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Ever since I caught the Rainbow High bug last autumn, I’ve been stockpiling Rainbow High dolls. I’ve got so many Rainbow High dolls at the moment that I’ve fallen behind in blogging about them. Gabriella Icely is from Series 3. I bought her at the end of last year, when Series 4 had already been released. Now that Series 5 dolls were released earlier this year, I suppose it’s time to give Gabriella her time in the Dollsville USA spotlight.
Like all Series 3 dolls, Gabriella comes with a second outfit and a second pair of shoes (Series 5 has been criticized for no longer including the second outfit, opting instead more more plastic accessories such as hangers and the same plastic sewing machine that came with the Jett Dawson deluxe set). Gabriella also came with the same stand, comb, and hangers as most if not all of the Rainbow High dolls.
I love the Rainbow High combs. This one came in handy to comb Gabriella’s hair which, surprisingly, didn’t have any glue in it. Excess glue to style hair has been an issue that has plagued many Rainbow High dolls, to the point that many collectors wash their dolls’ hair to get it out. Gabriella’s hair was very soft and easy to comb. This is her hair right out of the box with just a comb-through.
Gabriella Icely gives Wintertime realness. As her name suggests, her hair, makeup, and clothing are in tones of ice blue and silver for a super-frosty effect. And when I first saw Gabriella, I thought she was super-frosty too. She seemed a bit difficult when we first met her. I thought she was going to be one of the Mean Girls of Rainbow High, like the Devious Twins. But Gabriella mellowed out later on, like when she used her skills as a fashion technology major to help her roommates in the first season’s fashion show during Radiant Week. And it looks like love is in the air between Gabriella and Finn.
Her hair is made up of strands of icy blue mixed with streaks of snowy white. It’s secured by two plastic barrettes.
Her eye makeup is done in hues of icy blue and silver.
Gabriella’s second outfit features a sleeveless dress that’s shirred at the sides.
It’s paired with a faux snakeskin jacket and blue strappy sandals.
Gabriella’s faux snakeskin purse from the Rainbow High Mini Accessories Studio perfectly complements her second outfit.
The choker that comes with the second outfit spells “Rainbow.”
While Gabriella seemed to be a mean girl at first, she’s mellowed out over the course of the second and third seasons of the Rainbow High webisodes. So is Gabriella Icely the girl you love to hate, or the girl you hate to love? I like her!
This is Poppy Rowan. Winter Break Poppy Rowan, to be exact. I bought her nude off of eBay with the intention of customizing her to look like me. I have red hair, and I’m partial to red-headed fashion dolls because most of the fashion dolls of my childhood didn’t have red hair, so as an adult I’m trying to compensate for the lack of red-headed dolls when I was young. Since I started collecting Rainbow High dolls last month, I’ve seen doll collectors on YouTube who customized Rainbow High dolls to look like them. Since Rainbow High dolls have the vivid hair colors of the rainbow rather than natural hair colors, these doll customizers used two methods to change their dolls’ hair colors: dyeing, or re-rooting. I don’t have the experience or patience to re-root, so dyeing it is!
I chose Poppy for my mini-me because she has auburn eyebrows, freckles, and blue eyes – a perfect base for my Mini-Me.
Here she is from the back. Her hair is styled in two long sausage-curl pigtails, and, like all Rainbow High dolls, she has a lot of glue in her hair to keep the curls in place. So I rinsed her hair with hot water until the glue dissolved. You can use shampoo, but you don’t need to. Then I combed out all the tangles with a hairdresser’s fine-toothed rat-tail comb.
STEP ONE: COLOR
My goal for Poppy was to turn her bright orange tresses into a natural-looking auburn color. I watched a few videos on YouTube to learn how to color Rainbow High doll hair, and also to get an idea of which colors of dye I needed. I found a series of videos by Darling’s Dollhouse that I found extremely helpful for technique and color. Then I went to my nearest Michaels craft store to buy everything I needed. I bought Rit All-Purpose Dye in the colors Tan, to neutralize the orange, and Scarlet, to add red to Poppy’s hair. I also bought wooden dowels and a plastic organizer to use as a tub.
