Barbie Made to Move Soccer Player

The three latest Made to Move Barbies are in a sports theme. I have picked up all three and am enjoying them all. The soccer Barbie is a happy girl with an open mouth smile. Her face has the look I most associate with standard Barbies and is a lot of fun to play with.Barbie's articulation points are at neck, shoulder, upper arm, elbows, wrists, upper torso, hips, knees, and ankles. I could wish for waist articulation but the doll is lots of fun to play with as-is.Her hair light blond and is parted on the side with the hair pulled into a ponytail at the back. There is a bright pink elastic in the hair and a black band to keep her hair in place during the game. There is no stiffening product in her hair. Her eyes are light blue, lips are a medium pink and she does not have nail polish. Her skin tone is light tan.Barbie is dressed for action in her soccer outfit. The top is black, pink and white with a 59 printed on the front (perhaps an homage to the year Barbie was first released?) Her shorts are black with 59 printed on them as well. The details of the shirt are printed on and it closes in the back with hook and loop. The shorts have an elastic waist for pull on/off. The material of both are slightly stretchy. Barbie has yellow knee socks with white and pink accents. Her shoes are white with pink accents.Barbie with comes white plastic shin guards and an appropriately sized soccer ball.While the doll is posed nicely in the box, I like to play with my dolls so I've removed her to have fun posing her and changing her look up. I'm hoping for more great dolls in this line in the future and am enjoying the three latest sports dolls in the meantime.

A poseable doll enables a bit more realistic play for my granddaughters who love ‘football’.

Beautiful face mold with open mouth smile and gorgeous light brown skin tone. There is no end to the posing possibilities from this girl. Her little pink cleated soccer shoes are adorable! She has thick straight black hair and is easily given any hairstyle. I braided mine then placed her head in boiling water (shortly so the glue holding her hair in her head wouldn’t soften from the heat). No rubber bands needed. She may need rubber bands if she is played with by children, though. Mine are only for displaying in my office. She comes in a cute soccer outfit with shin guards under her socks, soccer cleats, and a cute soccer ball. The number on her jersey represents the year Barbie was born(created by Mattel and Ruth Handler). A great buy!!

I used this as a rebody for another doll. The skin tone matched pretty close. Great movement and gives her so much more personality. Best body Mattel makes. She was pretty stiff out the box but after stretching her out a bit. It’s fine. 9/10 would recommend.

(Wife): For those of you wondering: we are Caucasians. In fact, our daughter is blonde, kinda like Barbie. She still loves this doll (the tan / darker-complexioned Made to Move soccer player) and plays with it often.If you are wondering if this is an African-American doll, I'd be hard-pressed to say yes. Her hair is straight and something like 99% cacao dark chocolate brown (not black in our case); and her complexion is tan, so on the light side for AA. But, she reminds me of Indian Subcontinent friends I've had, and maybe a darker-complexioned Latina or possibly of more progressive Arab or related heritage. Or maybe biracial / multiracial. Whatever the case, she's pretty.Our daughter has a collection of somewhat diverse dolls: Caucasian, Asian, of ambiguous race / ethnicity.... she loves them all. Her latest thing has been getting them to hold hands and form a friendship chain. I love it. We live in a diverse area. She thought of this on her own. If your kid's like ours, then they might be fine with being given some dolls that look a little different than they themselves do. We still have a blonde Barbie Made to Move for our daughter to identify with. I'd say that the combination / diversity -- including one appropriate for our daughter to identify with -- seems to be working for us. = )Our daughter loves playing soccer with this doll. She couldn't wait to get the soccer ball out of the packaging. She likes the sock / shinguard / cleat accessories, too, and has me dress the doll in them most of the time. (Unfortunately, they do fall off. She's three, so I supervise her while we play, and she has me put the accessories back on. For actual play, using just the cleats is imho probably a safer bet.)The cleats are interesting: a rubbery-type material, with imprinted grass stains on one side. Very cute. I would not use the shin guards without the socks, even though they can fall off, because I'd be concerned about the shin guards leaving marks on the legs.I think that yes, ours is probably a "gluehead", I hate to say. I can squeeze the head like old-school "airhead" Barbies, but I do hear some cracking, which has me concerned. I'd honestly just leave the hair alone. Made to Move-style Barbies imho are not the best for styling, anyway, as the arms can damage most styling that you could do.This doll has a standard Made to Move body, possibly version 2.0, because the hands on this one are of a softer / flexible material, like the head. As is typical with Made to Move Barbies, she is well-articulated; can take flat shoes or high heels (or one of each); and likely fits into a lot of the regular clothes (more or less).Note: This doll may have a more complex head-neck attachment than the old-school nub, and the attachment assembly may be rigid. Please check and / or teach your kids about this if they like to remove Barbie's head, as the head may be removable, just more carefully, and using a particular method that you may find online. The more complex attachments can sometimes be cut off, as long as you leave the nub. But, please try to find out first, and be careful. Hopefully the hair will stay on well enough that you won't need a re-root right away. So far so good for us.Also note: The soccer ball is actually fairly hard. This is probably a good thing, given that kids may accidentally step on it sometimes.And: It's actually a little challenging to move her legs / body and play Barbie soccer at the same time. I find that I have to have one hand on the doll, and one hand manipulating the lower leg, if I use the articulation much at all. Also, interestingly, the articulation is looser in the right knee than the left in our particular doll. I don't know if this is intentional or not. We have had varying levels of stiff / loose joints in other Made to Move dolls. Overall, I love having the option of moving the legs at the knees and ankles, even though I don't actually move them that much while playing Barbie soccer with my daughter.Bottom line, this is a pretty nice doll. We like. And our daughter loves that you can play Barbie soccer with this doll. = )One final note: I would love to see Mattel sell different sport outfits and accessories, like goal nets -- clothes and accessories without the dolls -- for the Made to Move Barbie doll line, so that we could use these same dolls in different sports, without amassing a ton of dolls. Just my $0.02. But for now, I'll just be happy that after waiting about 25 years, Mattel is finally making the type of Barbie doll I wanted as a kid. ;)