Review: Jakks Pacific: City Fashions Bloom Doll

So today I'm gonna review City Fashions Bloom. It's annoying how similarly named this line is to City Style, but this isn't that. This was that cheap line that resembled the Season 4 basic outfits and was only ever found at Walgreens and some UK stores. Can't remember which ones.

Anyway, let's get started!

I got her for Christmas a while ago. My mom said she found her at Walgreens. She wouldn't tell me the price, so uh. I think it was around $8?

As you can see, I found the notebook I pull paper from for the floor of my photos. No more weird back of the box floors!

This is her! While the outfit is a little sad, overall she's actually a really cute doll. A lot of people write her off because the outfit is so lazy but I think she's worth it if you can get her around $8 or so.

So her shoes are blue heels, with three bows on the front. I think they're reused from her Speedix pack? right? Or maybe the Speedix packed reused them from this doll. As usual, she has the Winx Club Xs on her shoes.

Her dress is cute! While nothing like the Season 4 casual outfit except for the pattern, I think it works. It's a nice soft fabric-- almost reminds me of satin, I'm sure it's not that though. It seems like whatever Disney Store makes their doll clothing out of to me. It ties in the back like Monster High's Basic Lagoona or Clawdeen's shirts do. With a ribbon that comes tied in a bow around her neck.

This is the back of her hair. When I got her it was cut extremely poorly-- for any of you Monster High fans, it looked like the back of School's Out Cleo's hair, with the diagonal cut. One side was a LOT longer then the other.

I ended up trimming it up so it looks fine now. There are a few stands that for some reason are curling up and look bent, but it's the kind of few that if I sat down for about ten minutes I could pull 'em all out. I think it's just the fault of the packaging.

Her hair is really soft! It almost makes me wish Jakks did straight hair all the time. It's really thick too, surprisingly enough. Usually cheaper dolls like this don't have super thick hair, but this is thicker then at least a couple of my higher priced dolls. Everyday Stella for sure.

The front of her hair (as seen below) is two pieces parted to the side. They're hairsprayed, and they're slightly shorter then the rest of her hair. They don't really bother me, but they do flare out a bit if you don't have them  in the right position so if that bothers you you could just wash it out.

I haven't decided how I feel about the length of her hair. It's the perfect length on a human, but this is a doll and their hair usually reaches down to like, their butts. This is a nice change of pace, but if you wanted it to be in a ponytail or something I think it'd be hard to style.

This is her face; I don't think very many people have realized just how different it is from other Blooms'.

There are two main Bloom faces Jakks uses. The deluxe, and the budget. You can see comparisons between the two on the Comparing Jakks Pacific Faces post I did a while ago.

This is different from the both of them. It has the lips of the Believix one-- the "fish lip" shape, that you usually see on Ariel dolls and some of the Bratz from when they rebooted the franchise. It seems to be around the color of the Believix one too.

But don't get me wrong, this isn't the Believix one. The eyes look a lot smoother, and you know how Deluxe faces have lots of eyelashes and Budget just two? This only has two as well. Her eyelids seem bigger to me too, and they dont have nearly as much makeup. It's like a toned down Believix face. I love it. It's definitely my favorite of their Bloom faces so far. If only it was used more.

The less posable body sure does make for good poses, right? Not. While I don't usually care about much posability on dolls, this is the most interesting pose I could come up with. Her legs would be further apart but the dress is restricting them. 

At least she can move her arms out. Can Ken do that yet? I'm not keeping up on Ken. Last time I bought one somewhere in the mid 2000s he still couldn't move his arms out from his sides. 

I guess it's not really bad since it's not like the Deluxe posable bodies could do much either, but I miss the knee articulation.

Her legs are also super prone to doing this. That's natural, right? It looks like she has to pee, but not even because she can't move her upper legs together. 

I tried pulling them apart and holding them in a normal position for a while and they got a bit better. They came even more twisty then how they look in the top picture. For anyone that's really bothered by this I suggest getting a clip that you use on like, potato chip bags and stuff? Do you know what I mean? They're like clothespins but bigger, bulkier, and plastic. Anyway. Pry her legs out of the weird twisty position, get them how you want them, then clip them together so it holds them that way. Then take it off in a few days or so and it should be significantly better, though probably not completely.

