What year is this?

So, in case you've never noticed, I am Asian. Chinese, to be specific. My parents are actually from Taiwan, but I was born here in the U.S. As a child, I never ever had a single doll that looked anything like me. If I could find one that had brown hair, it was a banner day. Now I know that 30-odd years ago, it was simply not possible to find Asian-American dolls. But you'd think that we've come a long way since I was a kid, right? Well....I'm starting to feel not so sure about that.

For instance, the toys pictured up top. Those are real toys, currently for sale on Oompa.com, under the title of "Asian Family." I mean, seriously? Those border on freaking caricature. Who is buying those for their kid's dollhouse? Not me, that's for damn sure. And then I found these dolls, which might be even more horrifying, if that's possible.

So now that I have a daughter of my own, I've been on the search for some Asian dolls for her to play with. Let me tell you, the pickings are SLIM. For one thing, don't even bother looking in a brick and mortar store. At least, not here in Texas, and definitely not at any of the major chain stores. I've focused the bulk of my search online. The results I've found have varied from comical to downright horrifying. Let's take a gander, shall we?

The first doll that usually comes up in a search is this Corelle one. Corelle dolls are (I'm told) very high quality and expensive - I think they're French, if that means anything. This one's name is "Yang," (rolling my eyes) and in all honestly, she's not that bad. But I just don't find her to be very cute. Her hair is awful, and she looks like she's frowning, which I think is weird.



Corolle also makes another Asian doll, known as "Choquette Kim," although she's not listed on the Corolle website. Except for the black hair and slightly less peachy skin tone, she looks just like all the other dolls in the same line - meaning, she has big old round-y eyes. I think this is my biggest peeve: when they take a white/Caucasian baby doll, add some black hair and call it good. Grr.


Then we start to get into some of the weirder stuff, the ones that really bug me. For instance, the other type of doll that comes up a lot when you google search for "Asian dolls" are white dolls dressed in "traditional Asian" clothing. Like this one, which looks like some sort of Asian version of a Precious Moments figurine. Barf.


Last, but not least, there are the cloth dolls where they usually just draw a nice slanty line for the eyes, like this one. Also a bit of a peeve. I mean, I know my eyes aren't super round, but they aren't freaking little tiny slits either.


So there are a few dolls that I do like. This website called the Children's Factory actually has a pretty wide selection of ethnic dolls. Here are some of my faves.





But I'm super picky, so there's still things about each of the above dolls that I don't quite like. Although, I probably will buy the potty doll when we get ready to potty train. I finally ended up buying this pattern so I could make a doll myself. Here's the finished end product.


Not perfect, but I'm pretty happy with it for now.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention, we do already have one doll that I'm pretty happy with. It's the American Girl Bitty Baby with light skin, dark hair, and almond eyes. She's not super Asian-looking, but she does have almond eyes that are not outrageously slanty, so I'm satisfied. However, I would never pay that much for a doll, especially for a very small child. I'm way too much of a cheapskate. My sister-in-law loves American Girl dolls and bought it for E when she was born.