RAPUNZEL has nothing on Avery, a 10-inch injection-molded mall princess whose flaxen hair cascades to her knees. Rapunzel might also have envied Avery’s smart wardrobe and her arsenal of styling tools, from thumb-size lip gloss to a tiny curling iron.
One in a quartet of Moxie Girlz, Avery is among the latest in a phalanx of doe-eyed fashion dolls jostling for attention on toy shelves this season, their cutting-edge clothes making them hits with a nation of aspiring primary-school Rachel Zoes.
Ms. Zoe, the celebrity stylist, might herself have a field day with the dolls’ bright frocks and accessories — although she would probably sniff at the lack of glitz.
The Moxie Girlz, along with four Liv dolls and the Barbie Fashionistas, introduced in August, are more funky than flashy, their high-style, low-key personas embodying their marketers’ response to sober times.
They stand in contrast, especially, to the big-headed Bratz dolls, whose sometimes provocative clothing and fabulous lives — accessories included hot tubs and limousines — made them a $1 billion franchise a few years ago. But Bratz dolls have vanished from toy shelves since Mattel won a lawsuit for copyright infringement against their maker, MGA Entertainment, last year.
“Bratz celebrated materialism; we don’t,” said Ben Varadi, the creative director of Spin Master, the Toronto company that makes the plastic Liv dolls, positioned as the anti-Bratz, decked out in denim jackets and tooling around on tiny motor scooters.
Moxie Girlz, too, made by MGA, have turned their backs on gas-guzzling Escalades in favor of a fuel-efficient compact.
For better or worse, these new fashion dolls “reflect what’s in the culture right now,” Mr. Varadi said. “I don’t see Liv having a limo any time soon.”
What Liv and her cohort do possess are abundant locks — the better to crimp and to wave — articulated joints, back stories (Sophie, one of the Liv girls, is an aspiring celebrity stylist) and full social calendars that are documented on the Web. Their interactive features and fresh-faced looks, played up in television advertisements, have propelled them to the top of Christmas shopping lists at Wal-Mart, Target, Amazon and Toys “R” Us, where they are ringing up impressive sales.
“Since Bratz, there really hasn’t been anything exciting in the fashion dolls category,” said Garrick Johnson, a toy industry analyst with BMO Capital Markets. But by speaking to the aspirations of style-struck 8- and 9-year-olds, newcomers like Liv and Moxie have “revitalized the fashion doll category,” Mr. Johnson said.
Barbie and her accessories still rule the toy shelves, retailers and analysts say, taking in about $3 billion a year. The Liv and Moxie lines, by contrast, are each expected to generate $30 to $40 million this year, said Jim Silver, the editor in chief of Timetoplaymag.com, an industry journal. “But by the standards of the toy industry,” he added, “that’s a great success.”
Others maintain that Liv may one day be poised to knock Barbie from her perch. “If I were Barbie, I would be really concerned,” said Lutz Muller of the Klosters Trading Corporation, a toy and video game market research company. “Liv is an excellently constructed doll with much better functionality than most of her competitors.”
Mattel seems unshaken. “The leading indicators, including the most recent market share, all show growth for Barbie,” said Richard Dickson, a senior vice president. “Barbie has remained as the top fashion doll for 50 years as other doll brands have come in and out.”
Friendlier, younger and more hip-looking than Barbie, the Liv and Moxie dolls are aimed at pint-size consumers who mimic girls in their teens. One devotee, Ally Alessi, 8, who takes her style cues from Keke Palmer, who plays a fictional teenage fashion designer on the Nickelodeon network, already owns a Barbie. But the other day she had her eye on the Liv and Moxie dolls at the Toys “R” Us store in Times Square. “The Liv dolls have their own user names on little tickets that get you to go online,” Ally said raptly. “I know it because I saw it on TV.”
Liv, is perhaps the most lavishly detailed of the new dolls.
“We wanted to create a collector-doll feel,” said Mr. Varadi, who gave the Liv dolls glasslike eyes, glossy hair, interchangeable wigs and 14 points of articulation that make them easy to dress. He aimed to make Liv pretty but approachable by giving her slightly plump facial features and contours softer than Barbie’s. “We went through five different sculptors” to create an alternative to Barbie’s chiseled cheeks and pneumatic curves, he said, adding, “We didn’t want Liv to look like she just came back from a plastic surgeon.”
His company studied Vogue and Elle and youth-oriented television shows, and even visited local surf shops, in search of inspiration.
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