Review Time!: Maru and Friends Billie Jean Pop Star Doll-A-Day 2023 #177

   Today's doll is also a review. She's Billie Jean Pop Star, the latest doll from Maru and Friends. She was provided for review by Maru and Friends, but, as usual, I'll give you my honest opinions.

  I have to say, this review has been a challenge. I have been trying to keep up with the daily posts, do work at the house, take care of things rescued from the house, do housework to help Emma out, do extra laundry, washing clothes and things rescued from Fuzzy's room, (There has been more rescuable clothing and bedding than you would have thought possible. Plus odd things like toiletries and Chapsticks! The closet door is mostly charcoal, as I found Monday when I saw it for the first time, but there was unburnt Chapstick!), and any number of other things. Every picture I've had to take for this blog, for the last couple of months at least, has had to be taken 3, 4, or even 5 times, at various focus',  just to make sure I get one that's in focus, since my autofocus is out of commission. Then I have to go through all those pictures and delete all the out of focus ones. (Or the ones where the crack in my protective lens makes such a glare that it renders the picture unusable. That problem reared it's head quite a few times during Billie Jean's photo shoots, because they were sunny days.) Just doing the pictures for a post has taken forever. And I do a post every day. I have my phone, but I'm not really good at taking anything but landscapes with my phone camera. I'm going to have to get good though, because yesterday Ken tried to remove that cracked protective lens again, and ended up breaking my whole lens! Now I can't even manually focus. We are still sleeping on an air mattress, which naturally loses air over time. Without even noticing it has lost air, it loses enough that sleeping on it gives me terrible shoulder pain. (I understand the back aches, but the shoulders?) I have been hardly able to move my left arm some days. That makes typing with my laptop on my lap, or editing pictures, pretty painful and difficult sometimes, and there's no desk or anything here to use. Not sleeping well has meant that every day about 4 or 5 o'clock I can hardly keep my eyes open. That makes it hard to concentrate! Add to all that the approximately three weeks Emma spent in the hospital, where I was with her every day, and still managed to keep up with the daily posts. Shew! But here we are, finally done!

    Now! Enough whining! On to the review!

   Let's get the less interesting stuff out of the way first. Billie Jean arrived in a cardboard shipping box, within which was her regular box.

The box was tied with a pretty gauzy ribbon and sealed with a Maru and Friends sticker.

The box has an open front with no plastic. Good for them!

Billie Jean was held in by ribbon ties, and protected from the ribbon by foam strips.

Her hair is protected by a hair net and her accessory, which we'll talk about below, is in a plastic bag.

  She's the first doll in the anniversary limited edition series. Maru and Friends is celebrating their 15th anniversary. Billie Jean comes with a certificate of authenticity.

Her head sculpt is by the late Dianna Effner, and you can see it in her face.

  Is it just me, or does she look like Jennifer Aniston? 

  She has a slightly tanned complexion. 

  Billie Jean is another first too. She's the first fully articulated doll from Maru and Friends. In addition to a jointed neck, hips, and elbows, she also has jointed wrists, and jointed knees and ankles.

We'll talk more about that in a bit.

 Billie Jean fits right in with the other Mini Pals from Maru and Friends. Here she is with mini Savannah.

Billie Jean looks a little older than Savannah.

  Her blue eyes are made of glass, with a realistic blend of colours. 

  She has very long lashes too. Real top lashes, and painted bottom ones.

Her eyebrows are made up of a soft solid line with individual strokes painted over it. One of my doll's didn't line up though.

Her lips are painted with a light stripe down the middle, to give them depth I suppose. It looks okay from a distance, but a bit odd up close. 

I would have preferred a more natural look. But I guess she is supposed to be a pop star.

  Her hair is a wig. She has a little silicone wig cap to hold it on.

It worked really well, until I took her out for her second photo shoot. It was really hot that day, and I think the heat made the wig not adhere to the wig cap as well. Once I took the wig off to show the wig cap, it didn't want to stay on any more! Her hair kept slipping off! I think it was just the heat. I've had other Maru and Friends Mini Pals with wigs, but theirs were held on with Velcro, so I haven't dealt with the silicone caps on Maru and Friends dolls before. I was always afraid the hair would get caught in the Velcro and get ruined. There's not that fear with the silicone cap. Just don't take your dolls wig off out in the summer heat! 

The wig is made with shades of brown and red.

  

Billie's hands and feet have some nail definition. 

 

 The bottoms of her feet are smooth, but the palms of her hands have some detail.

Used the phone for this one. see how blurry it is?

