Best Pals Dolls by the Lennon Sisters Review

Recently, I met with the Lennon Sisters at the timetoplaymag.com 2010 Holiday Toy Preview. While there were numerous interesting toys and games at the event, it’s not often that I find a toy product  that I just love but Kathy and Janet Lennon have introduced a line of soft rag dolls, called Best Pals that absolutely captured my fancy.

The soft rag dolls are replicas of dolls that their mother and Nana gave them for Christmas in 1949. Yes, 1949. Can you imagine someone like me who has the latest gadget getting excited about a doll that was first made in 1949? Well, when it comes to certain things, I am pretty old school.

Here some of the many reasons, I love the Best Pals dolls.

• Huggability – yes, huggable. Without denigrating other dolls, these dolls are just plain huggable and a doll I can see my daughter pulling out when she goes off to college (much like Andy does in Toy Story 3) and reminiscing about how she played with them when she was kid.
• Old School Feel – The dolls come with dresses that are made of vintage fabrics, have embroidered facial features, rag doll yarn hair which can be restyled for added play and “best pals” bead bracelets (very ’50s) – too cute for words.
• Diverse line of dolls – As a woman of color who only had “Christie,” Barbie’s black friend growing up, I love that the line comes with three dolls of color,  Best Pals Isabelle Original 16″ Rag Doll, Best Pals Sofia Original 16″ Rag Doll, Best Pals Lily Original 16″ Rag Doll two of the dolls are black (light and dark, someone in product management knows that black people are not all one color, give that person a raise) and an Asian doll. When I interviewed the Lennon Sisters, they told me that they received numerous letters from adoptive parents who had bought their dolls to take with them when they went to pick up their children for the first time. This was not their intent other than ensuring they had a diverse line of dolls that appealed to a wide range of families but what an wonderful unintended affect.  For me, I teared up when they told me that story because I would have loved to have had a Sofia doll when I went to pick up my daughter at the adoption agency.

• Doll Choices for Everyone in the family – As I mentioned above, Best pals offer families of color options for their little girls but there are five dolls in all guaranteed to appeal to your little girl/neice/granddaughter.
  

  Best Pals Dolls Janet and Kathy

Now I am hardly the demographic for this product. When I gave the daughter the Sophia and Lilly dolls, she was so thrilled. As you can see, she immediately took the tea set and the dolls and started playing tea with them. And when we went for a photo shoot, she had to take the dolls with her as well. They have not left her side since I gave them to her.

Along with the dolls, we received the tea set. The tea set is just adorable plus I loved that it’s made out of tin and comes with it’s own case. My daughter had a china tea set that cost much more than  the Best Pals tea set and because of it’s delicate nature, we only have the plates left so tin works best for slippery hands.

The holidays are around the corner, so I hope you consider adding this to your shopping list, I think your child will love them. I almost forgot there is also a boy doll, Danny Boy, named after the Lennon sister’s brother.

Disclosure:  Level 1 Compensation. Please visit NYCSinglemom.com’s  disclosure page for more information.