I filled the plastic organizer with hot tap water. I added the Tan Rit Dye to the water and swirled the dye with a wooden dowel. The Tan is light enough in color to change the bright orange hair without making it too dark. Then I swirled Poppy’s hair in the colored water for about two minutes. It didn’t look like her hair was taking any of the color, so I added more dye, a little at a time and then swirled the doll’s hair some more until her hair started taking the color. I eyeballed it, taking Poppy out of the water and putting her back in until I liked how it looked. I stopped when her hair looked like a strawberry-blonde/ light auburn. This is her hair while still wet. She looks like Lindsay Lohan.
I immediately rinsed the excess dye from Poppy’s hair with cold water and let her hair dry for a couple of hours before deciding whether to do a second dye job with the Scarlet dye. Her hair color looked a little lighter after drying so I did go ahead and color her hair with the Scarlet over the Tan. Unlike the Tan dye, the Scarlet dye took to the hair immediately so it was a very quick dip. Then I did another dip with Tan to tone down the fiery copper a little. Here is the finished result:
I thought it would be fun to give Poppy a tattoo, like me, so I used a leftover tattoo from the Monster High Create-a-Monster Design Lab.
STEP TWO: BANGS
I wanted my Rainbow High mini-me to have bangs like me, but Poppy doesn’t have bangs. YouTube to the rescue again. This tutorial by Quinsdolls was just what I needed. The one thing I did differently was, after brushing the hair down in front of her face to make the bangs and securing it with a rubber band, I took the hair from the back out from under the rubber band so there wouldn’t be a line across her hair from the rubber band after the hair was boil-permed. The one problem with Winter Break Poppy is that her hair was rooted for pigtails. It was full when parted in the center from the back of the head, but when I combed hair down in front of her face for bangs, it exposed the patchy rooting on the top of her head. I saved the hair that I cut off when I made the bangs, in case I feel ambitious later and decide to re-root the patchy spots, but for now I’ll stop here.
The finished result: kinda punky, kinda funky.
Sweater and leggings by Mags Rocking Style on Etsy. Shoes from the Rainbow High Mini Accessories Studio.
After reviewing Lila Yamamoto, my first Rainbow High doll, I bought more of them. A lot more. I picked up a few more at Target, and I’ve got a few packages coming from Amazon (please don’t judge me!). When I went back to Target to pick out my second Rainbow High doll, I saw the Ainsley Slater Trunk Show. I loved her goth vibe, and the fact that she came with not one but three extra outfits! She was also on sale for $44.99 down from $49.99. So I bought it. I didn’t notice until I got her home that her box says Shadow High. Wait, what?
Why does Ainsley’s box say Shadow High when her stand and all of her accessories have Rainbow High on them? I thought she was a Rainbow High doll because her skin tone is a natural one, not the grey, pure white, or pure black skin tones of Shadow High dolls. Since I’m new to the Rainbow High universe, I’m still getting acquainted with the characters and their backstories. So I started watching the Rainbow High webisodes on YouTube. That’s where I discovered that, in Season 3 episode 6, during the intense competition of the Rainbow Vision song contest, Ainsley drops the bombshell that she’s transferring schools. It’s like the Ainsley doll was too far into the production stages to change the accessories by the time this episode aired but MGA was able to change the box before the doll was released.
Image courtesy of MGA Entertainment Image courtesy of MGA Entertainment
The Ainsley Slater Trunk Show special edition doll comes with three tops, two skirts, one dress, two jackets, one belt, one pair of pants, four pairs of shoes, one purse, two bracelets, four hangers, one comb, and one doll stand. Despite the name of this edition, however, it does not come with a trunk. It also doesn’t come with earrings, even though Ainsley’s ears have holes for them.
