Doll-A-Day 136: Review: Ai Coreopsis by Jun Planning

    Today's doll is a tiny ball jointed doll by Jun Planning, called Coreopsis.He's just about 5" tall. The dolls in this series are all named after flowers.Apparently there are a million different colours and types of coreopsis.Coreopsis the doll comes in the same book style box as the others, with magnets to hold the lid closed, and the plastic that just lifts off so you can easily get to the doll.

  I have reviewed a couple of other Ai dolls in this series, so I'm not going to go into great detail on Coreopsis' packaging. I'll just refer you to my reviews of Leptospurmum and Bee Balm for that.
He's nestled in a satiny padding with his accessories,which include his hat and jacket...

...shoes, and box of eye putty (for holding his eyes in place.) ...

... and his toy airplane.

It looks cool, but it's not really detailed. The wheels don't even move.

His hair was held in place by a circle of plastic.His arms were held behind him by plastic. I don't know if this was to make him fit in his little niche better, or to protect his arms...or both.

Hey Corey. Your strings are showing.I needed to tuck those inside his arm.

His little jacket and hat are more detailed than I thought.

The jacket is a faux suede fabric and is well made.But when I was trying to pull it on him one of the little fake buttons came off. They are only stuck on and it just fell off. I replaced it with glue, but really!

 His coat was also REALLY hard to get on. The sleeves were hardly big enough to get his hands through.
His hat has some decorative chains.

And so do his shorts. His shirt has a little skull applique'. I know that's popular right now, but I could have gone for something a bit more traditional. How about something to go with the airplane idea?

He's wearing cute little socks.

His shoes are nicely detailed, like the shoes on the other Ai dolls I have.But there's one difference...

They could get their shoes on! These shoes were so small and unyielding that he had to take his socks off to get them on.

Even Coreopsis has The One Hair.

And it was still almost impossible. Maybe after he has worn them a while and stretched them out he will be able to put his socks back on and still wear his shoes.I liked that he had socks, so I hope he will be able to wear the shoes and socks eventually.
Ok, here's an update. After wearing the shoes without socks for a day, he was able to get the shoes on----with some difficulty----over his socks. I still think a little tiny shoe horn would have been extremely useful though. 
  Like the other Ai dolls, his hair is a wig that attaches with velcro strips. 

The join in his head is held shut with a circle of plastic. When you remove the plastic the head can be opened to change the eyes.

The head is held shut with magnets. As with my other Ai dolls, when I opened the head the eyes popped out and I had a terrible time getting them back in place.

  Coreopsis was just about the perfect Ai doll from this series for me. He has dark auburn hair and brown eyes. (The other two I really like are Cymbidium and Lobelia.)

Cymbidium. Looks kind of like a boy, but it's a girl.

Lobelia. I love her outfit, but I would never be able to maintain that hair.

He's also a cute little boy doll, and you know there just aren't enough of those around.

Now this hair I can handle! And look at those brown eyes.He has a beautiful pink complexion and realistically coloured pink lips.

  Well, anatomically 'he' is a girl.Ivy's guess is that all the Ai dolls are anatomically female. All three I have are. I would have thought Leptosprmum was a boy too, so maybe she's right. In his whole ensemble Coreopsis looks like a boy. Boys can have hair this long, right? I saw some pictures on Flicker where someone had made little side ponytails on their Coreopsis and she obviously looked like a girl.  Either way he/she is cute.I'm going to say mine is a boy.
  There were three head molds used for these Ai dolls: closed eyes, sleepy eyes, and open eyes. Obviously Coreopsis has the open eye mold.

Bee Balm has the sleepy eye mold.

I was really lucky to find him at Tuesday Morning on Monday (That sounds like it doesn't make sense.) I found the other AI dolls at Tuesday Morning in February and I hadn't seen any there since. I went to two T.M. stores Monday, but only one of them had the AI dolls, and the only ones they had were Coreopsis and Statice.
  I got really excited when I saw that they had Coreopsis, because that was one of the Ai dolls that I really liked when I researched them after I got my first two.I liked Statice's dress, but she was too much like Leptospurmum.

Statice. I like her old fashioned dress and little shoes, but she has the same hair and almost the same eyes as Leptospurmum.

Leptospurmum has the open eye mold too.Her skin tone is much paler though.

See? Basically the same doll, just different clothes and slightly different coloured eyes.
  So, I love my Coreopsis. I really like all these Ai dolls, but if I was only going to be able to find a couple, Coreopsis is one of the ones I would have picked.
That's all for today's doll.See you tomorrow for Skipper Saturday.