Hi:Glamm "Pam" Doll (Discontinued) by MGA Entertainment

Hi:Glamm dolls were recommended to me in the comments section of one of my earlier reviews.  I love getting suggestions and finding out about new dolls.  In this case the "new" doll is actually five years old and discontinued, but she fits nicely into my recent fascination with MGA Entertainment, the mega-company that markets Bratz, Moxie Girlz, Moxie Teenz, Lalaloopsy, BFC Ink dolls and Novi Stars.

Hi:Glamm is a series of vinyl fashion dolls released in 2007.  The debut release included 5 super long-legged dolls that were also marketed by an Italian toy company called The Giochi Preziosi Group.  I am not positive about what (if any) differences there are between the two versions of the dolls, but this picture of an Italian Pam makes me think that perhaps the European dolls are better.

The MGA dolls seem to have had very little success on the shelves, and as far as I know, there were no additional releases in the US.  It's not so easy to find these dolls anymore.  The pickings on eBay are slim, and the few dolls on Amazon tend to be overpriced.  I found a Pam doll on Amazon for $28, which is less expensive than some of the other characters but still way overpriced.  I think the original cost was closer to $14.  Here's Pam:

Hi:Glamm "Pam," by MGA Entertainment.

In the box:

It was very hard to take Pam's picture through the prism-shaped plastic box with all of the sparkly glitter in the background.

Hi:Glare box.

A few things about the box caught my eye right away.  First, the name of the line, Hi:Glamm.  I don't like the misused colon or the double "m," but it's fine.  It's just that glamm with two "m's" makes me think of words like clammy and whammy.  And Pammy.

Groan.

She loves shopping!  And makeup! And likes being on the cover of magazines!  Still, all of the text on the box is repeated in French and Spanish, so that's slightly educational, I guess.

Two of Pam's accessories are these little fashion magazines.  They look neat, but the covers are odd:

The legs power...what?  The space shuttle?

Also, the slogan of the line is ill-conceived.  The Glamms are called "special ordinary girls."  That would have made my high school English teacher crabby.  If you look in a thesaurus, you'll see that the antonym of "special" is, in fact, "ordinary."  How can someone be both?

The Oxymoronic Girls?

Pam's box is a geometric plastic tube with a sparkly cardboard insert.  The plastic tube is closed with small tabs that are pretty easy to cut through.  It's much easier to appreciate the doll and the back of the box with the plastic removed:

The back of the box is a bit unusual.  Rather than having pictures of the other four dolls in the line, it has some tiny text in an old fashioned typewriter font and then five enlarged photographs of the just dolls' eyes.  Each of the eyes apparently represents one of the "secrets to be Hi:Glamm!"

Pam's eyes = glamour/fashion trends.

Nicole's eyes = emotions/love.

Alex's eyes = global life/travel experience.

Julia's eyes = positive thinking/communication.

Kit's eyes = wonky.

The box suggests that it takes more than a good sense of style and a healthy passion for shopping to be considered Hi Glamm.  This is encouraging.  In fact, I think I just happened to choose the character with the fashion-crazy personality.  This seems to be a trend for me.  If I had been able to find the redheaded doll, Julia, who's all about positive thinking and communications, I'd have a doll who enjoys photography, wants to be a journalist and who comes with a laptop and a camera.  I would relate better to that doll, I think.  

So, I was getting a good sense for what these dolls are all about, and appreciating their diversity, and then I read the little paragraph at the bottom of the box:

I give up.

This confuses the heck out of me.  There's a nice long list of positive-sounding words like "fun," and "love," but what does it all mean?  To live a global lifestyle, do I have to be fresh?  Or do I have to be fresh (and colorful?) to have an extra-ordinary friendship?  To I have to live a global lifestyle to live an extra-ordinary friendship?  The other way around?  Ahhhhhh!

One highlight is that apparently French people know that you shouldn't capitalize "freshness,"  which is a step in the right direction.

In any case, it's not so hard to get the doll detached from her cardboard backdrop.  She's tied on there with a few wire ties and some of those friendly little rubber bands.  It got tricky in this area because the hair is sewn into plastic and the plastic is attached to the cardboard:

Once the doll is removed from the box, you still have to get that irritating plastic strip out of her hair.

The first thing I noticed about this doll is that she has terrible hair.  It's thin and stringy and falls in hard, crispy clumps.  The other immediately apparent issue is that her skirt is way too small...and she comes with underwear:

That's not London, or France.

