I know I said a couple of reviews ago I'd stop including pics of the boxes, but this one was different and neat, so I thought I'd show it: the one on top if the 2-in-1 outfit box. The one below is a JLY outfit box, for size comparison. The box for this outfit is nearly twice the size oft he box for the other outfits AG sells. In hindsight, I should have seen this coming, because of the hockey stick in there. But still, there it is.
The box opens differently, too, with a lid that is completely removable (placed on top of a box of DVRs so you can see it's not attached to the box). You can also see how the stuff was arranged inside of the box, and the hockey stick taking up most of the space inside of it. For being new and different and giving me a thrill for a few minutes, I give this box an
A.
The stick. It's all plastic, including the "tape", which is just molded plastic painted a different color. As noted above, the hockey is curved so that it's meant for a leftie, which works for me because I gave it to Liz, who is a leftie. It's not a bad piece. Not the most highly detailed and the scale strikes me as a little off (the blade looks like, if it were scaled to human-size, it'd be too short, and the shaft looks too thin), but it's cute for what it is.
B-The puck, which is about the size of a nickel (included for comparison: a nickel). It has "AG" in the star on the top, and is a plastic disc about the size of three nickels stacked together (not included for comparison: three nickels stacked together). This is another thing that strikes me as a little smaller in scale than a human-sized one would be, but I'll admit I don't know much about youth hockey leagues, and maybe their pucks are smaller. I really didn't expect much more from a puck than a plastic disc, so I wasn't disappointed, just wasn't terribly impressed, either.
C+The jersey, and allow me to rant about my disappointment for a moment here, if I may. I somehow got the impression that the jersey would be a loose fit, because jerseys are sized big (you know, so you can put padding underneath them). I admit this is my bad here, because every pic of Mia on the AG site wearing the jersey shows that it's fitted, and even the pic in the review above of Mia wearing the jersey shows that it's fitted, but hope springs eternal, I guess, but I think we all can tell where this is leading: I got the outfit partially because I wanted the hockey stuff for Liz, a PM AGT who already has sizing issues as a result of being slightly overstuffed. It took a lot of grunting and struggling to get the jersey on her, and as you'll see in the pictures at the end, the result is it looks horrible and not very jersey-like on her.
But on to a more objective note. Here's the detail of the logo on the jersey, which says "STARS", and has the American Girl logo below it. The material feels similar to the material used for real jerseys, and I have to admit a slight bias for the color scheme: white, light blue, and navy blue are the colors of the Maine Black Bears, the college hockey team that I follow. I ultimately plan to find a small sew-on patch of the UMaine logo and sew it over the logo on the jersey, but I like their attempt at a team logo here, but no so much the inclusion of the AG logo (when did AG decide they have to put their logo on everything, anyway?).
And the detail of the sleeve, which includes a player number (like real professional jerseys) and the team colors.
Here is an example of what I mean. If this were a professional jersey
it'd be sized properly it'd also have a number and the player's name on the back, but because it's not, it's a doll jersey, we have velcro on the back instead:
Not that I'm at all surprised, though. I am still disappointed by the fit, though. Even if the fact that my doll were PM weren't an issue, jerseys just shouldn't be so tightly fitting. I wouldn't mind if it fit a little closer on Liz if it were still loose on Mattel dolls, including Mia, but this is just not the case. It's the little things that get to you, ya know?
C- (But I admit it would have gotten lower if not for the colors.)
So let's move on now to things I didn't have a huge bias toward going in: the rest of it!
The hat. It took me a while and many trips consulting with pics of Mia to figure out how, exactly, it's supposed to be put on. It's a seriously weird design, like it's not a beret, but it's not a cloche, and it's really, really hard to figure out how to make it not look stupid. And the doll I put it on had a totally different hairstyle and face mold from Mia so of course it was never going to look like the picture of Mia, but ANYway, the hat. It feels sort of fleecy and soft. And it's pink. Yeah.
The underside of the hat. I'm never fond of AG hats, anyway, but once I finally figured it out, it looked pretty cute, and for that, I give it a
B-.
The sweater, which is actually my favorite part of this outfit. Fair Isle sweaters are actually very popular up here in Maine, so I see them a lot, and the design is actually very similar to what you'd see an a people-sized one, and I love the color scheme on it.
Detail of the design on the sweater. It appears to be woven, not dyed in, and the sweater itself feels very soft without making me itch. Sweater-like but without sweater materials.
The button on the sleeve, which matches the color of the sweater very well, and is very small and unobtrusive, so if you decide not to put the mittens on, no one's going to remark on the weird random buttons on the sleeves. All in all, an
A for the sweater.
The mittens. I expected these to be hard to pull on, but actually they went on fairly easily, I just had to spin them a bit to get the thumbs in the right places. Then I worried that there would be a gap between the sweater sleeves and the tops of the mittens, since that seemed like the kind of thing that'd never look catalog-perfect in person, but no, they actually don't have much or any gap at all up there. In all, I didn't have high hopes for these and was pleasantly surprised, except for in one area...
The loops at the top, which I came to discover are actually an extension of the elastic at the top of the mittens. So when I pulled it very gently to loop it around the buttons, guess what happened? The tops of the mittens started to cinch and the loop doubled in size! And when I pulled the tops of the mittens to try to even out the elastic ratio again, it didn't quite work. So I suggest being very, very, extremely, don't-breathe-while-doing-it careful when attaching these to the sweater.
B+The legwarmers. Meh. Maybe they're designed around the skates they made for Mia, but since I have neither Mia nor her skates and used a different pair of shoes, they were a pain to navigate and of course didn't look anything like the AG catalog images showed (and not just because I positioned the pom-poms differently). The bows are actually elastic, and the knots aren't sewn, so be careful not to tug at the pom-poms too much or you'll untie them.
C-The skirt, which would be my second-favorite part of the outfit! I love the darker color of the denim on it.
It has pockets! Albiet quite shallow ones.
It has belt loops!
It has a strip of velcro that's too short so the skirt's sort of hard to get on! Which was my only major gripe about it, really. Once it's on, it's very cute.
A-Liz with the hockey parts, so you can see just how tight the jersey is on her PM body. (I didn't bother posing her. Sorry.)
Rose wearing the rest of it.
So my overall grade would be
C+. You certainly get a lot of bang for your buck, but for the $34 price tag, I'd really expect some better quality control here.
ETA: For those wondering, yes, the outfit
does come with a hanger (and yes, just the one, despite there being two shirts). I didn't bother getting a pic of it since we've all seen AG hangers before and I don't personally use them. I know, I take pics of the boxes, but not the hangers. I'm weird.
