Monster high - Freaky Fusion - Bonita Femur

I wasn't going to pick up Bonita till she went on clearance, but on Friday my father offered to buy me a doll and who am I to refuse the offer of a doll? lol.
So Bonita came home with me. I decided on her over Dracubecca or Lagoonafire because i'm still certain those two will go on clearance at some point and be fairly easy to find. I was starting to get a bit paranoid i'd miss out on Bonita completely.

As it turned out, Toys R Us had about 6 of her on the shelves and all seemed to have pretty good faces. But that £26:99 price point is just plain ludicrous. I don't know what the hell stores are smoking, but it's not good stuff if they think that price is reasonable.
But tru had Buy One, get one half price going on. So I grabbed I heart Fashion Venus (who I have wanted for a while) and got Bonita for half price, sweet!
well... my DAD got her for half price lol. But hey, semantics.

Anyway. Bonita was the only freaky fusion new character I honestly considered completely passing on. Much like Gigi, I felt like her pink skin was just a terrible idea pandering to the "little girls like pink" stereotype. and I was one of those little girls who came to DETEST pink for how shoved down our throats it was.
I  have a term for these dolls, they're called "pinkrifices". Those dolls that get "pinkwashed" so other dolls in that line can be released as intended by the designer. I have absolutely no doubt that with Freaky Fusion the exec at Mattel got a bit antsy when presented with a skeletal fairy chick, a centaur, a ghost mermaid and a half rotting zombie unicorn. Something had to give, and the sacrifice, or rather, the pinkrifice, was Bonita. "Girls like pink! Girls like fairies, moths are kinda like butterflies and they're kinda like fairies right?"
So she becamse inexplicably pink, despite the fact there's only 2... TWO moths that i've been able to find that are actually pink. Most people think of browns and greys when you say "moth" right? just like you think "bone coloured" when someone says "Skeleton" not Strawberry milkshake pink!

So for me, Bonita just felt like a hugely wasted design. A skeletal moth with a fairy vibe could have been so wonderfully gothic and creepy, a wonderful "twist" of what is fairly staple "girliness". Sirena managed to pull of the twisted mermaid look with the black and purple and chains, but Bonita just felt like she belonged in a Barbie movie instead of Monster High.
She was offensively pink and the pink bones just drove me batty.

But as time went on and I saw more photos, I came to appreciate how sweet her face was, and how damn awesome that body sculpt was. Under all the "pinkwash" was a truely macabre design. But this only served to irritate me more. Why oh why hide that detail! And why that HIDEOUS dress?

Poor Bonita. She was never going to be a doll I loved but she was a doll the completist in me needed just to be a completist.

My trip to TRU was my first experience seeing the Freaky Fusion dolls in the plastic (so to speak), as my others all came to be deboxed from the US.
The boxes are honestly WIERD. I'm not certain about the strange lightening bolt shape and that area to the side feels like such wasted space. These boxes are HUGE and kinda awkward. They stack face to face like the regular MH boxes, but they're wider and i'm not entirely sure why. Perhaps to accomidate Avea's big ol' horsey butt?

Anyway, Bonita in box doesn't, I think, stand out too well. The box is all yellow and black and pink... and she's all yellow and black and pink. She kinda blends in.
Her pinkness is just as offensive to my eye in real life and her dress more horrendous I think. I honestly detest this outfit so so much. It looks like something a 10 year old ice skater would wear, not a teenaged girl. It's spectacularly ugly and frumpy and just... ew.

But that face... it's so sweet.

Her box proudly proclaims she can "stand alone" and having seen first hand how well my Sirena and Avea stand, I believe it.

I find it a little disconserting that her box says she's the daughter of a skeleton and a moth. Like.. just a moth? like those small annoying things that flutter around my lampshades when i'm trying to watch tv? How is that even... squick.

I think they mean Mothman, her diary bio says "mothman" so goodness knows what's up with that. 

The back of her box has a very abreviated bio. Her art is kinda cute but her wings and pose are so startlingly awkward. And that hair... oh my god that hair. We'll get to that, just you wait.

