Taswegian1957

Fashion Doll Friday – Lea- Friend of Barbie


Lea has been around for the past ten years or so and seems to have replaced Kira as Mattel’s Asian doll. Sometimes she also goes by Kayla.

This is one of my favourite face molds so I have a few Lea/Kayla’s. I don’t remember which one this is but I believe that she was a beach doll originally. Her outfit was bought from an eBay seller.

 

One of my Lea dolls
Lea, friend of Barbie

Published by Taswegian1957

I was born in England in 1957 and lived there until our family came to Australia in 1966. I grew up in Adelaide, South Australia, where I met and married my husband David. We came together over a mutual love of trains. Both of us worked for the railways for many years, his job was with Australian National Railways, while I spent 12 years working for the STA, later TransAdelaide the Adelaide city transit system. After leaving that job I worked in hospitality until 2008. We moved to Tasmania in 2002 to live in the beautiful Huon Valley. In 2015 David became ill and passed away in October of that year. I currently co-write two blogs on WordPress.com with my sister Naomi. Our doll blog "Dolls, Dolls, Dolls", and "Our Other Blog" which is about everything else but with a focus on photographs and places in Tasmania. In November 2019 I began a new life in the house that Naomi and I intend to make our retirement home at Sisters Beach in Tasmania's northwest. My current housemates are Cindy, my 14-year-old Staffy-Lab X dog and Polly the world's most unsociable cat who is seven.

10 comments

  3. She is Amazing Nails Lea – the first ever Lea! There was also an Amazing Nails Kayla, who was a non-Asian character (some think Hispanic) with the same head sculpt. Congrats, she’s in beautiful condition! 🙂

    Like

    Reply

    • That surprised me because I have Amazing Nails Barbie and she has green nail polish while my Lea does not have any. However, on looking online for boxed Amazing Nails dolls I discovered another series which must be later than the one I have. Some of my Lea’s came from eBay and some I bought locally but she was not often sold in Australia so I’m glad to have her identified.

      Like

      Reply

      • I’ve never seen an Amazing Nails Lea with nail polish (although it makes sense that she’d have it). My Kayla is unpolished too. So you think the polished version is an earlier version? That’s really interesting, I’ll have to look into that. Thanks!

        Like

      • My Amazing Nails Barbie has the old T&T body and articulation, bright green polish. I know they made Teresa although she was not sold here but not sure if they made a Lea/Kayla. Mine was from around 1999-2000 I think the other one I saw was a year or two later.

        Like

      • Ah, sorry, just re-read that – BARBIE, not Lea. With you now!! Haha sorry. Hollywood Nails Barbie has green nail polish (the one in this sparkly dress). Think she is from an earlier line, yes.

        Like

      • Actually you are right. It is Hollywood Nails Barbie that I have. I don’t go in for the hair and nails play dolls that much but mine was a gift and very pretty. I just didn’t bother with all the nail stuff.

        Like

Leave a Reply to Trisha Cancel reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.