These dolls were released sometime last year, roughly around the time that the Jakks Pacific (the rubber-skinned ones) dolls came out... maybe a little bit before? They were supposedly available at Target, although I never saw 'em in a store, anywhere. I was curious and searched the Internet in vain for some honest, upfront info about them, besides the heavily belled & whistled company website, getrealgirls.com. Nada. Zip. The only place I found that had 'em was Etoys.com-- Since they're going tits up, I decided that I'd better get a couple before it's too late. So now I can bring to the 'Net some nekkid pics of these recent blips in the history of 12" female dollhood.

I feel a little guilty doing this. The company which puts these out (whatever their name is?) seems to be small, which earns some underdog points in my book. They also seem to be genuinely enthusiastic about the concept of their figure, which is: wholesome real teen age girls doing wholesome real teen age girl things-- they're modestly proportioned, ethnically diverse and outfitted to do things like play basketball, soccer, and outdoors camping. No crack-smoking dolls here! This is a good and noble thing, and sends unjaded children a good message-- the pure kind which seems like it might make the world a better place in the future. Barbie's message seems a tad hedonistic for kids, but then kids aren't its only target market. The Get Real Girls seem to be marketed exclusively for young girls and not adult collectors.

That's clearly not the character of this website. Given this mismatch, it's stupid to state the obvious-- yeah, the headsculpt doesn't look like CY Girls' (or any of mine). The headsculpts don't suck, they're stylized-- almost comic bookish-- and not trying to project that "sluttish" quality. Same for the molded-on modesty. If you expect this figure, unmodified, to fit in with your other 1/6th scale figures-- Get Real! She wasn't designed for that. Get a CY Girl. Sure, she's a better fit than a Barbie, but for a figure remodeller, she's still a "needs work" or a Parts Doll. Right off the bat, this one's braids are cool fodder.

The proportioning isn't dead-on realistic, despite the "Real" girl name. The curves are less exaggerated and she's got more meat than Barbie but like most dolls, she suffers from Longlimbitis. Between that and her neck, she's awfully tall. Correcting these would bring her down to a more reasonable height, relative to most Joes. Of course, there are tall girls but quite a few young girls are short and overweight, so this doll doesn't do a whole lot for their self esteem.

In construction, this is a fairly common design: Everything here has been done before. The neck is a Barbie design; the arms and legs are pressure tensioned; the elbows have the flex and rotation in one joint like a vintage Joe; the hands and feet are similar to vintage Joe (minus the metal rivet); the knees are small ganged hinges like a Dragon figure; the upper torso ball & socket articulation is similar to a Dragon's and the waist has a very limited socket-like deflection and rotation.

The ganged hinge in the knees doesn't have an accompanying rotation in the leg so the knees are fixed facing directly ahead. The elbows are surprising in their extremely limited range of deflection for a single hinge design-- the pic shows the maximum amount of deflection I could coax out of it. That's usually a fairly easy thing to fix though. It's not clear whether the hands and feet are removeable, but they sure aren't easily removeable.

It seems to be reasonably well-made in a matte-finish plastic, with no solid rubbery parts in the limbs: The hands are made of a flexible plastic and a decent size-- one's got a magnet embedded in it, probably to hold some envisioned, but not produced piece of gear (yeah, like her real metal Street Sweeper!). As with dolls of this type, expect disassembly to be fairly brutal, depending on the glue job.

Because she's a light figure, she can stand... that counts for something. And she's got some neat and well made "Adventure Girl" accessories too. In fact, if you're into that genre, that would probably be a bonus motivation to get the figure. I dunno-- maybe that stuff is available in Barbie format too?

It's difficult to recommend this figure-- it needs a lot of work and there are other ready-to-go figures available for folks who don't like to work on figures. BBI's CY Girls probably have removed most of the motivation for getting this doll-- at the time of this figure's release though, there were fewer options. In terms of raw potential, the only really unique thing here is the small double hinged knee. Other features are good, but not outstanding. Her fairly realistic proportioning and the design of her torso articulation gets you closer to the ballpark than a Barbie. But "Workout Barbie" has a great leg articulation. This is all probably a moot point though, since you're not likely to find this one at a brick & mortar shop on a targeted hunting trip.

--Jimbob, 02/05/01