Little ones will be giddy to find out whether they’ve got twins or even triplets tucked inside the cuddly swaddle!

The Baby Born Surprise Mini Babies probably do the best in this department in my opinion, because I find all of the themes adorable. The shape of this baby's mouth coupled with the surprise under his diaper reveal that this is a drink and wet doll. Little ones will be giddy to find out whether they've got twins or even triplets tucked inside the cuddly swaddle! Their highly-maneuverable heads are really expressive, and I like that they don't have "bottle mouth" like Apollo. I liked all of the dolls in different ways, I don't think I would have been unhappy with any of them.In any case, I've reviewed a few different surprise babies over the years, including Zapf Jolly Dollies and the unrivaled Cabbage Patch Babyland Mini Kids--which are still probably my favorite surprise mini of all. One of my critiques of the Li'l Woodzeez crib sets was that they didn't come with a cozy blanket for the baby animals to snuggle under. The most successful brand play concept of Zapf Creation AG is processes constantly and is enhanced by new, lovingly designed accessories.

The ball-jointed necks allow them to look all around and show off their personalities to great effect. It's nice to know that some of these surprise toys have thought and care put into them to make them good toys instead of just relying on the surprise factor to sell them. But here I am sitting on my couch typing up a surprise review, which, if you'd asked me a year ago, is not something I ever thought would happen again. What I didn't mention in the review is that I also like surprise toys where I can't pick a strong favorite.

There are little pink bows in the baby's hair, which suggests a girl, but there's no obvious gender reveal moment. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Careful if you do decide to repaint the skipper babies mouth, when I tried it, it made the plastic around the mouth dull, almost like a matte finish? Its hard to find carriers for dolls that small and Gina comes with one that work would for a few sizes! It used to be relatively hard to find a surprise-themed toy, other than the smaller (inexpensive) blind box assortments.

Both butterflies taste bad to predators, and so together they strengthen the connection between this particular pattern of orange and black and an icky taste--making predators more likely to stay away. Each swaddle comes in a fun shape – an apple, a cupcake, an ice-cream cone… Which one will yours be? And Marigold wins it all by being the cheapest and the most versatile of the entire group, even though there are no surprise elements in her packaging or appearance. It might not be fair to compare Marigold to the other surprise babies, but it's an interesting way of measuring the value of a surprise theme on the current market.

I think Chester and Apollo would make great bath toys, with their ability to drink and pee, but little Chester was still leaking water out of his mouth when I took that picture, above, which was days after I'd fed him. The pattern isn't super-clear (and it disappears again when the diaper is dry), but it looks like the "Lilipads" pattern, which means a September birthday. Furthermore, I had a really hard time getting all of the water out of the baby once I'd finished testing the bottle.

I didn't really care if they matched each other--or even if they were a perfect match for their parents, but it was such a fun addition to any doll game. If Mattel had packaged the Skipper Babysitters babies in a blind box so that you didn't know which of the three characters you'd get, and then included five individually-wrapped little plastic accessories, they could have put the dolls into bigger, flashier boxes and advertised them as surprise dolls.My complaint about Gina is they molded her in a way that it looks like she needs a diaper change but you can't do anything because its painted on. My favorites were the Baby Born and Skipper's Babysitter baby in great part because they're playscale and I'm not sure a baby doll that small can be a standalone collection or toy for very long unless it's the baby of other dolls in the toybox. Last year I drove seven hours from Maine in my tiny Prius packed full with all of the remaining belongings from our old house, plus four stressed-out dogs and two small cats.