You Create Barbie Basics by Mattel

I've been talking about head-swapping dolls for a long time now.  Since late January, if you can believe it.   I mean, there was snow on the ground back then, and now it's full-blown spring, with flowers everywhere. I'm probably at the point where I'll be trying to rip the heads off normal dolls, just out of habit.  And the thing is, I haven't even exhausted the concept.  I have a few more dolls that I found during the last few months that I'd love to show you someday.

But for now, I'm going to wrap up the series by finishing my discussion of Mattel's new Barbie Basics, all of whom have easily removable heads.  Today I'll be reviewing the You Create Kit 001, which offers extra bodies, heads, wigs, and outfits to match the 2025 Basics Model 01, who you met in the last review:

Barbie Basics Model 01 with heads from the You Create Kit 001.

2025 Barbie Basics by Mattel

There's been a lot of bleak news in this country lately, but I can usually find good stuff to distract me in the doll world.  For example, several new members joined my Patreon community recently, which is really exciting, especially since I haven't had much time for that site since I got a job.  But I have a new post in the pipeline, and am very grateful to those of you who've been keeping this blog running for the last four years.  Your contributions are invaluable--financial and otherwise.  As an example, my newest Patron, Aether, pointed out to me the other day that my List of All Reviews page wasn't working.  Sorry about that!  I have no idea why the code stopped functioning all of a sudden, and I tried to fix it, but as a last resort I'm in the process of manually entering the links to all of my old reviews.  That'll take a while, but should get everything back to normal.

As another fun distraction, I'm here today to take a look at the highly-anticipated new Barbie Basics dolls!  This crew is part of a broader You Create line that Mattel released last month.  All of the dolls have easily removable heads, which makes this review a nice addendum to my recent head-swapping series.

The 2025 Barbie Basics dolls from Mattel, $25 each.

Tea with Lena: Skiing Dolls and Wedding Plans

It was really fun to chat with you about different kinds of head-swapping dolls.  And since my You Create kit arrived just today (!),  I'll be back to re-visit that concept soon.  Based on my experiences with the head-swapping series, and also Barbie Month back in 2023 and the advent calendar focus last December, I'm finding that I enjoy writing groups of themed reviews.  They allow me to immerse myself in one subject matter for a relatively long period of time, and tend to make each individual review shorter than average.  I wonder if this is something that works for you as readers?  If so, I have a few ideas for future series that I think could be interesting.

The problem with these grouped reviews, though, is that they can take a month or more to complete, and so I get pulled away from other things--like Lena.  She's been frustrated with me lately because I haven't had a lot of time to check in with her.  So, in an effort to mend some bridges, I'm going take a little break from serious reviewing and turn today's post almost entirely over to Lena and Ian--with a few mini reviews tucked in for good measure.

Lena with the Pink Passport Made to Move Winter Sports equipment.

My Scene Swappin' Styles Barbie by Mattel

Here we are on the final head-swapping review of the series!  Or at least that's what I thought.  As a few of you mentioned in the comments, Mattel has recently come out with their new Barbie Basics line, and these dolls have...wait for it...swappable heads!  They also have Made to Move bodies.  Eee!  I immediately bought all five dolls (gulp) and am eager to take a closer look at them.  However, the five Basics dolls don't share a common skin tone, so there's not a lot of head-swapping that can happen, yet.  Fortunately, Mattel also announced three You Create kits to accompany the Basics dolls.  These kits have additional heads, bodies, wigs (!), and fashions, which I suspect will add to the fun considerably.  It all reminds me a bit of Monster High's Create-a-Monster kits from 2012...although I hope the quality is better.  Anyway, my plan is to wait until I have at least one You Create kit before I write a review, and while the kits can be pre-ordered now, they won't arrive until April.

That's all very exciting to me, and I can hardly wait for April, but I'm also super-excited about the dolls in this review.  Today we're going back in time to look at a much earlier head-swapping doll from Mattel: My Scene Barbie from 2005:

My Scene Swappin' Styles Barbie by Mattel, 2005.

Bratz Head Gamez by MGA Entertainment

If you've been tuning in since the beginning of this head-swapping saga, you might remember that I originally planned to review the Moxie Girlz Magic Hair dolls from 2009, but then discovered that there was an even earlier (and more famous) MGA line with removable heads: the Bratz Head Gamez girls.

I considered doing a review that included both Bratz and Moxie Girlz, but decided to keep things simple and just focus on Bratz.  The Moxie Girlz were never super tempting to me, but I did enjoy Kellen and her pooping unicorn and the tiny, adorable $3 Moxie Girlz Friends (a few of which I still have).  I much prefer the larger and more articulated Moxie Teenz.  Too bad those dolls never had a head-swapping variant!

I might do a really quick post on the Magic Hair Moxie Girlz at some point in the future, especially if there's interest, but today's going to be all about Bratz:

Bratz Head Gamez Yasmin by MGA Entertainment (2005).

Pop 'n Swap Polly Pocket by Mattel

It's time for some more head-swapping!  If you're new to the blog and happen to like dolls whose heads pop off, then feel free to check out the other reviews in this series.  Incidentally, if you also like doll dissections, there have been a few of those over the years, too.

In terms of head-swappers, I'm leaving the heavy hitters (Bratz and My Scene) for last--to build some suspense.  But this week's girls, Pop 'n Swap Polly Pocket and friends, are pretty cool in their own right.  Not only can they swap heads, but they can trade torsos and legs, too!

Pop 'n Swap Polly Pocket by Mattel, 2008.

Surprise Swap Tweens (and Tots!) by MGA Entertainment

I'm in the middle of another mini series right now, and this time it's all about dolls with swappable heads.  I started the series by talking about Mattel's Swappin' Styles Fashionistas, and today I'll be looking at MGA's Surprise Swap Tweens line.  There's no rational order to these reviews, unfortunately.  I probably should have approached the dolls chronologically, but I'm always tweaking what's in each review and waiting for things to arrive in the mail, so broad scale organization doesn't tend to work for me.

Also, several of you had excellent suggestions for head-swapping doll lines that weren't on my radar (thank you!), so I might have to slot in a few more reviews than I'd originally planned.  I love the unpredictability of this type of series, though.  It's like a chose your own adventure novel or something.

Today's review is a good example of the chaos, because only when I was uploading pictures of the Tweens dolls did I discover that there are Surprise Swap Tots as well.  These are versions of the classic 3-inch L.O.L. Surprise dolls, and they look interesting.  So I had to hustle to include them at the last minute.  But most of this review will focus on the head-swapping Tweens:

Surprise Swap Tweens by MGA Entertainment, $29.99.