Minikane Dolls vs Lille Love Dolls

While looking for Minikane dolls, I came across Lille Love dolls and thought how similar they looked. They're both 34cm, made in Spain and come in a variety of ethnicities, but how similar actually are they to Minikane dolls?

It turns out, they're not all that similar at all. Yes, they're the same height and they have similar sized heads, but their bodies are completely different shapes. The Lille Love doll has a very slim body while the Minikane is chunky. The Minikane's body looks like a chubby baby type of body while the Lille Love doll has a slimmer more child-like body. The difference doesn't look very big when looking at the photo of the two dolls from behind, but it's quite significant in the front view. This means that the two dolls can't share clothes because the Minikane clothing is all too wide and baggy on the Lille Love doll.

My Minikane doll in the picture doesn't have hair but I do have a Minikane doll with hair. Her hair is smooth and soft. The Lille Love doll's hair is sticky, as if it maybe has some kind of product in it to keep it in place. It doesn't feel very nice and the hair is rougher and more wiry looking than the Minikane's hair. The hair isn't very well cut either. I found a very long strand and you can see from the back view that it's a bit choppy with some longer bits.

The Minikane dolls with hair are roughly the same price as the Lille Love doll. The Minikane dolls without hair like the one in the photo are usually a bit cheaper, but the Minikane dolls come without clothing (occasionally you get one that comes with underwear). The Lille Love doll comes dressed in a top and trousers, and also comes with a birth certificate and passport, making it better value compared to the Minikane doll. Because of the Minikane's chubby body shape, it can be quite hard to find clothes to fit if it's not specially made Minikane clothing. The official Minikane clothing can be very expensive. I tried some clothes made for 12 inch dolls on the Lille Love doll (he is actually closer to 13 inches tall) and the fit was not too bad, so you'll probably have more choice when it comes to buying clothes for the Lille Love doll.

The Lille Love doll came packaged in a reusable drawstring bag and was wrapped in a paper bag inside, which I very much appreciated. It's nice to have a doll that you can just unwrap and give to a child to play with rather than needing scissors or even a screwdriver to try and pry it out of its excessive packaging. Minikane dolls come in minimal packaging too. I've had two come in a reusable Minikane printed tote bag, I think another two came in no packaging at all, and my final two came in plastic bags. I prefer the reusable or no packaging to plastic bags.

Both dolls are quite similar when it comes to quality. The Minikane doll had a few flaws - a tiny bubble in the vinyl on his head, a few rougher patches and what looks like it might be a a splodge of paint where it's not supposed to be. The Lille Love doll had some small issues with the vinyl, the hair wasn't great as I already mentioned, and if you read my full review on the doll, you'll see that the clothing was really quite poor quality. Despite these flaws, I would still say that the dolls are good quality. They're a nice solid vinyl. Some cheaper dolls have quite thin vinyl arms and legs and plastic bodies. These dolls are both fully vinyl. Both of them have joints that move easily, although I thought the Lille Love doll's legs looked a bit strange when you moved them into a sitting position. You can't really see this on the photo and it's quite hard to explain, but in certain positions you can see the flat part of the leg that should be held against the body. It just looked a bit odd. The Minikane didn't have this problem.

Overall, they're both very nice dolls. Personally, I prefer the faces on the Minikane dolls and I think their proportions look a bit more balanced. The Lille Love dolls are perfectly nice dolls though, but apart from being the same height they're not in any way a substitute for the Minikane dolls. If you have both, you'll need separate clothing for both.