1 Feb 2015

Mia by Hello Kitty


I admit, I know next to nothing about this line of dolls other than I saw them, thought they were cute and bought them.

Mia by Hello Kitty are made by Gzochi Preziosi, an Italian company who make things like Winx. As it stands, there doesn't seem to be much information on these dolls available online, certainly nothing I could find in English or anything I could translate.
So I just have to go with the obvious here. They're a line of cute 10 inch dolls dressed in Hello Kitty themed outfits.... aaand that's about it?


There are three in the line, and I got mine off Ebay so this is the box image from Amazon.co.uk instead.



As you can see, they come with little accessories based around a theme.
There's a gardener, an artist and a baker.


They all use the same mould, but with different eye and hair colours. The artist has pink hair and brown eyes, the gardener's hair is brown with purple streaks in the fringe/bangs and purple eyes, and the baker has yellow hair with subtle pink streaks and blue eyes.

They each come with a little hat. A beret for the artist, obviously. A straw hat for the gardener and a chefs hat for the baker.


They're about 10 or 11 inches tall. A little taller than my Makies but a lot shorter than Barbie.

Their heads are a similar size to the Makies, in fact Lirel can wear the straw hat pretty well but the other two hats are slightly too small (I can probably alter then to fit if i'm so inclined)


The dolls each come with an adorable Hello Kitty themed dress.
Gardener has a green pinafore over a plaid shirt (all one piece) The kitty head shape on the front is glittery.
Artist wears a pink smock with mesh sleeves. The bow pattern is outlined in glitter.
Baker has a dress with apron and frills. Also all one piece, but cleverly made to look like it's not.

The outfits fit my Makies (they don't quite do up at the back fully but they look fine from the front) so i'd guess probably would fit Sindy and Liv etc mostly ok as well (a bit tight)


All three have different shoes, which is really nice.
Gardener has a pair of wellies/gumboots (what do americans call these?), artist has a pair of flip flops/jandals/thongs (see what I do for you funny Aussies?) and baker wears a pair of red Mary Janes.
Baker and Painter both have half sock leg warmer things too.


Let's look at Baker first.

I think she's my favourite. which is funny as usually I find the blonde/blue eyed doll the blandest and most dull. I really dig her frilly outfit and the bright yellow of her hair though, and her eyes are beautiful.

She comes with baking stuff. As well as her hat she comes with a large spoon, a recipe book, an oven glove and a baking pan/muffin tray thing that doubles as a chocolate mould (mine didn't come with this, it was lost by the original owner alas.)


The recipe book is a fabulous little book. It has a hard cover and actual pages! they're blank so you can write your own recipes or something (you'd have to write bloody small) but it's so cute! It's a proper mini book and teeny things always delight me.


Her face is adorable. She has huge expressive blue eyes painted in three different shades! And thick lashes that dip at the edges of the eye. I've never seen that with a doll before, they they do soften her gaze a lot and give her a cute sort of expression.

Her lips are painted only slightly darker than her skin tone, she doesnt' really have anything resembling makeup at all furthering her cute little girly look. 

She has a pointy chin, round cheeks and a teeny little button nose. Her face is pretty flat and there's a sort of "chibi" quality to her features that's very cutesy.


The bodies of these dolls is frankly bizarre.
They have huge heads and then a fairly normally proportioned body. Interestingly, despite the very child-like face, she has boobs and hips, so i'm a bit confused as to what sort of age this doll is supposed to represent.

She has overlong arms that are stick thin but really shapely legs that widen below the knee and end in enormous flat feet.
And those feet are HUGE.
The mean the dolls can stand unsupported though, which rocks.


From behind. Those sock/legwarmer things I couldn't get off over those enormous feet so i didn't bother with the struggle. I don't think these dolls were really designed to be undressed because those feet and the straight arms make undressing and redressing very very difficult.

She has pink painted panties.


Her body is jointed at the hips and shoulders. She can spread her legs like this, or she can do high kicks. Though her legs seem to want to naturally splay a little outward. The hinged joint inside the hip swings a little to legs akimbo state.
The arms have ball socket attachments so there's a nice range of motion for the arms.

Her knees have a click mechanism inside, it seems fairly sturdy but i'm not much inclined to use clicky knees because they never can bend enough to be useful for posing.


The heads are a bit wobbly but given how much hair there is and how big the head is, this isn't much of a surprise.
The dolls can look up, but not down.


Eagle eyed readers may have already noticed a slightly strange feature of these bodies.
that's the fingers and toes.

The dolls only have four digits. Four shapely little fingers with moulded nails.


And four squat little toes.


