Makena Doll

[uninoodle]

Makena Williams has a passion for fashion, and clothes are a way for her to connect with others. But when Makena experiences racial injustice in her own neighborhood, she decides to post more than her OOTD (outfit of the day)—she figures out how to use fashion to speak up about injustice. Her set includes:

An 18" Makena™ doll with brown eyes and medium-length dark-brown textured hair that comes in a twisted style
A pleated skirt with a pink-and-purple ombre print and a glittery elastic waistband
A black graphic tee with the saying “See me, hear me, know me”
Three golden butterfly barrettes
A pair of pink shoes
Makena’s See Me, Hear Me, Know Me book that includes ideas for addressing racism, real girl profiles, and reader questions

[bingandnelsonfan]

Makena 18" Doll - $110.00
(Her name is pronounced: muh-KAY-nuh)
She has a unique face mold and is the #35-tone -- the "new dark", matching TM #80, #85 and #91.

Makena comes with a zip-tie, good quality eyes and body fabric. 2017 body tag.
She has very round eye sockets, compared to other AG dolls and appears to be based on the Nanea face mold with changes in the cheek and nose area.
Her eyelids are the regular dark-tone eyelid color, so they are not a great match to her skin tone.







Makena's meet outfit was my least favorite of the World By Us trio. It's really quite low in quality and seems like something you'd expect from My Life as . . . or Our Generation. The T-shirt was fine, typical modern AG t-shirt. But the skirt was very thin with a small glitter-elastic band and just a plain surged edge at the bottom. The shoes are plastic with an elastic ankle band. Not the usual type of AG quality. Inside the box (under the book) was a little package holding three plastic butterfly hair clips. They are a gold color, flat plastic.









These WBU dolls have completely unique face paint, when it comes to AG dolls. Their eyebrows are thicker/fuller, and they have eye makeup (eyelashes) painted along the edge of their eye sockets. Each doll has her own unique pattern. Here is a photo of Makena that, I hope, shows the face paint well. (Excuse the different hair on the photo showing her eyes closed -- she was in the process of modelling wigs at the time.)





As far as picking out the doll, it was not too difficult. There were plenty in the Columbus AGP store to choose from (twenty boxes, at least), and she seems to be a very consistent face mold. Her face paint was also very similar from doll to doll. I think you'd be pretty safe ordering her online.









Makena's wig was a lot nicer in person than any of us had expected from the initial photos. It's dark brown (definitely not black) with two tones in there. The hair is textured, but not the most textured or coarse like the older Addy dolls. I think the hair in this wig would be similar to TM #80 or the CYO textured hair. The wig also fits very well on Addy-mold dolls.
Photos of Makena's wig above were hard to capture the color, since it's very dark but not actually black. The final photo above is probably pretty close, though the doll herself isn't quite right due to the odd lighting.

I haven't made up my mind on this face mold yet. It looks very young, and the particular doll we chose is very diminutive -- though I can't say if that's just this doll or all Makena dolls.
She looks very young, and her gaze seems to point up a bit. It's interesting when photographing her with other dolls.

As a final photo, here's a picture of the three WBU girls together!

[bingandnelsonfan]

Adding some more photos here with a few comments on the Makena face mold, in case this helps someone considering this doll!

Here are some photos showing the new Makena face mold with the other AG molds (except #4). I did include the #77 (modified Addy boy mold) but none of the other boys.

Another quick reminder that Makena is the newest dark skin tone. Sometimes, the camera has trouble staying true to the darker colors, so a few of these aren't quite exactly as seen in real life. I'm starting with the photo of Makena standing with a customized Nanea doll, because the color there is extremely good.





A lot of the dolls shown here have been customized, so I'm just putting a title above the photos that says which face mold is standing with Makena.

Classic Face Mold


Josefina Face Mold


Addy Face Mold


Jess Face Mold


Kaya Face Mold


Sonali Face Mold


Marie-Grace Face Mold


TM #77 (Modified Addy Boy Mold)


Nanea Face Mold


Joss Face Mold




And if you're into changing wigs on your dolls or customizing, here are a few notes about this new head mold. This new mold is definitely a modification of the basic Nanea mold (photos below show comparisons of the heads without wigs on), particularly from the top half of the nose up, which seems to be about the same. The Nanea doll modelling below was purchased in May of 2021, so this is the current version.

As far as the faces go, the major differences between Nanea and Makena is in the nose and cheek area. Nanea has very flat cheeks compared to Makena's rounded ones. Their chins are also a bit different from the side (where Makena has a small indentation in her chin sculpt versus Nanea's straight/flat one). The top of the ear is pretty similar, though the bottom half of Makena's ear is longer and thinner. From a wig-changing perspective, Makena has a great mold! While the size of her face is on the small side like Nanea (which means a very full wig or long bangs can overpower the face), the crown of her head is rounded out more and a bit larger. This makes putting wigs on Makena much easier, because Nanea's head (like Marie-Grace and Sonali) is very small and tends to float in many wigs -- making it hard to use larger wigs or any that have been removed from the larger molds like Josefina, Jess and Addy. Makena's head fit into every wig I tried, whether it was brand-new-never-glued or removed from a doll. On the same note, I was able to put Makena's removed wig onto an Addy-mold without the least trouble -- which is something you cannot do easily with a wig removed from a Nanea mold.