Do LOL Surprise Dolls show underwear when dipped in water? Fact Check

ByCraig Haley

Online messages claim that LOL Surprise Dolls can covertly appear in undergarments, often resembling lingerie, when dipped in cold water.

MOSTLY TRUE

The fundamental aspect of this claim – that various markings will appear on a LOL Surprise Doll, including markings that appear in some cases to look like underwear or even lingerie, when they are dipped in water – is generally correct.

However this is not some type of covert or secretive feature to the toys, which were originally launched back in 2016. There is plenty of marketing material and videos that clearly show what happens when the dolls are submerged in water, and not all dolls react the same way. Some dolls show bathing suits, others show what appears to be undergarments, others have body paint. Some dolls don’t react to being submerged at all but instead have other interactive features.


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LOL Surprise Dolls are owned by MGA Entertainment and launched in December 2016. LOL stands for “Little Outrageous Dolls”. Like many toy brands – including Monster High Dolls and Troll Dolls – a number of complaints have steadily circulated the Internet over the course of many years asserting that aspects of the toy are inappropriate for younger children.

However in the case of LOL Surprise Dolls, those complaints surged suddenly in August 2020 when a number of videos – including one with the caption “My daughter is 6 and I just threw ALL her LOL dolls away!!! EVERY PARENT NEEDS TO SEE THIS!! #SaveOurKids” showed the apparent effects of dipping many of the dolls into water suddenly became viral, accumulating tens of millions of views in only a few days.

Despite these water changing effects being well publicized and marketed by the brand, and the water changing effects having existed for a number of years, the videos appear to have caught a number of parents off guard who apparently were unaware of the feature and took to social media to post videos of their own LOL Surprise Dolls reacting to cold water.


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This in turn created an illusion that the water changing effects were a new, undocumented, secret or unintended feature of the toy. However the water changing effects are none of those.

The videos also reignited another older complaint, in that the male dolls were “anatomically correct”. Those complaints led to MGA Entertainment CEO Isaac Larian defending the toys back in 2019, when he appeared on Fox Business.

I think we’ve got to teach our children from an early age about their body parts. I see nothing wrong with that.

 
To surmise, yes, a number of LOL Surprise Dolls react to water, and many show markings that could be interpreted as undergarments, even lingerie, and many others show body paint on the chest, arms and legs. And yes, the dolls are anatomically correct.

Cursory research into these toys will reveal all of these features, since none are undocumented or secret, and just with other brands of toys like Monster High Dolls and Troll Dolls, parents can ultimately make their own decisions on whether they think they should buy the dolls for their own children.