As someone who likes articulation in his figures this body is certainly up to scratch, however in recent years i’ve sworn off figures i feel has waaaay too many joints and not enough to make it look nice in clothing or generally aesthetically nice. Also my general attitude towards Mattel’s approach in articulation is super low since a lot of their attempts in articulation simply don’t function well. These include the old style legs where the dolls sit splay legged, the Fashionista Ken’s hip and knees are simply awful, and the 2014 jointed ankle bodies having really flimsy knees.
While not as weighted as Pure Neemos, the MTM body still has a nice weight to it but a few really tight joints that i needed to carefully work out before actively playing with it. I know people love comparing this joint system to more collector targeted bodies like action figures and Obitsu, but i honestly had more fun moving this figure and posing simply because it felt sturdy in my hand and that i didnt need to be as delicate with her.
In all my pics she’s posed unaided by anything asides from the chair, and once you really get used to moving bits you can coax her to pose in a lot of gravity defying ways lol. I particularly love the thigh joints since they’re often the least utilised joint in articulated bodies and you can pose her legs in nice ways including the suwariko pose (the cute Anime pose). I especially like her torso joint since usually most jointed torsos look ugly as heck or they’re barely poseable.
Aesthetically i do like the fact Mattel gave the sculpt subtle details like the arm musculature, the collar bones and nice belly sculpt. However i think the knee joints look SUPER ugly since the legs are far too thin for the knee joints and it just sticks out super bad.
But then i do really hate how thin Mattel keeps making the knees super skinny for no good reason. Liv and Obitsu did double joints for their legs and i just think its just really poor design.
Another thing i dislike is how the arms can’t lay flat against her torso due to how the shoulders are designed and how the wrists cant bend fully because the wrist plastic is covering up the joint. I could easily carve these bits but i do hate how much mattel keeps putting excess plastic in the joints to make it look nicer.
Also i keep seeing people who say the ankles are weak or hard to pose because theyre loose, but i think it’s the fact they’re literally 1/12 scale feet for a 1/6th body and it does draw attention to the fact Barbie’s body proportions are super messed up lol. It makes it hard to keep her standing due to tiny feet but what can you really do.
And the last thing i dislike is the fact Mattel used the Hula dancing Skipper hands for this body instead of the Fashionista hands or the detailed pivotal hands. Skipper’s hands are just so flat and unexpressive.
My final thoughts are that while, yes, we’ve had this kind of articulation for a long while, we’ve never had a FASHION DOLL with these proportions before with this joint system. Obitsu bodies are too petite for most fashion dolls and action figures are too bulky so Mattel finally cornered the inbetween market with these bodies.
While i am a fan of these bodies, i’m not going to go out of my way of replacing many of my hybrids’ bodies with this because it’s too costly on the scale i want to do it but i’m getting as many Lea bodies as i can because i’ve been waiting since 2009 for Mattel to release a jointed body in this skin tone.
I’m not always a fan of Mattel’s decisions and feel something like this is long overdue, I do give them credit for making this a playline item and that when they did do articulation they didnt give up the aesthetics of it.
