Review of Our Generation Mini Kendra and More Great Goodwill Finds

  I want to welcome our newest follower,Milena. Milena has a great blog called MINIMAGINE,and an Etsy shop where she sells her lovely handmade furniture and other items for 1/6 scale dolls. Right now she's having a give away for a 1/6 scale bookcase, and offering coupons for her Etsy shop to new subscribers to her blog or those who sign up to her mailing list. Check it all out.
   If you read the blog you'll have seen my review of one of my second round birthday gifts, the Madame Alexander Travel Pals India doll. (For those interested in the other Travel Friends, Barb the Evil Genius at My Little Doll Corner has just reviewed Germany and Ireland, and one of my favourite reviewers, Emily, at The Toy Box Philosopher recently reviewed India and Ireland too.) The other doll of a similar size that I got the same day was this Our Generation Mini Kendra.

Our Generation also make 18" versions of these dolls, thus the 'mini'. The 18" dolls even have the exact same outfit as the mini version.

  The box is made from recycled materials and can be recycled again.

That's good to know. Also, the packaging is minimal, so there isn't even alot to recycle anyway.

A portion of the sale goes to Free the Children's 'Power of a Girl' Initiative,"to help provide girls in developing countries an education".  According to the ogdolls.com, Free the Children was started 16 years ago by a 12 year old boy, and "has now built more than 650 schools which educate more than  50,000 children throughout the developing world. Not only does Free The Children build schools, but they also build and foster sustainable villages through healthcare, water programs and alternate income projects for moms and dads that give girls the opportunity to get the education they need."

 The box is sealed with tape circles.

When the tape circle is removed or cut the insert slides out.

The usual tape, thread,and plastic attachments.

 Her feet are held to a plastic piece by clear rubber bands.

She has a plastic thing on her head that has to be removed once she is out of the box.

It's rubber banded around her neck. Was this thing really necessary?

Mini Kendra is approximately 6" tall.

 And she can stand on her own if she's balanced properly and has her boots on.

These tiny dolls have inset eyes and rooted hair.

 Her freckles are a bit large, but I think she looks cute.

I think the minis are actually a lot cuter than the 18" dolls, which have strange lips.

She does remind me a lot of the very young Lindsey Lohan.

They have the same mouth, freckles, (Lindsey's aren't quite as big!), and big eyes.

Her outfit consists of a nice, soft blouse that Velcros in the back...

 a ruffled skirt...

My lining kept rolling up in the front and showing.

 tights...

 and boots.

The boots have a slit in the back for easy on and off.
She also has a head band. The head band is connected to her head with two plastic tie thingies, which have to be cut to be removed.

Her hair seems to have a little gap in the rooting in front.

She has a vinyl head and limbs, with a cloth body,like the construction of the original American Girl minis.

Her arms and legs can move up and down, and out to the sides a bit,plus rotating somewhat.

Her head can turn too, but it's not super easy to do it.

As you can see, these pictures were done last week, when there was plenty of snow. My poor daffodils can be seen here peeking through. They are taller now, but still have no intentions of blooming if they can help it.

The boots came in handy in the snow.

I figured even I could do this hairdo, so I took her ponytails down to see how well her hair was rooted.

Pretty thick and very long. Notice the large tag on her butt.

But not too thick for realism.

I suppose it would take a while for it to not want to still go into the ponytail shapes.

 The hair is nice and smooth and didn't shed much with combing. There is that gap in the front. Overall I think she is a good doll for hair play though.
 But what other clothes can she wear? If you read my Travel Friends review you'll know India tried on Kendra's outfit and it looked great on her. Well, Kendra tried on India's outfit too.

India looked great in Kendra's clothes, and they fit pretty well. Apart from India's dress not suiting Kendra very well, it didn't fit well either.

The dress wouldn't close in the back...

And the shoes wouldn't go on her much wider feet.

Here are the bodies without clothes for size comparison.

 I think Kendra could also wear some of the original Stacie, (Barbie's sister.) clothes, and even some Barbie shirts, as long as they are the stretchy kind, without darts in the chest, and of course they'd have to be short sleeved.
  I'd heard that the American Girl Mini clothes fit the OG minis pretty well. I have had some AG minis but I got rid of them all. (I really regretted saying goodbye to mini Emily and mini Felicity.) So, I wasn't going to be able to compare. But when Emma and I dropped Ken off at work the other day we went to Goodwill, and guess what Emma found there:

Kendra is hanging out with her new friend, American Girl mini Felicity!

"Don't ever say I never found you anything." she said as she threw Felicity at me. This Felicity is even better than the one I had, since she still has her stockings. (My other one had her dress and slip, but no stockings or shoes.)
They're about the same size. Kendra has inset eyes, while Felicity has painted eyes.

Here's a comparison of their very similar bodies. Remember, this is the old style AG mini. The new ones are all vinyl.Kendra's body is a nylonish type fabric. Felicity's is cotton.

Very similar jointing. Kendra is broader through the shoulders, but has a smaller waist than Felicity.

Here they are trying out the same jumping jacks pose. Kendra can spread her arms and legs a little wider than Felicity.

Both have huge body tags that get in the way of their clothing, but at least Felicity's tag is soft cloth and easy to make lay over out of the way.

They can both sit with their legs straight out in front of them, but Felicity can't straighten hers out quite as much. They tend to want to spread a bit.

They tried on each other's clothes.It looked pretty good. Felicity especially looked good in Kendra's clothes.She had plenty of what my Mom always called 'growing room'.

But Felicity's dress was too tight on Kendra.

The Velcro was straining to stay closed.

Felicity could almost have worn Kendra's tights as a one piece jumpsuit. I had a pair of tights like that when I was a kid, and they were blue too.

As for the other Goodwill find I made recently,here it is. A week or so before we found Felicity, I found this great miniature sampler at the same Goodwill. I wasn't sure at first if it was printed or actually needlepoint. It's so small! It was in a frame much bigger than it is, almost a 5" X 7" frame. I took it out of the frame and cut it down a little. I need to cut it down more.I'm going to make a frame more in scale with the sampler. It should be 1/6 scale (Or maybe a little big for 1/6.),when I'm done.

It was NOT printed!

It could have been made by a little girl the size of Felicity! It's not really old, or it wouldn't say, "The best antiques are old friends." Ivy swears she could needlepoint me something this tiny. I've challenged her to do it...please!

  So,I think Kendra's a nice little doll that could stand a lot of play. The small size makes her a nice companion doll for rides in the car and trips to Grama's house. She seems to be a good quality doll for a decent price. (Our Target charges $9.99.) The clothes are a nice quality too, and don't seem like they will fall apart easily. The fact that she can wear some Barbie clothes if she has to will extend her play potential, since almost everybody has some and they are easy to obtain. It would be nice if Our Generation made more clothes for these dolls though. I'd love to see mini copies of the Our Generation Retro line for these dolls.

Like this Our Generation Retro 18" doll.

These dolls seem to be popular enough to warrant more clothes, since the display is always either low or empty.     
And here are some more pictures because Kendra is so photogenic.