NEW Miraculous Ladybug Dolls!
Note: Click on pics to enlarge!
I'll admit I'm a closet Miraculous fan, and I may have only seen clips and compilations, but it's hella dope and I intend on watching the entire series. It gives me the same uncomfy, third-person embarrassment that some of my other favourite childhood shows gave me, such as h2o just add water and Winx but I love me some magical transformation supernatural shit.
I like awesome merchandise from such productions as well, the new Miraculous dolls are no exception. I mean, they WERE until I got my hands on them and now I'm indifferent.
I dislike Marionette's Miraculous Ladybug outfit; it's just far too basic compared to the others but I LOVE her De-Evilise doll outfit. When I find her, I'm absolutely getting her.
At this point, I have no intention of getting Queen Bee because her character is just all kinds of toxic. Today though, I just have the Playmates Toys ZAG Heroez Miraculous: Adrien as Cat Noir, and Ayla as Rena Rouge. Somehow I am simultaneously impressed AND unimpressed. Continue reading to find out why.
They're currently available at Mr Toys and Big W for $29.99 and $29 respectively. I picked mine up from Mr Toys and you bet I was surprised with the incredibly similar pricing from them. They're usually a few to a whole lot of dollars more expensive than general retailers.
Big W stock pics show they have the cooler Ladybug version, but I haven't seen it in stores.
Each doll in the line comes with their Kwami, full Miraculous outfit and weapon. Cat has extra outfit features like unique shoes, belt-tail, wrist cuffs and sewn-on bell. Rena has head-band ears, Miraculous necklace and a tuxedo style fox tail-coat train.
At first sight, each box is bubble windowed and card mounted and shows off as much of the doll's details and features as possible. They're some of the sturdiest boxes I've seen in a while. Looking a little closer, there's a plastic bubble hidden behind each of the character and name cards, which makes the box quite difficult to crush... in those sections. The opposite corners are incredibly weak but show off the foot ware and Kwami of the doll contained within. The big bubble window is stamped with a number 1 recycling symbol, and you know how I feel about recyclable packaging - I fucking love it.
Some boring box print time? Okay. Up in the top right is some branding stuff and product codes. The assortment is #50000 - also printed on the back - and Cat's code is #50002, Rena's is #50004. These match the last 5 digits of the barcodes and some sneaky print on bottom of the character card inserts. Strangely, Cat's has a P and Rena's does not. I found stamped codes on the bottom of the backcards, reading WW1018 and WW1025 for Cat and Rena respectively.
A pre-unboxing look at the dolls already presents with issues for me. My two dolls have fairly unfortunate eyes. I've absolutely seen worse Cat's eyes, but my Rena's eyes are undoubtedly the worst. Cat's eyes are outward facing, making him look like he's got health issues, but Rena's eyes. Oh no. Hers too are outward facing, and the print is stretched off her eye socket mould and onto her cheeks. There's orange bleeding through her right eyeliner. Why did I get her then if I knew she was so bad?! She was the only one there, and I knew she'd sell out fast. Same with Cat, there was just two of him, compared to the 10 or so Ladybugs.
On a note of quality control issues, I've seen dolls of both Cat and Rena with painted details on their weapons, but all the ones I've seen here aren't painted at all. Is this just a different factory production error or is this proving my point that Australia really does get all of the second-choice flawed shit?
Also, can I quickly mention how both Kwami's look like they've gotten into a drug stash? The screenshotted pics are what they should look like. Yikes...
---
The backing is attached as simply as a FailFix doll's backcard, the plastic tabs are glued onto the card the doll is mounted on, and then the true back is folded down and glued over it. The card is very thin and will tear so I'm not even going to try to separate it. I cut them free with a blade along the plastic bubble and the card. Cat was easy but Rena gave me hell lol.
Just as I thought, none of the inner packaging is attached to the front bubble in a way that would destroy the artwork, they're glued on the other side onto the inner packaging. I love keeping box art from deboxed dolls, and the less damage I do to it the better :D
---
Cat is quite heavy, both in and out of the box, likely because of his solid moulded head of hair. Why's it so hard to just give male dolls rooted hair? :( The big chunky blonde locks are a completely separate piece of plastic to his head, which could give way for giving him hair, but his head is solid and would make it difficult. If anyone wants to attempt it though, hopefully they'll sand the gross plastic shine off his face too.
