I love finding 18 inch dolls from defunct or obscure brands and welcoming them into the doll family. This has given me a very diverse collection after several years of stumbling across or tracking down lots of very rare, forgotten, and overlooked dolls. I've been searching for a secondhand Dae-rin for a while, and am so excited that she finally made her way to me. She's pretty special!
Dae-rin is one of a group of girls known as the Worldgirls. This was a brand of 18 inch dolls that centered around five characters who each possess a specific talent or gift, and are thus invited to attend school at the mysterious Worldgirls Hall, the oldest school in the world that nobody knows exists, located in the land of Thiri. The five girls each arrive at the school from a different country and represent a particular trait.
Maud Croak from Sweden is a rebel, Dae-rin Kim from South Korea is a healer, Zari Jones from Barbados is a scholar, Pemberley Crawford from the USA is an explorer, and Izel Léon from Peru is a warrior.
The company was founded in 2019 by identical twin sisters Carlissa and Laken King. They noticed the lack of racial and geographical diversity in children's literature and toys, and wanted to create a line of dolls where character traits are emphasized, so that children will be drawn to dolls not just for their looks but the ones whose passions they can relate to.
Sadly, as often happens with small brands with admirable purposes, they are no longer producing dolls. Their website is gone, and their last Instagram post was in February of 2024. I don't know what finally ended them. A lot of smaller doll brands were killed off by the pandemic slowing or halting production in toy factories, but Worldgirls survived that. It may have just been the inability to compete with more well-known brands with wider distribution.
Lucky for us all, the Wayback Machine was able to give me an archived version of their website, so I could learn a little more about Dae-rin and her friends.
The first three characters introduced were Maud, Pemberley, and Zari, each priced at $89. In late 2022, they were joined by Izel and Dae-rin, as well as some additional outfits.
When you click on a doll you get a snippet of their backstory.
Originally there was a picture, but the Wayback Machine didn't archive it. Each doll includes a passport-sized storybook about her journey to World girls Hall, as well as a stick-on patch both for the doll and you.
Elsewhere on the site, there's a nice mission statement from the founders, and some more information about where they got their inspiration to create these dolls.
Shall we start the unboxing?
Dae-rin came to me new in her box.
Finding dolls in their original packaging is always a fun bonus feature of hunting down the rare ones, but it is absolutely not a requirement when I buy dolls. I would have bought her undressed and messy if that was the way she presented herself to me. I've rehabbed plenty of well-loved dolls with positive results, and am always willing to do it again when necessary.
The original packaging is nice to have because it tends to share at least a couple of clues about a doll's life story or at least her brand. Dae-rin also came with her original 30-page storybook.
Her eyes do not open and close, and she does not have applied eyelashes. Her brown acrylic eyes are just beginning to turn purple, which is a common defect in inset eyes. I can replace them later on with glass eyes if the color becomes an issue. Otherwise, she's flawless. She has wigged hair with shorter side bangs, and her hands are curved so she can hold objects. Her outfit is very unique, and is beautifully made.
Her storybook is cute but not a particularly interesting story. It explains that she wears that colorful outfit when she participates in a children's talent competition on TV. She's a matchmaker, but not for romance; instead, she suggests an object a person might need. This is far more fascinating to the book's (rather gullible) characters than it was to me. But this was made for kids and I'm not in that targeted demographic, so that's probably why.
It ends right after she gets her invitation letter to Worldgirls Hall, and does not explore that storyline at all. She is invited to bring her cat with her.
Her cardigan sweater has a W/H embroidered school emblem.
And the little embroidered patches! They're not meant to be ironed on, they just have adhesive on the back.
She has a soft tummy and vinyl upper torso. Her body is exactly the same as a Journey Girls and Healthy Roots doll body. She is, however, a bit larger than Journey Girls, and fits pretty well into this Maplelea outfit. The shoes fit great.
Here she is wearing an American Girl outfit and shoes standing next to Journey Girls' Dana (left) and Sierra, an American Girl doll. Dae-rin is quite a bit taller than Dana, but you can see her hands are basically the same shape. She feels a lot more sturdy and built better than Dana. Dana's limbs are squeaky and hard to move. Dana's right arm suddenly broke out of its socket a while back and had to be glued back on, since it was attached by a flimsy plastic piece that snapped. Dae-rin's limbs move more smoothly and don't make noise when they do, so I don't feel like she's on the verge of losing an arm with even gentle handling.
Like I said I'm not the target audience, so I wasn't picking out a doll based on the passion or talent they possess. I've got a huge variety of personalities in my doll collection. I was mostly drawn to Dae-rin because of her unique face mold, which is different from the other four Worldgirls. I do tend to prefer dolls with something unique about them, and so many of my dolls are also equally special. She fits in with the doll family perfectly!
