ª"˜¯¨¨* Oz The Great and Powerful - Oscar Diggs doll by Jakks Pacific*¨¨¯˜"ª

Maybe it's the purist in me, but I really didn't enjoy this film. I enjoyed reading Frank Baum's OZ books and the 1939 film with Judy Garland e al, this film however really grated on my nerves.

It has some interesting aspects, artistically it's brilliant, the flying monkey, while I found him out of place and very annoying is adorable, same goes for China Girl and the adorable little pink fairy thing. The background story of The Wicked Witch of The West was interestingly portrayed and I loved the look of her, I also liked that they gave more of a background on the charlatan who went onto become The Wizard also known as Oz The Great and Powerful. 

I did however, love the look of him, he's very dapper with his top hat, three- piece suit and Gladstone bag. So when the doll version of him was released, I couldn't resist him. 

Amazon.co.uk

I have a bit of a thing about boy dolls, although the ones I like tend to be very few and far between. 

The fact that he came with a mini China Girl only added to his appeal for me, that said though I would definitely have preferred a little flying monkey too instead of the charm included in the packaging.

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Jakks Pacific's Oscar Diggs Doll is also one of the more facially attractive male doll's I've seen in a long time, most have very generic faces, such as in the case of MyScene boy dolls.

His outfit is beautifully made and presented and puts me in mind of Steam Punk style, which was another reason I wanted him. I think he's a really good candidate for customisation and would benefit from a make over to put him more in line with the way I've been envisioning him.

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.•:*¨¨*: Oz The Great and Powerful - China Girl Doll .•:*¨¨*:•.

A few months ago I purchased a Jakks Pacific "China Girl" Doll from Oz The Great and Powerful film. 

I fell in love with the look of her - not the character herself though (she was bloody annoying!) while watching the film and hoped that there would soon be a doll released of her and to my delight both Disney and Jakks Pacific did.

Disney released a porcelain version, while being more movie accurate the cracks looked weird on her - well to my mind anyway.

I discovered that the Jakks Pacific version had been moulded to resemble a cracked china doll too, so I decided to buy her and paint the cracks so they stand out better myself.

 I decided to take photographs as I unboxed her as I had the idea that I would do a review when I wrote my post about her - I'm not so sure that I want to now though as this is another post which has been sitting in my "Drafts" folder for several months and I really want to just get all these posts up in the quickest time possible - but then again, what is the point of a post if I have nothing useful or interesting to say?!

The box as you can see has a large viewing pane shaped like an "O"  - a reference to the character Oz. Once the inner is removed from the cardboard you see it is made of transparent plastic, with a cardboard backing. 

The plastic is also shaped in a similar way to the cardboard outer box.

Be very careful when removing the inner plastic container as the cardboard box is very flimsy once this is removed.

Unless of course you don't wish to keep the box - In which case, just ignore me!

To remove the doll you have to take the inner right out of the cardboard box, and turn it over as the fastenings are all located on the back.

The plastic shell is fastened by a series of tabs which slot through the cardboard backing and are secured with sellotape with the doll itself being secured to this using cable ties... you have to undo all of the plastic tabs prior to attempting to remove the doll, to do this it is easier to cut through the sellotape holding them using a craft knife.

Once the plastic outer shell is removed the cable ties have to be taken out in order to get to your doll as she is firmly secured to the cardboard backing. 

The ties aren't the usual plastic coated ones that are normally used on this kind of packaging and this makes them harder to untwist.

After removing the twist ties you then have to remove the thingame ties (like you find on clothing) which is holding her neck onto the backing cardboard - these have to be cut off so that the doll is accessible as it is tied on pretty tight.

Now that all the ties are removed you can remove the doll from the backing - do this carefully...

Her dress is made of a tough stiff, slightly crunchy fabric (I'm not sure what you call it) it's also very shiny which made it hard to photograph well enough to show the pattern printed onto it.

"Arrgh... Bright Light"

Once I removed her from the packaging, I set about testing her posability and tightness of joints, in other words, how well she can hold these poses before her arms etc get tired and she has to drop them!

 Oh I forgot to mention, as well as her beautiful dress she comes wearing moulded on blue "kidney warmers" and a cute pair of Mary Jane style shoes (also moulded onto her).

