Toyline
- Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The franchise itself is Korean-American, and, while it has a huge fandom in both of its home countries, Japan has a very heavy one. Exclusive dolls and merchandise has been released only in Japan.
- Heartwarming Moments: Many Uglydolls just need care and love, and will happily give back. Dream Bat is an especially sweet concept since it's stated that she turns good dreams real. Could be very useful to comfort someone who struggles to sleep.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: The 2014 comic book "My Hero?" features Babo and Uglyworm as parodies of Finn and Jake in the contents. Come 2017, actual dolls crossing over with Adventure Time were created, albeit with Ox and Jeero in the roles instead.
- Ugly Cute: To a freakin' T.
- Viewer Gender Confusion: Many of the Uglys are hard to pick out their gender at first glance, thanks to their various colors.
Movie
- Angel/Devil Shipping: One of the most popular ships among the movie's fans? Lou and Nolan.
- Anvilicious: Be Yourself, and judging and taunting others because of their physical appearances is wrong.
- Awesome Art: For all the film's flaws, its fluid animation, gorgeous visuals, and cutesy designs sure aren't any of them.
- Awesome Music: Being a musical, the film has many memorable songs:
- "Couldn't Be Better", the theme song of the characters in the film.
- "All Dolled Up", the song Mandy sings when trying to disguise the Ugly Dolls to look like the other dolls in Perfection.
- The "Unbreakable" duet by Moxy and Mandy.
- Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: A Downplayed moment were Moxie is scanned by a camera, which starts to malfuction after scanning Moxy, and randomly says "Tell my family I love them..." before shutting down.
- Cliché Storm: Despite its message about embracing differences and standing out being anything but subtle, the film has been savaged by critics for its generic plot, unmemorable characters and for not standing out at all from any other cookie-cutter children's animated film in the last decade.
- Critical Dissonance: The movie has been received fairly negatively by critics, while audiences have been somewhat kinder to it. This couldn't save the movie's dismal opening weekend.
- Draco in Leather Pants: Lou is often treated like this, with many people saying that he was misunderstood and that he deserved a better ending, considering that he can't go to the Big World since he's a prototype doll.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: Nolan. Probably because he's a big Woobie.
- Estrogen Brigade: Of all people, Lou has one of these. Being voiced by Nick Jonas probably helps him in that regard.
- Fridge Brilliance: The dog is voiced by Pitbull.
- Heartwarming Moments
- The movie's soundtrack already has one in the form of Kelly Clarkson's "Broken & Beautiful", a gorgeous song dedicated to learning how to love yourself, no matter how broken or "wrong" you may think you are.
- The ending: Moxy is given to a little girl, who finds her lying face down on her bed. When Moxy is picked up, she's visibly nervous about being with a child, and must stay motionless when the girl can see her, not unlike another group of toys. When the girl inspects her from the front, she loves her right from the start. Why? The girl is missing the same tooth Moxy is missing.
- Hollywood Homely:
- The Uglydolls are certainly strange looking, but calling them "ugly" would be an exaggeration. This is something that has come with the series for a long while, as, according to the creators, "ugly" was never meant to be "disgusting". Rather, it was supposed to mean "unique", so the Perfection dolls treating the Uglydolls as traditionally ugly hammers the "uniqueness" point in further.
- Nolan is another case to prove how driven the Perfection dolls are on "perfect looks". Despite having a sloppy green hair streak, uneven freckles, slightly mussed up clothes, and two different colored eyes, he still shares the exact same body style as the other Perfection dolls, thus highlighting how ridiculously superficial and petty Lou's list of "imperfections" in "The Ugly Truth" really are.
- Ho Yay: Nolan sounds kind of… hopeful when he assumes the reason Lou sang all those unkind things about him was because he "loves" him.
- Just Here for Godzilla: A heavy draw to planned moviegoers that have no interest in the original Uglydolls brand is the amount of artists on the soundtrack, even if they're not cast in the movie themselves.
- Narm: The more human-looking dolls from Perfection are all designed to look like teenagers at the oldest, yet are voiced by adult voice actors and singers that make no effort to sound younger than they are. Due to her larger role, Janelle Monáe's performance as Mandy is particularly jarring with her character design.
- So Okay, It's Average: The general reception of the movie is that it's a mostly boring but otherwise inoffensive Cliché Storm.
- Suspiciously Similar Song: Moxy and Mandy's duet, "Unbreakable", bears more than a passing resemblance to "This Is Me".
- Tear Jerker
- Mandy's glasses.
- First, as she drops the Uglydolls at their quarters at the institute, she accidentally walks into the door due to her poor vision, and they fall to the floor. The Uglydolls then proceed to all try them on, all while Mandy is trying to get them back. Although they only were curious to see Mandy's glasses, they're visibly distraught when she begs for them to give it back, and she starts to tear up. They do try to comfort her, but it doesn't quite work.
Moxy: Lots of dolls wear glasses in Uglyville, even Five Eyed Steve.
Mandy: This is the institute of perfection. And perfect dolls have perfect eyesight.- And later it gets worse: when Lou has Moxy & Mandy cornered, he rips the glasses out of the latter's arms, throws them on the ground, and smashes them.
- Lou forcing Ox to tell all of the Uglydolls that they're rejects. He clearly knows that breaking this news to everyone will do no good, and when he does, every Uglydoll, but especially Moxy, is heartbroken. Made worse by the fact that both Ox & Moxy blame themselves for what happened.
- The following lines from "Broken and Beautiful", if for no other reason than how relatable they can be:
I'm tired
Can I just be tired?
Without piling on all sad and scared and out of time?
I'm wild
Can I just be wild?
Without feeling like I'm failing and I'm losing my mind? - Mandy's glasses.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Uglydoll fans have this gripe with the movie, stating that it strays way too far from the characters and world established in the tags, books and comics.
- They Copied It, So It Sucks!: You can find quite a few comments saying that the movie rips off Trolls, often by some who've never heard of the Uglydoll toys, although some Uglydoll fans do share this sentiment. The comparisons have slightly eased up after the second trailer, however.
- Viewer Gender Confusion: Wage is easy to confuse as still being a boy like in the toyline from first glance. This is because her adaptation in the movie doesn't give her any identifiers like Moxy, who was given added eyelashes. As such, she looks just like the original toy.
- Viewer Species Confusion: Many first-time watchers, before his name is revealed, have mistaken Ugly Dog for a cat, due to his pointy ears and long tail with a rounded tip. A trailer shows a conveyor line of toys the same color as him being made, only with floppy ears and a pointed tail, hinting the cat-like design is part of his flaw.
- What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: A bunch of multi-colored beings decide to leave their homeland to find a new place where they belong. They end up finding a conformist society whose leader is blue-eyed and blond-haired, who upon seeing these different beings, decides to burn them in an oven. This subtext was
not lost on many reviewers who were quick to point it out.- Toy Story meets Schindler's List.