As usual, the clothes on the Maru and friends dolls are almost like human clothes. They are so well made, using quality fabrics. Billie Jean's outfit is faux leather, and consists of a jacket with matching skirt. 

The Maru and Friends label is inside.

  The clothes are fully lined, just like human clothes.

The skirt closes with a hook and eye. I assumed it was a snap and pulled so hard I tore a stitch through! It's not a snap!

See that gap? I did that!

The jacket closes with metal snaps and a real buckle.

She also has a pair of white undies.

Her boots are faux suede, trimmed in pink faux fur. 

The laces really do tie and untie. And they have to be untied to get them off. She's sockless though, so they slip on and off easily when untied.

The soles have a slight texture.

For a final accessory, Billie Jean has a pink faux fur purse to match her boots. 

The purse really opens and can hold small items. There's a zipper so the stuff stays in too.

  I was impressed that Billie Jean's articulation holds even with the leather like clothing. If she had strung joints, I don't think it would. But because she has actual metal joints, they hold tightly against the less flowy fabric.

See that cloud' in front of her face? The sun hit the lens crack just right. I lost most of the pictures from that day because of that!

  And let's talk about those joints. Okay. They aren't the most attractive joints in the world. But then joints are usually not very attractive. Her legs sort of look like she has skin socks on.

Her arms fare a bit better, but I always look at that wrist joint and think there should be skin there.

But these joints do hold a pose, and that's what it seems to be all about these days: posability. 

There is a great range of movement in those arms, and they do hold a pose really well. They can even hold a tight pose through that faux leather jacket.

  Billie Jean has it over a lot of dolls in some of her posing aspects, and doesn't meet up in a couple of others. It's a trade off I guess. For example, she can pose all day when it comes to her wrists, elbows, knees, and ankles.

(Her knee and ankle joints swivel in place too, which means sometimes they got a little wonky on me, even if it also meant they were more posable. I was never good with swivel joints, as my G.I. Joe will attest!)

  Those aspects are great. I love Billie Jean's posability. Previous Maru and Friends Mini Pals didn't have those joints, (except for  Pinocchio, and Pepper, who had jointed elbows. (We'll get further into that in a minute.) You can see my reviews HERE and HERE.), but they had great flexibility in that their arms and legs could move out to the sides as well as back and forth. That helped them stand upright and also do poses that looked good, even if they needed some support. On the other hand, who looks more natural in this 'relaxing and looking at the sky' pose? 

Billie Jean can't move her arms and legs out to the sides, but with jointed elbows and knees, its not quite as necessary for interesting poses, especially with her elbows and knees having a swivel feature too. 

  One of the best things about posing a Maru and Friends doll, even the Mini Pals, was always the way they could tilt their heads. With those cute Dianna Effner faces, it was so great to be able to tilt their little heads in cute poses. They could tilt side to side, as well as look up and down. Billie Jean is the first one I have had that can't tilt her head, and I miss it. Hopefully Maru and Friends will bring back that feature, and keep the articulation in the future.

  The difference between the jointed elbows on Pinocchio and Pepper, and the jointed elbows on Billie Jean is, their elbows were strung, and although their elbows could be posed, they didn't pose very far, or hold the extreme pose, or hold much of a bend with thick sleeves. Strung joints tend to bend, but not be able to take extreme bends without snapping back a lot. Billie Jean has those metal joints, and can do a more extreme bend and hold it, even through her sleeves. I just wish the jointing could be more attractive, especially the wrists, and the lack of smoothness on her legs below the knees. One benefit of the metal joints over the strung joint is that strung joints get flabby after a bit. Stringing wears out, and needs redone after a fair amount of play. The metal joints may have a longer life. The drawback would be that if they break, they can't just be simply repaired, like restringing would be.

  You know I love cute Dianna Effner face sculpts. I'm always a bit confused by the juxtaposition of the sweet children's faces and the adult style clothing doll companies sometimes dress their dolls in. I know kids dress like adults these days. I am sometimes concerned that doll companies try to make even the child dolls look 'sexy' or 'flirty', (or even that real kids clothes do the same). I'm old. I like to see a little kid dress like a little kid. I suppose that doesn't sell well to kids these days. They want dolls that dress like they do, and they dress like adults. But I'll always prefer a child doll dressed like Savannah to one dressed like Billie Jean.(Even if I didn't like to wear dresses myself as a kid.) Of course, you can always change her clothes, and Maru and Friends does sell some really cute traditional children's outfits too.

  Billie Jean sells for $149, but at the moment she is on sale for $130. In fact, there is a sale on a lot of the dolls, and clothing, on the Maru and Friends site right now. And while you're at it, check out the new doll they have coming up, that I am really excited about!