Overall I'd rate this doll around a 6.8/10. I really like her.. but I think that may just be my personal preference. The outfit is nice but inaccurate, and the legs have this weird twisty problem. Not to mention the lack or articulation.

What do you think of this doll?

Selkies, Fairy Pets, and Pixies... cute things everywhere!

Sorry it's been so long since my last post, I haven't felt good lately and every time I've come up with a new idea for one there always ends up being a problem. But I won't ramble on too long!

So as of recent, the Winx Club seems to keep getting more and more cute animals, chibi people or whatever... it wasn't that noticeable until Season 4. Because I mean, what's wrong with some pixies over the course of 3 seasons? But a new thing each Season... we're getting a little silly.

So this season we've got the selkies. A lot of people are complaining that they're replacing the pixies.. but I mean, face it guys, the pixies got replaced by the fairy pets last Season anyway. This isn't a new thing, despite the fact that these are more similar to the pixies.

The main thing that really irks me about the selkies is the fact that they're all generally the same. If it weren't for their colors and voices I wouldn't be able to tell them apart. The pixies had a use-- to be generally the opposites of the girls (minus Digit, who knows what went wrong there) and try to balance out the extremely polarized aspects of their personalities. The selkies... yeah, the purpose they serve is complimenting the color schemes of the girls, looking cute, and opening gates. You can argue that hey, some of them have different speech patterns, but that's it. And really only Tecna's and Filla Milla Earth selkie thing.

Also, am I the only one who finds it extremely odd that the seven selkies coincidentally match up to the girls' planets? Aren't there more planets? Wouldn't we really need like... fifty selkies, if there were fifty planets? (Imagine that. "Okay girls, all at once, open the gate to the infinite ocean!" They could probably beat Tritannus on their own.) 

We already know there's at least one more planet with water on it, Eraklyon. And what about Earth selkie Filla? Or whatever her name was, the one that talked in third person. She never even got to bond with anyone. Neither did Rocalucce selkie, but hey, at least it was minor. Filla was here from the start.

So like.. if you need the gatekeepers' powers, how many gatekeepers? Seven? Eight? All? Two and a half? 234? Did Tritannus gather the powers of EVERY selkie in the dimension while we tried to get some gems?

I guess the purpose of the Selkies is for marketing, but they don't seem to be using them much. I mean, you'd think they'd advertise them more so there'd be more little girls like "Ooooh cute!!"  But nope, not really. I think I've only seen them used in advertising once? I guess it attracts little kids anyway. 

And is anyone ever going to talk about how selkies in mythology were seal ladies that shed their skin and came onto land to have romance with a man for a while, before returning to the sea? And now in Winx they're cute merpixies? Whatever. I'm moving on.

With Season 4 we had the fairy pets, which are arguably worse then the selkies. Alright, they're probably worse then them for sure. The fairy pets were really annoying. At least the selkies are humanoid and can talk.

They were created from some defective stuffed animals that the girls were supposed to throw out, but instead Flora decided it'd be a good idea to turn them into real, living breathing animals. Keep in mind they hadn't decided to sell them until after they had turned them into living things. What did you plan to do with them before, Flora?

So the girls open their pet shop and give these things away for free. But wait. They wanted money in the first place so that they wouldn't be mooching off Mike and Vanessa, and thats why they got the job having to move the stuffed animals in the first place... but if you're giving these things away for free, you're not making any money. Am I missing something? Mike and Vanessa were the ones making the down payment on the place, and they paid it back right away... I must be forgetting something man, because I don't get how they got any money.

These things were quite obviously only here to sell products. Simba made an entire line of dolls based off of the girls' pet outfits, another line titled "I Love my Pet", and Jakks made a Bloom doll with seven(?) pets.

Not to mention various series of figures of the pets, but I can't find stock photos of them.