Baker's outfit is a single piece with an attached tail. The tail has a bow at the end of it and an internal wire that means if can be posed.. Cute... but really a bit baffling. why do they have tails? I mean I get they're Hello Kitty themed and all that, but why a tail and no cat ears or anything? Is this why they have 4 fingers and toes? are they half cat/half human freaks of nature?

Anyway,

the dress is nicely made with hemmed edges and the shoes are made of soft squishy plastic that makes them easier to get off those enormous feet.
The shoes have little kitty heads on the buckle.


Here's a better look at the cat tail. All the dolls have these tails attached to their outfits.


Gardening Mia comes with her cute straw hat, a watering can, a little spade and a pot (not pictured because youngest son stole it and hid it from me grr)

The pot has holes in the bottom and the packaging i've found online suggests you're supposed to plant seeds in it (though the doll doesn't appear to have come with any seeds... so yeah.. what?)
the watering can actually does work, which is adorable.


Gardener has purple streaks in her fringe but they're easily lost under all the rest of the hair. There are two I could find, one on each side of her face.

Her face is just like Baker's, only with purple eyes this time.

Her curls are really quite nice, though i'm not certain they won't frizz. I'm not sure what fibre these dolls use but it's very light and flyaway. Gardener has a lot of product in her hair to keep it curled.
It's very thick.


It needs a little trim I think, there's a few stray bits that are a little longer than others. The ends are, as with most curly haired dolls, a bit messy.
(for the record, this is pretty much exactly what my hair looks like on a daily basis hahaha)


She also came with a pair of ridiculous kitty head glasses. They actually magnify her eyes and they look ludicrous.

I couldn't get her outfit off very easily. Her boots DO NOT come off, least I couldn't pry the damn things off her and the dress won't go over those giant feet if they still have shoes on.

Her dress is a cotton plaid undershirt sewn onto a shiny slightly plasticky feeling dress. She has a red tail with a green bow.


I could only get her dress down as far as her knees. She has lime green panties.


Painter comes with a paint set. It looks to be a paintbrush thing with a sponge on it, and a thin plastic box with 5 blocks of paint and a sponge glued to it.
The box which is I think supposed to be an "easel" is made of very thin flimsy plastic and her accessories are hands down the most disappointing. She could have had a cute actual easel, or a little sketch book, or a painter pallette or something but instead she gets some paint and a sponge on a stick. Uh... ok?

Her outfit kinda makes up for this though. while her companions got more accessories, painter got slightly more outfit pieces. But she still feels like she was the one who got short changed.


She comes with a cute red hat with a big velvetty bow on top. A bead necklace and mismatched legwarmers.
Her dress is a single piece with mesh sleeves and ruffled netting trim.



Her hair is bright pink and very flyaway. it goes everywhere, which was annoying trying to photograph her.

She has brown eyes and unlike her two companions, she features a blue paint splotch on one cheek. Cute.


Her hair is a bit choppy, but it's lovely and soft and shiny.


She has pink panties, and comes with two little bracelets as well. Presumably those and the necklace are supposed to make up for her lack of accessories? i'm not convinced a few beads and two teeny plastic bracelets are really equal to a watering can or something though.


The flat profile of these dolls makes me think of Moxie Girlz or Ever After High or something.


They are super cute dolls though.

They're heavy, chunky toys that I feel would stand up very well to play. The accessories the first two came with are equally chunky and robust feeling, suited well to children (in fact, my younger two have had a great time playing with the pieces. Particularly the pot and watering can)
I just feel it's a shame the artist girl missed out on some cute play accessories and instead got some cheap paint "for you".

I love the bright bold colours of the three dolls and their sweet little girly faces. Their giant feet are an unusual aesthetic but give them great stability and certainly set them apart. The giant feet also help somewhat balance out the giant head.
I still have no clue why they only have four fingers and four toes though, it's a very bizarre choice. was it to make them look more like a cartoon character?

whatever the case, they're cute dolls that i think would be very popular with a fairly young child.
They're the sort of thing i'd have ADORED as a 6 year old, and I still really like them as an adult heh.

They make me think of a bit Rainbow Brite, a bit Cherry Merry Muffin, and a lot Moxie Girlz.

They're well made and they're well priced. I've seen them in Toys R Us for £9:99 each which for a doll isn't bad at all.

Overall I really enjoy the three of them. Sometimes the girly part of me needs appeasing and these definitely appeal to the girly.

I give them 8 kitty bigfoots out of 10.
worth checking out. A shame they seem to have been a bit of a flash in the pan line.

3 comments:

  1. These are cute, I remember seing them on Amazon. In the end I decided the shipping was too much for me, but if the artist had had better accessories I might have reconsidered. No idea about the characters or backstory, but with the tails, big feet and four fingers/toes, I'm thinking some kind of trolls? Maybe the boots will come off if you dip them in hot water.

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