Articulation Update: Rainbow High Jett Dawson

Happy New Year!  Cheers!  Here's hoping that the first few hours of 2022 have treated you well.  For me, the year is starting with an attempted migration to WordPress.  As some of you might have noticed, I suddenly stopped being able to comment on this blog about a week ago and can only manage to comment if I'm using Chrome (I typically use Safari).  I'd love to know how many other people are having this problem--but of course, if you are, you can't tell me because you can't comment!  In any case, WordPress is a superior blog platform for many reasons, and I've been meaning to migrate for years.  So please excuse any issues over the coming weeks as I figure out how to move this behemoth.  It shouldn't cause any change or disruption to how you access the site.

The best thing about 2022 for me so far is that, because of you, I managed to reach my end-of-year goal of 30 Patrons over on Patreon!  Woo hoo!  Thank you so much!  I'm incredibly grateful for all of the support and enthusiasm, and it's been fun to connect with more people over on that site.

The beginning of a new year is a great time to tie up loose ends, so I figured in the next week or so I'd deliver on some of the update reviews that I promised in previous posts.  In my first Rainbow High review, I mentioned that Jett Dawson has more points of articulation than the other Rainbow High dolls.  Today I'm going take a quick look at Jett and see how much those extra joints add to the appeal of this brand.

Rainbow High Jett Dawson, $57.99.

Jett comes in a larger box than the standard Rainbow High dolls, and she also comes with a few more accessories.  At nearly $60, her MSRP is significantly higher than a regular Rainbow High doll, although I think the market has rebuked this insanity.  It's currently possible to get Jett on sale at Amazon and Target for $27.99, which is a reasonable price.

My understanding is that some of these dolls were in a numbered edition of 1000.  If I'd gotten a numbered doll, the number would have been printed in gold at the bottom of that black hang tag.

To be clear: the dolls are not limited in their production at all.  This exact set in this exact packaging is not a limited release.  The only thing that's limited is the black hang tags--and I think maybe the tags on the clothing have a written number.  Needless to say, I was completely unconcerned about whether or not I got a numbered tag.

The back of the box has a colorful, shimmering illustration of Jett and all of her accessories:

Jett is described as an "up-and-coming fashion icon" who is about to debut her first collection:

The corners of the box have gold plastic decorations that are meant to look like trunk corners:

These seem completely unnecessary and over-the-top to me.  They also make the box a bit harder to open.

Jett and all of her accessories come mounted on a shiny gold backdrop with the word "rainbow" written in dripping rainbow colors:

Jett comes with an extra fashion (a fancy dress), two transparent plastic chests, a sewing machine, a fashion form, a measuring tape, extra shoes, a stand, and two hangers:

Most Rainbow High dolls come with two hangers, a stand, extra shoes, and an extra outfit, so what makes Jett's set different is the fashion form, measuring tape, chests, and sewing machine.  These are not enough to warrant the intended $20 price difference.

The fashion form is a styrofoam torso mounted onto a gold plastic stand:

The styrofoam torso is covered with white, slightly iridescent stretch fabric.  It is printed with "Rainbow High 2021" on one side and is blank on the other side:

The wheels of the stand actually roll, and they spin around on castors just like real wheels:

However, the stand is very lightweight, so the form slides around when I push it; the fancy wheels never engage.

The measuring tape looks realistic and feels like it's made out of flexible fiberglass ribbon--just like a real measuring tape:

At first it seemed like MGA had given the measuring tape completely arbitrary inch markings, though.  Look at how it doesn't line up at all with my real tape:

But then I realized that they just didn't line up the beginning of the tape correctly.  There's about a quarter of an inch of extra space at the end:

It would have been really cool if they'd scaled the inch markings down to a 1:6 size.

The sewing machine has a very simple shape, but I was delighted to see that when I turn the golden knob at the back, a little plastic needle lifts up and down!

Here's the back side of the machine:

So many accessories these days are just hollow plastic shapes, so it was a refreshing surprise to find that this machine has moving parts.

Jett's two plastic chests contain the extra pair of shoes and one of the hangers:

The chests open and close easily, but don't latch shut securely.  They're just cheap plastic boxes with unevenly-painted gold decoration:

These would be ok for housing a few hangers or other accessories, but they're not large enough to be practical storage for anyone who has a Rainbow High collection of more than two or three dolls.

Both the shoes and the hanger come mounted on clear plastic forms:

The shoes have white ribbon laces with "Rainbow High" printed many times in block letters.  The soles of the shoes are rainbow-colored and the ultra-high heels are made out of the letters "R" and "H:"

The rainbow pattern continues on the bottoms of the shoes:

I like how these shoes look, but they're a pain to get on.  The laces are small and slippery and hard to keep tight.  I can never make these things look as good as they do right out of the box:

Who ties all of the perfect little bows in the Rainbow High factory, I wonder?

