I've said a lot about this "reboot" thing on social media, I don't really feel I have the energy to repeat it. Suffice to say, i'm not happy about it but i'll enjoy the last few truly creative dolls we get before it all turns into doe eyed safeness.
And wow talk about going out with a bang because this mermaid line? it's awesome.
I joked a while ago that Mattel would inevitably give us mermaids and fairy mh because it was a cliche of "girl" franchises, and yeah... the have given us mermaids but oh my goodness they're not just a humany doll with a fish tail tacked on.
These here are merfolk done right, with creativity and craziness. I honestly really dig this whole line.
Anyway, I had Argos vouchers so I bought the three new characters.
I believe Peri/Pearl ship separate from the other two as their box is bigger. Argos thankfully had them all under different catalog codes which is useful.
These are retailing for £23:99 here in the UK, which isn't as eyewatering as the 26:99 of the boo york gala dolls but is still pretty excessive I think.
The boxes are awful, I hate them. They're basically clam shells (lol, getit?) but no.. seriously, they're a card backing with a plastic front. In order to get the doll out you have to pull the backing card open, unpop the tabs that hold the plastic in place and take the whole front of the box off.
I will say this though, the new plastic seems softer and not as razor edged as the previous plastic boxes. So.. that's something I suppose.
I still miss the trapper keeper style boxes of the original first wave dolls. Yeah the card tabs broke if you weren't super careful but at least they didn't cut you or hurt your hands.
it took me no joke like 2 hours to debox these three because I kept taking breaks due to my hands hurting. All the tabs, plus the various ties holding the dolls in meant I had to snip so much stuff with scissors that it was getting painful.
Maybe i'm just getting old.
Still, it takes a while to get these free and I can't imagine how stressful that would be with a kid screaming impatiently.
I opened the two headed doll first. Peri & Pearl the conjoined twin... hydra monster.. thing.
I dunno, she's apparently a Hydra. I can't help but think of well, less aquatic when I think of hydras but I think that's due to pop culture representation rather than actual myth.Supposedly in myth the Hydra was a multiheaded sea snake thing, which is what this/these girls look like. So yay?
Monster High, teaching kids greek mythology! YAY. haha.
The back of the box shows this is indeed the international version.
At the top we have the pair's names and the subtitle "hissters" which is... puntastic. I admit, it made me smile.
I don't know what the other three languages are, though the Kss ksss made me giggle.
Her bio is brief. I'm disappointed they don't refer to one another as "hissters" though.
I dig the art, there's a lot of personality here.
I had to scoff when I read this. Being the international version, I know better than to think Mattel won't just throw a half arsed multi lingual bullshit diary in there and claim it's complete.
Full diary my arse.
Seriously look at this shit. This is the whole thing, that's all there is. It's LAME. furthermore, the actual entries feel astoundingly pointless. There's some ramble about food and one of them having an allergy but that's like.. it. The diary is basically they have a fight over eating certain foods, then made up. Uh... right.. that.. went nowhere.
I find it a shame the international diaries don't do the character specific fonts either. They're always written in this easy to read but kinda dull generic typeface. The character specific "handwriting" I always found kinda cool. Like why on earth does Jackson write his Es so strange? And oh my goodness some of the ghouls need penmanship lessons because their writing is illegible haha.
And look! they refer to one another as "hisster" here! confusing!
The bio. I kinda like how one of them is into metal shop, though I find it disappointing that it's to make Jewellery. She should totally be like, undersea welding boo yah.
They're jerks and don't care about other's opinions, which makes me laugh.
Gotta love not so nice characters.
Worth noting, this is where the diaries are hidden. Yes, you have to actually pull the backing card apart of access the damn thing.
Why? just.. why?
Also at the bottom of the box is paperwork explaining the articulation in the tails and talking about the glow features.
Peri and Pearl's doll has a rather serene expression on her/their faces, quite a contrast to the artwork.
I sometimes wish Monster High dolls had more expression in their faces, like a quirked eyebrow here and there.
Still, they are VERY pretty.
I couldn't get it to show up in photos, but both girls have teeny scales moulded. Peri (I assume Peri is the blue haired one) has them on the left side of her face while Pearl has hers on the right. They mirror one another, which is quite cool.
They also have teeny ridges on their noses, which make me think of Bajorans from Star Trek but that may be because i've been playing way too much Star Trek Online.
Gotta love nose ridges.
The girls have one earring each, though their ears on the other side do have an indent for a piercing. I checked. Peri has a gold one, Pearl has a pink one. Aside from colour they look to be identical.
Their earrings are these long dangly beads or pearls and their ears are shaped like shells.