The pets seemingly disappeared at the end of Season 4, because at the start of Season 5 we were on Earth and they didn't appear once. Did you decide to turn them all back into stuffed animals? Did you shove it all onto Mike and Vanessa? Did you sell the shop? Did Roxy make her dad take if over? We'll never know. This is pretty sad for how much the girls loved the pets. They didn't even take them back to Alfea with them. 

Have the Winx forgotten about us?

Speaking of sad, at the beginning of Season 4 the girls promised the pixies that when they returned from Earth, they would come back to them. I guess they didn't, because the pixies haven't made an appearance this season either.

I guess you can say that they're busy having their own spinoff series, Pop Pixie, but that's a pretty lame excuse.

Personally I liked the pixies. They seemed to have the most personality of the cute things, and they were designed much better then the selkies. They had a cool village, and they did serve a purpose, as I mentioned earlier. 

But their time is over, sadly. But I guess they'll carry on in the form of Pop Pixie.

We also had pixie pets, if anyone remembers those. They were pretty much less girly, poorly proportioned fairy pets. I think they make appearances in Pop Pixie, but I haven't seen that so I wouldn't know. They seem to have more variety then the fairy pets, coming in species such as bear, bird, and porcupine, as opposed to cat, duck, and sheep.

My favorite of the "cute things" of Winx Club were the pixies. The fairy pets were my least favorite, mainly since they served no purpose other then to be cute. I mean, at least the selkies open gates.

I wonder what the cute thing of Season 6 will be-- since at the rate we're going, it's likely there'll be one. Maybe nymph pixies, or air pixies. Let's just hope it talks, and isn't an animal.

What's your favorite? What do you think of all the varieties of cute side characters? (If you can call them that.)

The Stella Design Studio has showed up on eBay... and I don't understand how it works

So that thing has hit... and I really, really don't get it... 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Jakks-2013-Nickelodeon-WINX-CLUB-Playset-STELLAS-DESIGN-STUDIO-w-Doll-/400387927862?_trksid=p5197.m1992&

credit to eBay user picker_joes for images, will remove if asked

Alright. So "Includes Stickers to Customize Clothes!" Are we sticking stickers on clothing? Is that all? It looks like we also get a table, a Stella, and a machine. Maybe more, this is hard to tell. Let's check out the back.

On the back, Stella is wearing a different orange outfit and a different blue top... and wait, what's that down there? DISCO dolls?

...what? It says "Create more custom designs with Studio Fashions!" 

Is that going to be some other design playset we're getting that has to do with the Disco dolls? Because that seems to be the only thing relating to them... why are they on here, how do I get them?! Do I have to make those outfits?! I know I can't make those outfits with "Become a fashion designer like Stella, make sewing sounds, and display your creations!", right?! It says "Other dolls sold separately", but... where what are they

Oh look, contents:

1 Sewing Table, 1 Winx Doll, 1 Skirt, 1 T-shirt, 1 Tube Top, 1 Pair of shoes, 1 sewing machine, 4 dress forms, 4 hangars, 2 sticker sheets, 4 fairy stickers, 1 backdrop (on packaging).

Okay so we know what the sewing table is. The Winx doll is Stella, and the tshirt and skirt is what she's wearing. Looks like we also must get that blue tube top. One pair of shoes is also what she's wearing. We see the sewing machine. What are dress forms???

Those hangars look like they're made of cardboard. Two sticker sheets, four fairy stickers (what is the difference are only the four good enough for fairies) and we see the backdrop that I can't believe they're counting as including.

Unless dress forms is code for 3 disco outfits, I do not understand. Nor do I understand what to do with this playset.

Anyway. The point of this post was mainly to show you guys Disco down there.. and maybe to figure out what this thing does. This wasn't the post I'd been planning, so check back for that in a few days.

Please comment if you think you understand this better than me!

What happened, Winx Club? Part 2

Read Part 1 here.

Now, let's continue!

I really, really don't like what they've done with Tecna's character in the most recent seasons... I know a lot of people love her now, but I can't stand it. In the early Seasons she was the smart girl... not the geeky girl.

Yes, yes, I know you're probably all thinking "oh, but she's smart AND geeky!!! its not like shes not smart anymore" but that wasn't what Tecna was intended to be. She was supposed to be similar to a machine; cold and serious. But still having emotions, just... she didn't share them much.

