Top Ender is pretty much your average eight year old. She loves making things, sharing things with her friends and the number of notes she has in her bedroom that she and her friends swap with each other shows to me that she and her friends appreciate each others friendship. When I saw an email about the Japanese Best Friend Dolls in my inbox I asked Tops what she thought of them. She loved the idea, especially when she realised that she could put secret notes inside the dolls and then give the dolls to your friends.
Top Ender knew I was going to have the dolls sent over and she was very excited when they arrived. Big Boy wanted to help Tops paint the dolls so we had to wait until Big Boy was busy before we could work on them. We soon found that most of the fun of these dolls wasn't going to be the giving but was the making of the dolls.
We had a great giggle painting them together (we took turns) and left them overnight to dry. They took a few hours to paint to the standard that we were happy with (lots of thin layers with plenty of drying time in between) but we eventually had them perfect and in the morning after they were well and truly dry we were able to put the stickers from the set on the dolls. Big Boy did end up helping us, but it's okay because Big Boy can stick stickers very well! Tops has asked that I not post a finished picture of the dolls because she wants them to be personal to her friends that she is giving the dolls to.
The dolls are really lovely and Tops loved making them and giving them to her friends. Tops and I are very much into Japanese culture and we love Kokeshi dolls (what these are and what the Mii's from Wii's are based on too) and were very pleased to make our own version and we even signed the bottom as the traditional Kokeshi doll makers would have. For £9.99 I think that these are a great buy and will be buying these as birthday gifts for Top Enders friends for the next year.
We were sent the Japanese Best Friend Dolls to review.
