toes and make the foot look rounded.  Oh well, don't guess it matters much, since Candy's default shoes cover her feet completely.  Candy's outfit is...a bit of a mish-mash!

These clothes are interesting in that they're vinyl, but they're also completely removable.  They're also one of my favorite color combinations, yellow and pink.  Yellow and pink, like one of my new hair bows.

Just call me the Bow Belle!  LOL, anyway, I'm going to start where I usually end things, because these shoes clash big time with the rest of the outfit!

Oh sure, they're a lovely shade of orange, and I'll bet they glow under blacklight (we'll find out next week).  But who would dream of pairing Day-Glo orange boots with a strawberry banana-colored outfit???  Not this pretty little raven, that's for sure!  I love committing fashion faux-pas, but this is a little too much even for me!  They help tie Candy's look together though, as some of her spare face pieces have orange makeup.

They're not all the same shade of orange, though.  Go figure, I guess.  Now the dress is a little unusual, as it has...an extra skirt underneath???

Is the outer dress a dress or a babydoll top???  Do people wear skirts with babydoll tops?  I s'pose one could technically pair anything with anything, but it still makes me scratch my head a little with this ensemble.  Either way the dress/top/whatever is a vaguely translucent yellow vinyl, and the pink part is painted on like so.

Remind anyone of Monster High???  Those drippy-looking extensions remind me of the pattern on C.A. Cupid's skirt.  Heavens, has it truly been seven and a half years since I reviewed C.A. Cupid???  The Newtown shooting was the story of the day right around then.  Anywho, Candy's dress opens in the back like so.

The little tabs on the right edge of the opening are supposed to hook into the holes on the left and they work...reasonably well.  Sometimes getting the tabs inserted is a little tricky, and sometimes they don't want to stay, which gets frustrating.  The skirt underneath closes in the same way.

The skirt is made of opaque yellow vinyl and has pink stripes running around the width of it (these go all the way around, YAY!).  The "hem" of the skirt has a molded ruffle, and the upper right hip area has...behold!  The one painting gaffe that I've seen on this product!

One painting gaffe is a bummer, but since Candy's accessories utilize so much paint I'm going to let one futz-up slide.  It's not like I can't repaint that in the future.  Overall I like these pieces quite a bit.  They do remind me a little of the vinyl clothes that millennial Polly Pocket dolls wore, the clothes that could be terribly fragile if mishandled, but I doubt Candy's clothes will tear with the same ease as Polly Pocket's clothes did.

Oh yes, Candy comes with a stand, as all top-heavy dolls should.

This grips Candy around the waist.  It holds her tight enough that she doesn't go tumbling out of it like my old La Dee Da doll did, but not so tight that it squeezes her clothes.  Monster High stands were sometimes problematic in that respect.

The extra face pieces that are available for purchase are just like the pieces Candy came with, but just for the heckuvit I'm going to show y'all anyway.  The pieces come ensconced in little plastic containers that look like makeup compacts with faces.  They also have heart-shaped bits, ostensibly so the compacts can be used as keyrings or whatnot.  These compacts come in orange, aqua, and pink, and they look just like the doll's face.

FYI, those eyes on the front are part of the set, and are not just decorations.  Here's the total contents of the aqua compact.

Two pairs of eyes and three mouths.  One of those mouths appears to be a heart-shaped wad of bubble gum, which would make sense given the eyes that say "POP".  I've GOTTA see how those look together!

Dolls make me smile, scowl, shake my head, or reel with repulsion, but very rarely do they make me laugh until my sides ache.  Candy has done just that.  Though this look is goofy, I like it much better than the frowning visage.  But...something's not right.

There!  I think those neutral eyebrows fit a little better.  Now Candy looks a little less like she's listening to "Bully" and more like she's listening to "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun."  The cloud-shaped eyes and the mouth with the yellow tongue are also a cute combo.

And of course I can add the dog ears and nose to this look...

...or add the braces and switch the eyebrows back again to make Candy look like she's horrified at having pop-eyes.

"CALL THE DOCTOR!!!  My eyes are popping out and I can't reach my ear!!!"

Dang, that mouth is ugly!  This is almost as fun as Mr. Potato Head though, and the "almost as fun" becomes "just as fun" when I add in the other pieces.  Yep, in the span of time that it took for me to put this review together, I found one of the other fashion packs and both of the other blind bag sets.  I used the Donut Bunny outfit, the S'mores Pup eyes, and a couple of random pieces to create this look.