The blurb for Freaky fusion is also present and i'll be damned if it doesn't sound like they're gonna cram far too many plot threads into one special. So.. we have time travel. body switching, four new characters struggling to fit in and find their place, plus saving frankie? I'm not convinced this won't result in an absolute mess in terms of pacing and narrative. Frights Camera Action was an absolute MESS, i'm really not optmistic this special will be any less painful to watch (I really liked 13 wishes and Ghoul's Rule though, they were great!)

Deboxing Bonita wasn't too awkward, though her stupid long hair was elastic banded in using about 5 bands, and oh my god does it shed EVERYWHERE.
It's also very very heavy so the poor girl's head lolls terribly, she can't actually hold her head properly because the weight of her hair pulls her head backward making her always look a little ceilingwards.

I absolutely HATE hair this length on dolls. I hate it more than I hate inexpilcable pinkness. Thankfully it's much easier to fix.

This length of hair I refer to as "princess length", ankle length doll hair that's really only acceptable if your doll is Rapunzel. The length gets in the way, it tangles easier, it looks crap much sooner regardless of the quality of fibre and what bugs me most, the practicality in terms of character.
I know that's a bit crazy, but think about it. She would trip over her hair ALL the time. Any girl who's ever worn a long skirt and tried to tackle stairs can attest to this, having something at ankle length is a massive trip hazard. Imagine sitting on that all the time, trying to brush it?

In terms of this actual doll, her hair being this long doesn't just cause problems with her head wobbling, it also tangles with her wings and generally gets in the damn way. It has GOT to go.

Look how long this hair is! If untied it'd be to the floor! she'd stand on it!

It is, to her credit, very very soft hair though. Lovely to run your hands through. However, forget restyling it. I tried to untie it from the hair tie and the elastic got tangled completely in a giant dreadlock of hair. I had to cut the damn thing out. Then I tried to pull it all back to neaten up her "box hair" (you always get these loose strands with ponytails) and it kept tangling with her antennae. Her wings come off, but those antennae do NOT and they were presenting a huge issue for me.

I sat on the sofa absolutely covered in shedding blonde hair, swearing perfusely and wishing much pain upon whoever thought hair this length was a good idea.
Husband was a bit scared, he hid in the kitchen while I threatened harm to innanimate objects.

I got annoyed and before I was going to go any further in my review, I HAD to be rid of that frustrating mess of hair.

I hacked it good. I now have a large pile of blonde, pink and black hair to reuse at some point. I cut off a good four or five inches of hair!

Now you can see her wings far better, her head can look forward and i'm not longer struggling with random tangled bits. SUCCESS!

Bonita's outfit consists of a singe piece dress, boots, a belt and a hair... thing. I dunno, it's like a hair band decoration.

Her boots are bright yellow and full of holes. I actually have no idea what they're supposed to represent as they look more like abstract vines than anything else. I suppose they're reminicient of her wings? but her wings also look more like swirly random spirals than actual moth wings so I haven't a clue here.
The boots are honestly, kinda ugly to me.

The belt is also yellow. It's made up of bones like a spine with a butterfly "bow" detail slightly to one side. It's a cute belt, I only wish it wasn't completely yellow as it washes out all the detail. I might paint some detail into it.

The hair... thing is inexplicably orange and pink. I don't know why it's orange as nothing else in Bonita's outfit is this colour. It feels kinda messy and haphazard.
It's a bunch of butterflies of various sizes all clustered together. It's kinda cool but you cant even see it when she's got it on due to the way her hair sits. Also, Mattel.. Butterflies =/= Moths!

The dress is mostly black with a butterfly motif (Seriously, do you think anyone explained to the designers that Moths and Butterflies aren't the same thing?). The sleeves are long (a shame as they conceal Bonita's bony arms) and made to look motheaten. They end in pink raggedy lace cuffs.
There's the same lace at the neck line and around the skirt, it has teeny circles which are surrounded by slightly larger circles which I initially thought was supposed to represent micrographed bone:

Or maybe magnified moth wing patterning:

It still might be inspired by these things, but it's pretty abstract.

I'm actually disappointed her outfit features no obvious "skeletal" features. The butterfly pattern, the torn hems, the moth eating are all very "moth".

The back of the dress exposes a lot of back to accomidate those wings. (You'll see why in a moment)

Yep... still hating this dress.