The shoes are pretty loose, even after my most valiant effort:

Here's Jett herself...with her left arm sticking out awkwardly to the side:

Everything I own in a plastic chest to the left.

Her arm is sticking out like that because I couldn't get it to move correctly while it was inside her stiff white jacket.

Her hair is rainbow-colored on one side and black on the other side.  It looks more scraggly than the other Rainbow High hair that I've seen up-close:

Here's Jett from the back again with her hair swept to one side:

Jett doesn't strike me as an especially pretty doll the way Georgia did.  Maybe it's because of her bangs?  I don't tend to like dolls with bangs.  I also look at her and think "fish eyes."  Her eyes are wide-set and very round:

Here's a comparison with Georgia so you can see what I mean:

Another thing is that most of the Rainbow High characters look better in the television show than they look in doll form.  Here are some screenshots of Jett for comparison:

Jett's hairstyle from the show has been replicated accurately with this doll.  There's a cute twist at the top of her head that mixes the black with the rainbow hair:

My doll's twist was already slightly messy when I got her out of the box, though.

Jett's eyes are a bit different from how they look in the television series.  The doll has a lot of different colors and reflective designs in her irises:

While the television character's irises are mostly purple:

And much prettier.

Jett's primary outfit is great.  It's made entirely out of black and white fabrics with black and white decorations and lettering:

Most of the details (even little creases) are printed onto the fabric in simple strokes, presumably to make it look like the entire outfit was drawn, like it would be in a comic book.

This will date me horribly, but the outfit makes me think of Ah-Ha's Take on Me video from 1985.

Jett is wearing two tops: a white jean jacket over a black printed hoodie sweatshirt.  The jean jacket has a belt with working belt loops along the bottom edge:

A ribcage belt.

This is the second time I've seen belt loops on the bottom of a jacket.  I guess that's a thing, although I'm never looking to cinch in my ribcage.

The belt unfastens:

It's hard to see what's going on with this top because everything is black and white!  Here's another angle on the opened belt:

The cuffs of the jacket also have straps with buckles, but these are not functional:

Jett is wearing imitation leather gloves on her hands, with two "Rs" embroidered on each glove.  

I had to remove Jett's hands and gloves in order to get the jacket off:

The fabric of this jacket is quite stiff, so it holds its shape (and wrinkles!) even when it's off the doll:

Pale jacket with nobody inside.

The cuff buckles have a yellow tinge, as though glue or some other product was used to tame those thin strips of fabric:

I like Jett's outfit even more when the white jacket is gone:

The black hoodie sweatshirt is covered with white "Rs" and has an embroidered Rainbow High logo in the middle.  This particular sweatshirt has unevenly-sewn trim along the front, but the cropped style lets us get a peek at Jett's torso joint!

Here's the sweatshirt on its own:

Both the body of the sweatshirt and the hood open all of the way down the back with velcro, so this piece is easy to take off and put back on again:

When I looked at Jett online, I thought that her actual legs were painted with a zig-zag pattern, but in fact those marks are just a design on her tights:

The tights have a pretty good skin color match, but they can look baggy at times, and these tights have a small hole in the right leg:

Here are the tights on their own:

The skirt has functional belt loops (but no belt) and working front pockets:

The buttons and creases on this skirt are all printed:

The skirt has a small velcro seam in back, and a printed, nonfunctional pocket:

Jett's shoes are high-top sneakers that match the style of the jacket:

They have a few gold accents along the front and around the shoelace grommets.  This is the only splash of color in Jett's entire ensemble!

There's a detailed tread on the bottoms of these shoes, and a "Rainbow" label at the back of the heel:

As I was taking Jett's shoes off the first time, I noticed how loose her ankles are.  This surprised me, even though I knew that she had joints in her ankles.  The second time I tried to remove Jett's shoes, I heard a "crack" noise in one of her ankle joints.  I was very, very careful using the shoes after this.

Okay!  I wanted to briefly cover those details of Jett's outfit and accessories just in case anyone is thinking of purchasing her, but what I'm really here to do is get a close look at the new articulation!

Here's Jett's body:

It has the addition of an upper torso joint and ankle joints.  Here's a side-by-side comparison with Vanessa Tempo's body:

Jett came covered in black fuzz from her sweatshirt:

After I cleaned away most of the fuzz, I could see that there is also some staining along Jett's arms from her dark jacket:

This type of thing is pretty hard to avoid with black clothing:

I did a quick check of Jett's full articulation, just to make sure her joints behave the same as the other dolls I've looked at.  For the most part, all of the joints behaved exactly as I expected them to.

