Disney Store 2017 Classic Merida doll review

"My land's only borders lie around my heart"

from Chess by Björn Ulvaeus & Benny Andersson, song: Anthem

Yes I'm really behind with my reviews, since the new dolls are already out in the USA and I'm doing a review of the Merida doll from last year. But she is the last doll of the bunch and I bought her for my sister as a Christmas present. I'll possibly purchase another Merida for myself for Christmas. My sister plans to turn her into a prim and proper regency lady, curled hair, high waisted dress and everything.
Let's get a closer look at the box first.

She follows the 2017 pattern, simple box, simple letters.

The movietitle and the characters name is at the front, and there are pictures on the sides and on the back of the box.

To be precise, one side shows her with a serious face, the backside shows her with a happy face (the doll can actually kind of do this trick, I'll show later, how it works).

The back of the box as all kinds of warnings as well, the price, the movietitle and Meridas name once more.

The other side shows her brothers in bear form, an obvious choice, since she comes with a bearcub figure. (This years, 2018 Merida comes with a ring, like all the girls this year) Merida also has her bow and arrows on both pictures, I think it's a great choice to represent her with her signature accesoires.

It would be great if the doll came with these accessoires, too. (Like the first edition did) I'm happy they didn't try to use 2D images of her for the box. While I think the 2D handdrawn pictures work quite well for Rapunzel, I don't think they work for Merida. She doesn't look like herself. But that's just my opinion.

Her background, misty woods, matches her colors and her story. Sorry no deboxing pictures this time but it was quite easy. The only ties that were almost forgotten and almost caused damage were the tiny ones at the bottom of her skirt.

She has a pretty, quite movie accurate face in my opinion. She has sideglancing, blue eyes with a touch of green. I think it's the result of some details painted with a yellowish color. She also has some freckles and rosy cheeks. Now the serious-happy trick: she has a loopsided smile so looking at her from the sides result in two very different pictures.

A happy one and a more serious one.

I love that. Little Kingdom Merida and Mini Merida can do this as well but pretty much all dolls with a loopsided smile are capable of this. It is great for storytelling with dolls. 

She has long, red, mane-like hair. Fresh out of the box, it's quite obvious that her hair has two different parts. At the front, you can see these bigger curls. She has them at the backside, too and these sections have a lot of hairproduct and are quite hard. The other parts are fluffy, messy and are mainly hidden under bigger curls. A boil-wash and recurling should help, but be careful, Disneystore hair doesn't like hot water that much, it'll possibly be damaged ot look dry. I recommend to do more research on the topic, if you decide to recurl your Meridas hair. There are many really good and helpful videos on youtube, they are a more reliable source - I've never done this myself so far, only read about it and watched videos on youtube.

So where was I? Oh yes, her hair is a mess.
That's okay for me, since her hair is quite messy in the movie as well.
Her dress is quite simple, no belt, no pattern running around the bottom part of the skirt. (the 2018 Merida does have it)

But there are some yellow details around the neckline and in her sleeves.
She wears plain brown flats, which are held in place with elastics. I leave them on so the shoes won't get lost.

She has flat feet and klick knees like all 2017 dolls I have.
I do not know what other collectors experience but my 2017 dolls tend to sit in a not so princessy way, as it was called when the issue first appeared with her hard plastic-hinge knee legged dolls back in 2012. Pocahontas sits propperly, holiday Anna is okay, too but Aurora, Belle and Merida... maybe it's Annas bad influence. All three of them sit now next to an Anna doll. :) Certainly not all the dolls have this problem and not all of them have it to the same degree. I don't really mind but I know a lot of people don't like it so I thought I'd mention it.

Now just look, how Merida sits. She has the usual princess articulation, head, shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips and the already mentioned klick knees. I mention in every single dollreview that I do not like those klick knees and responsible for that is this post by The Toybox Philosopher.
That post shows in detail, what is going on in the klick-knee legs.
The little bear she comes with is very top-heavy and can't stand on its own.

 

He has a mischevious little face.

There are some moulded details, too amd look at those... hands?

He also has a little tail.

He prefers to lay down, lazy little boy.

But he also likes to sit in Anna Margarets lap.
All in all, Merida is a lovely doll. My sister named her Mireben.
I also have mini Merida called Chris so I took a comparsion photo as well:

The picture doesn't really show it very well but there is a difference between the haircolors, Classic Meridas is a bit more red-red (like Ariels hair)  Mini Meridas hair is a bit more orange-rusty red color. There are lots of little differences between these two but they are both clearly representations of Merida. And good ones in my opinion.
And this last picture shows the reason why her arms were in the same position through the whole review:

She is doing a dancing pose (a different one) with this figure  and I have to put her back there, just as she was. It's much easier and is quite a nice pose, too:)

Right now I don't really have anything to review - all that's left are the Frozen mini wardrobe set and some bits from the big Tangled series set I got for my birthday. Sadly Rapunzel from that set has some issues I noticed too late to return it so I'm not really happy with it. The small bits are nice so I'll probably do a post about them. But for now, I'll just post about Dollys story, the ball and all that and hopefully get back to the Minis, too and let Elisabeth and Rosemary tell their tale and so straighten out a not so great start with Nicky and Becky. (If you have no idea who those are, but would like to know, go check the Introducing my minis tab at the top:) )