But now as of the two most recents seasons, Tecna has become the modern day geeky girl in my eyes. Always using her phone, playing computer games... and honestly, the writers aren't doing much to help that. She gets like maybe five lines an episode on average (assuming the episode isn't like.... the Zenith one) so the only thing we ever see her do is play on her phone.

I don't like this new Tecna. But let's move on to Aisha.

Aisha I think is actually doing pretty well, as far as not getting her character wrecked. She's one of the characters that you can actually use the excuse of "they grew up" on.

In Seasons 2 and 3 she was kinda quiet and kinda shy. Not in a "uwwahh I'm so nervous" kind of way, just in an unsocial way. Didn't introduce herself to many people.

Season 4 I've heard a lot of people complain that she was too gushy over Nabu... but Nabu is cool, man. He can be gushed over.

Joking aside, it was pretty out of character, for a guy who she hated a season before. It didn't strike me as blaringly annoying though.

Season 5 I've heard a lot of people say they're glad she's back to her S2 and 3 self... but I dunno. I don't really think she is. She seems a lot more aggressive in Season 5. Like a mix between evil at the end of 4 and 2 and 3 personalities.

I also see people complaining she's taking up too much lines and all in Season 5... which I REALLY don't get, considering she still says/does nothing, except she got shoved on a few more Sirenix missions then most girls. But hey, if you're going to complain about Sirenix missions, complain about Stella. She was in 5/6 of them, only reason she wasn't in the one she wasn't was because she was turned into a little kid. Stella is like the Nick writers' baby.

The boys.

Have I mentioned there are literally no stock pictures of these guys together in uniform. I have resorted to using this screenshot of them walking into the Frutti music bar with the most vague expressions on their faces I have ever seen.

The specialists are really lacking recently. In the beginning of the series they struck me as real characters... they were still mostly only there to be the boyfriends for the girls, but they had character anyway. That seems to have been lost in all except Riven, and amnesiac Sky.

I mean, Riven's character is hard to lose. To be fair he's spoken maybe literally one or two lines this entire Season so far, (holy cow riven I just noticed how few lines that is WHAT) BUT I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume he's still a selfish jerk.

Sky on the other hand wasn't even Sky 70% of what we've seen so far, but heck, at least the guy we saw had character. (I know a lot of people are gonna argue with me that he was Sky, just lost memories... i'm sorry but no, he wasn't Sky anymore.)

Every other guy including Riven has either dropped off the face of the planet, is Bloom's dad, is a villain, or has died. Cough, cough, Nabu. Where did our boys go? I know this is a girl power show, but man, we still need some guys. A single gendered show isn't interesting.

There isn't even anything else to say about them. That's how little they're doing.

Oh boy, time for our final characters... the Trix.

The Trix have been doing, quite sadly, too much as of right now. With their return and the blossoming love between Tritannus and Icy, these characters have been run through an entire season that they don't belong in. At all.

In Season 1 the girls were heartless, cold... well, witches. Nothing good about them. I mean, they summoned an entire army of the dead. The good witch Glinda doesn't do that. Seasons 2 and 3... they were lackeys, but they retained their general personality. Season 4 they weren't there. Originally I was kinda sad about that, but looking back it's a good thing.

Season 5 they DON'T need to be here. Yes, I love the Trix as much as the next Winx Club fan, but for petesake the girls have been reduced to a group of mildly evil incompetent witches, one of which is lovey dovey head over heels for the mutant merboy nextdoor, and the other two spend the entire time gagging and complaining about it; I CAN'T EVEN BLAME THEM FOR COMPLAINING. I'm not even going on I'm too frustrated at this point.

Anyway. My next post will probably go up sometime later this week; I've decided what it'll be... but that'll have to be a surprise. It's not a doll review!

Sorry for taking so long to do this, I've been sick since Sunday and haven't felt good enough to sit down and write something until today. :P Oh well. Thanks for reading! What do you guys think of the changes to the Winx Club cast over the years?