I love how Ainsley is posed in her box as if to say “Here I am!”
All of Ainsley’s accessories say Rainbow High.
The Ainsley Slater Trunk Show doll debuted at the Rainbow High x Shadow High Pop-up Shop in L.A. in late May and officially launched in retail stores on June 1st. It retailed for $60 when it first debuted. I’m glad I didn’t pay that much for her, because if I did I would be even more p.o.’d about all of the black marks on my doll. Marks that won’t come off, I should add. The first one is on her face. There are also a few stray bits of glitter on the right side of her nose that was used on the pearlescent finish on her face. It makes her look like she has blackheads (she is a teenager, after all). There is also some mottling of the pearlescent finish above her left eyebrow. I’m not usually the type of doll collector that compares faces before buying a doll, but I guess I have to check for marks on Rainbow High dolls. Apparently a lot of Rainbow High collectors have this problem with their dolls.
However, marks on the face were not the only problems I had with this doll. There were black marks all over her body, caused by the unlined black outfit she came in. And now I’m nervous because the Shadow High Storm Twins will be arriving from Amazon any day now.
Another issue I had with Ainsley that is common with Rainbow High dolls is that her hair had so much styling gel in it that it was super-crunchy. I’ve never washed and styled a doll’s hair before, but I decided to try it with Ansley. I took all the ties out and washed her hair with warm water and a little shampoo, and let it air-dry.
After her hair dried I restyled her high ponytail and wrapped two sections of hair around it, securing them underneath the ponytail with another rubber band. I left a long tendril one either side of her face. Now her ponytail looks like Ainsley’s hair in the webisodes (and the artwork on the box), where her ponytail is secured by a section of her hair. I still haven’t figured out a solution to that pesky flyaway doll-hair problem, though. And dang, that black mark next to her eyebrow is still bothering me!
In the webisodes, Ainsley’s hair is mostly purple. The Ainsley doll has black hair with indigo strands that are more visible in the right lighting.
Ainsley wears bright makeup colors to brighten up her black wardrobe. She has rainbow-colored eyeshadow and rose-pink lipstick. But in true goth/emo form, she wears black nail polish.
I love the artwork on the back of the box that illustrates the four outfits Ainsley comes with. They look kind of retro and remind me of those big-eyed-kids paintings by Margaret Keane. The outfit she comes in is called “Better with Boots.” It’s her signature outfit that she wears most of the time in the webisodes.
“Better with Boots” features a black cropped jacket with one sleeve paired with a black corset-laced miniskirt accentuated with a removable belt with letters that spell out the word “RAINBOW.” Her black combat boots have clear spikes on them. Ainsley seems kind of goth for a Rainbow High student. No wonder she’s transferring to Shadow High.
Ansley’s second outfit is called “Jewelry Completes the Look.”
The outfit consists of a fitted cropped pleather mock turtleneck top and a matte black skirt with white trim and a silver fastener.
The pleather motorcycle bustier is a separate piece.
She wears black plastic knee boots with a “silver” harness with alternating upside-down and right-side up letters “R” all over it and a printed zipper down the inside.
The soles of the boots have the colors of the rainbow on them. I think Ainsley must have an ironic sense of humor, because the only pop of color in her mostly-black wardrobe is on the bottom of her shoes, where it remains largely unseen.
This is the outfit Ainsley wore when she stunned the audience at Rainbow Vision with her announcement that she’s changing schools.
“I’m leaving Rainbow High for Shadow High and we’re gonna win Rainbow Vision.”
Ainsley’s third outfit is called “The Bag for Any Occasion.”
“The Bag for Any Occasion” consists of a black tube top with buckled shoulder straps, and long black pleather pants.
The black pleather low-rise pants have corseted gussets on the side. They remind me of Jim Morrison from The Doors. Is Ainsley the Lizard Queen?