Pam comes with a cloth purse and a plastic makeup case.  Both are attached to her.  The purse is connected to her shirt with a small plastic tie and the makeup case is tied to her hand with a rubber band.  Her necklace is also tied to her neck and chest with a rubber band.

Here she is with everything detached, still holding her purse:

From the back (after I tried to pull the skirt down a bit):

She doesn't come with her own brush, but any small plastic doll brush will work.  I used a Liv brush to try and fix her hair.  The stiff texture of the hair actually brushes out well.  It takes some effort, but I was able to brush her hair until it was pretty smooth--not at all crispy.  A fair amount of hair fell out in the process.  The problem is, the style of the hair is really thin and ragged, and so even when it's brushed out, it's still straggly and unattractive:

Washed-up-rocker-from-the-80s-hair.

Pam's features are subtle and pleasant, but overall this face is unremarkable to me:

She doesn't exude any kind of personality.  A lot of it could be that her features are very pale, and so they don't stand out much.  I wouldn't be surprised if a character with a darker palette had a more distinct look.  In fact, check out this lovely picture of Julia.  Her features are more vibrant and appear more detailed.

Pam has some nice detail in her eyes and a frosty pink lip color.  

That lipstick makes her lips disappear.

My other hypothesis about Pam's face is that maybe because her head is so small compared to her long body, her head just gets lost in the exaggerated overall appearance of the doll.  Or, I could just be too accustomed to looking at the big-headed dolls that I'm obsessed with right now.

An unexpected surprise is that this doll can stand on her own--without too much fiddling and balancing:

The outfit is a disappointment.  Not only do I think that the style and colors look cheap and slightly obscene, but the fabrics are unappealing and there are a few sloppy flaws.

The top is a pink knit with an off-the-shoulder style and a subtle sweetheart neckline.  The knit part of the shirt is cute and stitched nicely, and I even like the decorative green rhinestone buttons and the contrasting green thread in the hem:  

What I don't like are the gaudy green fake fur cuffs and the loosely woven fuzzy yarn straps.

The shirt has a stain on the front of it, right in the middle.  I have no idea what could have caused this with the doll sealed in her box. Perhaps some glue dripped there during production and over the years the dust has stuck and darkened that area?

Apparently, the Global LIFEstyle is not so fresh.

The fur cuffs are not attached all of the way around the sleeve, and so when you take off the top, the cuff pulls away from the rest of the shirt:

The skirt is made of a lightweight denim and has an iron-on white fleur-de-lis style design.  The belt is silver pleather and is laced through actual belt loops.  The belt has a big studded rectangular buckle.

The fit of the skirt is terrible.  Also, there a rip in the fabric along the hem.  It almost looks as though this doll has been played with, although that seems unlikely.

One reason that the skirt rides up so high (especially in the back) is that the doll has a short torso with a very exaggerated arched back.  The arched back pushes the skirt up in back, and the short torso makes the skirt look like it's riding up higher than it is.

Appalling lack of skirt.

Pam is wearing very long sheer striped thigh-high stockings and high-heeled ankle boots.

David Bowie + the Grinch = Glamour/Fashion Trend?
Who knew. 

I like the combination of blue and green on these shoes, and their shape is very stylish and attractive, but I am really not a fan of the fake green fur.  It looks like a craft project to me, with the pieces of fur hastily cut out and glued to the top of the boot.  

The stockings don't have any feet, which is fine.  It actually makes them easier to get on and off.  I really like the stockings--they're the best part of the outfit.

Pam comes with an extra pair of blue fishnet stockings.  I actually thought these were gloves at first because they are so small.  They must stretch a lot in order to fit.  The regular stockings aren't impossible to get on and off, but they're hard enough that I didn't even attempt these.

Lazy me.

Here's a closer look at Pam's purse:

It is all denim on one side and then has a purple/pink shiny pleather panel on the other side.  There a green accent on the strap.

The makeup case is bright blue and very cute.  It has a decorative "G" on the front with three dots underneath.  This looks classy.  Maybe the name of the dolls should have been "Hi Glamm" with three vertical dots in between the words instead of a colon?  Too late now.

The case opens, but the top usually just falls off.  It can be easily snapped back together.

Pam comes with three makeup items for her case--a perfume, a lipstick and an eyeshadow case:

The perfume bottle is a bit boring, but the lipstick and the eyeshadow kit are great.  The lipstick cap really comes off:

Better yet, the eyeshadow case opens...

...and the tiny applicator brush comes out:

I am always disappointed when these cute little magazines don't have anything printed inside.  

Not surprisingly, there seems to be an emphasis on legs.

