Chou Chou Baby Mika Doll Review

Reviewed by Jo Tebbs

Anytime I walk past a toy isle with my daughter, she makes a bee-line to the dolls section squealing ‘baby, baby, baby’ as she lunges in the direction of the first one that her little hands can reach and grab! This is where we could potentially spend the rest of our day…if only she could have her way!

Dolls these days are far more exciting than than they were back in my day, and they are becoming more and more realistic with their looks, sounds, actions and the incorporation of life’s bodily functions too! However, with such a vast array of choice on the shelves, it can cause a dilemma when trying to chose what doll to buy for a little person!

My daughter already owns a few doll toys; a small doll that is relatively basic but designed to be bathed/ washed (it comes with various accessories), dried and changed into a selection of different clothes. Another doll makes crying sounds and if you pour water into the cavity inside it’s head, it produces tears when it cries. Her third doll is ‘life’ sized, and walks when you lift up her arm.

Trying to find a new doll that combines different elements to her current dolls can be a challenge, but when I saw the Chou Chou Baby Dolls, I thought one of these would make a great Christmas present adding to my toddler’s doll collection.

I was kindly gifted the Chou Chou Baby Mika Doll to review which was delivered by the Royal Mail.

Although the doll itself is made of plastic, I was pleased to see that it comes with minimal packaging (it only gets thrown away) and that the packaging is plastic free (made of cardboard and cotton thread) except for a small amount of sellotape.

There are 3 dolls available within the Chou Chou range; Mika, Robin and Luca. I believe that all 3 of the dolls have the same functions and accessories, but each has a different aesthetic look. Bearing this in mind, I imagine that you would probably only want to own 1 of these dolls in your collection if they all do the same thing.

Each Chou Chou doll comes with accessories including a bottle, dummy, a short and t-shirt set, a limited edition onesie and a cute little hat that also acts as a sleeping mask.

As you open the packaging, neatly tucked inside is an instruction manual. These are very easy to follow picture and basic text instructions demonstrating the need for batteries to be inserted into the doll. Further more, there are then examples of the movements / actions that you child can carry out to make the toy spring into life and become interactive.

Please note that you will need 3 x AAA batteries (these are not included) in order for the interactive elements to work. The batteries are housed within a locked section (screwed) in the doll’s back with an ‘on and off’ switch located underneath it.

Our Mika doll’s head, arms and legs all rotate which means you can make the doll sit up and lie down. The head is quite heavy though so you may need to assist your little one at getting the doll’s limbs in the correct position in order for Mika to balance properly and not fall over. This frustrated my little girl when she was trying to make Mika sit.

Similarly, my little girl loved that Mika had a change of clothes and some accessories but she needed some assistance when putting on and taking off the clothes or when putting the dummy in his mouth – it was quite stiff! The doll is aimed at children aged 2+.

The dolls all have ‘wobbly’ eyes that can flick from left to right. I really like this idea. Most dolls I’ve seen have eyelids which, if you lie the baby flat or horizontal, may close, but I’ve never seen a doll that has eyes which actually look from side to side. No batteries are required though for the eye movement function of this doll.

Each doll makes 25 different sounds/ noises which range from the words ‘hello,’ ‘uh-oh’ and ‘oh yeah’ to burping, giggling and cute little tired yawning sounds. My daughter loved hearing these sounds and noises, although I have to admit, even after looking at the instructions, the noises seemed to occur at very random movements and didn’t particularly follow the actions that are meant to be carried out to initiate them. However, this was of no issue to my little darling girl who merrily continued rocking her baby to sleep whilst it made ‘boing-ing’ sounds.

One thing as a parent that I’m pleased to mention, is that the doll did stop making noise once it was out down and wasn’t being played with anymore. However, once it got picked up again, I noted that the noises didn’t start back again automatically, so you have to turn the doll off and back on again to restart the sounds.

Mika has a gorgeous little face and I love his bright blue hair colour. The doll has cute dog and bear themed clothing with colour co-ordinating accessories. It’s a really fun little doll that would make a lovely Christmas or Birthday present for a little person! Priced at £40 though, I do think this is an expensive doll for what it actually is/does.

Rating: I would rate this product 3.5/5

The RRP for this item is £40

You can buy the Chou Chou Baby Dolls from the Argos website here.