The outfit comes with a black quilted cross-body bag, hence the name of the ensemble.
The bag has a real zipper that opens and closes. It has a clasp that also opens and closes. The word “Rainbow” is embroidered in gold tinsel.
Her shoes are stiletto slides with the letters “R” and “H” for heels. Ainsley is going to have to buy a new purse and shoes when she gets to Shadow High.
The fourth and last outfit is called “Leather for Any Weather.”
It has a black minidress with a clear plastic double-buckled halter, and purple lace at the hem.
The dark purple boots feature a harness-and-medallion design.
The best part of “Leather for Any Weather” has to be the graffiti motorcycle jacket.
It has real but non-functional zippers. The buckled belt might fasten but it’s so tiny that I left it open.
So out of the four outfits Ainsley comes with, and the 400 fashion combinations that MGA advertised on the box (and no, I didn’t try them all), my favorite look on Ainsley is a combination of the top from Jewelry Completes the Look and the pants from The Bag for Any Occasion. They’re made from the same material, and they look so cool together. Ainsley is giving me Emma Peel vibes. The shoes I paired with this outfit, however, are not from Ainsley’s Trunk Show. They’re the Rainbow Sparkle Ankle Boots from the Rainbow High Mini Accessories Studio. They’re very Stephen Sprouse.
The jacket from Leather for Any Weather goes well with the boots. Ainsley looks like she belongs in Greenwich Village circa 1985.
Ainsley is only my second Rainbow High doll, and I’ve noticed some of the same issues that plague other Rainbow High collectors. I was disappointed by the quality issues of the black marks on the dolls, but I won’t let it dampen my enthusiasm for Rainbow High dolls just yet. Ainsley is very pretty but her original hairstyle was a little awkward. The excessive amount of hair gel could have been an issue but it was easy to fix and I love how her hair looks now. I’m still enjoying the quality of articulation of the dolls and their highly detailed clothes and accessories. The fashions Ainsley came with are fierce. They’re all black and goth. I had so much fun mixing and matching them.
Will Rainbow High win Rainbow Vision for the eighth year in a row, or will Shadow High win? Personally, I have a theory. Have you noticed during Season 3 that every time we see Seoul Select’s contestants, the Royal Three, up on stage to perform, the story cuts away to other characters? We haven’t yet heard their song. I think we’ll hear it in the final because – dare I say it – I think Seoul Select will win. My theory is that both Rainbow High and Shadow High will both be disqualified due to cheating from the two sets of twins everybody loves to hate: the Devious Twins from Rainbow High, and the Storm Twins from Shadow High. Crazy, I know! I look forward to more episodes to see who will win Rainbow Vision.
As if I haven’t already spent enough money on Rainbow High dolls since becoming a convert about a month ago, MGA Entertainment has introduced something else to separate me from my money. The Rainbow High Mini Accessories Studio surprise boxes have arrived at my local Target and Walmart stores. The Mini Accessories Studio is a collection of fashion-doll shoes and purses. There are twenty-seven different pairs of shoes or handbags, many of them styled for specific Rainbow High characters. The color of the box matches the color of the shoes or purse. However, that doesn’t mean you’ll know which item you’ll get. There are between one to four different purses or shoes for each box color, but you won’t know which one you’ll get until you open it. The concept is identical to MGA’s LOL Surprise dolls, which is the same concept behind the Japanese “blind boxes” that have been popular with adult designer-toy collectors for many years.
There are two versions of the Mini Studio Accessories cases of shoes and purses, Case A and Case B. Apparently only Case B has all twenty-seven different options in it. You can identify Case B as having the black Shadow High boxes. When I went to Walmart to look for the Mini Accessories Studio boxes, I was greeted with a fresh Case B of shoes. Yay! I took out my iPhone and checked the Instagram account of babydolldolls. She made a guide, with graphics, of the Mini Accessories Studio cases indicating the location in the case of each style of shoe or purse. This was invaluable, and it allowed me to locate the shoes I wanted. And she as spot on, with one exception (but more on that later). I bought eight boxes of shoes. The boxes are styled to look like trunks, as in fashion trunk-shows. I didn’t notice until I got home that the boxes I bought at Walmart are the international versions. It features three languages on the box: English, French, and German.