Underneath her clothes, as we know, Pam has some white cloth underpants:

And underneath the white underpants, she has some painted pink underpants:

Double pants.

She has an arched back similar to the Monster High dolls, but her torso is shorter, especially relative to her extremely long limbs.

The Hi:Glamm body has 7 points of articulation.  It has a swivel neck, hinged shoulders, ball and socket hips and rubbery click-jointed knees (like the older Disney body).

Having such long rubbery legs is both good and bad.  Bad because they're hard to control and good because they can bend to accentuate certain poses:

She's like a daddy long legs spider.

The absence of articulation in her elbows makes some poses look a bit unnatural...

Or, maybe it's more than just the elbows that makes this look unnatural...

I have to admit, the long legs are fun.  They add a silly uniqueness to this doll.  I can't say that they add a ton of elegance to her appearance, but the legs are definitely eye-catching and oddly endearing.

Here's a lineup so that you can see how extreme Pam's legs are:

Liv, Barbie, Hi Glamm, Monster High.

The other thing I noticed when taking this picture is how Pam's face just disappears in the mix.  It's what I was saying before--her face just fades into the background.

Even Clawdeen's extreme body starts to look realistic by comparison.

Pam's features remind me a lot of the Winx Club dolls.  Here is Pam with Bloom and my old Tecna who was rescued from eBay:

Remember when I thought Bloom's legs were long and spindly...?

Bloom and Pam, in particular, have similar faces.  I find Bloom's face much more sweet and expressive.

Bloom looks happy, Pam looks mildly bored.

My Tecna is a mess, but you can still appreciate the similarities--the slant to the eyes, the narrow face, the small nose and those simple, arched eyebrows.

Just a note--when I was redressing Pam, those green cuffs were really irritating.  The doll's splayed fingers make her hard to dress under the best of circumstances, but the half detached cuffs made it really frustrating.  I ended up just removing the cuffs (very easy to do). 

Pam's head can only spin around the axis of her neck--she can't look up and down.  Furthermore, when she looks to the side, she also looks up slightly.  This makes it hard to get her to look at the camera:

Despite an inflexible neck and some very spindly legs, Pam can strike a few poses that look pretty ordinary:

Ordinary...for a stilt-walker. 

The poor girl can barely see her feet...

 And could certainly never pick anything up:

(at least without exposing more of her underwear than she'd like...)

But I guess she can be pretty special, too, if these outlandish poses are any indication:

Bottom line?  Making a doll with spindly, exaggerated legs is a good idea.  Many dolls have distorted features, and legs seem like an obvious target for this kind of amplification.  MGA wasn't the first company to experiment with this body type.  Hasbro made a line of long-legged dolls in the 70's called, appropriately, Leggy Dolls.  These weren't much of a success, either.  So what is the problem with these dolls?  I don't think it's the long legs.

As a matter of fact, I found the legs to be the most exciting feature of this doll.  They are unique, endearing, fun to pose, extremely silly, and would come in handy during a flood.  Even the rubbery legs and click knee joints work well, with the locking knees giving the legs some rigidity and the rubbery contortions of the lower limbs adding to the doll's appealing absurdity.  The legs give the doll most (if not all) of her personality.  The problem with this doll is that her other features can't keep up with her legs.  Her face is unremarkable, her hair isn't pretty (or any fun to play with) and her clothes are skimpy and cheap.  Most of all, the posing possibilities made available by Pam's spectacular, rubbery legs are diminished by the lack of articulation in the rest of her body.  I always like to see bendable elbows and wrists with expressive hands.  With this doll, those features would have made her so much more hilarious and adorable.  I can see it so clearly--I would have posed her with her hands up to her mouth as she struggles to balance on her spidery legs, or maybe with one hand laid in exasperation on her forehead as she tries in vain to touch her toes...it would have been really, really fun. 

There's definitely a theme emerging in my mind regarding play dolls, and it is exemplified by MGA products.  MGA has a lot of good ideas, but they often fall short in the execution.  It seems to me that you can make a nice doll, or you can make an affordable doll.  We get these brief, wonderful glimpses of the two combined--Liv dolls were an excellent example and Cutie Pops are an exciting current example.  In the long run, though, I think the high quality $20 dolls are not sustainable.  They either get discontinued for lack of profit, or they have to take a hit in quality.  MGA might be a big enough company that they aren't concerned with releasing a high-quality first run doll--they don't need to attract buyers.  They go straight to the cheap version of their great idea.  This probably makes excellent business sense, but it is sad for this particular doll collector.

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