Joss' eyes are just the normal pinwheel AG brown eyes. Very nice. Her skin is the traditional #10 vinyl (not the very pale of Blaire). Any hair colour will suit her, except red. She looks like the kind that will appear just a little "greenish" in red hair --- for a comparison, I think she has colour just like modern Rebecca dolls.
The hearing aid fits in pretty nicely on the right ear. For adults and collectors, I don't think there will be any problem at all. For children, I don't think these will survive long, because they are sort of easy to knock off and very small, which will make them easy to lose. Hopefully, AG will offer the option to purchase replacements!
For anyone getting ready to pick their own, we have these points of advice (I had Elizabeth sit down with me to make this list):
- Face Shape: There is a lot of variety here. While this doesn't actually strike you as a unique "new mold", it is definitely full of subtle changes and gives the feel of a cross between Marie-Grace and Josefina. The rounder the face, the more like Josefina the doll looks (display dolls with rounder faces and hair pulled into the high pony tail look amazingly like Mckenna). The thinner the face, the more like Marie-Grace the doll looks. The MG look is also more noticeable when the doll's hair is left to hang around the face cover the ears.
- Eye Sockets: It appeared that there were dolls from two different factories. Half of the dolls have very nice, even eye sockets that are on the same level with each other and look great. Half of the dolls had their left eye socket so low on the cheek that the difference from one side of the face to the other was extremely noticeable.
- Cheek Paint: There is hardly and blush paint on Joss' cheeks, and many of the dolls appeared to have none at all. (For all it's worth, my Blaire doll has none either, so it may be the up-and-coming AG style.)
- Mouth Paint: Joss has dark lip paint, but not so bright and vibrant as Tenney and Grace. The colour suits her tone very well, but placement of the mouth paint was all over the place. The two things to look for were -- First, that the top lip paint is even on both sides. There were a lot of dolls with the right half of the top lip painted very flat and small, about half the size of the left side. Second, that the bottom lip is painted in the center of the mouth. There were also a lot of dolls with the bottom lip shifted to the right side of the face.
- Wig Colour & Length: There are a lot of photos to show the wigs on both of our dolls. The hair is the typical AG brown colour (think Rebecca) with some very pretty lighter brown highlights throughout. It's very pretty. The hair is long, but with a lot of layering, so there are some parts only medium length. It's very fine hair. Some posts online mentioned there being short hairs in the back to hide the wig cap when braiding, but neither of our dolls have any of those. It's not the thinnest wig ever, but you can separate to see the wig cap in numerous areas (being thin hair, I don't think you can get away from some of that). We both actually liked this wig a lot more than we guessed from the photos. It's very pretty and very modern looking. Take a look at all the different pictures above, though, and notice the differences of the two wigs. They are both very pretty, but they are totally different. My doll's hair falls forward at the front, where Elizabeth's doll's hair remains curving up (and they've been out of the box for 24 hours). My doll's hair is also a bit longer and a LOT more layered!
- Wig Placement: This was probably the most disturbing thing we noticed about Joss dolls. The wig placement is all over the place! More than half of the dolls at Columbus had a front hairline that was so crooked that the part could range all over the place. And the glue line (should you be buying this for customizing) was in a lot of awkward spots. The wig was also placed almost half an inch above the right ear on a lot of dolls. That makes her look like the wig did not fit very well. Not all dolls have that, but a lot of them did! Other dolls had another common problem (which is illustrated in the photo below showing my doll) -- a totally bare spot at the edge of the wig cap above the right ear. The spot on my doll measures 3/4" long. My sister's doll, though, does not have this.
The shorts are cute, nice light-weight denim with some embroidery near the left pocket. There are three plastic buttons on the front with velcro closure behind them. They're very short shorts, but they fit the doll nicely and aren't too tight (though I don't think these would fit the early dolls). The main pockets are not real pockets, but the "change" pocket on the right side is nice and deep! No back pockets.
The Jacket is nice. Metal zipper with star-shaped zipper pull. The emblem and wave designs on the front and sleeves are almost like a sticker decal. Very cute, but I don't think I'd try to wash this. The colours are nice and could be used on a boy doll as well as girls. I think Benny will be trying this one soon!
The bathing suit is sort of disappointing. It's rather thin fabric and very low cut. There is not velcro or closure of any kind, which is probably why it's so low cut. I took photos (above) that show it from all angles. The colour is pleasing and an improvement from the usual HOT pink.
If anyone has other questions, please just ask! We're really looking forward to customizing my doll soon, so there will be photos of other wigs coming then.