Bratz From The Past: Strut It! Meygan

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http://cannellefraiche.bratzheaven.com/photos/robyn-bratzstrutitmeygan.jpg

Meygan is my all-time favorite Bratz character. I have more Meygan dolls in my Bratz Doll Collection than any of the other Bratz characters. However, I remember purchasing Bratz Strut It! Meygan from KB Toys in January 2005 and being so unhappy with it, because the doll was "not the Meygan I had grown accustomed to seeing." Much of that was attributed to the first Meygan doll I purchased, Bratz Wild Life Safari Meygan. Hands down, it is the best Meygan doll ever manufactured by MGA Entertainment, because it illustrates what Meygan is really all about: Wild, fun, tough, reckless, and one bad-ass MF who'll smash you to pieces if you mess around with her. What an amazing return after Meygan "moved out of town" in 2003!

Bratz Strut It! Meygan is not wild, tough, or reckless like Bratz Wild Life Safari Meygan. But this doll is fun, especially when it came to capturing this photo on March 11, 1991. Okay, okay, I'm lying: It was actually March 11, 2009 when I captured this photo of my Bratz Strut It! Meygan doll. I wanted to make this photo appear as though it was captured 18 years ago, to give it that old-school appearance. For the most part, this photo of my Bratz Strut It! Meygan doll looks like something captured in 1991. And regardless of any negative impressions I had about this doll, I feel very fortunate that I purchased it when it was available.

The most noticeable aspects about Bratz Strut It! Meygan are that the head mold, eye print, and lip print look substantially DIFFERENT than similar features from the earlier Bratz collections (e.g., Bratz XPress It!, Bratz 1st Edition). I compared this photo of my Bratz Strut It! Meygan doll to a few photos that I captured of my Bratz XPress It! Jade doll for my "Plain Jade" Bratz Photography Project on Bratz Heaven. The dolls looked very different from one another, and aside from their funky fashion passion, I did not see any other similarities between them.

I also love the bracelets on Bratz Strut It! Meygan, and I thought it was ingenious that the designers at MGA Entertainment made the bracelets look like something normal preteen girls would wear. There is a very tiny elastic thread that holds the tiny bracelet beads together, and I'm always worried that this thread is going to break whenever I fasten the bracelets on the doll's wrist! The fashions are also "lighter" than the fashions from Bratz XPress It! Jade, and likely because this was a Spring 2003 release (Bratz XPress It! is from Fall 2002). Yet, the attention to detail on those fashions on Bratz Strut It! Meygan is amazing.

This photo of my Bratz Strut It! Meygan doll is actually part of a new Bratz Photography Project that I was working on. I had completed capturing all the photos of Bratz Strut It! Meygan for this project in April 2009. However, I never got around to completing the project in its entirety, since it was too time consuming to age the photos, as well as construct the project's corresponding video slideshow. But I did not abandon this project. And since I want to compensate for what I missed out on when Bratz was released during the franchise's early beginnings from 2001 through 2003, I do intend to complete this Bratz Photography Project devoted to my Bratz Strut It! Meygan doll sometime during the fall or winter of 2009.

Since purchasing Bratz Strut It! Meygan, my attitude and perception toward this doll has changed. I now have a much greater appreciation for Bratz Strut It! Meygan, and I'm grateful to own it and the other characters from the Bratz Strut It! collection (i.e., Yasmin, Cloe, Sasha, Jade). When I look at this photo of my Bratz Strut It! Meygan doll, I'm transported back to a time when Bratz was about attitude, individuality, expression, and style — aspects about the Bratz that were true then and that will forever be true when Bratz is retired and gone. These dolls were certainly ahead of their time, and Bratz Strut It! was one of those collections that exemplified how ahead of their time they were. Bratz Strut It! Meygan is one of my favorite old-school Bratz dolls, and I'm happy that it belongs where it should: In my Bratz Doll Collection.