My Review of Get Ready Kids Tina
PRODUCT DETAILS
UPC: 768631006364
Composition: Vinyl
Hair Color: Black
Rooted Hair
Safety Tested
BPA Free
Recommended Age: 3+
Nationality: Japanese
Website: www.getreadykids.com
Made in China
Produced by: Get Ready, Inc.
Box Contents: 1 doll dressed in a pink shirt, black skirt, and plastic black shoes.
Eye Color: Brown
Height: 16 inches
Price: $34.95 if you buy them from the company directly. Walmart has them cheaper (around $25), but doesn't have all the dolls. Also be warned that other companies who sell them may have flawed dolls--messed up eyes, and this doll smelled like paint when I got her. Fortunately, a bath and airing out fixed that.
Doll Movement: Classic baby doll. Can be rather stiff or have one limb looser than the other.
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| The Get Ready Kids Collection. Top From left: Tom, Anna, Maria, and Joey. Bottom from left: Tina, Ian, Danny, and Taylor |
I first became aware of the Get Ready Kids while searching for other companies besides American Girl who had put out a boy doll. At first, the search was unsuccessful...but as soon as American Girl released their doll, it seemed other companies were in a hurry to jump on board. Get Ready Kids put out 16" dolls, both boys and girls. They are generally sold separately, though there are boy and girl sets on Amazon...and the Get Ready Kids website, as well as other places, sell a bundle set with all eight dolls.
The first doll I purchased was from Walmart, and it was the Ian doll. In those days, these were also labeled as multicultural dolls. Walmart and Amazon had rather unimaginative names for them (they are referred to by their nationality, not by the names the company gave them): Caucasian boy and girl (Tom and Anna), African American boy and girl (Danny and Taylor), Hispanic boy and girl (Joey and Maria), and Asian boy and girl (Ian and Tina). I thought Ian was the cutest, and it was a good thing I got him when I did. Ian and Tina have almost disappeared, though you can get them from the company website. Why, I don't really know but can guess possibly two reasons.
One, Asian is becoming an inappropriate term. People want to be recognized as whatever culture they come from--Japanese, Chinese, Korean, etc. They don't want to be labeled as "some kind of Asian." The dolls may be disappearing from stock merely for their un-PC names of Asian Boy and Asian Girl.
Though the dolls differ in skin color, hair color, and eye color...they all look the same to me. If I was going for multicultural dolls, I doubt these would really fit the bill.
Two, the Ian and Tina dolls had defective eyes--and I really hate saying this since they were labeled the Asian dolls. I'm not making a racial slur here, folks. The left eye socket on the Ian and Tina dolls, in the original production, bent towards the nose more than the right eye. It wasn't a terrible flaw--the dolls were very cute. However, some doll collectors can really be picky about things like that, and that is why I think it is worth mentioning. In later productions, it seemed to get fixed...but then the dolls had a lazy eye.
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| The dolls suffered bad haircuts from the company that produces them--the boys getting it the worst. |
When I saw the Ian doll on the website, I wasn't that impressed, but I ordered him anyway because it was another boy doll. When I got him, he was better quality and cuter than I expected, and I decided to keep him. Aside from the eye defect that I mentioned earlier, the doll had a terrible hair cut. If you look at the photos, you probably will blame me for this--but I didn't cut his hair. He has what is known as a bowl hair cut. I remember as a child hearing humiliating stories from my grandparents and parents about the horrors of home haircuts. The bowl hair cut was supposed to be simple. You put a bowl on a kid's head and cut around it. Done well, and if you have the right kind of face for it, it can actually be very cute. It is amazing, though, how badly it can turn out--and the humiliation of being teased at school made for entertaining stories for the grandkids and kids, only to be rivaled by the fascination of removing false teeth.
Tina fared a lot better than Ian, though her hair is uneven too. It is done in layers. She originally came with pigtails. I have since done her hair up as shown, and that actually hides the most uneven areas of her hair--which seemed to be the top layers. I'm assuming that originally the company had all girl dolls, and to make the boy dolls they chopped off the hair. The boys suffered more because of that. The girls just got a hair style, and that minimized the damage.
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| Get Ready Kids are full vinyl dolls--no cloth torsos like many 18" brands. The boys and girls have the same body, which is why I'm showing the boy doll nude rather than the girl doll, as I already had pictures of him. |
It was fortunate these are full vinyl dolls. If the doll had a cloth torso like so many 18 inch dolls, I may have been forced to return her.
Get Ready Kids are 16" dolls. I haven't tried putting my 18 inch dolls' clothes on my Get Ready Kids, but I did put my Get Ready Kids clothes on my 18 inch dolls. They fit pretty well, from the slimmer Carpatina to the wider other brands. The pants were the only ones that had some issues--on an 18 inch doll, they are almost Capri pants.
Most 18 inch dolls represent pre-puberty ages. The Get Ready Kids make nice younger siblings for your 18 inch dolls not only because they are smaller, but they also look younger too. The fact that the boys and girls are so identical is nice if you want fraternal twins...or even more (buy several sets, and you could be the mom of quintuplets, sextuplets, etc.). If you have a son that wants to play with his sister, these dolls are also nice for that.
The clothing the dolls come in are everyday clothes. Though well made, many outfits are disappointing in that they aren't very interesting. I assign life stories to my dolls when I get them, and due to the home hair cuts and plain clothes, I assigned them both into a lower socio-economic background. I don't do this to be snotty. I like making my dolls human, giving them conflict that applies over all the scenarios we play or even into board games. Who they are determines their choices in scenarios and how aggressive they are in playing Monopoly. I have a Jar Jar Binks that has an anger management problem.
The dolls don't come with underwear or socks. The plastic shoes can be a bit challenging to remove. They can also leave scuff marks on the doll.
Doll movement is like classic baby dolls. The dolls can be stiff, or sometimes they can have one limb that is looser than the opposite limb. They are well made and sturdy, though. Heads move side to side, arms go back and forth, and legs go back and forth. There is no articulation in the elbows, wrists, torso, knees, or ankles. Doll arms and legs also can't go to the side, only back and forth. They can stand on their own, and they can sit down. You need to put their hands behind them to keep them sitting upright, or else prop them against something. Their legs are splayed wide when they sit, which makes sitting on doll furniture awkward. For the girls, it causes their skirts to rise--and lacking underwear, forces them to be a bit immodest.
They are very cute dolls, but you have to be careful who you are buying them for. They cost nearly as much as many other doll brands. I find them adorable and full of personality, but some people may wonder why you spent the money to buy them a doll with a bad hair cut and boring clothes. I think these dolls can only be appreciated by certain types of people.
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