An unboxing toy from a Los Angeles toy company.

L.O.L. Surprise! is a doll line made by MGA Entertainment, a privately held American toy and entertainment company. English Wikipedia’s article on MGA says the company launched the unboxing toy line on 7 December 2016, and that the initials stand for “Li’l Outrageous Littles”. The name, with its full stops and its exclamation mark, is written the same way across the range, and the brand has stayed with MGA since its launch: MGA Entertainment has owned L.O.L. Surprise! since 2016.

The company behind it has a longer and more varied history. Wikipedia says MGA was founded in 1979 by Isaac Larian, a civil engineering student from Iran, who first ran a mail-order business selling decorative brass goods from Asia and then, after the Iranian Revolution ended his plans to return home, started an importing company called ABC Electronics with his brother Fred. It says the brothers became a distributor for Nintendo in 1987 and a licensee for the Power Rangers in 1993, that the business renamed itself Micro Games of America while making handheld mini games, and that it later shortened the name to MGA. By 1997, Wikipedia says, toys had become its focus. The current company name, Wikipedia adds, is short for Micro-Games America Entertainment, and the business is often referred to simply as MGA.

MGA is headquartered on a mixed-use corporate campus in the Chatsworth area of Los Angeles, according to Wikipedia, which lists Isaac Larian as chief executive. The company’s other lines include Bratz, introduced in 2001, Lalaloopsy, introduced in 2010, and Rainbow High, and MGA also owns the American outdoor-toy maker Little Tikes and the animation studio MGA Studios. Wikipedia adds that MGA took a minority stake in the German doll maker Zapf Creation in July 2006 and announced in 2023 that it would acquire the rest of that company.

A family of spin-offs grew out of the first dolls.

The line did not stay a single assortment for long. English Wikipedia says MGA released several larger L.O.L. Surprise! toys over the summer of 2018, naming the L.O.L. Surprise House, L.O.L. Amazing Surprise and L.O.L. Bigger Surprise!. All three carry the L.O.L. initials at the front of the name.

The brand then moved into older-looking dolls. Wikipedia says MGA expanded L.O.L. Surprise! in 2019 with the L.O.L. O.M.G. fashion dolls, the initials there standing for “Outrageous Millennial Girls”, and that 2020 brought another spin-off, the L.O.L. J.K. mini fashion dolls, released during the summer of that year, with both lines sold under the L.O.L. Surprise! umbrella. Like the parent name, each of these sub-lines is written as a short set of capital initials separated by full stops.

The same year tested the supply side. Wikipedia says the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted production of L.O.L. Surprise! and threatened supply for the 2020 holiday season, and that in April 2020 MGA announced a special-edition charity doll named Frontline Hero, linked to the company’s non-profit, MGA Entertainment Cares.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group all make plush or collectible toys: soft animals and characters, small figures and dolls, and ranges designed to be gathered one piece at a time. Toy brands of this kind sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s name to lines that belong to much larger toy companies, and a single name can appear on shelves in gift shops, museum stores and toy aisles alike.

A toy brand’s identity is usually carried less by one product than by a name, a character style and a package, because the company behind it may have changed hands, moved its design or manufacturing, or added new ranges over the years. That makes the plain questions behind each name worth asking: who started it, who owns it now, and where its toys are designed and made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its toys are made and how its look has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From the toy aisle to a streaming film and games.

The dolls also became characters on screen. English Wikipedia says L.O.L. Surprise! The Movie, an animated feature of about 47 minutes, was released on Netflix as an original film on 8 October 2021. It describes the story as following Queen Bee, a young girl who finds herself in the dolls’ animated world and has to help them make a film. Wikipedia says a second film, L.O.L. Surprise! Winter Fashion Show, followed in October 2022.

Video games carried the brand further. Wikipedia lists three: L.O.L. Surprise! Remix: We Rule The World in 2020 and L.O.L. Surprise! Movie Night in 2021, both developed by Maestro Interactive Games for the Nintendo Switch, and L.O.L. Surprise! B.B.s Born to Travel in 2022, developed by Xaloc Studios and released for Steam, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation and Xbox consoles. MGA’s own online shop, viewed in October 2026, lists a crossover line, L.O.L. Surprise! Loves Care Bears, alongside the company’s other brands.

The brand sits within a wider MGA portfolio. The brand menu on MGA’s own website, viewed in October 2026, lists L.O.L. Surprise! next to Bratz, Rainbow High, BABY born, Little Tikes and MGA’s Miniverse, among others. Wikipedia also notes that Isaac Larian announced in 2018 that MGA would open an Australian office in early 2019, part of the company’s reach beyond its Los Angeles base. Through all of these changes, the dolls, the spin-offs, the film and the games have been released under the same owner that launched the line in December 2016.

For a design guide, L.O.L. Surprise! shows how a set of punctuated initials can become a brand system that stretches from a small doll package to a feature film. Compare its MGA stablemate in our Bratz brand guidelines and MGA’s outdoor-toy maker in our Little Tikes brand guidelines. For this guide we use bubblegum pink, pool blue and sherbet yellow with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep L.O.L. Surprise!’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.