Thursday, July 7, 2022

REVIEW: Art Squad Nene

 
This is my first review done on my new laptop, so bear with me. The keyboard is slightly different and I'm getting the hang of it. 

So my friend showed me these girls on Instagram and at first, I didn't care for their faces, but as I looked at them more, I decided I liked the concept and I wanted to try a couple out. 

Nene here actually was not my first choice! Surprising, right? Vannah was the one I knew I wanted, but I decided to get one of each headmold and while Andi is cute, Nene is more my style. 

First impression: BIG. I forgot to do a size comparison because I'm scatterbrained like that, but I was expecting them to be more like FailFix size. 

I will take a picture eventually. I'm planning on ordering Andi soon (not sure on Lady T yet) and I can stick a size shot into her review. 

But they're about the height of a LOL OMG but with heads as big as RH, maybe even a bit wider.

Each doll comes with multiple art projects. 

There's a photo frame with a black and white piece of doll art you can color. 

There's a keychain you can etch the black paint off to create designs. Nene's artistic skill is etching so that's the doll's theme. Her dress's black skirt can also be etched. Then there's the little tub of black paint you can use to repaint each piece and etch a new design. The little sponge is for applying the paint. 

Her earrings and headband have places you can color with the markers. And you can color the outfit itself, but we'll get to that.

As for doll accessories, she has a brush, a stand, sunglasses and the cardboard in back is a photo background. You're supposed to keep the frame from the box and use that as a background. Not something I'll do. 




I initially thought the closed-mouth smile was cuter but now it's the toothy smile. 


She has the protective plastic on her skirt here.



One of the other things you can do is use the eye shadow stickers to create different looks. However, this isn't necessarily going to work. Nene's went on easily and they even seem to be reusable, but I tried to put Vannah's on and they wouldn't stick at all. So this is a cute idea and I wish it worked better, but it needs a little better execution. 




Her hair is reddish-brown with blue and purple streaks. It's really soft. 




Plastic gone. It just pulls off, but you have to work at it a bit.


 


Her outfit is a top, pants, dress, boots, and a bracelet. 



The body is cute and quite poseable. I like the bra top. The thigh joints have good range of motion and her calves can turn sideways. 

I like the shapes of the hands and feet. 




Her top. 




The hands do pop off for redressing ease, though I got the shirt on over her hand just fine. 




Here are the sunglasses. 


And the pants after I colored them! The markers work nicely and I had fun coloring all the places in. I listen to a podcast while I do doll stuff, so it was very relaxing to sprawl on the floor, listen to that, and color in these pants. 

I'm opting not to do the earrings or headband, though I think they're cute for the target market. They're just a little too oversized and cartoony for me. Coloring the pants though? I'd say that's fun for any age. 

The paint is described as not washable so make your color choices wisely. I did get marker all over my fingers, but it washed off very easily. 




At the moment, I'm not etching the skirt. I think a pattern on there, paired with a patterned shirt and pants is a bit much. A bit of the black paint has already scraped off naturally though, so etching may be in the future. 

Oh, her boots are super rubbery so they're not the most fun to get on. Cute though. 



Final thoughts: I absolutely love the creativity of these dolls and I think they're well worth the $24.99 price tag. There's a lot of stuff kids can do here and I'm all for anything that encourages a child's artistic side. I think they're fun for adult collectors, too, though don't expect the quality level of an RH doll or something like that. I do hope they do well enough that we see more. I'd love to see what types of art they come up with next. 


PHOTO CREDIT: Mine.

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