"Tükröm, tükröm, te mondd
meg,
látszik-e vajon, hogy öreg lett?"
from the musical Elisabeth by Lévay and
Kunze, the part is called Restless years. Literally: Mirror, mirror
tell me, can it be seen that she got old.
It's based on the lines the Evil Queen says to her mirror in the fairytale Snow White and
the seven dwarfs.
They are all mirrors of each other thus the quote with the mirror. First I only wanted to compare the change of Elsa's face over the years but then I thought that the length of their braid, the different takes on the same hairstyle (although this is more interesting for Anna’s updo – I’ll do a comparison post for her as well). Not only the facepaints aka faceups are different, but the headmolds as well.
I will refer to them either by numbers (first second and third face) or their names. Elsa with the first face is Victoria, Kiki for short, Elsa with the second face is Sissel (the sister to all my sisterless Annas) and Elsa with the third face is Shizuka (for now) or singing Elsa since she’s not a classic doll but a singing doll. I show them in chronological order in the pictures - oldest is on the left, newest is on the right.
I did review some of them, you can find them here:
Singing Elsa from Frozen 2 with newest/third face
Christmas Elsa (who has the same headmold as middleface Elsa)
The headmolds of Christmas Elsa and Second face classic Elsa are the same and the faceups likely similar but I don’t have the Christmas doll anymore so I can’t compare. But I’m sure the skintone is different, Christmas Elsa was pretty much white as snow while the middle face classic Elsa has a little color.
Our three ladies in their original clothes - this photo has them in a mixed up order, third Elsa aka singing Elsa is in the middle and second Elsa is on the right.
I redressed Singing Elsa into a beautiful blue sparkly Barbie dress that I think suits her wonderfully.
Now let’s take a look at all three ladies in chronological order.
She’s a first release classic doll, I got her from Germany, thanks to a very generous helper and talented artist named Verirrtes Irrlicht (Take a look at her Instagram account and her gorgeous repaints: https://www.instagram.com/verirrtes_irrlicht/ )
Since she is a first release and from Germany, she has the hinge knees and ankle joints and much messier, wilder bangs than the others, she has more sections. Later versions with the same face had flatter, less messy bangs, shorter braids, smaller trains/capes and at some point even the articulation was changed to click knees. Her shoes changed from simple blue flats to ice heels, later the heels were changed to fit the flat feet better. Those changes are visible on the other two dolls as well. Their bodies are basically the same, but there are lots of small differences. The first one has as already mentioned hinge knees, the other two have internal joints in the legs, so called click knees that I hate and don’t consider as proper articulation. I’m waiting for suitable Made to move Barbies that will serve as body donors for better articulation. Some other differences are there because one of them, the third one, is a singing doll. Turning one of her hands activates the singing, the arm that hand is attached to has no articulation at the elbow and her wrist articulation is limited,
Classic doll with the middle face, full body picture:
There are other changes to the dress, we will look at them in more detail later. The eyes are much smaller.
The third version of her face.
The eyes are a bit bigger again and it looks closer to the first face than the second.
People have very different opinions on the faces but from what I’ve seen, the middle one got the most criticism. I think all three are lovely. Let’s compare their facemolds, first let’s look at them from the side. Each doll has its head as high as it goes. Yes, the first doll has much smaller range of motion vertically than the other two:
You can see how odd Elsa’s signature hairstyle turned out on the second doll, as if part of her head was missing on the back, but it’s just the odd placing of the bangs.
For this picture, I tried to have the “bottom line” of their heads to be one straight horizontal line:
The first Elsa almost looks scary
Here we can observe the obvious changes to the faceups.
Middle Elsa still has her head as high as it goes so she looks a bit odd.
The first one has the lightest blue eyes, the second one has smaller eyes with differently painted details and a bit darker blue eyes. The third one has less details and even darker blue eyes with just a hint of green.
The eyebrows changed as well, the second one has longer and thinner ones than the first, the third one has more details in her eyebrows and it’s getting more brownish than grey with each new doll. The eyeshadow is different as well and only the first two represent the same look so naturally the third one has very different makeup. The first doll has even her eyelids molded and shiny purple eyeshadow. The second and third dolls only have that line painted. The second doll has purple eyeshadow as well but it’s not shiny and it’s slightly darker. The third doll has bright pink eyeshadow that’s painted under her eyes as well. The outlines of the eye are finer on this doll so it’s fine, the first doll has thick outlines, she almost looks like she’s very tired. (I guess Elsa actually was tired of everything plus organizing a coronation even with tons of help is really stressful for her)
The lips got thinner, the first two have a very similar color, the second doll’s is perhaps a tad more red, the third one’s are bright pink, matching her pink eyeshadow. Normally I would think it too much, I don’t like bright pink but she somehow pulls it off.
