Sunday Surprise: Hairdorables by Just Play!

Happy Sunday!  As I mentioned a few weeks ago, several of the comments here prompted me to investigate the latest blind box doll sensation, the Hairdorables!  These toys follow the lead of the L.O.L. Surprise dolls by offering a complex package-opening experience, with several little surprises to uncover along the way.  Originally, I intended to compare these dolls directly to L.O.L.'s most recent offering (the Under Wraps wave), but this post is long enough as it is, so I'll look at an Under Wraps toy in a week or two.

Hairdorables are made by Just Play (not to be confused with Jay at Play, the makers of the Boxy Girls).  I think the most recent Just Play toys I reviewed here were the Spirit Riding Free horses and riders.  I can actually see a resemblance between the dolls from that collection and these new Hairdorables:

Hairdorables "Bella Bunerina" doll, $12.88 .

Here's a reminder of what the Spirit Riding Free Lucky doll looks like, so you can see what I mean:

Spirit Riding Free Lucky doll by Just Play.

It's almost like they took Lucky's head and stretched it out to make the Hairdorables face.  I'm not sure I like the face in either incarnation, but I do think it suits the Hairdorables better than it suits Lucky.  At least the Hairdorables aren't meant to be realistic (or I hope they aren't).

For anyone who was worried, the Hairdorable Bella doll I showed in that first picture is not the doll I'm de-boxing today.  I would never give away the surprise like that!

I bought three Hairdorables in total.  I opened Bella first because I was too curious to wait any longer, but I managed to save the other two dolls for today's review.  

Here's Bella with one of my unopened boxes:

These toys are much bigger than I expected them to be.  Bella is about 7 inches tall with her hair and 5 inches without it.  The box is 8 inches tall, 7 inches wide, and 3 inches deep.  I was expecting something more like the size of a small card game, like Exploding Kittens or One Night Ultimate Werewolf.

Before I open the mystery doll, I'll share a few of my first impressions of Bella.

First of all, her face is not as relatable as I'd hoped.  It's better than the Boxy Girls faces, absolutely, but it's still a little too much on the goofy/strange side for my taste.

I think this reaction has a lot to do with the design of the eyes.  The irises are a pretty green color, but the pupil isn't pitch black (it's dark green) and the reflective marks are bright green.  This makes the whole pupil area look like it's floating in front of the iris...with a crescent-shaped hole at the bottom:

Given the name and slogan of this brand (Big Hair, Don't Care!) I expected to be amazed by the dolls' hair.  Bella's hair sticks up a lot because of the curls, but I'm not overwhelmed by the volume of hair.  It's not so different from other dolls I've seen.

On the plus side, Bella is articulated and could probably stand on her own if it weren't for the back-heavy weight of her hair.  Also, her clothing is made out of fabric and is pretty cute (much better than the plastic L.O.L. clothing).  The hair is soft and fun to arrange in different ways, and I like the purple streak at the front.  I had no desire to take that ponytail down, though, since curly doll hair can be hard to manage (at least for me).

Basically, I was intrigued enough to open another doll.

Here's the mystery box:

The box advertises 11 different surprises.  As with the Boxy Girls and L.O.L. dolls, some of these surprises are stickers.

The box is colorful eye candy.  

It's covered with cartoon versions of the Hairdorable characters.  I really like this rainbow-haired girl:

In fact, I think all of the cartoon drawings are really cute.  Cuter than my actual Bella doll, sadly.

The doll in the very center of the box has a blank face, but very distinctive blue wavy hair.  It's a funny combination:

The sides of the box are covered with decorations, too.  The right side shows four different characters while the left side has a few paragraphs of text and just one blue-haired girl, who I think is the main character:

There's my favorite rainbow girl again!

Here's a closer look at the text:

I guess the main character of the Hairdorables is a girl named Noah who likes to style hair.  Are girls going to co-opt all of the good boy names, I wonder??

The back of the box is covered with little square pictures of the characters.  I think these are actual photos of the dolls--or maybe enhanced photos: 

There's a version of my favorite rainbow character at the top:

And there's also a redheaded character!

The bottom of the box has a list of everything that's included--all 11 of the surprises:

So, I guess they're counting the collector sheet and the signature card as surprises?  That's a stretch.  If that's the standard, then pretty much every blind box toy ever made has at least two surprises (toy and collector sheet).  

I'd say that this box has four good surprises inside (doll, shoes, and 2 accessories).

To open the box, I had to first remove a clear plastic cover:

That caused the first "surprise" (the collector sheet) to fall out of the front of the box:

One side of the sheet has cartoons of the dolls (with Noah front and center):

I like Noah's ombré hair!  That would be fun to see in real life.

The other side of the sheet has a list of all 12 characters and their variations:

Noah is at the very top:

But my favorite character in this column is Kat.  She comes with, strangely, not cats, but little dogs!  They're all so cute:

I really want this one!

