Today I finally received my long-awaited Brooklyn Doll.

My first impression - pure delight. I absolutely love this mold, the hairstyle, even the outfit (I know a lot of people criticized the clothes). The only thing that’s really not my taste is the lipstick color. I’m not a fan of light pink lipstick. But that’s just my personal preference, and if it starts to bother me in the future, I’ll simply repaint it.

I consider myself one of those lucky (?) people who can’t really tell whether a doll’s face print is perfectly centered or not. I’m actually very happy about that, because it allows me to love all of my dolls without overanalyzing them. That said, what I especially love about this doll is the lip print - it almost perfectly matches the sculpted lip shape.

Of course, I wasn’t impressed with the plastic accessories. They look cheap, and I don’t really understand why they exist in this form on collector dolls. But I’ll talk about that in another post.

A much more important and complicated topic is quality.

My doll unfortunately has some serious issues with her legs. There are symmetrical cracks on both legs. At first glance, it might look like a mixing issue in the plastic, but under direct light, the chip becomes visible. The defect is equally present on both legs, but the chip is more visible under light on one leg than on the other. I didn’t take a photo, but there’s a similar defect on the lower part of the leg as well. It’s disappointing (especially on darker-skinned dolls, where this kind of defect is much more noticeable), but it doesn’t affect functionality. Honestly, I was mentally prepared for this issue.

What upset me even more were the white stress marks around the ankle joints. First of all, they don’t look good, and secondly, they indicate significant thinning of the plastic, which, in my opinion, could potentially affect the doll’s long-term durability. I once created a similar mark myself on a buff Ken when I tried to bend the joint further than it was meant to go.

There are similar marks near both ankles.

I was genuinely surprised by the joints. After all my Basics and Looks dolls, I wasn’t expecting much. Every Basics and Looks doll I own has at least one joint that’s too loose and annoying. With all of my Basics dolls, the arm joints were stiff at first, and I had to gently work them until they could bend past 90 degrees. But all the joints on this girl work perfectly. None are too loose or too stiff. Even the ankle joints - which literally annoy me on every single doll I own - work perfectly here.

As someone who owns a doll where every body segment is a slightly different shade, I also want to mention that Brooklyn has almost no color mismatch between body parts. Yes, if you really nitpick, you could say there’s a slight variation. But compared to my red-haired Basics - no, this is not a real color mismatch at all, just a tiny difference.

Overall thoughts.

I really love my Brooklyn. Yes, she has flaws, and I’m sure I would notice even more issues if I had more experience and a sharper eye. But I didn’t have high expectations. I fully understand that Mattel, like (almost) all doll brands, isn’t really about creating the highest-quality, most interesting doll possible - it’s about maximizing profit while minimizing costs. So Brooklyn fully met my expectations, and in some ways even exceeded them.