Reviving Liv...

First wave Daniela. Renamed Caz.

I was going through my doll stuff and found three Liv dolls in one of the drawers. I had every intention of decapitating these dolls at one point in time and make them body donors for some Barbie dolls that I wanted to be articulated. In fact I succeeded in transplanting one. Check out Twilight Bella HERE. I had fun with Bella in a Liv doll body. It's a good doll body! It felt solid and worthy of roughhousing fun without the worry of breakage! That was when I felt a little bad for decapitating the Liv doll to begin with. Hahaha! I never went through with my plan for the other two and just kept them in a drawer for years.

My first Liv doll. She was a first wave Katie.
(She was the one I decapitated...She's forgiven me now that she has her head back!)
Renamed Tilin.

It was almost like I blinked the last couple of years away. Suddenly Liv dolls are no longer in production and Barbie-Made-to-Move are the four new buzz words for doll articulation on a budget. I'll probably want one of those eventually but I haven't encountered them yet so I gave back the Liv doll head that I had decapitated and tried to give the bulbous head with the glassy-eyed stare another chance.

I felt nostalgic about things that are no more. Why is it that we humans always want what we cannot have? Remember the My Scene dolls? I had fun with those...Now they're gone and it saddens me a bit that they are, even though I didn't like the last ones released because they were looking more and more like Bratz than My Scene. I think I loved the play sets more than the dolls actually.

I think she's a second wave Sophie. Renamed Frey.

So I tried to remember what I first thought of Liv dolls. The articulation was the line's greatest edge over other dolls. These dolls can hold poses that some of my articulated collector dolls can't. I also remember liking the idea of 'glass' eyes. They were a refreshing change to the painted ones. The wigs gave me a hell of a time. They were messy and they didn't fit my 16" AvantGuard doll very well like I had hoped...again with the thoughts of parts donations! The heads were a middle ground. They weren't overtly huge like Blythe's but they were definitely not small like Barbie's. And then there's the face sculpt. Liv dolls had cute noses but I wasn't sure about the lips. They look a little bit like they had lip injection. Then again I was partial to the cupid' arrow curve on Francie's upper lips and the puckered pout on Poppy's. I could go on...Ultimately, when I did photograph these girls after some hair combing, and outfit stealing from other dolls, I was delighted to discover that they can be photogenic. It made me want to play with them some more. It took years but they grew on me and I really wish Spin Master stuck with them longer. These dolls were groundbreaking in the playline category.