A box of shoes I bought earlier at Target is the U.S. version and only has the English language on the box.
Here are the box tops side-by-side.
The international boxes also have a brochure taped to the bottom with product information in multiple languages. The letters “CE” indicate that this product complies with the European Union Toy Safety Directive of 2009. Neat!
One side of the box indicates that these surprise boxes are Series 1, which suggests that there will be a Series 2.
The other side lets you know some of the contents of the box.
The certificate of authenticity, the receipt, and the receipt envelope are taped inside the lid of the box in a small plastic bag.
The Certificate of G.L.A.M. (or Certificat de G.L.A.M.) indicates that these shoes are from the Fall 2022 collection. Does this mean there will be a spring collection? I’d better start saving my money now!
I love how detailed the receipt is. I tried scanning the QR code to see if it would bring up a website. It does. Just click on the photo below to see the larger image, and scan the QR code. It takes you to the official Rainbow High website.
“Your receipt, Madame. Thank you for shopping with us.”
Inside the “trunk” is a drawer-like box that contains a shoebox.
The side of the box shows which shoes are inside.
The shoebox holds two surprises – well, three if you count the shoes. The first surprise is that the shoes are wrapped in tissue paper, like real shoes in a shoebox when you first buy them. The paper is sealed with a sticker that emulates a wax seal. The paper also matches the color of the box. The designs printed on the colored paper is different for each colored box.
The second surprise is a dust bag to store the shoes in.
Each box of shoes and purses comes with a collector’s guide. One side features the shoes, with the purses on the reverse. I’ll just show the shoes in this review and save the purse collectors’ guide for a separate review.
The first pair of shoes I got were Poppy Rowan’s thigh-high boots. One down, seven to go.
1. Poppy Rowan – Monarch butterfly boots.
2. Sunny Madison – kawaii graffiti boots. They’re like Doc Martens.
These shoes were the one exception to babydolldolls finder’s guide to the shoes. I intended to get Sunny Madison’s pastel platform sneakers and took the yellow box that was on the top row, in the center front, as per the finder’s guide. When I opened the box at home, however, I discovered that I got the kawaii graffiti boots. But I’m not mad. These boots are cooler than I thought they were. The illustration in the collector’s guide doesn’t have the graffiti on it and shows plain white boots. I actually like these more than the pastel rainbow sneakers. A happy accident! In my rush to get the boxes I wanted while I was in Walmart, I didn’t see babydolldolls’s comment on her post that explained that, while the four cases she bought all had the pastel platform sneakers in the same spot, others had the same issue I had. But her guide was super helpful. Thank you babydolldolls.
5. Jade Hunter – buckled combat boots. They’re loosely based on the Versace Medusa harness boots. I love how MGAEntertainment looks to designer fashion houses for inspiration.
8. Rainbow High – rainbow-sparkle slouchy knee boots.
I have bought an awful lot of tiny doll shoes and purses in the past couple of weeks, and I’m probably not done yet! At ten dollars each, I could have bought myself a purse or a couple of pairs of shoes with the money I’ve spent. The ten-dollar price point for the Mini Accessories Studio items is a bone of contention for some collectors. For little more than twice the price, collectors can buy a Rainbow High doll, including the shoes. While ten dollars may seem a bit steep for a pair of doll shoes, I’m not mad at it. MGA could have put the mini accessories in carded plastic bags and just hung them on a peg at Target or Walmart. Instead, they come in an aesthetically pleasing presentation box, wrapped in tissue, and placed in a mini shoe box, accompanied by a real cloth drawstring dust bag. As they say, presentation is everything. I had a lot of fun opening each box. It feels like I’m buying designer shoes in an exclusive boutique, just like Lila below.