Bella is at the top of the second column:

The Bella I got is in the middle.  The heart symbol means that's her "signature look."  The other two Bellas seem to have straight hair:

A green diamond means the character is rare, a blue star would be super rare.  Ombré-haired Bella is rare.

The third panel has the redhead at the bottom (Brit) and a different rainbow-haired girl (Harmony) in the middle:

The last panel has my favorite rainbow-haired girl, Rayne:

There's even a rare, mystery Rayne doll!  That would be very fun to get!

The front of the cardboard box opens with a perforated pull-down strip:

Once the strip is removed, the two sides of the box pull apart in the middle!  This is cool:

There's even a little circle of velcro to hold the two sides together if you want to close the box again:

The two sides of the box swing out to reveal a flat cardboard scene at the back of the box:

The left side of the box has four perforated compartments (the accessories, shoes, and comb):

While the right side of the box has the actual doll:

The picture says to open the doll last, so that's what I'll do.

If I fold the sides of the box out even more, the inner edges of each side have a continuation of the scene on the backdrop.  There's even a little semi-circle of carpeting that folds down onto the ground.  It's like a little diorama!

That's a really nice touch.

I wonder if all of the scenes are the same?  I can't remember what Bella's scene was.  It would be fun if there were several different backdrops.  That would be a much better surprise than the collector sheet!

Ok, let's start opening up those compartments!

The perforated doors come apart really easily, and they reveal little plastic "drawers" inside:

Because the world needs more plastic.

The containers have pull tabs that make them easy to remove from the box:

This one has a picture of Bella (the exact Bella I got before!) and says, "just my style!"

Oh, gosh.  I hope this doesn't mean I'm getting the same Bella again.  There are a few complaints online from people who ordered several dolls from the same vendor and got all of the same character.  

That's the worst.

I peeled back the top of the container...

And it's a comb!

The comb has a molded braid at the top.  There's also a sticker sheet with the symbols for how rare each doll is.  It's probably so that you can mark the dolls you get on the collector sheet, just like with L.O.L. dolls.

The comb doesn't give anything away about the doll I'll get, and it's not the same comb as the one that came with Bella.  

All good so far!

On to the next compartment:

I poked the cardboard door open...

And pulled out the next container!

This one says "love is in the hair," which made me smile.

I peeled back the top...

...and found the shoes!

Wow!  Pretty nice shoes!

The shoes come with a sticker that's meant to be folded into a cell phone shape:

Hm.

The shoes are pretty great.  They're purple boots with green laces and pink soles.  They have a lot of detail for such tiny footwear:

The soles are not just pink--they're translucent pink!

That's a nice little shoe:

The shoe gives away which character I got, though.  This is a big problem with all of these blind bag toys.  If the companies would mix and match the accessories, then there truly would be multiple surprises.  As it is, there's one surprise that's uncovered in five steps.

However, when I was opening this box, I wasn't familiar with any of the characters yet, so I didn't know anything about the doll I'd get.  I certainly won't give it away for you!

Let's see what's behind door number three!

It's pretty fun to open these little doors, but I was getting slightly dismayed by the pile of plastic garbage I was accumulating as I went.  In addition to what you can see, the purple containers are resting on another big piece of plastic that's inside the box.

This container has a purple-eyed girl saying, "there's more in hair!"

I bet Just Play had fun coming up with all of these hair puns.

What could this be?

As I peeled back the top of the container, I caught a glimpse of blue...

Could it be a little pet??

It is!  It's a little robot dog!

Oh, man!  I've always been fascinated by robot dogs.  When my kids were young, we had a few electronic dogs called i-Cybie.  They were really loud and ran out of battery too fast, but I thought they were fun.  I bet you can get some pretty amazing robot dogs these days!  I doubt my real dogs would be too happy about that, though.

Here's a better look at the dog:

He's really basic (no moving parts or anything), but I like the idea.

There was also a sticker in the container:

There's my rainbow girl!

Now there's only one compartment left on this side.  That was fast!

It's Rayne again!

This is the biggest container yet:

It says "queen of curls," which isn't very punny.

I was expecting something really big inside this container:

But as I peeked in...

I saw nothing!

So I peeked a little more...and then finally, at the very bottom, I saw some pink:

This huge container was holding one sticker...

...and a pair of glasses.

The glasses are made to look pixelated, like an 8-bit design.

Well, opening that side of the box was pretty fun, granted.

However, look at the pile of plastic compared to the pile of actual doll accessories:

I think we can recycle those containers curbside here in Maine, but still.

Here's a closer look at the doll accessories:

I really like the boots, the glasses, and the little robot dog.  Those suggest I'm going to get a techie character, which is awesome.