Review: Jakks Pacific, Stella Harmonix Doll

Dropped by ToysRUs this morning, no City Style. If they had them I would've gotten Aisha, but no luck. I'll check back next week. 

As some of you read I did go there last week though and snagged both City Style and Harmonix Stella. I did a review of City Style last week, but now it's time for Harmonix! Let's get started.

As you can see, Sibylla still hasn't found her note book to tear paper out of for the floors of her pictures.

So, this is Stella. She's a pretty nice doll! I think Bloom beats her overall, but she does have some little parts that are better than Bloom. So let's start toe to head.

I thought I took a picture of her shoes, but I guess I didn't. Oh well. Anyway.

So Stella Harmonix's shoes are generally the same as Bloom's; they start off orange, and turn into the same pink color as Bloom's start as. They're really tall, just like Bloom's. My only complaint is they kinda sink down occasionally and end up at around her knees. They don't go any further then that though.

This is her dress! Personally I kinda thought it was a letdown compared to Bloom's. I know they're generally the same but Bloom's had that pink thing across the top and just looked nicer in general. The fabric used on Stella seems really thin too.

I mean, I know there aren't that many details on the top part of her costume anyway but they could've done this thing:

That orange band on her shirt below the frills on her bust.

Anyway. The skirt is cute same as Bloom's, but part of the skirt kept folding up and that got annoying. It's a nice orange color. I wish this doll was a little less citrus, like the show, but I know they were looking at the art instead where she pretty much is this citrus.

This outfit looks horribly uncomfortable. But hey, they're cartoons. It doesn't matter. She also has the exact same belt as Bloom and everyone else in the line. Exciting.

These are her wings. They're probably my favorite of the line, I absolutely adore the color sparkles they used for them. It looks like pink bubblegum. I'm not sure if you can see it or not but there are tons of different colors in her wings; yellow, orange, purple, pink, blue.

They're really pretty.

This is the back of everything! As you can see I redid her hair. It came with a nice pretty bump and down but you know, I took it down and tied it up in a ponytail so it looked like the show.

Her train is the same beautiful material as Bloom's, but it's a nice yellow. The same color as the show. I don't really see any problems with it, no tears or anything, that's nice. 

It's a miracle her wings haven't fallen apart once yet. Most my dolls will have like, one wing that always falls off.

Her face is super gorgeous! It's really different from the Believix face, which I'm grateful about. I disliked the Believix face a whole lot. It wasn't very Stella at all. This one has pink pearly lipstick and light pink and yellow eyeshadow. Funny thing is on my doll, on one eye the lower eyeshadow is pink and the upper yellow, and on the other it's vice versa. I wonder which way it's supposed to be?

I really like the hair on this doll. I've sseen the bangs done differently on a lot of the ones in stores, like I mean, some more in her face and all that, but I like the way mine is the best personally.

She also has these two really long pieces in front that are like the longest things I've ever seen and they hang down to her knees. I haven't even decided how I feel about them. I don't even know if she has them in the show or not. They're cute, but they're weird.

This is her crown! It's well.. a crown. I wish the shape of it was more like the show but that's fine. It has a starfish on one side and the rest is just orange and sparkly. I like it. It's tied to her head with little light orange strings on each side as seen in the photo.

Overall I'd rate this doll about an 8/10. Not as fab as Bloom, but not bad.

Sorry if this review wasn't very interesting, I'm kinda tired. My next post will be "What happened, Winx Club? Part 2" and after that.. I haven't decided. Be sure to check back though! Season 5 is resuming this month so episode reviews will be making a comeback as well. ;)

What happened, Winx Club? Part 1

Hope I don't get any flak for this post, but I figure since my blog is already so opinionated it won't matter.

Note: The two dubs I'm basing this all off are 4kids and Nick. I haven't watched Rai, so I can't judge that.

This is only part one. There'll be a second part sometime soon.

I've noticed throughout the course of the show our characters changing... some say they're growing up, others say the characters are slowly degrading. I'm part of the latter.

It's been more or less evident depending on the character; and I'm sure you guys have noticed too. I'll still love Winx nonetheless, but it is a little disappointing as of now.

We'll start with Bloom.

