Manufacturer: Spin Master Ltd.
Series: Bollywood Legends
Character Name: Kajol
Box Year, if Noted: 2006
Why is Kajol on the Top Ten List?
One, she is gorgeous. Two, she's an ethnic doll who looks ethnic. Three, in her leaf green and gold outfit with her long gold scarf, she stands out on any shelf. Yes, the Priyanka Chopra doll is lovely, too. But Kajol packs a bonus with her tooth-baring smile. Where Priyanka seems smug and aloof, Kajol seems warm and welcoming. If Tiara Gold is the "Sunshine Girl," Kajol is la femme dorée, "The Golden Woman." Here's another photo to confirm that subjective statement.
Why is Kajol the fifth doll on the List?
One, limited pose-ability. Two, excessively tiny feet. She has the same body as Priyanka Chopra. Three, the gold dust on her clothes sheds. Most of all, the limited pose-ability places Kajol in the middle of the List. Straight arms and straight legs translate to toy soldier stiffness. A doll this lovely cries for articulation, but she has little in that vein. And she will be a tricky doll to match if I should decide to re-body her onto a more pose-able body. All but one of the dolls ranked higher than Kajol have more articulation.
Kajol, like the other Bollywood Legend dolls, came from Fairy Dust Dolls Ltd. through Amazon.co.uk. Postage to the United States from the United Kingdom was costly, but that was the only way that I knew to get these dolls. If anyone knows of a U.S. source for these dolls, please send that information in a comment.
5 comments:
Thanks for posting about another doll from this line. I think I like the outfit better on this doll, but I prefer closed mouth dolls to open mouths. I think open mouth dolls do look friendlier in general but I think the Superstar Barbie that I used to have when I was little forever cured me of preferring open mouth dolls (she had gigantic eyes, yellow hair and a huge grin - I liked her at the time, but I saw a pic of her the other day and found her to be scary looking to me as an adult. What was I thinking back then?!).
Anyway, this outfit on your doll is beautiful! Is the fabric nice?
You are welcome, AilanthusAltissima. I am glad to post about the Bollywood dolls. To my knowledge, the only one missing from my collection is Shah Rukh Khan. He cost more than the others so I passed over him when I ordered the other three.
Superstar Barbie had turned me against blond dolls with blue eyes. I got that sick of seeing her same face and complexion.
Ooops, forgot about the fabric for the dress. It's okay. The green fabric is chiffon, lined with light yellow nylon (I think). The color is gorgeous, but the texture is middling.
It is interesting that the single, male doll would cost more. I think that would almost guarantee lower sales because of price. Does he come with anything special to make him cost more?
I used to *love* Superstar Barbie when I was little. I think I had three of them in succession (I kept breaking the bent arm off at the shoulder when changing her clothes and could never fix her so I begged to get a new one). I think I still have the last one stored away somewhere. I loved her dress and her jewelry and her face and her boa ('cause it was sparkly!) and her shoes. For the day, she was pretty poseable and her clothes worked well with her body to enhance its expression. I played with that doll so much there were pills on her dress(es) (and I was actually very careful with my dolls). The fact that she was blond was neither here nor there to me back then. I did like the hairplay aspect of the length of her hair. I agree with you in that far too many dolls were made with the long, flowing, corn yellow hair and blue eyes after her, though. I think she sold so well that doll makers just cloned the idea at a superficial level without really trying to understand why she was popular and then innovate rather than to copy (badly).
When I saw a pic of her the other day, I was shocked at what she looked like to me as an adult. Her eyes were really large in an anime kind of way - but not nearly as artful as anime. This realization actually better helped me to understand some of the differences in dolls targeted to children and dolls targeted to adults.
But to this day, I still don't like bent arm dolls very much (though my last acquisition was a bent arm doll - ITBE Flounce).
Thanks for telling me about the fabric. It looked like it could be stiff from the pics, but it didn't seem to be too coarse or out of scale so I couldn't really tell. I like the jewelry on the doll.
My guess is that Shah Rukh Khan might be more popular as an actor; I can't think of any other reason why he should cost so much more than the others.
The blondness of Superstar Barbie annoyed me then because when I was younger, Barbie had 4 different hair colors. My childhood Barbies were the 1967+ TNT ones. I missed the variety of hair colors. When I found a Baggie Francie from Kiddie City, I was thrilled: a brunette with brown eyes. Only sad thing was that her knees didn't bend.
That's a good point about how other companies copied the superficial "look" of Barbie in their "clone dolls." I have a blond dollar store doll who could almost be Barbie. Sad that they didn't try to bring something new and different out, but I suppose their budgets interfered with interest in novelty, etc.
Glad the fabric feedback helped. It isn't the worst, but it isn't very nice.
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