I tried to fold the phone sticker the way the directions said,

But it was too small for my ham hands to manage, so that went into the trash.

I bet some of you went back to the collector sheet and figured out which character I got at this point.  It's like a fun mystery to solve, with three little clues (the shoes, the glasses, and the dog).

Maybe those of you who've already collected a few of these dolls knew right away which one is the techie character!

I didn't know yet, so this part was exciting:

The whole front of this side of the box opens with a tab to reveal a single tall container:

Behind the container, the box is decorated like a little closet!

That's really cute:

Here's the tall container on it own.  I think that's Noah on the front, reaching for the edge of the plastic cover...

At first, I just pulled down a tiny bit:

I see purple hair!

Then I pulled down more, and...ack!

Oh, wow.  That's a very orange doll!

I don't really know anyone with terracotta skin.

I had the exact same problem with the Boxy Girls.  The black character, Nomi, has a very orange skin tone.

Once I got over my initial surprise at the skin tone, I started to appreciate some things about this doll.

First of all, her name is Kali (I love that name) and she's the tech wizard (I love tech wizards.  I'm married to one):

Also, I got the Kali Coder version...and I really admire coders!

The only bad thing is that Kali has the exact same hairstyle as Bella.  I was hoping to see some variety in the hair, since this is the big selling point of the brand.

Also, Kali is drawn with some very interesting earrings, but the doll has nothing on her ears.

Here's Kali with all of her accessories:

Kali has green, upward-glancing eyes and beautiful dark purple hair:

She can stand on her own--precariously--when she's wearing her boots.

The position of Kali's eyes makes it hard to get her to look at the camera:

I like side-glancing eyes on dolls, though, because they add a lot of character.

These eyes have basically the same design as Bella's eyes, but they're looking in the opposite direction and have a different mix of greens in the iris.

Here's a reminder of what Bella's eye looks like:

Kali has a wide smile with a thin band of teeth showing:

She also has little metallic gold triangles at the edges of her smile, which is an interesting design detail:

Kali is wearing a multicolored dress with a pixelated print:

The dress opens all of the way down the back with velcro and is easy to use:

The front is decorated with glittery decorative buttons and a ribbon belt:

Many of the edges are stitched, but the neckline and sleeves are unfinished:

Underneath her dress, Kali has a painted pink bodysuit:

I took the boots off so that you could see her whole body.  She has flat feet and five points of articulation:

Kali's head can only spin around (not look up or down), but the rest of her joints are rotating hinges:

The flexible shoulders combined with molded bent elbows give Kali a lot of fun poising options:

There are several different arm and hand molds in the Hairdorables collection, and I really like this one.  It's very unique.

Kali's hips are also rotating hinges:

She can do pretty good side-to-side and front-to-back splits:

She can also sit on the ground:

As reluctant as I was to let Kali's curls down, I decided that I needed to do it in order to present a thorough review.  I mean, these dolls are all about their hair.  We need to know how good the hair is!

The color of Kali's hair is great.  It's a nice rich purple overall, but it's made up of two different shades evenly mixed together:

The rooting pattern is fine, especially for a small doll with lots of curly hair:

Here's how Kali looked when I first let her ponytail down:

She had a lot of trouble balancing on her own with her hair down.

But this is really big hair.  There's no denying it now!

I actually used the little pick comb that came with Kali to see if it would work for smoothing out her curls a bit.  It worked pretty well!  I think this might be the first time I've ever used one of the plastic combs that came with a play doll.  Momentous occasion.

It ended up being easiest to pose Kali against the diorama of the box.  This kept her upright and added some fun scenery!

Her big hair tends to block out all of the scenery, though, which is a bit of a problem.  

I asked her to stand off to the side here so that you could see at least part of the desk:

Putting Kali's hair back up into a ponytail helped, too:

Her upward-looking, side-glancing eyes are cute...

...but they make it hard for her to look at her robot dog friend!  This was the best I could do:

The glasses don't look great on Kali (she's staring straight into the upper part of the frame) but I added them for this last picture:

One of the best things about the Hairdorables is how the box can be used as scenery for doll games.  I love this idea.  The edges of the box look a little ragged after it's been opened, though:

The right side of the box is ok because it's doubling as a closet (although another velcro latch there would have been amazing!), but that left side looks messy.  The perforated doors are fragile and probably wouldn't last through too many play sessions.  They're perforated all of the way around, so they eventually fall off completely.  A slightly more robust design on that side would have made a huge difference.

I also think a variety of scenes on the backdrops would be outstanding.  Since I can't remember anything about Bella's backdrop, I was eager to see what scene was inside my very last Hairdorables box!

I won't do a fully detailed de-boxing with this doll.  Instead, I'll focus mostly on whether or not the doll is a repeat, and what the inside of the box looks like.

Let's go!

