Doll-A-Day 2023 #120: Friends Forever Club Dolls Iha and Carina

    Emma's home from the hospital, but still having pain and discomfort. I hope she is all better soon.

   I found these dolls at Dollar Tree. Their names are Iha, and Carina.

  They're from a line called Friends Forever Club, which makes them easy to confuse with 4-Ever Best Friends  dolls, and the Friends Forever line of Winx dolls.

   There are actually four dolls in the series. The others are the red haired Viera, and the brown haired Alanis. You would have thought I would have bought the red haired one, (It's actually sort of pink.), but I thought these two were the cutest, so I bought them. So there.

  The theme behind these dolls is that the four met 'on a field trip to the Science Center and...became best friends'. The idea of the Science Center suggests they all have an interest in some form of science.

 Each character has an interest that is her theme. Iha loves fish,(and killing them apparently, because she also loves to fish.), the beach, shells...and baking cookies. (No word on if the cookies have to have a beach theme too, or if they have fish in them.) She wants to be a marine biologist when she grows up. To show her interests, she has a sea shell on her headband. 

  

With her dark hair and headband, there's a little something Snow White-ish about Iha.

 Her eyes are sort of almond shaped, which gives her a bit of a fairy look. Well, I think so. The red haired doll, Viera, looks even more like a fairy than Iha does.

  Carina loves all things space. She likes studying 'astrology', and wants to be an astronaut when she grows up. I think they meant to say she loves studying 'astronomy', not astrology. Just guessing. There's nothing about her appearance to show that she loves space, so to prove she's smart, she wears glasses.

And yes, her glasses are removable. They also don't stay on very well...well, we'll get to that. She also has cute little hair meatballs.

  Both dolls use the same head sculpt. 

Carina modeling the no glasses look.

  These dolls are about 5 inches tall. They could be used as dollhouse dolls, in a dollhouse that's a bit bigger than 1/12 scale if you want them to be children. They'd be about the size an of adult woman in a 1/12 scale dollhouse.

  Their hands look as if they were meant to hold something, but they don't come with accessories. Maybe they were originally intended to. Maybe it's for the larger accessories that are sold separately.

  They have simple articulation, but then, they did only cost $1.25 each. They're jointed at the neck, shoulders, and hips. They can turn their heads, move their arms, and even sit down.

  I did kind of feel like their limbs might break off if I wasn't delicate enough with them. They just feel cheap, but then, again, they were. There is also another problem with them sitting down.

Um. Yes. These dolls do have removable rubber clothing. And when they sit down, it removes itself. The clothes have an interesting latching system in the back. 

I found Iha's skirt hard to force closed over her butt. 

The hooks are weird, and almost have to be hooked from the inside. It's hard to explain. None of the clothes stayed closed very well.

  And Carina can't pull her shorts up all the way.

The sleeves on Carina's hoodie are just her arms, painted. And when she raises her arms, it shows.

On the other hand, they bothered to put some texture on Iha's skirt.

It's like fish scales, to go with her interest.

And their shoes are removable too.

Slits down the back make them easy to remove...and fall off.

And they have one more removable thing.

Their hair! Surprisingly, they can't wear each other's hair, although I did see someone review all 4 dolls who put someone else's hair on one of them. But it was neither of these two. 

It won't sit all the way down on her head.

There are shapes in the hair, and bumps on their heads. They look the same, but they didn't fit both dolls the same.

Carina's hair is marked 2, and Iha's is marked 1.

Then why make it removable? Maybe it isn't meant to be, but it wasn't glued on.

  And that brings us to that other issue. Carina can't keep her glasses on unless they are stuck under her hair...or she doesn't wear her hair at all. but the glasses won't stay over the hair.

  As a side note, the glasses fit Tammy World really well.

    I didn't see them in any of the Dollar Tree stores I went to, but apparently there is a swing you can put together, that is sold in a pack, and a slide for these dolls. There are also cloth outfits for them too, but our Dollar Trees never seemed to get them either. From seeing them online the clothes, although actually made of cloth, look very cheap and like they would probably fall apart with very little play.

  So these dolls are cute, and would survive some play, but I don't know how long they'd last before they start falling apart.

Those are the dolls for today. See you again tomorrow.