Last year's debut of My Life As School Boy dolls by CItyToy stirred up the 18" boy doll market with their two school boys, giving AG's Logan Everett a run for his money. I reviewed them here.

This year My Life As has two more School Boys, this time in a bookish or preppy theme, as opposed to the sporty/ urban theme of last year's boys. I was able to pick up the blond boy this week to review.
 

 

The new School Boy is a reworking of the earlier brunette boy, with the same face mold and skin color, but with blond hair, green eyes, glasses, and different clothing.
 

The first thing I noticed when I got this guy out of his box was that his hair was flatter than his brunette twin's hair, maybe slightly shorter. This may have been intended style, but I like the fluffier style of the earlier School Boy. It looks more natural.
 

His glasses are tightly secured to his head with an elastic band attached to his glasses. I removed the band as it makes the glasses hard to put on and take off. But I could see it being a good way for a younger child to keep from losing the doll's glasses.

In truth I didn't really care for the style of his glasses when I first saw them. Not to mention they aren't the same glasses he's wearing in the official Walmart picture.
 

These glasses were wider and thicker and didn't really suit his face that well. I like the green color which was off-beat and cool, but I would have liked the style pictured below much better.

The shirt and vest combo remind me a bit of a 70s thing. :) But it could also be a prep school look, as well as a bookish/ computer wiz look. It does have its own charm.

Although the shirt looks like a separate button-up and a vest, its really a once-piece shirt-and-vest-assembly that fastens with Velcro in the back.
 

Like I wrote in my earlier review about the other My Life as School Boys, his full vinyl torso is protected from potential dye staining by a clear plastic vest.
 

 
He's wearing a pair of super cute gray/ khaki shorts with a faux fly and faux pockets, and soft vinyl slip on shoes.  In this case, his feet did not have the protective covering that his friends had, as there is no cloth dye to stain them.
 

He has a full vinyl body with natural proportions and nice little details like collar bones.  I did notice that like the other School Boys, his leg joints were a little stiff in getting him to sit, particularly the left joint. I was afraid the leg was going to pop off while I was trying to bend it! But I get the impression the joints would loosen up over time with some play.
 

Here he is with his schoolmates for a bit of comparison.

Overall I really like this doll; he's quite cute. But I wasn't crazy about his hair at first! I kept wanting to fluff it up to match his friends' hair. It may not look as bad in the photos, but in person it didn't look quite right to me.

So I spritzed up his hair and tried to make it look more natural.

My Life as A School Boy has inset eyes without eyelashes, just like the other My Life As boys. The color is a very intense green. I believe it's the same shade of green that some of the My Life As girls use, but it seems to look better in the girls' case, possibly because of their paler skin tone or because it's framed by eyelashes. Either way, the deep green hue really stands out. It wasn't my favorite color for him.
 

Also, the My Life As Caucasian boys have a beige skin color that is about half a tone darker than the Caucasian girls (though not quite as tan as medium skin). I think the beige tone looks great on the brunette boy. It goes well with the warm brown of his hair and eyes, and blends in nicely.

The blonde boy's hair, not so much. Like the deep green eyes, the bright brassy blond of his hair contrasts with the beige of his skin, doesn't blend into the palate as well in my opinion.
 

I would have liked to see CityToy design a boy doll with fairer skin, and maybe freckles, perhaps wavy hair, to make him a bit more different than his brunette twin, to offer a little more variety.

Or maybe just given this one better hair! Just for fun, I tried a more neutral toned blond wig that had a little longer style.

Wow I love this look for him. He reminds of a young blond John Lennon.

How's that, I even like his bright green eyes and glasses now. Hair makes all the difference!

My final assessment of My Life as a [blond] School Boy is pretty positive. He's good-looking, relatively well-built, and has all the benefits of the other My Life As boys. The only real negatives, and they weren't really negatives per se, are that his hair should have a bit more length or volume (or better color) and that his glasses should be a slightly different style for him.
 

And admittedly it would have been cool to have had a boy doll in a new fair skin tone and new features like freckles. But the fact that there is a new My Life boy at all is pretty good. I'll count my blessings.



The two new "preppy" My Life as a School Boy dolls--African American and [blonde] Caucasian--can be found at Walmart for under $30.

It looks like I'm on a role with new boy doll reviews: next week I'll be doing a review on Our Generation's new boy Rafael! Stay tuned.