Review: Only Hearts Club doll "Olivia Hope."

Earlier this year, I bought a small lot of Only Hearts Club doll clothes from eBay, with the hope that they'd fit a very small bjd I own. Alas, no such luck, and the clothes went in to a ziplock bag and were set aside.

On Saturday I was in a Joann's (really, did I need a reason? I didn't think so), and noticed a few Only Hearts dolls in the red tag clearance bin. It occurred to me then that I still had that bag of clothes for these dolls. So I poked through available clearance items, and decided to take home an Olivia Hope.

Cute, yes? And her little dog, too!



I hadn't looked at these dolls too closely before, and was actually pleasantly surprised to realize they have inset eyes. No, really--look!

 Tiny little inset eyes and lovely face paint. I'm already pleased with my purchase. Now to get her out of the packaging....

 ....during which I had to trash the box to get to the threads holding her in. Well, three threads and one plastic tag, which did NOT want to come off or out, and resulted in her losing the tiniest bit of her very nice and thick rooted hair. Dammit.

 One of the lower threads didn't especially want to come off her calf, either, but I managed after some muted grumbling to pull it out without damage.

 She's extremely flexible, given that her plush body has a wire armature all through the limbs and torso, including her neck, so that she can look up--

or down, or all around...no, her head doesn't easily do a 360, which is just fine by me. Her vinyl head does move on the plush neck, but it's on there very tightly.

Her clothes are cute--note that little tie detail on the sleeves of her t-shirt and at the bottom of the vest. Very nice details, although--

 some of the fundamentals are lacking. The t-shirt's hem mysteriously stops and trails away about 3/4 of the way around, and the sleeve hems aren't finished.

 She does have underpants, but look at that inside-out unfinished seam. These were probably sewn directly to the doll, hence that seam, but it makes the underpants look half-diaper, half- panties.

Her clothes did come off fairly easily, although I had to snip a few more threads intended to keep her posed and the clothes attached. No damage, I'm pleased to say.

 Here's the required tag for the plush content and filling. That tag will be cut off. It's not huge, but it is big enough to be annoying when dressing her.

 But look at these stubs of feet! Not even any stitching to mimic toes, and they're tiny in proportion to the rest of her. She actually does look like her feet were cut off if the feet aren't firmly bent at the ankles.

But the girl can pose, all right. The ballerina line of these dolls take great advantage of it. Olivia Rose, however, is content today with a simple pirhouette. I did notice that though she's very posable, the poses don't hold tight, and kept drifting loose as the wire tried to return to the original pose.

The DISadvantage to the wire armature is that it's very easy to affect poses that people can't do without grave bodily injury, and then the wire is a bit kinked and doesn't quite go back to its former straightness. Twist her about at your own risk.

Little Dog Too (my name for him, I didn't see a name on the box) has a little bit of color on him, but I'm not sure if that's intentional, or bleed-off from the pink vest. Either way, it's very light, and I had trouble getting the camera to pick it up clearly.

Her shoes are cute--pink plastic boots with a sweater lining detail and teeny buckle (really just silver thread). They're open at the back, so they slipped on pretty easily.

Getting her clothes on her wasn't too much of a struggle, thanks to garments that open all the way down the back. I was thrilled, because I just don't know how I'd manage to re-dress her with that plush body.

I have to confess here that I have an aesthetic issue with that plush body. It just looks a bit weird, IMO, and makes her arms and limbs and neck look disproportionately large and hairy. Poor little fuzzy girl. The effect is pronounced when she's nude, but not as much when she's clothed.

I'm glad I bought her, however, because her face and hair are wonderful, I can live with the plush once she's dressed, and the available clothing is really nice. She'll probably end up as a doll belonging to one of the bigger other dolls, like my Dollmore Daish, Elizabeth. Olivia Rose is the right size for Elizabeth's hands, and I can bend her about to hold on to those hands.

I'm a bit concerned that it looked as though the line is discontinued (clearance, few updates on the website or Facebook page, etc), but I couldn't find any current info to either confirm or disconfirm.

Verdict: Good play value for the price, and lots of outfits available. Check the clearance aisles and eBay as well if you're interested, and Amazon.com has a number of the dolls available at reasonable prices.