I kept seeing these pouty,
melon-headed girls in the pages of doll magazines, and thought they
were super interesting. I finally decided I needed one, so I sold
one of my older dolls for some guilt-free cash, and thus got the
purple-eyed Lila called "A Very Catty Day."
I love the quirky, slightly
Gothic look. It's not Gothic in an over-the-top, Wednesday Addams
sort of way like Tonner's Agnes Dreary was, but more subtly so. Lila
has a ton of personality in that grumpy face. Some people prefer
smiling dolls. I prefer pouting ones.
I want to show you the box,
first. Please excuse the glare. Everything about this doll is so
shiny! She wasn't tied into the box. Instead, there was a clear
plastic cover inside the box holding her and her accessories in.
She came with a waist-grip stand, extra hands, a raincoat, stockings,
cat ears and a tail, and boots.
It was so difficult to find
any information on this doll in English! She's made by the South
Korean company Soom, and I kept seeing fan pages about her in French,
German and Spanish. She seems to have a bit of a following, although
it looks like her fans are spotted here and there all over the globe.
In English I found one Facebook group and a Flickr group. So I'm
doing my duty and putting out some information about her for English
speakers. I'll try to be thorough. :)
"A Very Catty Day"
Lila came with removable cat ears and a tail. I thought that was
terribly fun! The ears just stick on her head with magnets. I love
this, because you could theoretically use those same magnets in her
head to attach all kinds of neat things like devil horns or antlers
or the like. Unfortunately Soom doesn't actually make any additional
attachments for Lila (Why don't they? Argh!), so you'd have to get
them from some other BJD site, or make them yourself from clay, and
glue on magnets. Still, lots of possibilities there.
The tail is not magnetic, but
instead is held on with a pin that goes into a small hole in her
lower back. The pin looks a little delicate; I'd be afraid to yank
on it. The company did include two extra pins, though, which I
assume are in case one breaks.
There are also a couple of
small holes near the shoulders, which don't have a function for this
particular Lila, but are where wings attach on a few of the other
Lila dolls. So far there have been four Lilas made with wings.
I want to discuss Lila in a
few different sub-headings, so let's start with Lila's face.
FACE AND HEAD
Notice her eyes peeking in
different directions in the
pictures? The doll has
two knobs on the back of her head that you can twist, to individually
move each of her eyes. She can look left, right or straight, or
anything in between. She cannot look up or down, though. The knobs
are easy to use, but stick out from the head way farther than they
need to. You can still pretty much hide them under the wig, though.
Her eyes are SUPER reflective,
which makes them tricky to photograph. In some photos the eyes look
like they have a glaze over them. (Or "cataracts," as one
person put it. LOL.) Despite being harder to photograph, they look
neat and add to her mysterious Gothy look.
You can't change her eyes. I
have seen some really amazing and creative Lila doll customs, though,
where people actually got into the head, replaced the pupils of the
eyes manually, and then closed up the head again. This is not easy
to do, because the head is apparently glued shut and you have to get
in there by slicing the glue with an Exacto knife. I'm too scared to
attempt it.
The doll is bald under the
wig, which is removable and changeable. Her wig size is an 8-9",
the same size as Pullip, and Tonner's Patience. The wig in these
photos is her stock wig, although I straightened it by dipping it in
boiling water.
The face paint is beautifully
done. It looks hand-painted, with individual eyelash hairs and
wonderful eyebrows, and I can't find a single flaw in it. This is
apparently not a mass-produced, factory-screened face.
CLOTHING
The clothing is a mix of
wonderful and disappointing. The fabrics used are nice and it's well
sewn. That skirt is so cute! But the shirt fastens with velcro in
the back (the skirt has a hook-and-eye), and the shoes are just plain
plastic and completely underwhelming. Seriously, for such a
high-quality doll in most other respects, she should have had some
nicer shoes. I couldn't even get them on.
"Catty Day" doesn't
come with underwear (I guess because of the tail?), but some of the
other Lila dolls come with really nice quality panties.
The raincoat fastens at the
neck with snaps. It's not lined, but looks really nice, I think.
THE BODY, AND POSING
The articulation on Lila's
body is pretty nice, with bending elbows, wrists, ankles and knees.
She can touch both her mouth and forehead, which not all dolls can
do. Her upper thighs have a rotating joint that lets you turn her
leg, which means she can sit with one leg crossed over the other to
an extent.
Like most big-headed dolls,
she's top-heavy, though, so posing her pretty much requires balancing
that head of hers. She can sit nicely with thighs together, BUT the
weight of her head makes her want to fall over, so she sits most
easily when her back is against something. Otherwise, it's a
balancing act where you have to prop her up with her hands so she
doesn't topple backward, like in the photo below.
She comes with extra hands!
She has a total of four pairs of hands (three additional). They all
have fingers in different positions. The hands pull out at the wrist
so you can change them out and mix-and-match. I discovered the extra
hands fit really well in the wrists: not too loose and not too tight.
By the way, Lila dolls are
made from ABS plastic, not resin like most of Soom's other dolls.
This is a very tough material that doesn't yellow, and is more
stain-resistant than a lot of other plastics. I'm a huge fan of this
material.
So anyway, that's Soom Lila.
See ya.