The nose is a bit askew, but...well, bunnies twitch their noses.  I'm glad that I was able to complete the overall "rabbit" look, which I couldn't have done without the blind bag sets, but the blind bag pieces also proved a bit disappointing, as there were a lot of repaints of pieces I already had in another set.  I got two sets of buck teeth, for example...

...and three (yes, three) sets of pouty lips (one of these mouths is Candy's default mouth)...

...and two of that ugly mouth with bared teeth...

...and two tongues...

...and two bubblegums...

...AND two of this...pukey stuff, I guess you could call it.

Seriously, this goes in the doll's mouth and makes them look like they're barfing up Detroit (pop eyes again, LOL).

Those pukey-looking bits are more something I'd expect from MGA Entertainment, with their cotton-pickin' poopy slime unicorns and all that.  Anyway, I can understand why there are a lot of repeats since this is a fairly young doll line; likely Mattel is hesitant to play around with more shapes, since more shapes mean more molds, and more molds mean more money spent on production.  But repetitive shapes still get a hair monotonous after awhile.  Some of the other dolls have still more repeats, as Skate Pop reveals.  She has yet another tongue, yet another pair of pouty lips, and yet another pukey-looking piece.  However, I will note that her pukey piece is at least cute, as it's painted up to look like piano keys.  I can live with redundant shapes if they're painted differently, and Mattel appears to have done just that.  I kind of wish one of these dolls came with a selfie stick, as the ridiculous faces they have look a lot like the ridiculous faces we humans sometimes make when we take our own selfies.  LOL, I know I like to look ridiculous for the rare occasions when I take a selfie!  Yes, I admit that I do it every so often, and I try to look as dumb as I possibly can.  If Hairdorables can come with selfie sticks then Lotta Looks ought to have them too.

I b'lieve I've said enough.  Good stuff and bad stuff.

BAD
*Candy unfortunately suffers a bit from "creepy bug-eyed doll syndrome," rather like Blythe does.  Admittedly she's not as creepy as Blythe, but she could easily give the heebie-jeebies to someone who doesn't like dolls much.
*Small pieces could get lost, swallowed, choked on, or gnawed by pets.  Candy almost lost an eyebrow to one of my dogs during the span of making this post.
*Pieces don't vary in shape much, though colors do vary enough to keep them from getting too boring.
*Might be a little hard to dress; I had a hard time getting Candy's sleeves over her arms since she can't move her arms close together.
*Can't share clothes with any other dolls that I know of.

GOOD
*Idea is fairly original; the Cutie Pops and What's Her Face dolls tinkered with customizable doll faces, but we don't have them anymore!
*I love the colors!  While my doll is predominantly pink (like too many other dolls) other colors are incorporated.
*Gimmick is fairly kid-friendly, though as I noted above small children shouldn't have this toy.
*Colors are bright and eye-catching.
*These have the potential to keep a little kid entertained for hours as she (or less likely, he) comes up with new combinations for the pieces.

Final thoughts?  I thought these dolls looked ridiculous at first, but I've had enjoyed playing with Candy.  These pieces are goofy and silly and fun to mix and match, they stay put...fairly well, and they pop in with a reasonable amount of ease.  Mind y'all, these are NOT for small children; the package says "five and up," and I'd even hesitate to give this doll to a five-year-old, given my fondness for putting odd things in my mouth when I was five.  Have I ever told y'all what a weird little kid I was?  Anywho, this doll is a good toy as long as the kid doesn't put crap in his or her mouth, but for a collector???  Well...Candy is really just for display once her face is in place.  She can't be posed very well, and she can't fit into any of the dollhouses that I've seen, and she can't wear other dolls' clothes.  She's cute, but she lacks the personality of an American Girl or a Monster High doll.  She's just...kinda bland, even with her swappable face pieces.  But then again, the same could be said for Blythe and Cutie Pops, and they have their fans.  But as for me, Candy will likely join the shelf with other dolls that I bought and rarely touch, like Riley and Kikki.  Maybe the three of them can come up with some sort of game to play, though neither Candy nor Riley never appear fond of anyone.  Maybe I can find something to do with Candy, though...that trio gives me some ideas!  But overall I'd say that the Lotta Looks dolls are for kids, not collectors.  They might give a little girl something to do if her school is out for this infernal virus...which in retrospect is a good thing.  We all know how kids can get when they're bored!

Much love,
RagingMoon1987