Some of the timing some times just seems suspicious. Before the 100 Poses dolls came out I was at a doll meeting with my Volks Littles and at least one of the attendees revealed they worked for Mattel and gave my girls a good look over. That useless Barbie chest joint is along the lines of the Beauty B but the head swap thing is all their own.
Some of it has to be if this is selling we'd better jump on the bandwagon too. As for heart shaped pupils, and I could be mistaken, I might have seen that in Blythe eye chips. There's nothing 'original' in the world just a novel way of putting it out there.