Well, the first surprise was over really fast: it's the exact same office scene:

Bummer.

After opening this box, I cheated and looked online for pictures of other people's Hairdorables boxes.  I saw a few different scenes (yay!) so I just got unlucky with this particular repeat.

So, let's scratch the collector sheet as one of the surprises and replace it with the backdrop scene!  It's a much better surprise.

To find out the other big surprise from this box (which doll it is), I might only have to open one compartment.  If it's a comb I recognize, then I probably got a repeat.  However, if it's a new comb, then I'll have to open one more contained to find out who I got!

Are you ready?

Here we go:

Oops, sorry: hair we go!

I peeked in and saw...

A new comb!  It's not a repeat!  Hurrah!

So, this is it, folks.  Which doll did I get?  Could it be rainbow girl Rayne??

Please, please, please, please....

The suspense is crazy!

It's a pair of shoes!

Definitely not a repeat.  And not Rayne, I don't think.  I've looked at pictures of her enough to know that she has green boots or roller skates.

Oh, well.

I'll skip ahead and show you all of the accessories:

With those clues, maybe you want to see if you can figure out who I got?

I kept the suspense as long as I could, avoiding that collector sheet until the very end.

It's not Rayne, but look at this!

It's very long, very straight, very RED hair!  It's Brit!  

More specifically, it's signature look Brit Braids:

She's pretty cute:

She also has green eyes that are looking up and sideways:

Here's a comparison of all three of the green-eyed styles I got:

Bella.

Kali.

Brit.

I like Brit's eyes the best.  Looking at the photos, above, I think Bella's eyes are printed incorrectly (the iris and pupil decals don't line up).  Also, I like the dark shade of hunter green in Brit's eyes better than the chartreuse green of Kali's eyes.

Brit's accessories are a hairband and a pink soccer ball:

She's wearing a two-piece soccer uniform to match!

Her red hair is striped with pink and tied back into two huge braids:

I took the hair down to get a better look:

The braids have made the texture of the hair really wavy.  A good boil wash would probably make a big difference with this doll!

The rooting pattern is the same as it was with Kali:

The hair is actually good for helping Brit to balance on her own!

The pick comb that came with Brit was not very effective at brushing her hair, and my wire brush made it even more crazy!

I've seen so much doll hair like this: nice while it's still in its factory hairdo, but a bit of a nightmare when you try to re-style it.

The yellow headband helps tame the hair a little bit:

Overall, Brit's hair is not especially nice.  It's not terrible, but it's smooth at the top, coarse at the ends, and hard to style...like so many other mid-level play dolls with wavy hair.

That leads into my bottom line: for a collection that's named after hair, the hair isn't good enough on these dolls.  Bella and Kali's curly hair is soft and looks cute, but it's hard to style and tangles easily.  Brit's hair is smoother, but once it's out of the original braided style, it's almost impossible to keep it looking nice.  I'm not sure what kids will be able to do with it.

For a blind box toy, though, the Hairdorables are better than most.  They're nicely-sized dolls with decent articulation and adequate balance.  They have really cute arm molds that add a lot to their sassiness.  Their large heads and character faces don't appeal to me very much, but they definitely have personality.  The dolls come with fabric clothing that's reasonably well-made and easy to use.  Some of the accessory items are lame (like the sticker "phone"), but other things, like the shoes, the robot dog, Bella's wings, and Brit's soccer ball, are fun little items that build each character's persona and add value to their play potential.  All in all, these are dolls that can definitely be played with after they're opened.  Seems like a low bar, I know, but a lot of surprise toys are basically throwaways.

The packaging is fun to open, but it's also pretty ridiculous.  The waste-to-toy ratio is one of the worst I've seen.  That said, the plastic containers and the cardboard box are probably recyclable in a lot of areas, and the box has the bonus of doubling as a diorama-like backdrop.

I guess the real bottom line is that I'm getting weary (finally) of the surprise-themed blind box doll craze.  For any child who'd be happy with just one or two of these dolls, I think they're fine.  Each part of the packaging would likely be used and enjoyed as a novelty.  However, the dolls are clearly marketed for collecting--meaning buying as many of them as you can.  This is where the whole concept falls apart in my eyes.  First of all, there's a chance of getting a duplicate doll...and these are $13 dolls.  If you get three duplicates, that's almost $30 that you could have spent on a different doll.  I've gotten used My Twinn dolls for less.  Also, there's a chance of getting a duplicate backdrop on the box, which eliminates the appeal of that feature.  Then, of course, the more familiar you are with that collector sheet, the less of a surprise the whole thing is.  One or two containers into the opening process, and you might already know which doll you got.  That's not much fun.

I guess I'm ready for the next big doll craze to center around a doll that has something creative and new to offer on its own, not a decent, predictable doll that's marketed in creative packaging.