There are actual Barbies that are more poseable too. I own at least one. I think they come from the Fashionista series of Barbies. Jointed knees, elbows, wrists… Much more flexible than the standard Barbie. I don’t know if they’re more expensive, though.
Hell no. I had a very early 1960’s Barbie and it was a full-on glamour doll for me.
I had some Barbies (handed down from my sister) but I mostly acted out stories from books with a large collection of toy animals, all of which played the parts of humans in the stories. I liked a large cast of characters, and I didn’t have enough human dolls to play all the roles. Besides, a shoebox was plenty big enough for a room for a two-inch horse, say, but not nearly big enough for a Barbie doll. I no longer have the Barbies, but I still have all the animals.
I had that same Skipper, and my sister and I played with her just as much as we did the Barbies. Of course, we also played with GI Joes too. GI Joe was cooler than Ken. 
The purpose of dolls for me was to hug them and squeeze them and love them. You couldn’t hug Barbie, and if you tried sleeping with her, she would probably poke your eye out. I don’t think that changing her proportions would help any.
My doll of choice was Raggedy Ann. She was bizarre-looking, and she only had one outfit, but she was extremely cuddly. She was my friend, and we had lots of adventures together.
I showed the source link to my fiancee and she had the following to say:
“When I was a little girl, the taller one would have been the parent and the shorter one the teen.”
In other words, the closest relationship she would relate to anything real, was that taller = adult, shorter = daughter. She’s also of the idea that neither would have had an impact on what ideal beauty was, since she based that on actual real people at the time. The dolls were just toys, similar to cartoons, dinosaurs, robots, action figures, etc. which she shared with her brother (who also played with the dolls). All of them came in a number of shapes, sizes, and colors.
I didn’t have any Barbies (70’s feminist mom) but I didn’t particularly like playing with them at my friends’ houses, because there just wasn’t much I could do with them. Those curves and her inflexibility made it nearly impossible to dress and undress her, so the acres of outfits were frustrating, not fun. This one looks like she’d be easier to work with and easier to pose (Barbie is top heavy, and even if you can get her to bend at the hips, she tended to topple over out of her seat).
I don’t think she’ll be a great commercial success, but I like her.
That looks quite a bit like a Maxie doll! I think I still have mine.
The doll in the OP looks interesting…it would benefit from a name change though.
I found Barbie yucky, but she came on the Spanish market when I was already in High School. Nancy (the old models, the newer ones look more like women) looked more like an almost-pubescent girl than a woman and she had a TON of clothes and accesories but they were all kind of colors, not chewing-gum pink. I’d had a brown-haired Nancy which got destroyed by a friend, then someone gave me a blonde Nancy I didn’t like because her torso was too heavy and rigid, and after an enormous tantrum (which both my mother and I can remember, it must have been epic) I was able to convince Mom to buy me a “japanese Barbie” who of course was a brunette and had the most gorgeous green kimono, saving it for my upcoming birthday (which was about one month away). I still have her.
I was almost traumatized by the sight of a naked Barbie in her bubblegum-pink bathtub. That thing didn’t have tits, it had bazookas like the ones Afrodita A got in that Mazinger episode! OWIE! Apparently and according to a documentary I watched years later, The Mazinger Z Episode Everybody Remembers was inspired by the sight of… a Barbie doll. So yeah, the animation team got the effect just so.
Barbie was no lady.
Yeah, I’d have played with Lammily as a kid. As much as I played with any dolls - dolls were mostly for giving haircuts to.
Nah, sadly there would be less Dopers than YECs.
Yeah, I would have played with her as long as she had some variety in her clothing. Most of my Barbies and their clothes were hand-me-downs from my cousin, so I was happy to have any doll that didn’t have dated-looking clothes.
Yeah, I think that’s the main appeal of this new doll: that her arms and legs bend. My favorite part of playing with Barbies was setting up a house with picture books for walls, arranging the Barbie furniture… but then her body was too stiff to interact realistically with all that furniture I set up, which was annoying.
If I was still a kid and had a mix of Barbies and Lammilys I’d pretend the Barbies all had a disease that made their limbs stiff and were tragically doomed to pose rather than run and exercise and play like Lammily.
I had one of those really big Barbie styling heads as a kid, and I’d pretend she was the leader of the alien Barbies. Plot totally lifted from Mork and Mindy. I couldn’t figure out how else to explain her presence in the Barbie world.
Oh yeah. I liked playing with a pretty doll. I didn’t aspire to look like or be her or anything, but if I’m going to play with a plastic figurine, it may as well look nice. I remember Maxie dolls in the 80s/90s, and those were slightly more realistic looking, but still pretty. I think they were supposed to be teenagers or something (I don’t really remember) which might have been behind the more attainable figure. Anyway, I get why this guy wants to make a more realistic looking doll, but really? Does any little girl want her dolls to be a Midwestern housewife? This reminds me of that Simpsons episode with the talking Al Gore doll that only said really boring stuff. 2/10. Would not play with.
Will you play Barbies with me?
I would have played with Lammily. In fact, if she had been around in the 70’s, I might have had one. My mom would not let me have a Barbie doll or any of the fashion dolls like Christie or Suntan Tuesday Taylor.
I got to have the Sunshine Family instead, because they were a wholesome family.
Can Lammily stand without being propped up? That was another reason I preferred to play with little plastic animals: they could stand on their own (four) feet.
Skipper!! I loved her. I wasn’t really a doll kid - I was way more into stuffed animals - but I liked Skipper because she looked like a little girl. Like you said, she could represent me.
I did have a Barbie, but I totally didn’t get her. She really didn’t work for any of the adventures we were sending Skipper on. I was never sure what to do with her - OK, you can change her clothes and brush her hair, but then what? She spent basically all her time in an unladylike position on the floor of my closet.
I’d have been fine with Lammily’s body - a bit too grownup to represent me-as-a-kid, but definitely better than Barbie. I wouldn’t have liked the solid hair, but my main problem would’ve been her clothes - they’re boring, they don’t start you imagining anything - and at that age imagining things is the whole point of dolls. Like **phouka **said, give her a bow and a wolf and I would’ve been *begging *for one. Hell, give her a bow and a wolf and I’ll use my four-year-old as an excuse to buy one now.