In my opinion, at the beginning of the series, Bloom was a really headstrong, cute character... she didn't give up, she was kind of naive, but she wasn't weak like a lot of her type of character's. I liked that about her; most the heroines in her situation are all like, "uwwaahhh Im magical!! I dont know if I can do this, im so weak, uwah angst angst."

Bloom was good. But in recent Seasons... I feel like headstrong, not giving up is all she's been reduced to. I mean, I can't think of a line off the top of my head in Season 5 that isn't something like "We can't give up! I won't give up! We can do it!" or else really generic. I can't really think of any interests of hers besides being a fairy, either... maybe being in a band?

Season 4 I don't really remember much. I didn't like that Season much. I know she wasn't as bad as in Season 5 but she still got really annoying constantly trying to relate to and connect with Roxy. 

Stella's changes probably pain me the most. She started off as kind of snooty, mean... but she had common sense. THAT is something that she is lacking in the most recent Season.

I'm sorry, but you do not steal something from a museum for "inspiration." Even early Stella wouldn't do that. What happened, Stella? She seemed to go from a snotty teenage girl to a whiny little five year old. And we even had an episode pointing that out, yet at the end of it, she learned nothing, and proceeds to act the same way. Not to mention poor Brandon. Their relationship is starting to edge into the 'he's almost babysitting her' territory. I miss her old relationship with him. The one where they would do anything for each other and seriously were in love.

Now maybe you're all thinking, "Sibylla, why are you acting like you don't like Stella? I thought she was your favorite character?" Yes. She is. Early Stella is. Some aspects of her character remind me of myself. (No, I'm not snooty.)

I'm not saying later Stella has no good qualities; the designs they do for her outfits are gorgeous. And I still love her friendship with Bloom.  She just gets on my nerves. Also. Does anyone remember this dress?

That's the dress Stella supposedly designed as of Season 1.

I thought maybe they forgot about it... nope. But they're still pushing her as a fashion designer. I'm sure she's gotten better by now, but it's just funny that it's still here.

I think Flora's probably suffered the least change over the show. She's generally stayed the same, sweet, cutesy girl... but she has differed between Season 1 and Season 2 on.

I remember back in Season 1 her voice sounded normal; not the high and whimpery thing most 4kids fans are used to. She also seemed to have a fair amount of confidence, and wasn't as much cutesy as she was in later seasons. She seemed like the older, mature one of the group. I don't really know what happened between those Seasons. I guess something made her lose every ounce of confidence she had.

In the recent seasons she's pretty normal, except for the weird lovey-dovey moment she had for Helia in The Lilo.

I'd say Musa has suffered through quite a few weird, character change moments.. but she somehow managed to end up around the same place she was in the original season, just grown up.

In the first two seasons she seemed to have this weird, dorky hip hop thing going on. At least in the 4kids dub. Something tells me this was just 4kids dub. She kept saying stuff like playa and yo.

Season 3 she was pretty much the same too, but slightly more normal about it and not as much of shoving it in everywhere. 

Season 4 she just blew up. It's like whoever used to write her script left and the new guy didn't know what to do other then have her have relationship troubles with Riven. That entire Season she struck me as really, really out of character... the constant whining about Riven, (I mean, it's totally normal for anyone to whine about Riven; he's a jerk, but Musa wouldn't really.) and the falling for Jason Queen thing... oh man, Jason Queen. I can't stand that guy. He really didn't do anything wrong but he created a world of tiring, repetitive troubles for Musa and Riven. Her outfit didn't help at all. That is not anything Musa would ever wear.

Season 5 she has turned into the most snarky and sarcastic character on the show. I don't even know how that happened after her Season 4 drama, but it's like during the break between the Seasons they realized there was something wrong and brought her back to normal. Of course she's not the same dorky girl from the first few Seasons, but it strikes me as still her, but grown up.

What do you guys think of the changes happening in the show? Do you think they're positive or negative? Do you like it more or less now? 

Thanks for reading. Like I mentioned earlier in the post, this'll be continued sometime soon, but I think before I continue I'm gonna review Stella Harmonix.

All images used in this post found off Google, except the one of Stella's dress.