Retail Price: $110 for doll, $36 for accessories ($5 discount if purchasing both)
Year Released: 2023
Found at: American Girl
SKU: HNR73 (Doll), HNR75 (Accessories), 02BUN137 (both)
Manufacturer: American Girl
Materials:
- Doll & Journal:
- Doll: Vinyl, cotton, modacrylic hair fiber
- Tee, dress, shirt, underwear: Cotton
- Socks: T/C, spandex
- Shoes: PU/TPR
- Journal: Paper
- Accessories:
- Hat: Cotton
- Glasses: Plastic
- Necklace: Metal/ribbon
- Bag: PU
- Notebook, stickers: Paper
After a lot of hemming and hawing, I finally decided to get Nicki with rewards and the 3x points promotion AG has going on in late April. I ended up purchasing her online, versus picking out one in store since I didn’t have the bandwidth to make a trip out.
Nicki Doll
Like all 18 inch AG dolls, Nicki features a vinyl head and limbs and a stuffed cloth body. She has the Joss mold, first introduced in 2020, and the same eyebrow pattern and painted eyelashes as Maritza and subsequent Joss mold dolls. She has the original light skin tone (so not the very lightest), blue pinwheel eyes and reddish brown hair styled in a middle part with blonde money piece highlights.
Her wig is very nice quality – much better than the wigs of dolls produced from around 2020-2022. I noticed an improvement in some, but not all, Truly Me dolls with the big refresh in Fall 2022. There was some speculation that AG was trying to cut costs by using lower quality hair fiber, but perhaps customer feedback convinced them to go back to a higher quality fiber. My one hesitation in getting Nicki were the money piece highlights – some pictures and styling have made them really stark and but in person, I have not found them as bad. They also can be brushed into the brown hair to some degree for less contrast.
The rest of the doll is on par with usual AG quality, and the one I blindly received had a good face and placement of face paint.
The outfit consists of a grey tee with purple trim, a navy knit jumper, white crew socks, navy sneakers and a purple plaid button down shirt. The sleeves on the button down shirt are longer than normal so the shirt can be tied around the doll’s waist. Overall, I always prefer outfits that have a lot of separate pieces for mix and match potential, and the face that Isabel’s top was all one piece influenced my decision to get Nicki. All pieces are nice quality and will hold up well to play and multiple outfit changes.
The journal is a cute story, but definitely one that helps if you also have Isabel’s as well. You hear of stuff happening with Isabel, but since these events do not happen when Nicki is around, there are some gaps. The age range is definitely younger, due to the limited text and many images, but provides a glimpse into Nicki’s life, but nothing in depth.
Nicki’s Accessories
The accessories consist of a light blue baseball cap with two grin pins attached, a black shoulder bag, black sunglasses, a yin yang choker necklace, a journal and a sheet of stick on grin pins. The hat is made of a thin canvas material, leading to the visor not well structured – I would have preferred it to have some cardboard or something to give it a firmer feel. The shoulder bag is made of a shiny vinyl and opens with a zipper. It is not very spacious inside and barely fits the journal. Sunglasses are the standard plastic sunglasses, and the journal is the standard paper piece. The choker necklace is a black ribbon with a plastic yin tang sewn on – I would have preferred to see a cord with a charm instead. Finally, the grin pins are basically the same as the 90s ones – stick on circular raised buttons resembling grin pin designs.
Overall Thoughts
I do think Nicki is a worthwhile doll to get due to her good quality and unique wig, and mix and match outfit. With the straight, medium-long length wig, it is also an easy wig for a younger child to brush and style. The outfit pieces also have stretch to them, allowing easy on and off handling. Nicki would make a great starter doll for someone new to AG.
As for the accessories, I would say it’s a personal choice. If you really want them to complete Nicki’s look, go for it, but there’s nothing outstanding about the accessories. Yes, there are a lot of pieces, but most are either plastic or paper. While I get AG was going for some contrast with picking light blue for the baseball cap, I wish they had picked a different color, as it doesn’t really work with the rest of the outfit.
At the end, I give the doll a solid 4/5 and the accessories 3/5.
Alex D. Perreault 