Warning: Long Post.
Yep, even though Mike was on his way here before Jakob was - Jakob ended up showing up first - today in fact!
If you have no idea what I am talking about you'll want to check out this post here:
http://thedollwardrobe.blogspot.com/2012/02/we-are-super-excited.html
We ordered two Kidz n Cats dolls - Mike and Jakob. They are designed by Sonja Hartmann (German doll designer) and marketed by Heart and Soul and distributed by Madame Alexander here in the USA - or something along those lines. Primarily they are marketed to Europeans. So it is a rather confusing task to find them online for the US or Canadian market because there are like 100 company names associated with the line.
You can buy Kidz n Cats from the Madame Alexander website - but they are also available from individual shops and sellers, like the Toy Shoppe and Doll Market, as well as Ebay sellers and on Amazon. So it is best to shop around online first before buying in order to get the best deal. The prices from place to place vary quite a bit.
I know y'all expected us to look like this when Jakob arrived today:
But we didn't. Us girls were trying to play it cool. ;-)
The girls just hung out casually as Penny cut open his box and then I took various pics.
So it was really just me being a crazy fangirl with a camera.
Jakob. We knew our balloon of excitement would burst - and it has. He is a very nice doll - but we don't think he is really compatible with AGs. His face is a lot smaller and it looks a lot more realistic than the AG girls. And overall he has a much smaller, slimmer build and is not really as tall as them. Here he is with Kenna.
Yeah. Doesn't quite work for us. Maybe we'll get used to it, but initial reaction is no - these boys will be in their own photo shoots.
Here he is in his box, but released from the ties that bind and doing a dance:
Out of his box, sans shoes.
He is a cutie.
He comes with a form to join the Kidz n Cats doll club, and
a little catalog that has a paper doll and a few outfits in it to cut out:
With Kenna again, who is wearing a Sophia's Collection dress from Ebay, and
the leggings and shoes from McKenna's School Outfit:
As you can tell he has a lot of facepaint and he's got those long, long eyelashes. Well one set of his eyelashes was already coming off. Quality? Not quite. Either the glue stinks or this "brand-new" doll has had a hard life in his box. Also, his left eye (right while facing him) has a small crack in the corner of it. Yeah. :-(
So we decided we'd just take both sets of eyelashes off of him and store them for now. Here he is without his long lashes, looking slightly shocked. He still has light lashes painted onto his face, as you can see.
His cheeks are totally rosy red. Sure it was cold outside, but once he was inside long enough - he didn't need to look like he was permanently blushing. So Penny said she was going to Magic Eraser some of that color off of his cheeks. She also thought he had a bit of a doll-zombie look to eyes, so she added a bit more brown lashes with acrylic paint to the corners of his eyelids during his "makeover" for more definition and to tone down the whites of his eyes.
He doesn't look 100% different and one could say his still looks feminine, but we think this will do.
Three phases next to each other: 1) Out of box 2) Without eyelashes 3) With a lil extra eyelash paint and less cheek blush.
Jakob's Wig
Dry, stiff, thin, and not easy to manage. We have read that the first edition of the Sonja Hartmann Kidz n Cats had much better wigs before Madame Alexander was involved. This is a pretty bad wig, in our opinion. We'd change it up, but it's almost not worth the effort since Mike and Jakob are pretty much going to be all we get as far as Kidz n Cats, and it's not like we'll be buying them a huge wardrobe given their size difference in comparison to AGs.
And even though the wig quality is bad, the color and shape kind of suit him. We'll just deal with it for now. We can do more photos of his wigs from various sides and angles if you want - just let us know.
Jakob's Body
We haven't stripped him down to his nuddie pants yet - just his undies. But his body has a lot of scuff marks on it already. He is supposed to be brand-new, so we aren't sure what that is about. And he has stray dark marks on one hand. Can't win.
His legs are loose, but he can still manage to stand with some coaxing - kind of an expected issue when you have knee joints. His arms are tighter than Scrooge's purse-strings before his Christmas revelation. And this makes them quite hard to move. Of course, it also means they will hold a pose. If you can manage to get them into a position that doesn't look silly.
Jakob's Clothing
Shoes are too big even with him wearing thick socks. They just fall off his feet, and being loafers there is no way to fix that besides stuffing them with tissue paper. The design of them is nice. Quality is a bit cheapish. And it would be nice if they stayed on his feet.
Jacket is nice. It is lined and is very detailed. Its material is kinda lightweight though. It does fit the AGs. Which is very nice. Jakob's under shirt (tank top), boxers, and shirt are very nice quality items. We didn't have any problem getting his shirts off, but they don't have backs that open. You have to pull them off over his head. The pants have a button closure that is easy to open, not so easy to close. But besides that the quality of the pants is great.
Kenna borrowing Jakob's jacket:
Besides the scarf, hat, and jacket - we don't think that any of his other clothing pieces will really work for the AGs. We'll eventually do some more testing to find out for sure though. :-)
The hat and scarf oozed some sort of oil onto the cardboard interior of the box. Yep. Nice, right? They are fine, don't even feel oily at all. They are just normal knit items. The scarf is in two parts btw. The clothing they were near is fine, and Jakob looks fine - not like extra oily or something. But for some reason the box doesn't look fine and it lines up with where the hat and scarf were inside of it. So we don't have a clue what the knit items are oozing, but we'll keep them in a plastic bag unless they are being used for photo shoots. :-/
Maybe Jakob's wig is bad because the knit hat oozed something onto it while he lived in the box? We'll rinse his hair out a bit to see if that makes a difference.
Hmmm, what else? Not sure what else to say.
After his makeover, we changed him into a Sophia's Collection tee shirt we bought off Ebay. Yeah, it is a girl's shirt, but it works as a boy shirt for us. And then we posed him with Sun Ji and Sabrina to see how their facemolds would look with his.
Sun Ji's shirt is also Sophia's Collection from Ebay, her skirt is from
Andrea Jene Threads, and her socks are from
Aunt Bees Old Sew N Sew. Sabrina's two shirts are from
Sew Urban Designs, as well as her necklace. Her leggings are from
Lizziebee Design. And yep, those weird looking-things are Jakob's elbow joints. ;-)
Overall, we like him. He is a nice, cute doll. Not like best-quality doll we have ever seen - but certainly remarkable. We will keep him and use him for photo shoots. But he wasn't really what we wanted 100%. We'd like a boy doll that can hang out with the AGs without looking out of place, and we don't think this is it. He is just scaled too small - like an Elvish princeling, Legolas's younger brother or something. Maybe Jakob and Mike can have their own adventures here though. :-)
Any questions, comments, thoughts?
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And feel free to comment with specific photo requests.