One thing I didn't notice before is that Rainbow High arms can't extend into a completely straight line.  Notice how Jett's arms remain slightly crooked at the elbow:

This is even more noticeable when her forearms are rotated downwards:

Otherwise, the arm articulation is exactly how I remember it.

But let's take a closer look at this torso joint:

The joint allows for a bit of side-to-side movement that you can see in this GIF:

It doesn't allow Jett to lean forward at all, but she can arch her back like this:

The arched back is nice in sitting positions.  This is how Jett lounges on the ground without bending her torso joint:

And this is how much further back she can lean because of the new joint:

She can also twist ever-so-slightly at the torso, although I'm not sure if this is intentional or just a mild wobble in the joint:

If you look at Jett's side seams in this picture, you can see that her chest is rotated a tiny bit back from the rest of the midline:

Jett's other special joint is a rotating hinge at the ankle.

The joint doesn't allow Jett to flex her foot much (she can't become flat-footed), but she can point her toes to much more of an extreme:

Notice the crack in her ankle seam.

The feet can also spin around:

There's not a huge need for rotation at the ankle since Jett already has rotation in her upper thigh.  But the new joint allows her to flatten the tops of her feet against the ground when she's in a kneeling position, like this:

This pose, which I also used for the cover shot, basically shows everything Jett can do that other Rainbow High dolls can't do:

She can lie on her side more gracefully than Georgia or Vanessa, since the torso joint has some side-to-side movement:

Would we call that graceful?

She can also lift up her head when she's laying on her tummy:

A good pose for reading on the beach.

Although she can't prop herself up enough to look at the camera in this position:

I'm more interested in my book, thanks.

I like the addition of the torso joint.  I think it adds valuable flexibility to Jett's body without any negative side-effects.  I'm not as sure how I feel about the ankle joints.  They don't add a ton of posing options to Jett's repertoire, and they make me nervous.  Some of the Rainbow High shoes are really tight and hard to remove (I broke Ruby Anderson's shoe when I was trying to get it off...) and the extra fragility in this area might result in some snapped ankles and sad kids.

After I'd gotten a good look at Jett's articulation, I decided to take down her hairstyle.  My doll's hair twist was already messy, and I wanted to get a sense for how versatile the rooting pattern is.

The hair did not look good immediately after I took it down:

The twisted section of hair has its own rooting pattern, with a part that runs along the width of the head.  I wasn't sure how this part would behave with the hair let down:

The rooting at the back of Jett's head is pretty nice.  The scalp is painted black on one side and pink on the other, so the areas without hair don't look too bad:

The rooting pattern is perpendicular to what we saw on Georgia's head, but the density is similar:

It was hard to work with the top of Jett's hair while it was still crimped, so I gave her a quick boil-wash:

Jett looks a bit deflated without the twist at the top of her head.  That style added some welcome shape to an otherwise overly-round cranium.

But the hair itself looks nice when it's straight and loose:

The problem is that the hair on the very top of Jett's head is not rooted densely at all.  It's only rooted at the bangs and along the part:

Not good.

So, Jett basically has to keep a version of her original hairstyle, with a section of hair pulled up onto the top of her head in a ponytail, braid, or twist.

I put the hair back into a simple ponytail:

Here's how it looks from the back:

It was quite difficult to recreate this part:

I had to move through the area with a toothpick, carefully sorting bits of hair to one side or the other.  Even after all of that work, the part is still messy.

So, I would strongly recommend not taking Jett's hair down, and if you do, don't wash the hair and disturb the original part--just put it back into a fresh ponytail. 

The only thing left for me to look at is Jett's extra outfit.  This is a mermaid-style ballgown:

It's very ambitious!

The dress closes in back with velcro and has a big bow to conceal the seam:

The fabric of the dress is a metallic-backed dark red, with lettering at the bodice and on the peplum ruffle.  There are black ribbon spaghetti straps and a black accent bow at the waist:

This dress has too much going on for my taste.  With the big peplum at the top, the big bow in back, the extra ribbon bow at the waist, an asymmetric detail at the neckline, and then that huge ruffle at the bottom...it's a lot.  Especially with the busy print of the fabric.

The balance of the whole thing is off to my eye, but I'm no fashion icon.  I wonder how the dress would look if the peplum was moved down below the hips--just above the flared skirt?  

Anyway, the best part of the dress is the intricate underskirt, which has at least twenty layers of densely-packed ribbon ruffles.  The skirt has a Spanish vibe and looks like a big, beautiful flower.  The problem is that this part of the dress is never visible!

Buried treasure.

Here's a closer look:

I wish the whole dress looked like this.