Btw... does anyone know why they are called that?  When I was small we called them "Beetle crushers"!

Anyhoo, I digress...

Her body is covered in "cracks" making her reminiscent of an Easter Egg! 

These are moulded into the plastic and are all over her body, minus her girl pants and shoes of course... She even has fainter ones moulded into her face and throughout her hair.

Her limbs move smoothly, with only a very slight stiffness from her "newness" but this is good as there is nothing worse than floppy limbs. It is very easy to place her into a number of weird poses and she holds each with no problem whatsoever.

The above photograph shows the crack marks better and also her 13 points of articulation.

She has quite a wide body which makes her feel very sturdy and also helps with balance when posing her.

I'm not sure if I already mentioned that she stands at 15 inches high, or thereabouts, which is another reason her slightly stockier (compared to other dolls) frame helps give her a very sturdy feel.

I find her very deceptive as while she looks delicate she is anything but an would likely cope well with intense play - although this girl, being mine, is obviously not destined for that.

I decided I wanted her "cracks" to show up more as I love the way old dolls look when they have been cracked but are so well loved they have been glued back together many times over the years, and as that really fits with the theme of this doll, I decided I would bring them out with the help of my trusty tool kit!

I got to work on this straight away but I really was not expecting it to be the huge undertaking which it became, she is currently on hold as the paint job I've already given her took me two and a half episodes of  The Sopranos to do and became so tedious I began to wonder if I was going insane!

I kept trying to make the ones on her face show up better too but each time I did I found it detracted from her features and so I removed it as she has such a beautiful face I hated to do anything to it that made it hard for her beauty to shine through.

I'm still not 100% happy with the cracks in her hair so I'll probably redo them at some time...

I also retouched her eyes as I wanted them to have a more glass-like appearance, I'm not 100% that that worked either!

So work may or not continue on her - the plan was to do a full body crack definition on her, but I quite like the way she looks right now so I might not, an all over crack definition may be a bit too much and seeing as how long this small amount took I'd be right gutted if I spent all that time on her only to have to remove it all later... hmmm

Customisation aside, this doll is truly lovely - she's just as I hoped she would be: beautiful, easy to pose, holds poses well, smooth movement and is very very close to her onscreen counterpart.

 I'd definitely recommend her to anyone who wanted my advice about buying themselves or a child in their life one.

Hugs,

Maleficent Doll or "Buyer Beware"

 Ever since I first watched the Walt Disney's Classic Sleeping Beauty  when I was tiny, I wished I could have my own Maleficent Doll, ok that's not quite true, I wanted the Three Good Fairy Godmothers and Diablo the raven, in miniature to keep as pets... I also wanted a miniature "Crone", Evil Step Mother, The Seven Dwarves and the friendly Forest Animals from Snow White in living miniature versions, but that's another story...

In my fantasy I would grow up to become Maleficent, be able to use lightning as a weapon, wear an Atora Headdress and be able to transform into a Dragon at will.

As I grew up I discovered that unfortunately I would never be able to fulfil these wishes but on becoming an adult the possibility of having a mini version of Maleficent in doll form began to  take form in my mind - I have for many years harboured the knowledge that one day I'll get around to making myself one..

In 1997 Disney released their Classic Doll Collection and a beautiful green skinned movie perfect Maleficent was amongst those dolls released... So I found I had another opportunity to own a Maleficent Doll, but at the same time the artist in me still wanted to make my own.

Although I still haven't gotten around to making myself a Maleficent, I do now own an "Official" Maleficent Doll - She is one of those released by Disney in 2013. But there is nothing like "making your own doll", so I have never put the idea to rest and still find myself eyeing up dolls with this idea in mind.

With the release of the recent Maleficent film there was the inevitable merchandise, amongst these are the Disney and Jakks Pacific Maleficent Dolls, both bearing a strong resemblance to Angelina Jolie.

While I am in no way a fan of Angelina Jolie's acting skills and have no desire to ever watch the Maleficent Movie, these dolls seemed like the perfect base on which to make my custom.

