Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I wish the product description for this doll had been a little more informative. Maybe they'll update it after it receives a few reviews.
When I bought this toy for my daughter the description was a brief two lines long and neglected to mention the fact that, although it's cool to be able to wave a wand and change the doll's dress, this is about the ONLY thing a kid can do with the doll, and that's just not realistic to the way most girls play with their dolls.
First of all: A kid can't dress/undress this doll. The magical, color-changing skirt is actually a second skirt underneath the outer gown. It has three different-colored panels and is permanently attached to the torso. The outer, larger part of the gown can be removed, but once you do that you see that they have manufactured the doll to have a bizarre, flared hip piece. This piece is designed to make the ball gown flare out and look nice and full. They could have easily created a piece of the costume that would have had this same effect, but instead they made the torso itself look like a short, flesh-colored minidress. The bottom line is, if you try to change the doll's clothes, you can't take them off completely, and you take them off even partially you see a VERY weird-looking body that was designed for one gown alone and clearly can't be dressed in anything else.
Furthermore -- and this is a big flaw in my opinion - the doll's legs are the completely straight, completely hard plastic kind that don't bend at the knee AT ALL. Kids like being able to pose their dolls in different ways for more realistic play, and these days most dolls of this type have bendable legs. The better ones even have legs that can be moved out to the side as well as front and back, which this doll also can't do.
The hair is also of rather poor quality. Severely matted and tangled right out of the box, and combing didn't help. The front pieces of hair look quite pretty, but the long hair that hangs down in back is inferior to the hair on all of my daughter's other dolls. It kind of looked to me like this might be the fault of the packaging, but the ends of the hair were tough, frizzy and frayed. In order to be silky and brushable you'd have to cut it to about shoulder length.
In order to find out all of these things, I had to go through the arduous process of getting her out of the box (and you know how thoroughly they wire and sew these things into boxes these days). But first I had to cut the box apart, because there was no way to naturally open it -- it had no flaps or openings as far as I could see. As a result, after what seemed like minor surgery to get the doll free of all its packaging, strings and wires, there's no way to put it back in the box the same way it was, or to put the box together again. So even though it's never been touched or even seen by my daughter, I can't return it (or even resell it unless I want to call it "used"). I paid almost $25 bucks for something that's probably going straight to the Good Will donation pile (if not the garbage), and now I still have to look for and buy another version of the Belle Doll for her birthday. Very frustrating.
The only satisfactory feature: The little wand that comes with it is a pretty little keepsake that probably any little girl would enjoy playing with.
MY ADVICE: If your kid likes playing with dolls, pay attention to how they play with them before you buy this toy. If you think your child would actually be happy just taking this doll out of the box and making its skirt spin around and never doing anything else with it, then it will be a fine toy for her. If she wants to keep it in its box as a collector's item -- even better (I don't know any little kids that do this, though). But if she's going to want to make it sit down, wants to take its clothes off or put other dresses on it, take it in the tub (this doll has a battery) or brush its hair, this is not the doll for her.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Disney Princess: Enchanted Tales Musical Wand Dolls - Belle
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