Doll Diversity, Fantasy Hair Colors, And Finding A Reroot That Won't Break My Budget?

Hello again friends and visitors. This is Treesa. As anyone who frequents this blog can tell you, I've been drawn to dolls with 'fantasy hair colors' ever since I bought Dandelion used at a flea market. Lucky for me, Mattel seems to be making a lot more of these dolls lately. The newer Fashionistas series has featured a number of dolls with 'fantasy hair colors', and Mattel's various 'fairy' lines have also shown a lot more variety in terms of hair color. Granted most of these 'fairy' dolls have non-removable, molded clothing pieces, but I've found ways to work around that in some cases.

A bigger problem I'm having is that a large percentage of these 'fantasy hair color' dolls are Caucasian. I'd really like to have more diversity in my 'fantasy hair color' doll collection, but it seems to be harder to find an African American or an Asian or a Hispanic doll with a 'fantasy hair color'. This is particularly true for the various 'fairy' lines, although Mattel does seem to be including more diverse skin tones and head molds in these lines lately.

Still, in this age of online shopping, I wondered how difficult it would be to find dolls of other ethnicities who'd been rerooted with 'fantasy hair colors', and how much money I would have to save up to buy one. Now I've never bought a custom doll before, except for a vintage Francie who'd been rerooted with pink hair.

But I found her at the thrift store so I don't think she really counts. The most I've ever paid for a Barbie doll was $40.00 plus tax, and that was for a new in box collector doll that I bought retail years ago. So $40.00 or less became my baseline price. I realized of course that it was probably unrealistic to expect to find a custom, rerooted doll for $40.00. But I needed a place to start, and I thought it wouldn't hurt to look. Besides, I could always go up from $40.00 later. This post will go over what I learned in my initial search.

My first stop was ebay. As a starting point I typed "Barbie doll reroot" into the search box and adjusted the settings on the sidebar to "US only". I live in the United States, and at this stage I didn't want to have to worry about international shipping or customs or anything like that. Then I sorted my search results using "Price + Shipping: lowest first". After scrolling past all the listings for doll hair and nude Barbie dolls waiting for their makeovers I finally came across something that looked interesting.

A seller named eblake seemed to have exactly what I was looking for, ethnically diverse dolls rerooted in various 'fantasy hair colors'. Not only that but the prices were unbelievable, starting out at just $13.50 plus shipping for a rerooted, DRESSED doll. However as I studied the listings more closely, I discovered what I think is the seller's secret to keeping costs down. Nearly every one of the seller's dolls included the word "Ponytail", or the abbreviation "PT", in the listings. As the seller clearly explains at the bottom of every listing, this term means that the dolls are, to use the seller's exact words, "rooted like the original Barbies and have hair all along the outside hair line and the scalp is bald". Now the dolls do look lovely. Some of them look downright gorgeous. But because of the way they were rerooted the hair can't be restyled. Now I'm not much of a hairstylist, but I'd still like to have the option.

After I finished scrolling through the dolls eblake had listed, the next likely hit came from a seller named kaylinasboutique2010. A lovely nude doll, with a pink shade of hair that was described in the listing as a "cranberry blend", was posted at $40.00 plus shipping. The seller had some other rerooted dolls for sale, but their price tags were higher at $65.00 plus shipping.

I still wanted to research my other options, so my second stop was etsy. Once again I typed "Barbie doll reroot" into the search box and set the filter for "shop location: United States". I was a little surprised by how few results I got. There were more listings for "packs" or "hanks" or "wefts" of doll hair than there were for completed dolls. RetroDollsUS did have a lovely reproduction Barbie that had been rerooted with a beautiful blend of blue and blue-green for $60.00. But that wasn't what I was looking for and I'm not the type to spend more than $25.00 on an impulse purchase. There's a reason I buy most of my dolls at the thrift store. Well, actually there's more than one reason, but cost is a big factor.

Thinking my search terms may have been too specific I tried typing in "Barbie reroot" (which gave me pretty much the same results), and "doll reroot" (which brought up a flood of Monster High and Blythe custom dolls). At any rate, I think I found out what I wanted to know, which was how much would a rerooted doll cost me. The answer is, more than I can justify spending without doing some budgeting in advance. I'm thinking if I can put a little money aside each month, I might save up enough to try my search again sometime. Or I might just wait and see what new dolls Mattel comes out with. Like I said before, Mattel seems to be branching out lately in terms of doll hair colors.

Signed, Treesa

Update: Look who I found at Walmart.

 

She's a Barbie Dreamtopia Sweetville Fairy doll. At least she was before I removed her wings and redressed her. Isn't her skin tone lovely? My camera doesn't do her justice. And that hair, it reminds me of cotton candy.

The trick to redressing these 'fairy' dolls is to keep in mind that their body shape is basically a belly button body, but the chest is usually a little larger thanks to the raised details on the dolls' molded bodices. So in general these dolls can wear pants and skirts designed for the belly button body, but when it comes to shirts it helps if they're either made of stretchy fabric or from the pre-belly button body time frame when Barbie's chest was slightly larger.