In particular I felt the Jakks Pacific version would better suit my purposes, the price was of course lower too, especially as at the time there seemed to be an influx of these dolls, but not so many official Disney Dolls, and when doing customs I much prefer to use a less expensive doll (or in the case of Monster High - one I already have) otherwise I'll feel bad about stripping and repainting her...

The fact that they both have the Atora Headdress already moulded onto their head was a quite a selling point for me - I must confess that I have on many occasions wondered how the heck to make her crazy headdress, which would make either of these dolls an idea candidate for customisation.

I also love the strong chiseled jaw and cheekbones these dolls have. So I went ahead and purchased a Jakks Pacific Maleficent from a U.K based Seller on Ebay... Or so I thought...

The first nasty surprise I had was when I was waiting for the doll to arrive and had the realisation that the doll was actually coming from China not The U.K.

After waiting a month she finally arrived and instead of the doll in the above photograph, I received this:

I was at first struck how unlike the photograph on the listing the doll I received is, and certainly was not the Jakks Pacific Doll I had been lead to believe and paid for. The box is a poor imitation, flimsy too and the backdrop behind the doll is clearly an image that has been enlarged so much it has pixelated.

After realising that she is clearly a counterfeit, I thought well I guess she'll just have to do as sending her back is certainly not an option.

Her face mould is pretty good so what the hell, so I began to open and inspect her...

I began to remove her from the packaging and discovered another nasty surprise - her dress is made of such flimsy poor quality fabric that it had ripped around the velcro strip and frayed so much, where the maker had placed the plastic ties to hold the doll into her box.

As you can see when viewed from the front, her dress is only slightly like the Jakks Pacific Doll's dress. It has a similar pattern to the fabric, but there is no stiff stand up collar, just an oversized fabric floppy one, and no choker around her neck.

I carefully removed her dress to check out the doll's body, with the hope that I would be able to salvage more of her than just her head, instead I got another horrible surprise: The doll's body is covered in stains from where the dye of her dress has seeped into the plastic.

The body of the doll is so cheap and flimsy. It also creaks loudly when the legs are moved and aside from standing or sitting with her legs out in front of her, there really are no other poses this body is capable of.

The distance between her legs make her body look stupid when her clothes are removed.

Her legs are so skinny that they are of absolutely useless to me in terms of salvage. That goes for the rest of her body really, apart from the head the arms may be of some use if I need temporary arms for some reason, but definitely not as replacements.

Basically, this body style is only worth being recycled, that way it may actually become something of use in the future!

So now I guess I have my Maleficent head to customise which will be completely stripped prior to use.

But the body is destined for the bin, I can't even see any salvage benefit in it - it's that bad!

Her face mould is nice, but "Nagdabbit"! I was angry, I've been totally duped - the price I paid and the month's wait was not worth it for just a head... 

If I was in the market for just a head to use, I could have either used one of my "victims" or bought a different doll's head for this purpose.

I'd bought a Maleficent Doll in particular as I had plans for her, and having a ready made dress too was I thought a bonus as most of my customs have to wait months for completion just because I haven't had the time to get my machine out and materials together, draw up and tweak patterns, resize etc and everything else that goes along with it.

The neck hole is handy, it should fit easily on another body - hopefully, I haven't checked this yet but meh, something has to give...

Side by side it's easy to see the quality difference between these two dolls, that said it's unfathomable that the seller could have made a mistake... They planned to rip people off and sadly it was my bad luck that I was their patsy, but "Hell no" were they going to be getting away with it!

I contacted them, I sent photographs of the damages and told them in no uncertain terms that I was not made aware that the goods they were selling are counterfeit... They ignored me!

I persisted and Ebay returned the full payment to me, so I guess I shouldn't complain anymore as I got her for free and as the saying goes "You get what you pay for"!

As you know, I'm not against "Clone Dolls" some of them are really beautiful, especially the vintage ones, and I did buy a "knock off" Wydona Spider Doll several months back when the only version of her available was the Comic Con Exclusive that came with a ridiculous price tag.

 The fact that this doll is not an Official Doll is not the issue, the issue is it WAS sold as being one, the listing photograph was of an official product, and the product received was anything but...

And so the point of this post is really is to serve as a warning to other buyers - Please be careful when buying yourself or anyone else a Maleficent Doll, ask questions, look closely at photographs, and if in doubt - don't buy it!