Doll Review: Bibi Doll

The Bibi doll is made by The Magic Toy Shop and costs £16.99. They are available from the Magic Toy Shop website and are also sold at places like Amazon and eBay. There are lots of different sized baby dolls in the range, including newborn and reborn type dolls, twin dolls, dolls for younger children and there is also a fashion doll similar in style to the American Girl and Our Generation dolls. There are lots of nice looking outfits available for all the dolls too.

This doll was very highly rated on the Magic Toy Shop website, but he is actually one of the poorest quality dolls in my collection. He is a soft-bodied doll and his body is very soft. This makes it nice and cuddly feeling, but it's very hard to pose the doll. His arms and legs just flop and it's hard to get him into a sitting position without any back support. The pocket on the front is for a noise box that makes baby sounds.

You can also see in the photo below that the doll's limbs are mostly stuffed. He only really has vinyl hands and feet. Actually, I don't think it's vinyl. The limbs seem to be made from a hard plastic.

His face isn't the prettiest of doll faces. My doll looks a bit odd because he has lost a set of eyelashes. The eyelashes were just stuck on with a strip of glue like false eyelashes. I haven't used this doll much. My mum actually bought him to model baby hats on so he has barely been used, but somehow his eyelashes have managed to become unstuck. I did stick them back on the first time it happened, but I noticed they fell off again. Somewhere in my house there is a set of eyelashes! I haven't managed to find them yet. The eyes are fixed in these dolls and don't close when you lie them back.

The eyes of my doll weren't great. The shape lens on one of the eyes was a bit strange, like it was malformed. The eye also had a black speck in it which I'm sure wasn't supposed to be there. This is the eye that lost the eyelashes, and you can still see bits of glue around the eyelid. I do quite like the painted on eyebrows on this doll.

One of the things that makes the Bibi dolls look really nice is the clothing. All the dolls come with really cute outfits that look like real baby clothes. The outfit looks quite substantial too. There is a romper and matching hat as well as a jacket. Some much more expensive dolls don't come with any clothing at all and others come with only a very skimpy outfit like a vest and a nappy. This doll doesn't come with a nappy and apart from the dummy, he doesn't come with any other accessories. I really like the dummy this doll comes with. I like the little heart-shaped cut outs it has.

The clothes are not great quality, which I think is to be expected. The cost of this doll and the outfit is around what you would expect to pay for a single outfit for another doll.

The jacket is made from a strange crinkly fabric, almost like a plastic bag. The inside looks like interfacing rather than a lining fabric. The jacket has no fasteners either, no zip or snaps or velcro. You can see on the bottom left hand side of the jacket, it's very poorly made and the seams haven't even been trimmed.

All dolls that don't have full vinyl limbs have this problem where when they wear anything short sleeved or sleeveless, the body fabric shows, which can look a bit odd. It's particularly bad for this doll. Because so much of his arms and legs are made from fabric, he can't really wear shorts or t.shirts. Some dolls like the Our Generation doll and Baby Annabell try to get around this by using a fabric for the body that matches the skin colour, but this doll's body fabric is a sort of off-white coloured fabric. It's also quite a thin fabric. Other dolls have much more hard wearing looking body fabrics.

Here he is compared to Baby Born, who is 43cm. The Bibi doll is 50cm, so quite a bit larger. There are smaller dolls in the Bibi doll range. They have a more expensive 'reborn' doll who is the same size as Baby Born. As you can imagine, being much larger, the Bibi doll can't fit into any of the clothing made for Baby Born. Being 50cm, the Bibi dolls should be able to fit into some newborn clothing, although his feet are weirdly short but chubby, so I think you might struggle to find shoes and socks to fit him.

The reviews on this doll were all extremely positive and almost everyone seemed very happy with the doll. I do think it's a good doll for a child playing with at grandma's or for very young children who might break a more expensive doll, but compared to other dolls out there, it's quite poor. I think in the photo above, even just from the picture you can tell that Baby Born is a much better quality doll, despite the fact that my Baby Born is at least 25 years old. I can't imagine the Bibi doll would last 25 years.

Comparing the Bibi doll to say, Baby Annabell, Annabell is about three times the price, but so much better quality. Annabell's body is made so that the noise box and batteries are hidden inside, while the Bibi doll's just sit in a pocket sewn onto the doll's front. The Bibi doll's eyelashes are just glued on, while Annabell's appear to be part of her eyelids. I've never owned a doll with the sleepy eyes that ever lost eyelashes.

The stuffing in Annabell's body is much firmer. Annabell isn't the greatest at sitting up on her own, but she does a better job than the Bibi doll. Her limbs are also made from vinyl that feels soft to the touch. The Bibi doll's limbs are made of hard plastic. Annabell's arms and legs start from pretty much the shoulder and hip too, giving her full vinyl limbs. As already mentioned, the fabric her body is made from tones in with her skin colour, so it's not so noticeable. I would also say that Annabell's clothing is much better quality than the Bibi doll's clothing.

Not everyone can afford a Baby Annabell or Baby Born though so despite my negative comments, I do think the Bibi dolls are nice dolls to have. They are affordable and they come with a substantial outfit. There are other cute outfits ranging from £10.99 to £16.99 for the dolls, which is also quite affordable compared to dolls clothes from Zapf or Minikane. There is also the option of being able to dress them in real baby clothes, which you can often pick up extremely cheaply from car boot sales or charity shops. They're just not amazing quality, but I don't think you can expect that when you're paying £16.99 for a large doll and an outfit.

If you need a doll that's only going to be played with occasionally, like at Grandma's house, or to give to a child that's maybe not all that interested in dolls, I think the Bibi doll would be great for that.