Their heads sit a bit awkwardly because of the whole two necks, one narrow torso thing. Interestingly this is how most people who customised two headed torsos did it. I wonder if Mattel took notes on what people were doing with their dolls and took inspiration from all the two headed customs.
Because of the angle of the necks, the heads are always tilted.
The ghouls have unusually painted eyes. Their irises are blue with a yellow section and little lines around, but the pupil is also blue rather than the usual black.
Peri has orangy yellow (gold maybe) eyeshadow and then blue around her eyes with darker blue dots. those same dots appear under her eyes as sort of ... maybe freckles?
her lips are dark pink and shaped into a very slight smile.
These ghouls have a really nicely shaped mouth I think.
Peri's hair is dark blue with small white streaks through it. It's a beautiful colour, there's some green or teal streaks mixed into the blue giving it a very watery shimmery effect.
Pearl has green eyeshadow with pale purple around the eyes, with dark purple dots.
Like her sister (or is that hisster?) there's those dots under her eyes.
Her lips are a coral colour. I don't like it as much as the dark pink, I don't think it goes so well with her pale grey skin.
Pearl's hair is white with blue underneath.
Mattel seems to love their mirror image twins huh?
The twin's outfit has a long pattered top with fishnet sleeves, a chunky gold necklace with all manner of things strung on it, and a gold ornate belt with dangly bits.
There's a lot of skull keys (skeleton keys?)
They also have a pierced tail fin. Ouch?
The twin's body is totally scaled, they has these long fins on both arms and similarly long fins on their hips. The body looks to be no wider than a regular Monster High doll, despite the two necks. The tail looks much like Whisp's tail, a long snake tail that's jointed in three places so it can be sort of posed.
There's what looks like a joint where the "knees" might be on a regular doll but i couldn't get it to bend. It only moves slightly and doesn't appear to be supposed to do so. I'm a bit baffled by it.
The scales across her body are awesome. I love when they put sculpting on the bodies. Note that there are very slight webs on the hands and long nails. I love those little details.
it is rather spoiled by the giant rectangle in the middle of her back with the copyright stamp though.
I thought i'd gotten a picture of her top without the accessories but my camera clearly ate it. Anyway, it's a cute simple little tank with added puffy fishnetty sleeves that sort of get in they way of the girl's heads and earrings.
The pattern I think is coral.
The tail means they can sit (waist joint), stand on the tail (folded like this), straighten it out or lay the end part flat. Very much like Whisp's tail in fact, I think it's probably the same mould tweaked for fishy bits.
Next up Kala!
Weirdly both her and Posea's boxes make zero mention of their monster parents. I believe she's a Kraken.
She was actually the one I was most eager to get a hold of, I have a fondness for tentacles.. and no NOT that way get your minds out of the gutter!
I really like octopus and squids.
Kala's artwork pose just looks a bit awkward to me. Here's one case where I actually think the doll looks better.
Her bio.. as it stands. I couldn't be bothered digging the non diary out of the back of the box, sorry. The international diaries just piss me off too much to go to that kind of effort and the glue holding the two edges of the card is just crazy.
Kala is a rich purpley pink tone that's quite bright, i'm not sure if it's fushia or actually purple, I get a bit lost with colours honestly. Anyway, she also has four arms which is awesome. I really really wanted Luna to have four arms because she's a moth you know? but at least i get one four armed dolly at last.
Technically she has 10 "limbs". Four arms, four tentacles and two longer ... I don't know if they have a special name.
Sadly my Kala has slightly wonky eyes but it's not too bad.
Her eyes also have those blue pupils, but the iris is solidly pale blue. She has super long lashes and very thick black eyeliner, which is striking enough but it's paired with bright orange splashes, orange "eyebrows" which look more like markings and pink markings around her eyes. Her face makeup kinda reminds me of a butterfly.
She has a bulbous nose with defined nostrils, a long face with a square jaw and pouty lips which are almost the same colour as her skin but have yellow dots all over them.
I'm not entirely sure what the yellow dots are about. Squid herpes?
Her ears are bizarre. They're round sorta.. cylinders.
Her earrings are semi opaque purple rings with spikes coming off them.
Her face sculpt is very very unusual and rather attractive I think. She certainly doesn't look like just another white chick. I rather liked the theory she was aborigine, I like the idea of more ethnic diversity in MH. It's already pretty diverse, but getting more ethnic groups represented is always welcome.
Her hair is a deep purple/blue colour with orange streaks, It's tied up in a high ponytail but having taken it out of the tie, i'm pretty sure there actually is a parting in there.
Her hair is pretty frizzy and doesn't sit that well in the high ponytail, I think she needs some spa treatment.
