When exploring 18" dolls, it's sometimes hard to get a sense of what you are really getting until you have it in your hands which is why we continually do doll reviews.
Sophia's is a relatively new doll, and if you have frequently purchased 18" doll clothes on Amazon inexpensively, you may recognize the brand. What intrigued me about this doll first off is that she is listed on Amazon for $43.25 (at the time I bought her) and that she is a wigged doll. Having looked at many 18" dolls available at Target and Walmart in the under $50 range, all are rooted hair dolls. Not that is bad, but wigged dolls are more useful to me as a business as I love to customize and show off new wigs on my doll models. So this doll intrigued me as well as the description that she was a soft body doll. There were not any unclothed pictures of the doll for me to really see how she was constructed, but I ordered one out of curiousity.
Regular Amazon purchases come in about two days, but it was a full week for this doll to come in. My guess was that it wasn't fulfilled by Amazon directly and so it had a much longer lead time. When she came in, she was in a pink very generic looking box with a front window and large letters stating 5+ as the appropriate age range. Interesting because American Girl shoots for 8+. I noticed right away that her hair accessory had come off her head in transit so her first presentation to me was a bit wonky, but then again we are talking about a $40 doll.
Ok so first impressions. Packaging is what you would expect from purchasing a doll in a Target, Walmart, Walgreens, or other inexpensive toy aisle. It's cute with flowers and stripes and pink so it's very girly. Three twist ties on the back of the inner packaging gets the girl out of the box without need of any tools, so it's a quick unwrap. She came with a gold sequin dress and gold shoes and little floral undies. The shoes had little roses and velcroed at the ankle, foam bottoms. It's your basic very inexpensive shoe. The dress is very cheap with very thin inner lining although it is lined so props for that. Outer sequin is ok. It's a dress fit for a cheap doll. What surprised me was the doll's hair. It is wigged, and is actually soft with a blended mix of colors and a sewn hair part. It is very light, but the coverage on the head is good. It of course doesn't have the weight and feel of higher end wigs like what we carry, but it's better than 90% of the doll hair I've seen on off-brand (non-American Girl type dolls) and definitely not cheap nasty hair. She has blinking eyes that are a turquoise color and a thin curved line for eyebrows. Her nose is rather stubby and shallow but cute and she has a light blush on her cheeks with full cheeks. Her mouth is partially open with two front teeth that have a space in between each tooth. Stock lip color is a light pink and there are actually groove marks on the lips to account for lip detail. Ears and neck are very much similar to an American Girl as well as how she is constructed, with the same soft body torso and then vinyl head, limbs, and legs.
Something I could tell right off the bat, is that although similar in body construction, the arms and legs are relatively straight in shape and appear to be much thinner than an American Girl doll. I want to say it's more like looking at a Journey Doll with not very much definition between the thigh down to the knee and to the calf and similar up and down on the arm. The hands and feet come french manicured which I think is a nice touch. The panties this doll comes with are actually more adorable to me than the dress. They are made from real cotton jersey like human undies with lacy elastic.
You can see from this picture how straight up and down those thighs are. I want to say that the torso cloth is just slightly darker than her skin tone and is closer in color to bodies seen on Josefina, Kanani, or Nanea even though she is clearly a lighter skin tone.
The back of her cloth had a little tab that was glued over her neck area to cover up a zip tie. I removed it, partially to see what was under there and because I didn't want it there.
The feet on this doll are longer and skinnier much like a Gotz doll, but I found that 18" generic shoes and our shoes fit her just fine, so it doesn't seem to matter that she has slimmer feet.
Doll Measurements for Sophia's 18" Doll:
Height: 17.75"
Waist: 10.5"
Chest: 11.5"
Hip: 12"
Arm Length: 7"
Sleeve Length to wrist: 5.5"
Bicep: 3.75"
Forearm: 3.5"
Wrist: 3"
Leg Length: 8:
Thigh: 5"
Calf: 5"
Ankle: 4"
Foot: 2.5"x 1.25" at toes and 1" at heel
Neck: 6"
Head: 11.5"
Overall her measurements are very similar. She feels lighter than an AG doll so I had to weigh her and she came in at 1.5lbs which is actually the same as AG so there isn't any difference there. Other than the arms and legs being slightly slimmer and a slightly slimmer foot, this doll matches all the measurements in the heads and torso for an AG doll. It will be interesting to see how she looks with upgraded customizations. I definitely want to experiment with her.