Nikki

First, I want to apologize for the kind of bad quality of these pictures. I'm down one light, so I had to take these in front of a window with the natural light coming and going... so some of the photos came out darker than I intended...

I just found Top Model Nikki at TRU...

Here she is as she came out of the box:

Photos and review may not be used without permission.

Like the other Top Models, she comes with a fair amount of accessories for a $20 doll.

In addition to the sheer blouse, short trousers and turquoise boots, her other fashion pieces are a denim mini-skirt and an orange camisole (which has no closures -- she has to step into it. I didn't have any problem with mine, but if there is bad QC and some are made smaller than others, it could be a problem). Her other pair of shoes are black plastic t-strap sandals. She comes with some clear, turquoise and black rubber bands (for doing her hair? using as bracelets? something else??), a brush, coat hanger, cardboard shoebox, and portfolio.

One of the portfolio photos showed her wearing the camisole under the blouse, but when I tried that, I could never get the camisole to show like it did in the portfolio pictures. I would have thought that orange and turquoise would not be an attractive combination, but I have to say I think she carries it off.

I would say her skin tone is medium-dark. It's lighter than the MOTM Nichelle skin tone, but still dark. I think my photos make her complexion look yellower than it really is. Her hair is dark brown, and she has brown eyes with blue eyeshadow. She uses the Nichelle headmold. I have Teresa and Summer, and I'd say the Nichelle sculpt scales well with Summer's Steffie head, but seems a bit bigger than the Lara sculpt on Teresa. Anyway, I really like Nikki's face, even if the blue eyeshadow isn't my favorite...

I find her face more expressive than the others in the series -- she's more fun to photograph than Summer or Teresa for me, because of this. (I like Summer and Teresa, but their faces mainly just look 'cute' to me.) I wasn't actually planning to get her, because I thought I wouldn't like her fashions, but when I saw her in person I couldn't resist.

The quality of the clothes and accessories is about what you'd expect for a $20 playline doll. I actually got pretty lucky in terms of getting one with straight seams, everything fit pretty well, etc. I really like

the turquoise faux-leather boots. It's nice to see Mattel putting non-plastic boots on these girls. The plastic sandals are kind of difficult to put on, but the boots go on and off very easily. The hair quality is ok. Overall, a nice doll for the price, and in my opinion the best of the op model dolls released so far.