Monster High - Jane Boolittle

Jane Boolittle, a bit of a random odd addition to the MH franchise. This ghoul showed up with no fanfare, no real details, she just... was. Odd.

She can indeed talk with the animals, walk and talk and sing with the animals. Ok i'll stop.

Her box! VERY striking . The red is very eye catching and the jungley, bridge/skull/waterfall thing is very King Kong. Lots of pulp references here i'm sure.

There's also this 3d bit, which is cool. I don't know why there's a sticking out rock.. but there is and it's awesome. Sometimes the MH boxes have 3d furniture and stuff to display shoes and accessories on, but I don't recall any having like... 3d scenery like this.

It's worth noting that Jane is not part of any line, she exists on her own as the doll accompanying, presumably, secret creepers, the newest gimmicky piece of tat branded MH. They're basically oversized versions of existing character's pets, which open up so you can hide things in them, mostly scraps of paper with stuff written on them. Kinda exactly like Keypers...

(I totally had the snail, she was awesome)

Only less fabulously useful and demented. (You could hide your dad's keys in these things, a hilaaaarious prank... <_< what?)

I never quite understood why toy companies are so keen for kids to write their secrets down. Surely writing them down is like... the number 1 sure fire way to make sure it DOESN'T stay a secret?

Anyway, Jane seems to be part of this line.. somehow. It's confusing and odd. Means she's packaged in her own case though, much like Catty Noir was, and all those exclusives.

Jane has a diary, which is great. I love these things. Hers goes into details about how she was adopted by Doctor Boolittle (presumably the monster Doctor Doolittle) and Doctor Moreau, AKA that crazy dude who turned people into animals. It's been parodied on the Simpsons so you better have heard of it.
Anyway, what's interesting to note is that why Dr M is male in the book/movies, in this diary he or she is NEVER once mentioned by gender pronoun. It's "dr M" this and "dr m" that. That's gotta be intentional, but why would Mattel hide the gender of a character from us? There's two reasons I can think of.

The first, Dr M is indeed a man and they didn't want anyone to read any homosexual subtext into her having two dads.

Or they're screwing with our preconceptions and it'll turn out Dr M is in fact a woman and the daughter of the original Dr M, much like Jackson's mother appears to be the Jekyll/Hyde parent.

Either way, it's odd.

And no, we never learn what monster type Jane actually is. She doesn't seem to know.

She comes with instructions, exciting. They seem to tell me that her bag can open, her sloth goes on her back and she can hold her staff thing which is also a pen? Awesome... and random.

Presumably for writing your "secrets" to put inside the toy and leave for your siblings to find and blackmail you with... yep.

Here's Needles the sloth, who appears to be made of stitched together burlap sacks lol. Least, i'd rather believe he was made of burlap than shredded sloth parts. Ahem.
I wonder if he's linked to Hoodude's fabric, which was given to Dr Stein by some voodoo shaman he knew... hmmm.

He is soft and squishy and hollow, having a slit in his back for secret thiiiingsssss.

Inside Jane's purse is a small pile of papers, secret papers? no, just blank paper with little vine motifs on the edges.

I didn't want to waste one of the bits of paper, so I uncapped the staff/marker and wrote my secret things on A4 bwhahaha. It's a purple felt tip pen.

You waited long enough though, here she is, deboxed and gorgeous.

Jane's skin is a really deep bruised purple, much much deeper than Operetta's or Twyla's. Her hair is actually a deep purple indigo shade, with deep pink streaks though it. It's lovely and soft but a little frizzy.

Her outfit is a mad assortment of colours, patterns and textures that works well against her dark tones. Irl the colours are all much much darker than photos tell.

  

Her shoes are mismatched, one is a snake coiling around the leg, the other looks to be some sort of metal brace thing with feathers. Go figure.

Her leggings/tights have jagged hems and one is longer than the other.

 

Over the tights she wears a pink dress/tunic with a teal skirt in netting. Her belt is three skullettes with feathers and I think teeth are the other motif to each side.

She has one bracelet with scratched lines in it, and the other arm has a fishnet sleeve and a red and a teal bracelet.

She has clawed hands.

Over the dress thing is an asymetrical top with furry cap sleeves.
the top itself has a sort of vine/tree pattern on it.

Over that she wears a plastic shoulder piece made of moulded plastic feathers. Then a necklace piece in red.

One ear has a bone and feather earring.

The other has a tooth.

Jane's face is striking with very unusual lips. The top lip has no dip in it, while the bottom lip has a pronounced dimple. No upper lip dip always makes me think of Julia Roberts, though I think Jane here pulls it off far far better.

She has aqua/teal coloured eyes with pink and purple makeup which is quite subtle. Under each eye are a series of aqua/teal dots. Her ears are very faintly pointed.

On top of her head she has a headband with a skullette at the centre of large feather "wings". It kinda makes me think of a butterfly or moth tbh.

Her hair is pretty, and not too bad out of the box tbh. It needed a little combing and finger curling but it's ok to me.

Under that top you can see her dress thing is a strapless number, held up with clear elastic straps.

As the instructions told me, her sloth does indeed make a good backpack. he looks so cosy there. though he does also kiiiinda look like he's trying to cop a feel. Hmmm.

There is a bit of a problem with the slothpack though. Jane comes with a standard stand, but with the sloth on her back as he's clearly designed to be worn, the stand will not fit.

Best I could manage was a nice sloth seat. A saddle stand would have made a lot more sense. Annoyingly, the only one I have came with Catty Noir and is far too high for any other doll to use. Grrr.

Solution! Put her on the stand sideways lol. It's not particularly elegant, but it works till I can locate some shorter saddle stands.

Overall, I really do like Jane. She's a very unique colour and she stands out beautifully. Her tribal motif is fun and I like how she has so many colours on her without it feeling too much.
Her pen staff is a cute accessory, but it's a bit gimmicky as a pen for me. I can't see when I would ever use it as a pen, but it makes a great prop.
her pet is stinking adorable and I do like that he clips onto her. Only a few of the pets have really been able to hang out with their owner in a way that felt/looked natural. Sir Hoots a Lot can perch on Ghoulia's arm for instance, so I always like it when the doll and pet can interact in this sort of manner on display. Also saves me from losing the pets when they fall off the shelf and roll off somewhere.

Booo.

I like having them attached to the doll, but very few of them can do that.

Her stand lets her down. A real design oversight here to make it so she couldn't be on her stand and wearing her sloth in the manner the instructions tell you.
The secret keeper thing is a bit cheesy and I can't see it ever being used, at all. Why would you?
But she's a nice doll and an interesting character addition. Her parents add a lot of potential for tying her in with other characters and i'm really curious about Dr M's gender now lol.
Is she our first MH character with two dads? Or are Mattel just messing with us?
I suspect the latter but I like to think the former.

I give Jane Boolittle 9 ambiguous gender identities out of 10. She'd get 10 but the stand thing annoyed me.