I can only repeat that the bangs are pressed more and more against her head and have less sections. I must say, to me, the first version of the bangs looks best. Notice that the shape of the hairline changed as well, the middle one almost has a widow’s peek. At the same time, it manages to make her face look like a square. I guess this is partly the odd bang sectioning’s fault. The lock that falls into Elsa’s face is also the longest and thickest on the first doll, becoming shorter and thinner with each new doll.
The first one has a significantly longer braid, the second and the third doll's braid is about the same lenght and except for the first one, the end of it is very hard due to the amount of hairproduct in it. First Elsa’s braid has a nice and soft end. They were really generous with this first doll, but the braid length of the later dolls is more movie accurate. The haircolor of the first two Elsas is very similar, it was also the most repeated complain I heard, that the dolls have too yellow hair compared to Elsa in the movie. The third doll has a much lighter and more silvery haircolor that is more like Elsas haircolor in the movies.
Last but not least, their skin. Yep, first Elsa is very purplish, almost as if she was frozen or based on her early concept art, when she was still evil and had blue skin. Christmas Elsa, that’s not shown in this review, had white skin or at least almost no color to her skin, the other Elsa with the same face as Christmas Elsa has a bit more color and the third one has a very similar skincolor. It’s a tad yellowish, in the movies it’s a bit more pinkish in my opinion. I have the set with the girl’s final looks from Frozen 2 and that Elsa’s skin and especially face seems even more yellow.
She has the same facemold as the singing doll but has her hair loose.
Now let’s move on to the two representations of the famous ice dress.
The fabrics used are pretty much the same, the dress part is exactly the same blue, the difference is the printed white details the newer version has. The older dress is a better construction, it has the sweetheart neckline and a proper waistline, unlike the second dress. On top of that I was quite unlucky to get a sloppily made dress for my poor second Elsa doll, the waistline is crooked and it even folds the fabric in a way I can’t straighten. (I’ll get her a new outfit. She was supposed to get that blue Barbie dress but it looked better on the third Elsa so she’ll get the Frozen 2 travelling outfit. Someday. Or not.) It was obviously made with much less care and love than the first version.
The see through part of the dress is a bit brighter on the newer dress, the older dress has a bit lighter, and a tiny bit more purplish blue sleeves.
The first dress has a bit longer and wider skirt.
Sorry, this picture turned out a bit dark.
On the back, they look pretty much the same, it’s the same structure.
But it’s clear who has the bigger train. Or cape or whatever it is called. I used cape in my earlier reviews but now train seems a better term. Whatever, I mean this big thing on the backside of Elsa's dress.
The edges of first Elsa’s train overlap in front of her, she is practically wrapped into her train. The two parts were also tied together with one (or more, I can’t remember) of those annoying plastic tags. The second dress also had some but the train was tied to the dress (leaving nice and loveable holes in the dress. Still better than the holes they leave in the heads of the dolls, they are absolutely unnecessary for securing the dolls to the packaging in my humble opinion.)
Let’s see how big those trains actually are:
Simple, solid blue flats and slightly see through… heels? They are almost flats with a tiny heel, a very odd design but the ice details are pretty.
The new shoes are clearly superior in looks but the old ones fit better on the doll’s feet. But I think that’s an issue with those flat feet.
It’s the usual thing happening, as the years go by, the outfit loses details and quality. Not that the second one is a bad dress (aside from my sloppy version), it’s good enough but next to the first dress, all the little shortcomings show.
I like all three dolls a lot but if I’m forced to choose just one, I think I’d go with the first one, she has definitely the better dress and even with her thick eyeliner and purple skin, she is my favorite. (Also my very first Disney doll)
Some more pictures as a closing of this comparison post:
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| First Elsa aka Victoria |
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| Second Elsa aka Sissel |
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| Third Elsa aka singing Elsa or Shizuka |
I got the new classic dolls except Tink so there will be reviews of Meg, Esmeralda, Alice and Wendy! I also promised a similar comparison post with the Anna dolls and there is some other stuff from previous years (and my dollstories). I will try and post more this year so please look forward to it!
