Monster High - Picnic Casket for Two

Not my photo

Picnic Casket for two, another two pack from Monster High featuring two characters who might be dating, and probably aren't. 

Anyway, I imported my set from the US (Thank you Drake, you rock!) when Toys R Us in the UK took months to actually GET stock and when they did, decided £39:99 was a reasonable price to charge. (I'll put that into perspective for you folks too lazy to get a currency converter up, that's a whopping $67 USD)

So to save on shipping I had these posted from the US without the box. Sorry guys, no box images this time. 

 I'll make it up to you next time heh.

I did get the back of the box sent to me though lol. 

So the explanation for why Jackson and Frankie are on a picnic in the park is delightfully ambiguous. In the webisodes the pair decided, well, Frankie decided things were too complicated with Jackson's alter ego issues and they put a pause on their relationship. Status quo has them just friends, yet here they are packaged as a "date" set. 

So the back blurb clarifies, or is that confuses? Anyway, it says:

"It's a BOOTIFUL day for a picnic so Frankie and Jackson have thrown together a casket full of goodies and they're off to find a nice spit that's quiet, shady and music free. Is this just a friendly get together for lunch or is there a real spark in the air between these two fangtastic friends."

Ok, a couple of things. 1: if it's daytime, why is it so dark?  and 2: Did Frankie call ahead to make sure she could match her outfit to Jacksons? Or vice versa? She even dyed her hair to match his outfit! That's dedication man. Girl's totally trying too hard for "just friends". 

Now my personal dislike for this pair aside, this is totally a date pack. You so don't go on a picnic just you and a guy as friends unless you have a set of magic cards and are duelling... wait... what? Not everyone hangs out in parks and plays Magic the Gathering with their BFF? Well sucks to be you huh?

Dum de dum.

With no deboxing to do, we can get straight to the dolly goodness. YAY no deboxing. 

Frankie's hair is a bit crumpled from her box but considering these two just travelled across the Atlantic, they don't look too bad.

Jackson comes with a frankly adorkable grey checked sweater with random green ribbons on one sleeve. He has a blue tanktop with yin yang and proper hipster yellow pants. Omg the yellow pants ahahahah. They're ridiculous.

His shoes are the now becoming over used slip on mould with yin yang symbols. Slip on shoes are lame boys, take note, guys in slip on shoes not near a beach? Bad. Bad boys. 

*style advice courtesy of the girl wearing sweatpants with yogurt stains*

He also has yellow glasses. I love his yellow glasses, it's nice to see different glasses for him even if it is just the rim colour. 

His hair is cut short with a quiff at the front that sticks up with a lot of gel. His head is honestly a bit sticky from the gel in his hair and he's covered in loose hair. I'll be giving him a bit of a wash to get that sorted.

Frankie has a cute little dress with a bolt patterned bodice and checked skirt with stitching over. A big yellow bow is at the waist.

Over this she wears a grey sweater with pink trim and stitching detail on one arm. 

Her shoes are a recast of her School's Out/2.0 doll (I think) with a bolt heel. They're black with pink soles and heels. Pink is unusual to see on Frankie actually, and i'm not sure i'm sold on the idea. She already has grey and yellow and blue, another colour feels a bit like overkill but at least it matches her lipstick so it ties into the whole ensemble. 

She has large yellow lightening bolt earrings. Apparently they're I heart fashion earrings... honestly I tend not to pay much attention to earrings. The hair usually covers them.

Her hair is that annoying blended black and white that makes her hair look grey. I don't much like when Frankie's hair is this blended. I like her better when she has obvious streaks of black and white. Running through her hair is a splotch of yellow that looks like someone dumped paint on her head. 

Yellow and grey really isn't a hugely attractive combo to my eye, her hair may have worked better with more seperated white and black chunks. Personally i'd have liked mostly black with white and yellow for a high contrast look. 

She has a picnic casket in grey which is most likely a recast of Little Dead Riding Wolf's purple basket. 

Jackson's tank top looks a bit wierd without the sweater to me. I think a tee shirt would have looked nicer but it's hard to get short sleeves to cooperate when you put a jacket over the top. That's likely why he has no sleeves at all. 

Worth noting, Jackson DOES have his yin yang tattoo on his back. 

This is his entire outfit. All the pieces are very nicely made. The sweater is soft and cozy feeling, i'd so wear this. 

I couldn't find Gloom Beach Jackson, but signature and Picnic casket are suitably different. I find that often with the male dolls they end up looking very much alike except clothes. This is particularly true of the moulded hair dolls. Nude, I am not sure Scaris Deuce or Swim Holt could be told apart from their signature versions without very close scrutiny. So I like more obvious variations like hair style. The boys can't exactly do the makeup thing, so it's nice to see Jackson with a new hair style.

I also like that his outfit, while a much hipper outfit than his signature outfit, still incorperates a lot of his thematic. The yellow and grey is reversed this time, the check pattern it there and of course that ever present green yin yang that's on both his shoes. 

I wonder why it's green... 

All of my Jackson's suffer squint eye. The eye with the eyebrow piercing is always a little squished. I wonder if this is a result of the piercing itself. I like to think Jackson just has a permanent twitch thanks to Holt.

