REVIEW: Kuu Kuu Harajuku Love

It saddens me to say that I only have one review for you today and not three.

The quality control on the KKH dolls is just what I feared: the same weak level as Monster High and Ever After High. I received a G doll with her left eye printed much lower than her right. Love here suffers from the same problem with the same eye, but her lower eye only goes onto the eye indent molding a tiny bit, so it's not as noticeable as G's was. When that white paint goes onto the molding line, it makes a big shiny crease and it's really obvious then that one eye is not placed right.

And poor Angel. Angel had two eyes placed completely different, plus a chunk of missing eyeshadow, a big scratch across the white of one eye and several scratches through the brown paint of the iris. All on the same eye.

Needless to say, I've packaged both dolls for return. I'm not paying $19.99 for messed up toys. I also wrote to Mattel and complained, because I really shouldn't have to return dolls, plus place an order for two of each in the hopes of getting one that's decent and once again have to do a return on the extras. It's a lot of work just to get a couple dolls. But if I wait for them to show in stores, what are the chances the one that will be on the shelf will have good eyes?

Slim. Sadly slim.

So anyway. Let's set that aside and look at Love.

I am very happy that the one doll I was able to open and keep was Love, who's my second favorite in the line after Music. (The sarcastic one's my fave, then the smart one. No shock.)

Love has an adorable face with big blue eyes and dark pink lipstick that matches the thin streaks in her black bangs.

Her bangs are set in curls on each side of her face and her hair is done in four heavily gelled buns. I'm trying to avoid touching her hair, because those aren't the most stable buns ever. Her headband is plastic stapled to her head and while I didn't touch the tabs holding it down, I did remove the giant ugly plastic chunk holding her smaller heart barrette down, which in turn lead to the larger barrette also coming loose.

Love does not have enough hair to support these barrettes. The buns will be messed up if you separate a chunk of hair small enough to work in the barrettes. I used the plastic bands from her hands, clipped a barrette to each and slipped the bands over the buns. So it looks like her barrettes are on, but they're not really.

She has a funny little flat profile. If people whined that the Ever After High original headmold had pancake face, wait 'til they get a load of these!

Unlike several other Mattel lines, the print and detailing on the clothing are on the back of it as well. No half prints here. Not yet anyway.

All the outfit pieces are separate. My only complaint is that there's no "panty" strap in the skirt to hold it in place, so it spins around on her little waist pretty easily.

I think the outfit is well-made, typical Mattel quality. The only real flaw is that the paint on the kneepads could have used another coat.

Love's boots are enormous compared to her teeny tiny feet, which works perfectly for her standing on her own. Yep, the boots are even large enough to balance that giant head.

Love has a petite body that's unlike any Monster High or Ever After High doll. They have exaggerated proportions in a different way. Love's got the giant head over a teeny torso and long legs. Her arms have relatively large forearms and hands.

I did not struggle a lot with it, but neither her hands nor her forearms wanted to come off, so I don't think that's a feature on these dolls. I wasn't going to force the issue, but I would think I would have been able to get at least one loose if they were meant to be so.

The Kuu Kuu Harajuku girls are shorter than Monster High. The giant head and updo make the height a little more equal, but you can see the differences in the body part sizes.

Love's feet are tiny and she cannot wear any open MH shoes. Some fully enclosed shoes might work, since even though they're bigger, they're still not nearly as big as Love's own boots. Love's boots do fit Cleo, but they looked so ridiculous I wasn't going to shame Cleo by posting the photo.

Love actually fits quite well into Cleo's dress, so there might be some clothing sharing capable on the part of the Kuu Kuus. Although both lines have such distinctive clothing that I'm not sure many swaps would work aesthetically.

Love's clothes cannot be worn by Cleo.

Each Kuu Kuu Harajuku doll comes with a different child-sized accessory and four pop-in pieces, similar to the ones that came with the smaller action figures.

Love only has two places she can wear the pop-ins though. On the side of each boot and in one of her barrettes. I don't really care for the boot ones, so I put three of her pop-ins into the bracelet for storage. The silver ones are an alien and Love's head and the pink one in the bracelet is a mushroom.

I love the pink atom-shaped one, so that ended up in her barrette.

Overall, I think this is an adorable, well-designed line. I love the shorter hair on almost all the girls, even if it does render them unbrushable. I always pick style over brushing, because a) I'm not a hair person and b) even if I was, I can brush a five dollar Barbie. I don't need to brush everything. The faces are incredibly cute and I love the uniform-esque outfits. Also, definitely a fan of more dolls that can stand on their own!

On the con side, of course the biggest one is the quality control. Pick your dolls very carefully if you buy them in stores, and if you're disappointed in what Amazon sent, don't hesitate to mark it as defective, because it is, and send it back. And let Mattel know!

I'm not a big fan of the separate outfits except the one purple dress, so I probably won't get any just yet. I'd put Music in that dress, but I like the uniformity of the...well, uniforms, so I don't plan on redressing unless they release outfits I like more.

So now I'm just going to cross my fingers that the next Amazon delivery brings me a G and an Angel that I can actually add to my collection!