As I mentioned in a recent post I brought home a bunch of Bratz dolls from the Op Shop to tidy up so I thought that before I took them back I would photograph them and try to learn something about them.
We were quite lucky that several of the dolls were in fairly good condition only needing their hair combed. I don’t know if they have their original outfits or hairstyle but I decided to assume that they did initially and see if I could ID any of them.
The photos here were taken outside in my garden before I had untangled their hair. This is how donated dolls typically look although someone had gone to the trouble of tying some of the dolls hair back to keep it a bit more tidy.
Moxie Girlz
Thanks to my research on Friday I discovered there was another one of the Moxie Girlz but sadly this one has no feet. The dark-haired one is Merin and she and blonde Avery were sold together as a set called Artitude. They are wearing their original outfits so they were not hard to identify.
Bratz
As I don’t know anything about Bratz dolls I decided to make couple of assumptions to speed up my search. I am aware that the first Bratz dolls were produced in 2001 but as these dolls were donated with other toys I thought that they were more likely to be from the past couple of years. Then I learned that the Bratz were restyled in 2013 and given articulated bodies and made slightly taller. These dolls are not articulated so they must have been made prior to 2013.
After spending a good bit of my spare time in the evenings looking at pictures of Bratz dolls I still don’t know a lot about them. I was hoping to find a website that gave descriptions of each Bratz release year by year like the ones I have used for Barbie, Sindy and other fashion dolls but I haven’t so far found anything like that online. I have found a lot of links with photos but not a lot of information.
So now I am going to throw it open to Bratz collectors and doll detectives out there. Can you help me identify these dolls? If I don’t find out who they are it will be like an earworm that won’t go away.
I have taken the dolls back to the op shop now and some of the footless ones have already been sold. Two or three of the nicer dolls have been put aside and we will either use them in our gift baskets or they will be sold at a special Saturday sale in the spring. We always try to have some extra nice bits and pieces put aside for our Saturday sales.
The girls scrubbed up quite well, here they are after having their hair detangled.
Conclusion
After having these dolls around for a week or so I have got used to their faces although I still don’t like the pouty lips on the earlier ones or their skinny bodies. I think the newer articulated ones look a bit better. I do quite like the Moxie Girlz and was tempted to keep Avery but I was strong and took her back.
I think the feet are a problem with these dolls. I get that the designer was trying to solve the problem of tiny shoes being lost but losing a whole foot is worse as it looks terrible. I don’t suppose young kids care that much but it does spoil the look of the doll and would make reselling them a bit harder. A lot of the Bratz photos I saw online were of footless dolls.
Links
http://www.historyofdolls.com/history-of-famous-dolls/history-of-bratz/
Dolls, Dolls, Dolls 
How do you de-tangle fashion doll hair? Please post an article on this or if you have done so already, a link please??
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I’ll try to post something about it Melanie. I use a couple of different methods. I did not wash the hair on these. When I do I use normal shampoo and conditioner or sometimes dish washing liquid and fabric conditioner works just as well. I used hair de-tangler f
or humans and wide tooth comb for these girls but did not do too much to the curly haired ones because I did not want to pull the curl out.
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Thanks! It would be great to see a step by step how-to on your blog. I prefer the older Barbies, pre-2000 (I feel the features are finer and more natural looking) and scout the thrift stores for them. The hardest part is restoring their beauty and glamour 🙂
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I definitely prefer the older ones although I liked Fashion Fever. The faces of the current dolls are the biggest disappointment. I will try to write something up this week. I have seen quite a lot of good pages I can link to as well as describing what I do.
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Don’t know the “history” of the Brats but your link seemed to cover that, I only just as it relates to my daughter, In the early 90’s someone gave her the blonde blue eyed Cloe because they thought it looked like her most. I got her a mini Christmas tree with Bratz ornaments for her room a few months later, it didn’t fit in her Barbie doll house but she didn’t care. She got a blonde boy Bratz named Cameron who had blue eyes like Cloe. She bought a Yasmin with brown hair with highlights she loved that you could switch the outfits and shoes even on the bows and kid ones and because the shoes are heavy they could stand alone with-out doll stands. We looked for a Sasha which is most likely AA or Hispanic with dark eyes and darker brown hair, they were hard to find so I got her a Jade with dark eyes and Black hair, Hers has a red streak in it)she had the best clothes and I still have her MIB in what used to be my daughters room, but now has OUR dolls. There were a couple other boys she had but they were donated in favor of her favorites.
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There have been a lot of Bratz. I knew there had been a court case with Mattel but did not really understand what it was about until I read up on it.
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Me either, I had supposed it was about the my scene dolls Mattel did that had the big lips being a copy of Bratz. I also wondered with all the stylish outfits they didn’t, have them on cards like Mattel. Also the dates were random, some staying in drug stores for years unless they were using old heads. I think of my daughters dolls she liked Bratz better than Barbie’s because the accessories were harder to loose, plus they fit more in with the pops series of characters a lot of young (ish) adults collect with big heads.
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I suppose that as Barbie has been around for 3 generations there has been plenty of time for her to be researched while Bratz are a relative newcomer. Perhaps your daughters generation will compile all the facts on Bratz for future collectors.
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