FASHION DOLL DISCOVERY 1: LOL Surprise OMG

Welcome to my first blog project of the summer, Fashion Doll Discovery!! This blog will focus on a number of the fashion doll lines I have studied over many years of being a doll nerd. You can expect to see me covering the history, design inspo, popularity, and style of each line in these blogs. 

This episode will focus on one of the first doll lines I got invested in, LOL OMG. 

This brand was created by MGA Entertainment, monsters in the toy industry known for making Bratz, Rainbow High, Num Noms, ProjectMc^2 (remember those?) Lalaloopsy, Little Tikes, uhhh... Poopsie Slime Surprise, I guess? They can't all be winners. And in 2016, while their prized Bratz were slowly dying away, MGA realized they had to create something Outrageous. If they just added together fashion doll + surprise element (kids LOVED their surprise toys at the time) + baby dolls (?), it would make big money!! 

And big money it made. 

Honestly, I'm not huge on the original LOL Surprise dolls. They're just a little too strange looking. Also, because this may never be brought up again, LOL stands for "Li'l Outrageous Littles", which is just hilarious. BUTTT after these dolls were a huge hit, MGA had the huge idea to make adult versions of them, canonical big sisters to the core dolls. Therefore, the core dolls would serve as inspiration for the big sisters' design, so they would look related. For an example: take a look at Royal Bee and her little sister Queen Bee. 

This doll line came to be known as OMG, which stands for the equally stupid "Outrageous Millennial Girls". LOL. (In that case, I am laughing aloud.)

Now, I'll stop yapping in long-paragraph form and start to break things down. 

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Characteristics and Qualities of LOL OMG: 

• Extremely stylized faces and proportions
• Unique style for each doll, all drawing from distinct real-world fashion references 
• Surprisingly (haha) high-quality, detailed clothing 
• Expensive :( 
• Non-human names (Swag, Lady Diva, Royal Bee, Neonlicious, no I'm not joking, etc.)

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Controversy, because oh yes there is controversy:

• Too 'sexy' and 'revealing' clothing/ anatomically correct boy dolls?? Which could have so easily been avoided gah damn
• Accused of stealing concepts 
• Isaac Larian, CEO of MGA is like the worst person ever and I will dunk on him every time I cover MGA in a blog

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Highlights & Best Series: 

Series 2, in the first pic on the entry, definitely shows the best of OMG. Each doll is unique and super intricate. Their crazy face proportions genuinely look cute to me! 

There was a HUGE project called LOL Surprise Remix, a line that featured the baby dolls, pets, playsets, and ofc OMG dolls all themed around music. Meaning, every doll was inspired by a genre or artist, and I truly love the mount of care that was put into these references. You can see inspirations ranging from Madonna to David Bowie, Lady Gaga to freaking Strawberry Switchblade if I'm not mistaken?? If you take one thing away from this blog, let it be that the Remix line was bomb. 

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That concludes this first Fashion Doll Discovery. If you've made it here, thank you so much for reading and I hope you stick around for more blogs. Hope you all have a good day!