Leggy & Hi Glamm Dolls

Look...if we're going to talk about young girls self image, there are worse dolls as an example than Barbie, and I think now that we've all accepted that as fact, thanks to the Barbie movie, some real progress on the subject can be made. And while there's other dolls people love to throw shade at, such as Bratz, I think there's one we're all seriously overlooking, and that is Hasbro's Leggy Dolls.

Produced in the 1970s and dressed for the era to boot, the dolls, named Jill, Nan, Kate and Sue were, as their names so aptly described, extremely leggy. In fact they were mostly leg. If a woman had this much leg in real life, she'd probably be studied in a medical journal because it's so clearly not normal. And like many dolls, they had their own clothing line sold specifically and seperately for them called "Fashion Assortments". Because, if the name Leggy Dolls was any indication, these people were truly creative geniuses when it came to naming things.

To nobody's surprise, they lasted on the shelf for just a year before the line was ultimately discontinued. Curiously, after their flop in the US, Italian company Polistil released them in Europe in 1975, but they also managed to survive there. In Japan, The dolls were distributed by Shiba, and proved that they were also unpopular in Japan. It just seemed like maybe, for once, we all kind of agreed that this visual model wasn't exactly one to emulate and collectively, as a society - even across borders - decided to have no part in it.

Except apparently that isn't enough to put a nail in the coffin that is long legged dolls because despite the utter and total disinterest and multiple failures, there was eventually a reincarnation line by MGA Entertainment called Hi:Glamm in 2007.

The weird thing is, much like the original lines release being helmed by a top dog like Hasbro, this line was also helmed by a top dog, namely MGA who also released Bratz, Moxie and Lalaloopsy, all of which have been nothing but smash successes. This line saw 5 super long-legged dolls that were marketed by an Italian toy company called The Giochi Preziosi Group, and yet, once again, they completely failed to catch on.

According to a post I found on the Toy Box Philosopher site - which I highly recommend as it's fantastic - the concept isn't the only issue with the doll. In fact, its long legs are its most appealing, and honestly only, concept, while everything else seems to pale in comparison and I think I've said this before yet it bares repeating...a concept isn't all you can have. You need more. But to go back to the feminist well we started with, how about the fact that on the box, when it describes one particular doll, it states "I love shopping!  And makeup! And I'd like to be on the cover of magazines!" Once again, not very great goals for young girls to strive for. Look, far be it from me to suddenly turn super feminist, because honestly I myself am a fashion fiend and love makeup too. But those cannot be your sole defining characteristics as they appear to be here. That's just a bad role model.

And I get it, dolls are not proportional. This isn't a new thing.

Hell, it's been one of the ever ongoing criticisms of Barbie, was that her body type was not only ludicrously unreal but outright impossible to attain, and therefore an awful example of beauty to strive for. But there's limits to that, and Barbie, at least I think, has done a pretty decent job of getting away from that over the years, now including more plus sized dolls and dolls of varying form overall. So sure, Barbie might've had a waist the size of your pinky, but you know what Barbie never was?

99% leg.

Look at this skinny bitch (and I say this as a skinny bitch), she's nothing BUT leg. She's essentially a sentient pair of legs that simply grew a torso out of necessity to fit into society and not be questioned. I like dolls, I really do; I think they're a great way to play pretend and spread your imagination, but these things...there's just something about these that rub me the wrong way. And it's no fault of the designer proper, because they did honestly the best they could with such a ridiculous concept. It's the fault, if anything, of the person who came up with the idea to begin with. Girls - hell everyone, really - suffer enough body dysmorphia without havng to rub it in via toy.

I try very hard to stay positive on this blog, and instead focus on the toy proper and not the ideas surrounding it or even my own opinions really, but every now and then the facade has to drop and the truth has to be spoken into the ether, and the truth is that these are awful. Is there a way to make this not awful? Probably, but I'm not the one to figure it out. That's best left to those with expertise in the field of doll design. I do think it's possible however to make a doll with long legs (hell, just give her 8 and make her a spider woman, that's not an impossible beauty standard, that's just wishful thinking), but this isn't it.

Leggy and Hi Glamm both were entwined and both failed tremendously, and I think that repeating failure combined with utter disinterest from the general public, barring a few niche groups that are very dedicated to the doll scene, is proof enough that this doesn't work.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go get plastic surgery to add on 6 more legs. I wanna be a spider, what can I say. Every girl has her dream.