The dress doesn't flatter Jett, either.  It clashes with her coloring:

The dress isn't a true red color.  It's more of a muted, rusty red.  This doesn't match the rainbow tones of Jett's hair at all.

The underskirt has some true red in it, so--again--I wish that this was a bigger focus of the outfit:

That underskirt might literally be the most spectacular feature I've ever seen on play doll clothing.  It's amazing.  What a shame that it's hidden away.

I get that, coming from the point-of-view of the television show, Jett is a fashion designer and not a model.  And so the dress isn't made for her to wear, necessarily, it's simply one of her creations.  However, since this is an expensive play doll and the dress is an accessory, it would have been nice if the dress worked with the doll.

The third problem with this dress is that it's so tight through the legs that Jett can barely move when she's wearing it.  It was hard to get her to balance because I could't shift the position of her legs much at all.

About to tip over.

I still have my Ruby Anderson doll kicking around the house, so I decided to see if the dress looked any better with her red-themed coloring:

Ruby's hair is such a bright red that this doesn't work well, either, although it's an improvement.

The hint of bright red in the underskirt is what makes it work.  I wish the dress was black and silver with a slightly higher hem and that amazing bright red underskirt peeking out more.

As an aside, one thing I noticed about Ruby in this outfit that I hadn't paid much attention to before is that the color of her head doesn't match the color of her body.  I don't know how well you can see that in these pictures: 

The head is paler, with a yellow cast, while the body has more pink in it.  Just a random observation.

Jett was happy that Ruby was wearing this dress, because it gave her a chance to measure for some minor alterations!

Loosen the skirt, Jett!  I can't walk.

The red dress fits onto the fashion form, too:

I like Jett much better in her original outfit.  The black and white ensemble makes her rainbow hair into a highlighted feature instead of something lost in the noise.  

It's fun to pose Jett so that very little of her rainbow hair is showing..

...or so that a lot of her rainbow hair is showing!

Rainbow High dolls are good at posing even without the extra torso and ankle joints, so I didn't find too many new positions for Jett to demonstrate, but here are a few:

The torso joint can turn an ordinary pose like this...

Into an arched-back drama pose like this:

Although that arched back also opens up some less attractive options:

  

Jett's ankle joints allow her to do this:

Which is a pretty basic pose, but it involves the toe of her sneaker pointing downwards:

Other Rainbow High dolls can't do that.

She can also strike this pose...although it's not necessarily recommended:

What the ankle joints are best at doing, however, is helping Jett balance.  I found it easy to make her stand on her own in many different positions.

It was fun to pose Jett with a few of her accessories, too.  The plastic boxes are probably the least interesting of these items, but they're a good make-shift chair:

The dress form is the best accessory since the proportions are the same as they are on the doll.  This form could legitimately be used to tailor a new Rainbow High dress--if only the stand was more substantial.

Bottom line?  I have two bottom line topics to discuss here; whether or not Jett's articulation is preferable to that of the other Rainbow High dolls, and whether or not Jett and her accessories are worth the investment.

For the first question, I have a mixed response.  I like the addition of Jett's torso joint, even though it doesn't allow for a huge number of new poses.  The side-to-side tipping of the torso is nice, and Jett's ability to arch her back can add drama to an otherwise ordinary pose.  I'd like this joint even more if it allowed Jett's torso to rotate from side to side.  I'm not as excited about the ankle joints.  I never thought I'd write these words, but I feel like the dolls with unarticulated ankles are preferable.  Rainbow High shoes can be stiff and hard to remove, and I almost broke Jett's foot trying to get her sneakers off.   The ankle joints definitely add something to Jett's balance and flexibility, but because there's already rotation in the upper leg, I don't think this benefit outweighs the added fragility. 

As for whether or not Jett is worth her price, the simple answer is no--not the original retail price of $57.99.  No way.  But she is probably worth the current sale price, especially if you like her appearance and accessories--or love her character from the show.  I don't find her to be as attractive as Georgia, Vanessa, or some of the other dolls I've seen in-store, but she has a lot of good features.  Her original black and white outfit is unique and flattering, especially without the stiff white jacket.  Several of the accessories are fun, especially the realistic tape measure, movable sewing machine, and dress form.  But the busy red dress, cheap plastic chests, and hard-to-use extra shoes do not have much value in my eyes...with the exception of the red dress' underskirt, which is spectacular, but tragically hidden from view.  Despite her impressive eighteen points of articulation, Jett is not my favorite Rainbow High doll.  

Having seen Jett's enhanced articulation, I can safely say that while I wouldn't mind if other Rainbow High releases included torso and ankle joints, I wouldn't choose a doll specifically based on whether or not they had this feature.  Instead, I'd choose the doll with the coloring and accessories that appealed to me the most--regardless of the articulation.  And that's saying a lot for me.