Bratz Dolls

Carter Bryant worked in Barbie Collectibles at Mattel, drawing fashions and hairstyles for the expensive dolls that sit behind glass. In August 2000, still on Mattel's payroll, he carried a different set of drawings to a smaller company called MGA: four girls with oversized heads, oversized shoes, and clothes that argued with everything else on the shelf. He gave Mattel notice on October 4 and worked his last day there on the nineteenth. The dolls reached stores the following year.

Act IThe names changed on the way to the shelf

In Bryant's drawings the four girls were Zoe, Lupe, Hallidae and Jade. By the time they hit stores in 2001 they were Cloe, Yasmin, Sasha and Jade, sold under one slogan: The Girls With a Passion for Fashion. Exactly one name survived the trip. That is worth remembering beside a folding table, because the character name is the least stable thing about a Bratz doll. Cloe came back for twenty years in new hair, new face paint and new clothes. A dressed doll wearing the wrong shoes may be carrying pieces from three different releases, each aimed at a different buyer.

Act IIThe shoe is the foot

Look at the legs. On the classic bodies the leg stops at the ankle and the shoe carries the entire foot, snapped onto a peg. It let MGA build boots and platforms that no real ankle could ever wear, and it handed the category its harshest completeness test. Lose a shoe and you have lost a foot. Two shoes in the bag can still be wrong: mismatched skin tone, two lefts, a heel snapped off, or a split peg hole that will no longer grip. Pair every shoe by side and tone before you count anything else in the lot.

Act IIIA court once tried to take the whole line away

Mattel sued over those drawings. A jury awarded Mattel $10 million against a brand the appeals court described as having earned MGA more than $1 billion in interest-adjusted profit. The trial judge went further, placing the Bratz trademarks in a constructive trust and barring MGA from making virtually every Bratz female fashion doll. The Ninth Circuit vacated both orders. None of that fight shows up anywhere on the doll in your hand, which is the point. Scarcity here comes from release lines and survival rates, never from a stamped year.

Act IVOne logo, several separate markets

Standard dolls, Bratz Boyz, Lil' Bratz, modern reissues, boxed collector releases and bags of loose original clothing do not ride one price curve. A redressed 2005 doll and a complete, wanted winter release can sell a world apart. The rule is short enough to use with one hand: if you cannot name the line, keep the ceiling low.

Act V2001 is not a birthday

Turn a doll over and there it is: MGA, and a copyright year, usually 2001. It looks like a birth certificate. It is closer to a tooling number. Copyright marks follow the mold, so a doll made years later still carries the early year, and sellers price that year as rarity. The evidence that works is cumulative and dull: body mark, face screening, eye and lip color, hair fiber and part, character, outfit, both shoe-feet, accessories, box. Collector databases run to thousands of separate products for exactly this reason. Name the outfit and you have named the doll.

Sources: US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit: Mattel v. MGA opinion · MGA Entertainment: About MGA · MGA Entertainment: Bratz at 25 · Lookin' Bratz: Product database · Lookin' Bratz: Face screening guide