"Frozen" Dolls from J.C. Penney and The Disney Store: A Quick Update!

Well, I got distracted from the review I was working on by the arrival of a few J.C. Penney Frozen dolls that I ordered right after my Singing Elsa review (did I mention I was obsessed?).  This will be a brief post, but since I recommended the J.C. Penney dolls in the comments section to several of you (with incomplete information) I wanted to post a summary of my observations as soon as possible.

My understanding was that the J.C. Penney 12" Frozen dolls are exactly the same as the dolls being sold at the Disney Store, just wearing simpler outfits.  That's what it looked liked in the pictures, anyway.  This is not the case.  The dolls are actually different in ways that I think are important.

At the risk of inflicting Frozen overload, I will (quickly!) show you my 12" Elsa from J.C. Penney.  I will also show you the basic differences between the Animators' Collection toddler Anna from the Disney Store and the version of young Anna that is being sold at J.C. Penney.
Here is the Animators' Collection Anna...and her friend:

Animators' Collection Anna from Frozen (Disney Store).

The scramble for Frozen dolls has only increased since my last post.  The Disney Store is now sold out of all Elsa dolls, but has the plush Anna and Kristoff and the vinyl Kristoff.  The hope is that they will re-stock in March when the DVD is released.  J.C. Penney is sold out of many of their Frozen dolls at the moment, too, but they seem to get them back in stock more regularly.

I bought the J.C. Penney Anna and Elsa for $10 each (they're $12 if you buy only one).  I think the Disney Store versions cost $16.95.

I'll start with my J.C. Penney Elsa and show you the main differences between her and the 12" Elsa doll that was for sale at the Disney Store (you can see a review of the Disney Store Elsa here).

Here are both dolls in their boxes.  I will keep the J.C. Penney doll on the left:

J.C. Penney Elsa (L), Disney Store Elsa (R).

The boxes are the same size and have the same construction. A good way to tell one from the other (if you're looking at small pictures on eBay or something) is to peek at the bottom of the box.  If there's no picture of Elsa, it's a J.C. Penney doll.  Also, the J.C. Penney doll has more pink in the background.

The dolls have exactly the same face mold, which is why I assumed that other things about them were the same:

J.C. Penney                                                                                                  The Disney Store

The shorter hairs around my J.C. Penney doll are much wilder than they are on the Disney Store doll:

J.C. Penney doll with crazy hair.

  The Disney Store doll's eyes also look wonkier.   These things could just be flukes.  

J.C. Penney                                                                                                  The Disney Store

Here's a close-up of the Disney Store doll's right eye:

Disney Store.

Below is one of the J.C. Penney doll's eyes.  The eyes are almost identical.  The painting style is the same, but the Disney Store doll's eyes are a lighter blue.  It's hard to tell if this color discrepancy is a consistent difference between the two versions.

The J.C. Penney doll has a black line under her eye, too.

My J.C. Penney doll has something brown stuck to her left eye--a small factory defect. 

The faces of these two dolls are very similar, but I slightly prefer the J.C. Penney doll's face.  Her eyes look clearer and more focused with her darker irises and additional eyeliner.

J.C. Penney doll.

The bodice and sleeves of the dresses are the same.  With my dolls, J.C. Penney Elsa's neckline looks different (a little higher), but that's just because of a small variation in how the fabric was cut.

J.C. Penney                                                                                                  The Disney Store

When I inspected the sleeves, I got my first hint that something was different with the J.C. Penney doll.  These are not typical Disney Store doll hands:

If you are looking at the dolls up close, the best way to tell them apart is that Disney Store Elsa has a much fancier train on her dress.  J.C. Penney Elsa's dress has a train just like the one Singing Elsa is wearing.

J.C. Penney                                                                                                  The Disney Store

I de-boxed the J.C. Penney Elsa to get a closer look at her arms.

The body on this doll is not the highly articulated body that the Disney Store Frozen dolls have.  This Elsa has rubbery legs with click knees (like the non-Frozen Disney Store princess dolls this year) but she has unarticulated elbows and wrists.

Nooooo!

Everything about her body is identical in shape to the current 12" Rapunzel, except for her arms.

The arms have a nice shape, but the missing joints are a huge disappointment for me.

Can anyone identify this arm?  Is it used on any other Disney dolls?

The stiff wrists make it very hard to get Elsa dressed again. Those fragile sleeves snag on her thumbs--just like with Singing Elsa:

Arm articulation might not be a big deal to a lot of people--especially not to children.  However, since I have seen both the J.C. Penney Elsa and the Disney Store Elsa selling on eBay for $40 and over, I think it's important to know what each doll offers.  I wouldn't pay $40 for the J.C. Penney doll, but I might pay that for the Disney Store doll if she's truly sold out for good.

I love this doll's face, but her hair is out of control.

Taking the hair down was a very similar experience to taking Singing Elsa's hair down, although it is nowhere near as hard and crispy on top as the larger doll's hair was.

The hair is soft, silky, and quite long.  

The rooting is a little thin, though:

Because the styling gel is not as thickly applied on this doll as it was on Singing Elsa, I was able to just brush most of it out rather than giving the doll a boiling hair wash.

