Mattel Pose and Style Rapunzel Review

Okay, today begins my journey through a huge list of posts-in-draft, just waiting to be shared with all of you. :)  

This past summer, I added several dolls to my collection, including the one I'll be reviewing today:  Mattel's "Pose and Style" Rapunzel.  I was mainly interested in this doll because she was fully poseable.  I wanted to see how she compared to the new, fully poseable Disney Store Princess dolls.  So when I found her on clearance at Target, I decided to try her out. :)

Here she is before deboxing.

A view of the back.

I must say, one of the things I really appreciated about this doll was her "easy open" box.  It's been a while since I've bought a Mattel doll new, so I'm not sure how long this has been a feature on their doll boxes.  It sure was nice, though.

Simply pop out along the dotted line, and Voila!  Your doll is free! :)

Well, technically free.  I still had to release her from all of the rubber bands and such. :}

  

She came with these purple ballet slippers, which were nice and easy to get on and off.

I loved the detail on her brush, and the fact that it was a larger size than your average Mattel doll brush.

I thought it was interesting that there were rubber bands actually attached to her dress with little plastic thingees.

They did leave very small holes in the skirt because of the thin, shiny material it was made of.

Rapunzel came with this ringed collection of hair tutorial cards in full color.

I really liked this one.

And just in case you couldn't figure the styles out from looking at the cards, they were also in the instruction manual...

So here she is with all of her accessories.

She has a sweet face, although I prefer the Disney Store Rapunzel doll faces to the Mattel ones.

This Rapunzel also comes with a Pascal, who has apparently gained a few pounds since the movie. ;)

She has legs that are hard plastic and articulated at the knees.

Her skirt is shimmery in the middle, with that material that feels almost like plastic.

A view of her shoes.

Another nice feature of this doll is that she is always dressed (a big plus in our house full of little girls!). ;)  This does limit some of her clothing options, but most Barbie dresses should still fit over her top, especially since she has one of the Barbie bodies with a smaller chest.

Her hair was surprising. ;)

Aside from the normal hair, it has 3 braided strands with wire inside.  This is supposed to help with all of the hairstyles.

Here's the deal, though.  I consider myself a pretty competent person when it comes to doll hair, but I had a HORRENDOUS time trying to duplicate the styles in the little booklet.

This was the closest I got to a halfway decent replica, and even then, it had issues.

This was as close as I could get the two ends, but they're supposed to be almost intersecting.  And this was by far the easiest one.  Trust me.  I tried the other styles too. 

Finally, I gave up and came up with my own style.  Ahh, much better. ;)

While I wasn't a huge fan of the "style" part of this doll, I did love her poseability.  I much prefer her articulation to that of the Disney Store dolls (more on that in a later post!).  As you can see from the above picture, she is articulated at the elbows and wrists in addition to her knees.  It was really fun to pose her and take pictures.  

Overall, I would give "Pose and Style Rapunzel" a 4 out of 5.  I love her fun poseability and the fact that she has built-in clothing.  She has a sweet face and the concept of the doll is really fun.  However, I have to knock a point off for the whole hair issue.  I mean, if I had difficulty getting the hairstyles to work, how hard would it be for the target age group (ages 4 and up) to do them?  Moms, if you get this doll for your little one, plan on dealing with frustration from your kiddos.  Either that, or plan on doing hairstyles yourself under your little girl's watchful eye.  And hopefully you can do better than I did. ;)

Stay tuned for a review of the 2012 Disney Store Rapunzel doll and how she compares to this one. :)