Luvabella is a battery operated, interactive baby doll by Spin Master. She comes in three versions: blonde hair/light skin, brown hair/tan skin, and dark brown hair/AA skin. A boy doll, LuvaBeau, is currently being marketed as a Toys R Us exclusive.
Luvabella takes 4 C batteries. Once installed, turn her on and she comes to life! This robotic baby doll makes lifelike sounds and movement. Her head, arms and facial features (eyes, cheeks and lips) move on their own. The movements are quite realistic looking, in my opinion. There’s a slight motor sound that you hear when she’s turned on, but Luvabella’s cute babbling easily drowns that out.
Luvabella says over 100 words and phrases. When you first take her out of the box, Luvabella babbles, laughs and cries. As you play with her, she learns more unique words and phrases, like “spooky” or “food, please.” Luvabella also loves to play games. If you hold your hands over her round, blinking eyes, she’ll start to mumble and eventually shout “peek-a-boo”! It’s actually quite adorable!
Luvabella has sensors that allow her to know when you’re touching or tickling her. Her laugh is contagious and really does make you smile. You can hear Luvabella’s heartbeat if you hold your hand over her chest.
For Luvabella’s cheeks and mouth to work properly, her face needs to allow for movement. To do this, Spin Master chose to use a rubbery material. This material picks up hair, sparkles and other foreign objects really easily. Our doll very quickly found herself covered in dog and cat hair, for example. To wash her face, they suggest using a damp washcloth. While her vinyl limbs feel as you’d expect, her head is definitely best described as tacky or rubbery. But, I’ll take that, because the movements Luvabella makes are so cool and really well done. See her in action in the video below.
Luvabella comes with a bottle, pacifier, spoon and sheep toy. If you put the sheep toy to Luvabella’s mouth, she’ll interact with it. If she’s getting fussy, she’ll take a bottle or some food from her spoon (pretend food, of course). When she’s ready for a nap, just lay her down or begin to rock her and she’ll start to fall asleep. If Luvabella has trouble falling asleep, give her the provided pacifier to calm her.
We actually tested out two Luvabella’s. The first, the brunette hair/tan skin version, didn’t work properly, which was sad, because she was so adorable and we had truly bonded with her. After contacting Spin Master, they sent a new one, the blonde hair/pale skin version. Both my mom and I agree that the brunette Luvabella’s are much cuter than the blonde one. Blonde dolls are just so common. But, it was nice getting to play with one that worked properly. We discuss the malfunction in the video review, just in case it happens to any other Luvabella dolls.
Luvabella does have an off switch to conserve battery power. Another plus is that besides English, Luvabella can also babble and speak in French, if you so choose. The biggest plus, though, is that you can change Luvabella’s ‘mama’ to ‘dada’, for the boys who may want one of these robotic, interactive baby dolls to play with and parent. You can also revert her back to babble mode easily, in case you gift this to a sibling down the line.
Watch the video review, embedded above, to see both the brown haired doll and the blonde. What do you think of Luvabella? Share your thoughts in the comment area.
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Review
