The Middle School Moguls are brand spankin' new for 2016. I first
learned about these 11-inch dolls from their original Kickstarter,
which raised just over $52,000 to get the line started. I liked the
two original prototypes immediately. The tan-skinned, curly-haired
Jada jumped into my online shopping cart. The blue-eyed blonde,
McKenna, was adorable as well, but I figured I should hold off on
ordering more than one. It was a new company, with a new line of
toys, and I had no idea what to expect from the final production
dolls. (Sunny, the girl with the blue streaks in her hair, came later.)
The
line went through a few changes while in production. McKenna got
renamed McKinley when the company's owners learned Mattel already had
"McKenna" trademarked. The original name of the line,
iBesties, was switched to Middle School Moguls. The character Izzy, shown originally with brown hair, now has purple
thanks to feedback they got from interviewing school-age kids. (Hey,
who DOESN'T like purple hair?!) Six originally-planned characters
were reduced to five in production.
The
dolls are meant to encourage girls to be tech-savvy business
entrepreneurs, with a mind for the S.T.E.M. fields -- science,
technology, engineering and math. I think it's a nice background for
the dolls, and more substantive than simply making them characters
obsessed with fashion, hair and makeup. Nice.
The
Moguls just debuted in some Target superstores this October.
Anyway,
I wanted to give you my impressions.
The
ones I got were Jada and Sunny. They're cute and elfin, with a
quirky body shape with big, round tummies and bums, and relatively
short arms.
Their
hair is really soft and nice.
The
one issue I saw with the dolls at Target was that the positioning of
the eyes is not quite uniform on every doll. Some dolls have eyes
that are a tiny bit higher or lower, or closer together than others.
The differences aren't extreme, but it's something I noticed. Since
this is the dolls' very first run EVER from a brand new company, I
expect it's a factory issue that would be fixed in later runs.
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| Still extremely cute, though. |
The
elbows and knees bend, which is so nice! The elbows have a hinge
joint that also rotates outward. They can wave hi.
I
had to strip Sunny so I could show you their body sculpt and legs
better. They don't come with underwear; I just gave Sunny some
yellow undies for modesty. The articulation is OK, but has a few
limitations. The biggest issue with the articulation is that
although they can sit with knees bent, they're top-heavy because of
the large heads. You have to lean them against something when you
sit them down, otherwise they'll topple over. So long as they're
leaning against something, they can sit nicely with thighs together and look adorable, and
can even cross their legs. They'd be able to sit in a doll
chair, but only if the chair has a back to it for support.
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| They can sit with thighs together, but I was balancing her without leaning her against anything, here. |
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| The knees can swivel to do poses like this. |
The
legs are pretty nicely-formed and look good. The legs have ball
joints at the hips, which gives them quite a nice range of motion.
The knees are on hinge joints, but also swivel like the elbows. They
can actually do splits.
The
heads are not on ball joints, and simply move from side-to-side.
The
clothes are pretty typical play doll quality, with velcro in the back
and unfinished seams, but the fabrics are decent. I'd love to redress these two, but I have no
idea what clothes they'd fit into, because anything that fit them in
the chest would be too small for their large rear ends. They
*possibly* could fit into Barbie shirts if the shirts were stretchy,
but it'd be a comical waste of effort to try to squeeze them into
Barbie pants.
Each
doll is packaged with a different book. I actually wasn't planning
on saying much about the books, except I've discovered they have a
very unique feature: each is a bit of a "choose your own
adventure"-type of story, with four different possible endings
per book. That was unexpected and cool. The books are paperback and
around 48-to-50 pages, with each having a few full-page color
illustrations.
Anyway,
I'll be really interested to see where this line goes. As of writing this, there are four characters available at Target right now, with a fifth (a redhead) currently in production. Not all Targets have them, though, so you'll have to check their web site to see which ones do.
Click
on the pictures to make them bigger.
Later,