Kala wears a crop top, a big spiky waist cinch and a jacket sort of.. thing.
Her tail is dark purple with pink and yellow markings.
There's little spines/nodules on her shoulders that do a great job holding her top's straps in place.
The pattern again looks like coral to me.
Her jacket/overshirt is made from thin fabric and has squids all over it! I want a dress in this fabric like.. NOW.
And Daayyym she's hippy.
Baby got back!
her hips are really large, and to be honest, her bust is quite large too. Is this the mermaid equivilant of the big sister body? The proportions seem a little more like the big sisters than regular Monster High.
Her four arms suffer the same problem as Wydowna's 6, they sort of get in the way of one another limiting her articulation. they're also very stiff in the shoulders.
The tentacles are actually on ball sockets meaning they have some movement.
they're all beautifully sculpted with nice curls and defined suckers.
Speaking of suckers, Kala also has suction cup fingers.
She has spikes all over her body. A line runs down her spine and each of her segmented arms has little spines too.
The whole bottom part of her tail rotates, presumably to allow more movement in the tail but honestly it doesn't add a lot. The longer tentacles are rubbery and glow in the dark, so they don't really pose at all.
Her tentacles can flatten out like this.
Or she can rise up on them like this.
they can rise up a bit more than this as well, but she's not very stable in that position.
She has three bracelets. an orange long one that kinda looks skeletal to me. A yellow one that's identical and then a small pink spiny one.
I know some people don't like this girl's colour scheme but I quite enjoy it. It's very tropical, and i'm always delighted to see yellow and orange in the MH franchise. I LOVE orange and yellow.
My only gripe with this girl really is that her hair is pretty crap. It's a real shame.
Posea Reef was the last one I deboxed, just because her box was furthest away from my chair. I'm lazy like that.
Interestingly, her prototype showed her with gills on her face but her actual doll has those gone. They looked like they were sculpted so did they alter the mould during production?
Kinda a shame but I do understand why, the gills did look a bit like wrinkles and made her look a bit old and haggard.
Her artwork still has them though. I almost want to paint in the lines or something.
I admit, it kinda bothers me these girls don't have Aussie accents, least they don't seem to in the trailer for the movie. Damnit Mattel, this isn't Fern Gully, make the aussies sound aussie!
Also apparently her name is pronouced "Posey"
Posea's eyes are painted with blue instead of the usual black, with a thick black top line and lashes. Like the other dolls, her pupils are blue and her eyes are a blueish green with a yellow section.
Her eyeshadow is subtle, a blue that's quite similar to her skin tone and a very very faint purple dusting above that.
Under her eyes she has this crescent shape and then a bunch of black dots, then pink dotty freckles.
No clue what the crescent or black dots are all about.
She has purple eyebrows and deep pink lips.
She has a fairly mature face I think, with this narrow nose and high cheek bones, she reminds me a bit of spectra with the gaunt face. She does NOT look like a 16 year old to my eye. But hey, she's a goddess or.. demi god or something so... yah know.
Her shoulders are REALLY stiff and hard to move.
Anyway, Posea is a bright shade of light blue, quite similar to Finnegan Wake's skin tone in fact. She has webbed fingers and this incredible tail that's all tendrils and seaweed.
Her hair is a very pretty shade of plum purple with a few streaks of lighter pink and then this chunky sea green streak down one side. It's styled back with the top section tied up and the front puffing out a little into a bump on top of her head.
The top section of hair is twisted into this complicated looking series of twists and curls and held in place with an elastic band. There's a black plastic coral? headpiece that looks like it's supposed to wrap around the twists but the twist is too fat to fit into the clip.
Also the clip is plastic tabbed in place anyway. I suspect it won't stay on without these.
In the middle of the "bow" ( I think it's meant to look like a bow) is a sea egg or urchin.
Her hair is below "knee" length and gets in the way of her tentacles a bit.
It's soft but kinda frizzy at the ends. All three ghouls suffered terrible box hair.
posea has amazing ears, they're all swirly like seaweed or waves or something.
She has coral earrings too, long dangly fans in dark blue. They get tangled in her hair and interfere with her head motion a bit.
Posea wears a purple top with a pinky purple coral decorative plastic thing over the top.
Under that is a cute asymetrical sleeveless top. It has starfish, shells and even a few seahorses hidden in seaweed and kept on a purple background.
She has seaweedy arm cuffs on each arm too. One is a bracelet and the other is worn higher up her arm.
The bracelets are semi opaque just like her tail. She has solidly moulded webbed fingers too. I feel these look a bit unfinished because the webbing looks so flat without a different colour added. This girl needs a teeny bit of body blushing I think to really make all her details pop.