He's 29cm/11.5in tall and has 13 points of articulation but not in the normal sense. His neck rotation is 360 degrees, no up and down motion. His shoulders have 360 rotation, and 90 up and down motion. His elbows bend at two points like a made to move Barbie, and the wrists rotate 360 degrees with no up or down movement. He's got basic ball hipjoints that allow frontward and sideways movement, and very minimal backward movement. His knees are the same as his elbows, with two points of movement.
His body looks like a pretty basic male doll mould and is so WIDE and disproportionate to his head. Thanks, I hate it.
The clothes are pretty well put together for some cheap, printed and sewn-detail fabric, but after a lot of play I think the faux leather areas will flake. They've already started to ever so faintly and I've undressed and redressed him twice. The feet of the suit are the only raw edges not hidden or hemmed but I think they're fairly well protected by his shoes.
His little plastic additions make for good outfit completion, like his bell, the wrist cuffs and oversized belt. The little joiny-tab bits on the cuffs and belts were a little difficult for me, an adult, to put back together, children may have trouble too. It's a shame his ring is moulded into his hand instead of removable the way old barbies used to do it.
I think I'm most impressed by his shoes. They have detailing on the bottom that I don't think he has in the show, not what I've seen from clips and screenshots that is. They're fairly flat-soled too, and he can stand on his own with minimal adjustments.
His staff and Kwami are pretty upsetting, I mentioned why earlier. At least Plagg sits up on his own. Sort of. He's very top-heavy and only has 3 legs with his tail acting as the third.
---
Rena is as light as a feather, even with all that curly red hair on her head. But Rena Rouge doesn't have curly hair... interesting design choice. It's also not white-tipped like it should be. Gradient hair is hard to do in mass production and still be cost-effective so that's fair I suppose. I found some residue on her cheek from her hair while taking pics, and it won't come off. It doesn't show well in pictures, but it's very prominent in person.
I've already talked about the let down her facework is, moving on.
She's 26cm/10in tall with the exact same 13 points of articulation as Cat Noir, with the ability to tilt in all directions. Her skin is chocolate brown, and the body shape is petite and simple.
Rena's clothes are well put together too, but I'm really not liking her fox-tail trail and the way it's just so rawly and lazily sewn onto the back of the suit. It's not even white-tipped :( There's no hemming on the exposed edges too, which will most likely result in a lot of fraying. When I put the suit back on the doll, the velcro got stuck in the textured fabric and caused threads to pull and frizz on the back of her shoulder. That super sucks. There are areas of the white paint vinyl stuff down her front that is unevenly applied and thinner, and show the texture of the fabric through it way more obvious than the thick areas do.
Good grief, poor Trixx, he is... DISTURBED. And while he's moulded to stand, he does not because his head too big!
---
In terms of playability and child-friendliness, these dolls are pretty damn perfect. They're articulated for maximum playability, they don't have lots of tiny accessories that'll go missing and the accessories they have, are important to the character and have a purpose. Of the two though, I'd recommend Cat for accuracy, but Rena for better mobility. Mind the wrists.
In terms of the quality expected by an adult fan and collector, they're pretty weak. The outfits are way too simple and are as show accurate as possible with minimal detail. Their hands aren't coloured for their gloves, they don't even have stands. In fact, I dislike them so much, I started planning complete custom overhauls of them both even before I took them out of the box, and plan on finding another of each to keep original for comparison. The Kwami's need it especially, those poor babies.
Sometimes I feel like I'm too critical of dolls and manufacturers, the quality and stuff because I KNOW they're intended for CHILDREN to play with and not adult fans. I can't help but pick them apart - both metaphorically and literally sometimes - to find what they could do better.
--------------------
Do you prefer Cat Noir or Rena Rouge?
Don't take my words as an unbiased judge for this product. I'm very picky. Do some more research! Check out others reviews, check out their homepage below, or purchase one to discover it for yourself!
If you have any questions or additional information about this product, please comment!
Thanks for reading, stay tuned for more! <3
--------------------
You can check out what I talk about, buy and open, in real-time over on my Instagram~
Comments
Post a Comment