Unfortunately, Picnic casket Jackson has a real hair issue. It's very thinly rooted and the poor boy looks to be suffering from early onset male pattern baldness. No matter how I comb it, there's simply not enough hair to cover the bald patches. 

This sort of thing is honestly unacceptable for a set you're charging £40 for. Heck, i'd be ticked off with a doll I paid £16 for. 

What bothers me the most is that signature Jackson has SO MUCH hair. His hair is thick and floppy and awesome, Picnic casket's is not just cut too short to be at all decent looking in many places, it's also rooted so sparsely that even if the hair was longer, it wouldn't cover his head properly. 

Poor boy. He needs a beanie. 

Meanwhile, Frankie's outfit is again, decently made but her sweater has a lot of loose threads and a little fraying to the edges. 

The picnic casket/basket does open, but it's too small and doesn't open wide enough to fit anything actually into. Except perhaps her earrings but what's the point in that?

After a rinse, Frankie's hair came up nice enough. It's soft and smooth and while not overly thick, she doesn't have any balding issues. 

The yellow splotch is very uh... striking? Though it sort of consumes the white in her hair. I still maintain this would have looked better if she had more black in her hair. White and yellow simply isn't a good contrast. 

The width and placement of the streak also feels rather random. It's like a random blob on her head, like someone got a bottle of yellow dye and just threw it at her head.

As is often the case with Frankie, her black streaks are randomly shorter and cut really haphazardly. As is her yellow. I don't get this. Like, why can't her streaks all be a uniform length? Why is the upper layer of her hair longer at one side than the other? It looks weird.

Frankie's makeup is quite attractive though. Much as I dislike her hair, her face is lovely. 

She has bright pink lips and blue eyeshadow with a bright green around both eyes. 

Her makeup in fact felt, to me, quite similar to Swim Class (the latest one) Frankie's. Swim Class has green around her eyes as well, and pink lips but it's a different shade in both cases.

Swim Class Frankie does make a good point about my issues with Picnic Casket's hair streaks though. She has a coloured streak in her hair, but the placement seems more intentional as an underlayer rather than a random splotch. Her hair also is divided into very distinct black and white streaks, which I feel would have helped Picnic Casket's yellow stand out a little more. 

As it stands, Picnic Casket looks, to me, like her hair has been stained by something she's been stored next to, rather than it being an intentional streak of colour. 

And that's a shame because I actually really do love her face. She's got a really sweet look to her and the green and pink makeup is a good look for her. Her makeup is understated and I get this sort of "ghoul next door" vibe from her overall outfit and appearance. I just wish her hair was better looking. Less grey and yellow (ew) and more contrasting.

If I could be bothered, i'd be tempted to reroot her with mostly black hair. 

These two dolls do also represent an interesting point. Picnic Casket has yellow in her hair to tie in with Jackson, who's signature colour is yellow. Swim Class has a deep blue which ties in nicely with the skin tone of Holt, who came packaged in the same line as she did. I wonder if that was the point. Hmmm. 

The set also comes with two... cakes? and gender colour coded uh... drinks bottles? Or possibly grenades. I have no clue what the hell those are. 

None of these fit into the basket. 

Also, what kind of a picnic hasn't got a blanket and two cakes is hardly a picnic. Booo. I get why they didn't come with more food, but I do wish they'd come with a blanket or something, it could have been really cute. Considering they're charging £40 for this set, it's astoundingly sparse. two dolls, reused sculpts for shoes and accessories and only four accessories? That's rather stingy.

I find it adorable that Jackson is packaged to look like he's juggling these though. Boy's got some mad anti gravity skills keeping that cake on the plate while upside down huh? 

Another hint that this picnic isn't just friends. What guy shows off his circus skillz to a girl he's not trying to impress? 

Overall, it's a nice enough set but the price is ridiculous and the actual content is totally not worth that. Even at £30 it's a bit spartan I feel.

I hate Frankie's hair but I love her face. Her outfit feels a little simplistic but it's cute enough. I'm not convinced the grey sweater works for her though, it's a bit distracting being such a different colour to everything else. 

Jackson's hair is an absolute slap in the face QC wise but his overall look is ADORABLE. If you can find one without bald patches, awesome, but i'm emailing Mattel to complain. There's just no excuse in my mind for bald patches on a doll. It's gross and just flat out not cool. 

Poor Jackson. I thought Clawd was the one with baldness as his freaky flaw.

Overall, I give Picnic Casket for Two 7 inadequate picnic baskets out of 10. And that's only because Jackson is my favourite character and I love his outfit. Frankie is very average for a Frankie, there's much better ones available. Jackson needs more hair but otherwise is a very cute doll. He's not worth the price of the set alone though, that price is a joke.

Now this said, i've been told the overall QC on these sets is crazy bad so be wary. Not just thinly rooted hair, but smeared up faces and all sorts. I don't know what the hell is going on with Mattel and their QC but I feel like maybe they're pushing to get stuff to stores a little too quickly, and letting quality slide as a result. SLOW DOWN Mattel, we'd rather have less stuff but made well!