Moving down to her tail. It's made in two pieces. The darker green under piece and this detailed leafy outer which unclips at the back like a belt.
There's all manner of critters tangled in her tail, a couple of skeletal fish, a crab, a sea horse and a sea snake but strangely they're not actually attached, they're elastic banded on. This strikes me as really strange, I mean I understand they had to be moulded separate because they're different colours and they glow but could they not have made them with a tab on the back so they could be slotted into holes in the tail and thus be mixed about a little? As soon as that elastic band perishes, which it will do after a few years, those critters will all fall off and get lost. Elastic banding them on feels like an astoundingly inefficient and unprofessional way to attach them, it feels well.. lazy and cheap and last minute.
Surely they could have figured out a more solid way to attach these things?
Her tail is constructed in a similar way to Kala's. It has a rotating gear above the tentacle section so they can rotate, though it doesn't really do much and is quite stiff.
Without the overskirt her tail looks more tree-like to me. You could probably make a really cool looking dryad or something using this tail. Even the tail itself looks barky with the lines sculpted into it.
She has three tendrils that like Kala, are on a ball socket. Posea's tendrils have less motion though, they don't seem to rotate quite as much on their ball.
She can stand with them mostly flat, or rise up on the very tips of those curves but she's not very stable in this pose just like Kala isn't.
The rotating gear means you can theoretically position these in several different alignments but her overskirt sort of limits that because it cannot be moved and the tendrils tangle with it, meaning they can't move much more.
She has these amazing little spines all over her body, which look cool but hurt my hands when I tried to get her hands off. They make her whole body really rough to handle.
on her back she has four leaf shaped patterns that look a bit like a flower or as it probably more likely, a Sand Dollar
The spines continue down her arms and onto her hands.
and they're all over her front too. And look, she actually has a belly button. The other two really don't.
Like Kala Posea has a bust joint so she can tilt her body a little side to side and turn. It gives her a teeny bit more motion than the twins.
She can sit too, though like Kala her tendrils get in the way.
In conclusion
So, having deboxed my three.. or is it four? ghouls, what do I think?Honestly? I'm actually more impressed with them now than I was seeing their promos. The body detail is awesome and exactly what i've come to love from Monster High and though there's a few issues with stiff joints and poorly executed ideas, they still look freaking awesome.
their colours are bright and they stand out among the sea of pastel MH has become recently. Kala particularly is just so bright and cheerful looking colourwise, she looks cool on the shelf.
I don't feel these dolls lend themselves so well to play though. For a start they're awkward to handle, particularly the two with tentacles. The tentacle sections are huge and chunky and a bit cumbersome. Their movement is pretty limited by the tentacles/tendrils and in Posea's case, she's just not nice to hold or undress because her spikes are rough and hurt your fingers when you try to pull her hands off.
They also don't have much in the way of redressing potential. They have no shoes or pants obviously, so you really can only put tops on them which is a little limiting if you're a kid who loves to redress their dolls.
I'm also not convinced the supposed target market of 6 year old girls has the same love for squids and snakes that I do.
I'm actually rather sad because Peri and Pearl's body could easily have been adapted into a Naga body and i've wanted Mattel to do a damn Naga doll for years now. looks like that probably won't happen now, as they're going more of a safe friendly cutesy route with the reboot supposedly. *sigh* But we got a squid monster, a two headed doll and a bizarre sea weed mermaid thing so I guess that's better than nothing.
I love that none of the three are conventional mermaids, in fact none of them are even fish. I like that, it makes them feel more unique and creative. I like that Mattel actually went and looked at different sea creatures and made merfolk of them.
Minor gripes like box hair, crappy non diaries and cumbersome tails aside, I really like all three (four?) dolls from this set. They're all bizarre and freaky and unique and definitely the sort of thing you don't see on toy shelves usually.
I'm delighted by them, and i'm even tempted to pick up the budget existing characters as mermaids dolls. It makes me laugh the puns and references they went for with those ones, someone on the design team had a lot of fun there.
I give the whole line 9 inexplicably American accented Aussies of Greek ancestry out of 10.
The last wave of cool and freaky MH dolls! Yeah, I'm not in love with the lack of re-dressability -- but at least the concept is cool.
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to decide whether to keep ranting about the new faces or treat the whole thing as too appalling to deserve my attention. I want my MH freaky!
I also have the three of them, and originally I thought Peri and Pearl were going to be my favourite, but I can't love Kala enough! She's amazing, prettier in person than in photos, and I'm glad there was a huge sale on her that made me get her. Posea....ugh. I just got her recently and....I don't know what to do with her honestly. She has waaaay too much going on, to be honest.
ReplyDeleteBut I like the three of them.