Here is J.C. Penney Elsa with the Disney Store's 16" Singing Elsa:

The shorter strands of hair can be braided in with the longer hairs to restore a tamer version of the original style:

Here's a summary of the differences between the two 12" Elsa dolls:

	J.C. Penney 12" Elsa	The Disney Store 12" Elsa
Packaging	Pinkish background, no picture of Elsa on the front	Blueish background, small picture of Elsa on the front
Dress	Plain glittery train (just like Singing Elsa’s dress)	Elaborate snowflake design on the train
Face paint	Darker blue eyes with eyeliner (?)*	Lighter blue eyes (?)*
Body	No elbow or wrist articulation Click knee joints with rubbery legs	Elbow and wrist articulation Hinged knees and ankles
Price	$12, $10 if buying 2 or more.	$16.95

*Could be simply due to painting variation, not a reliable difference between these two dolls.

Toddler Anna Dolls:
The differences between the toddler dolls offered at the Disney Store and J.C. Penney are a bit more obvious, even from the online pictures.  However, I was still curious about how the $20 J.C. Penney doll compared to the $24.95 Animator's Collection girl.  Here are the two dolls in their boxes:

Disney Store Animators' Collection Anna (L), J.C. Penney Toddler Anna (R).

For this comparison, I will keep the Disney Store doll on the left:

The faces are completely different.  They don't even have the same head mold.  The Disney Store Anna has side-glancing eyes and a closed-mouth smile while the J.C. Penney doll has forward-facing eyes and visible teeth.

The Disney Store                                                                                                  J.C. Penney

Here's the J.C. Penney doll up close.  My doll has a wandering right eye.  Her expression looks very blank compared to the Disney Store doll's impish grin.  She doesn't remind me of the adorable movie character anywhere near as much as the other doll:

Please, please pleeeeease can we build a snowman?

I prefer everything about the Disney Store doll's face.  Her eyes are a darker teal color and she has more subtle iris detail.  I appreciate her randomly scattered, natural-looking freckles.  I like her slightly raised eyebrows and hopeful expression.  

The J.C. Penney doll is cute, but she looks very generic to me, with nowhere near the personality of the Animators' doll.  I would be curious to compare both of these dolls to the Anna toddlers sold at Target and Toys R Us, but I'm not sure I need another toddler Anna in my house.

The Disney Store                                                                                                  J.C. Penney

The dresses are also completely different.  The Disney Store dress has a decorated bodice and a satin skirt with a floral print hem.  The J.C. Penney doll has a plain bodice and a satin skirt with a glittery tulle overlay.  The Disney Store dress is more accurate to the movie:

The Disney Store                                                                                                  J.C. Penney

J.C. Penney toddler Anna dress.

The Disney Store doll has removable white tights and detailed slippers that match her dress.  The J.C. Penney doll's legs are painted lime green to make it look like she's wearing tights.  Her shoes are unadorned.

The Disney Store                                                                                                  J.C. Penney

The J.C. Penney doll's skinny legs and painted tights.

I did not get the J.C. Penney doll out of her box. She doesn't really evoke memories of the movie the same way that the Disney Store doll does.

I did not make a comparison chart for these two dolls, either, since almost everything about them is different.  They have essentially the same hair, but that's about it.

Here are a few more picture of the Animators' Collection Anna from the Disney Store:

The back of her dress has a big green satin bow:

The hair on both dolls feels nice, but the style is inaccurate to the movie.  Young Anna had low, straight ponytails, not curly high ones like this:

I tried to fix the style to make it more accurate, but the hairs near the top of Anna's head are too short to make a really low ponytail.  I might straighten the hair and try again at some point.  This doll will probably show up on the blog again at some point.

Of course, Anna wanted to build a snowman, and even though the snow here is very icy and hard to pack, I just couldn't say no to her.

Bottom line?  In my opinion, and at normal retail prices, the Disney Store dolls are both better options than the J.C. Penney equivalents.  The Disney Store toddler Anna doll seems significantly nicer.   The differences are not as glaring when comparing the 12" Elsa dolls.   Despite the J.C. Penney doll's reduced articulation and simpler clothing, she still has the beautiful Disney Store face and nice hair.

The toddler dolls are different in almost every way.  Since both of the Anna dolls I showed you here are still in stock, and the Disney Store doll is only $5 more expensive, I would unequivocally recommend the Disney Store's Animators' Collection Anna over the J.C. Penney equivalent.

Evaluating the two Elsa dolls is more complicated right now since the Disney Store version has been sold out for so long and all of the Elsa dolls are going for very high prices on the secondary market.  If we assume that the Disney Store Elsa will be re-stocked at some point, then I think she's worth waiting for.  The fancier dress alone makes her special.  For me, the articulation differences in these dolls are a huge deal, but they may not be as important to kids.  I was dismayed to see that the J.C. Penney doll is lacking arm articulation.  The leg differences are less critical to me, but still worth noting.  While the hinge-kneed princesses can't sit very elegantly, I still prefer those joints to the fragile internal joints on the rubbery-legged dolls.  Still, I would rather have the J.C. Penney Elsa than any of the Mattel Elsa dolls...and if you can find her for $12, that's an amazing steal given the scarcity of this character.

I hope this helps those of you who are searching for these hard-to-find dolls.