Have you bought any of the Mini Accessories Studio shoes or purses? What do you think of them? Let us know in the comments.
With Halloween right around the corner, I thought now would be the perfect time to add Shadow High Costume Ball Demi Batista to my ever-growing Rainbow High Collection. The Costume Ball collection consists of six dolls, three from Rainbow High and three from Shadow High. They are Walmart exclusives. The Costume Ball is a sub-plot of the Rainbow Vision plot that has been driving Season Three of the Rainbow High webisodes on YouTube. Demi came with an invitation to the Costume Ball – well, an invitation to watch the Costume Ball episode. Just scan the QR code.
Rainbow High vs. Shadow High. Photo courtesy of MGA Entertainment.
Demi’s focus at Shadow High is film. Her costume, a vampire, reflects her love of old black-and-white vampire movies. Even her name, Demi Batista, is a play on words that can be loosely translated to mean half-bat.
Here’s Demi unboxed in all her gothy glory.
The Costume Ball dolls are Special Editions, which means they cost the same as other Rainbow High dolls but don’t come with a second outfit! Demi does come with a stand and a comb like other Rainbow/Shadow High dolls. They’re dark purple with purple glitter. Both the stand and the comb feature the Shadow High logo. I do love the combs that come with the dolls.
Demi’s hair is jet black mixed with streaks of light and dark purple. Her hair is surprisingly free of the gel or glue that makes the hair of so many Rainbow High dolls super-crunchy and difficult to manage.
I did need to trim her bangs a little. Here she is before the trim.
Here she is after.
Demi’s long pony tails are held in place with black fabric bat-wing bows with the initials for Shadow High.
Demi’s skin tone is pale, but it’s not pure white or grey like other Shadow High dolls. Her exaggerated vampire eye makeup features shades of black, white, and grey. Her long rooted upper lashes are white. Her irises feature subtle shades of purple and blue, and she has starbursts for pupils. Her eyebrows resemble microblading and feature purple shading on the inner edges. She has a light blush on her cheeks. Her lips are medium purple over salmon pink. It looks like she put one lipstick on top of another. It’s pretty.
The details on Demi’s hands are incredible. She wears two molded rings on her right hand – a large silver bat ring and a silver ring with a black painted “stone,” like an onyx. She has long fingernails, like talons, with a dark purple manicure flecked with silver.
More “onyx” rings on her left hand. I love that she’s wearing a thumb ring.
Demi wears a purple damask jumper dress over a white peasant blouse with a sweetheart neckline, full sleeves and ruffled cuffs. The dress is accentuated with a separate black belt featuring a buckle with the initials for Shadow High. The black cape and the white ruffled collar are also separates.
The cape has a metal non-working zipper with a metal zipper pull. The outside of the cape is made of cotton velvet.
The lining of the cape features a printed silver iridescent scroll-and-bat design.
Demi’s thigh-high boots are made of black vinyl. The tops of the boots are ruffled.
The trompe l’oeil zippers are printed onto the boots. I haven’t attempted to remove her boots because I’m afraid I won’t be able to get them back on.
Here’s a look at her dress and blouse once the cape and collar have been removed. She’s really sweet, actually.
When I first saw the photos of Demi online, I wasn’t sure about her. I was a little put off by her exaggerated eye makeup. But I get it, she’s dressed as a vampire and she did her eye makeup as part of her costume. Seeing her in person, I think she’s really cute. Compared to the other Costume Ball dolls, I feel that Demi was the most impressive in terms of the execution of her concept. Her outfit is amazing, and I’m impressed by the details in her clothing, her accessories, and her hands. I really like her. She would look amazing displayed with the Shadow High Storm Twins, which I have also purchased and will feature in an upcoming review.
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