Now those wings.
These things are HUGE. Which is odd because no other winged MH character has large wings. it seems to be a stylistic thing with the MH universe that all wings, no matter how useless it'd make them, are teeny tiny things.
Bonita's wings however, are gigantic and look much more like they belong on a fairytopia doll than Monster High. There's something very costumey about them, which I really don't like.
Honestly i'm disappointed they don't have more of a bone motif to them like the Novi Star Vera Tebray.

The middle section is a spine and part of a rib cage, that then spreads into the wings. this part is AWESOME but it's a detail you simply cannot see when the wings are on the doll. From the front like this, that part is right up against the doll's back and from the back, her hair covers this part of the wings anyway. It seems a huge shame as it's such a cool detail.
from there, the wings rapidly turn into some kinda of random spiral that feels more like caligraphy or vines. The very ends make me think of musical notes, which makes absolutely no sense at all.

There's a sheet of see through yellow plastic highlighing certain parts of the wings, which look like a scary face. There's two eyes and a jagged mouth, which is a cool touch. Sadly though, I feel the contrast between the yellow and pink isn't enough to make the eyes really stand out to my tastes. The wings are also Barbie pink, which really does them NO favours. I wonder if I could repaint them... hmmmm.

  

The back of the wings unfortunately, despite that awesome spine section, clearly wasn't designed to be displayed. The plastic clips for the yellow sections are very very obvious and somewhat ruin the look.

These wings seriously remind me of a butterfly masquerade mask.

Unlike the other winged Monster High dolls who use two small holes to fasten the wings in, Bonita has a GIANT gaping chasm in her back. I understand why, I mean those huge wings are heavy and this is the only real way to anchor them in, but I feel like they're only that huge because they wanted her to "stand on her own". It doesn't mesh with any of the other MH aesthetic and this bothers me for some reason lol.

The gaping hole is also really ugly. It's not just a single hole either, there's a bar section to the top AND bottom of this hole (you can't quite see the bottom part because her plastic sheathe thing is covering it.)
This makes redressing this doll a nightmare. You can't just leave that one hole free, no, you have to leave most of her back free. She can only really wear backless outfits and there's surprisingly few MH items of clothing that have a back THIS low.

Let's talk about this body though.

Oh.. my goth.

It's an amazing blend of moth and skeleton, it's just beautiful and morbid and fantastic. I absolutely love it! Imagine this sculpt in a colour that isn't PINK! It'd be astounding.

First of all that face. There's elements of skeleton to those lips and the angular shape of her jaw, but then these HUGE eyes with multiple "Pupils". The central one looks skullette shaped.

And these teeny antennae. I was worried they're look too much like ears, but they actually don't (for the record, Bonita hasn't got any ears just like the skeletons and insect monster dolls previously. Yay).

Her makeup is a very soft peachy cream with glitter which doesn't photograph well at all. The only issue I saw with the Bonita's in TRU was the placement of the glitter. Most of them had the glitter on one eye in their eyebrow rather than above the eye. My girl has some glittery eyebrow as well, but it's not too bad.

Under her dress she has this stitched and taped together plastic sheath thing. I assume it's to avoid staining from the black dress. It has sewn sleeves but the thing is actually selotaped ON.

Under that though... woah. There's a sinewy neck, an external ribcage (get it? because insects have exoskeletons!) and a fuzzy wuzzy moth belly! She has a slight indent to her torso but no obvious bellybutton as such.

Her arms are completely skeletal just like Skelita, though it still bugs the hell out of me that they're pink. Pink bones just looks stupid to me. Really... really stupid.

Her legs are also fuzzy wuzzy (and Clawdeen shaving HER legs was controversial, imagine this girl! lol)

The detail in this sculpt is just astounding. I get the impression Bonita was "pinkwashed" because the designers refused to back down on freaky as all hell external ribcage detailing and hairy legs. Making her pink somewhat softens how macabre and creepy that whole thing is, were she actually brown and bone toned she would be one terrifying doll. Awesome yes, but perhaps a bit "too much" for the target market.
Still, it bums me out they felt they had to tone it down with pink. I'd have loved the full embracing of crazy horrifying but then i'm a wierdo.

Just because I get it, doesn't mean I have to like it though.

I can imagine what could have been, and that sucks.

Of course, the biggest thing i've taken away from handling Bonita is this:

That outfit... has GOT... to GO.

Still trying to find the ideal outfit for her, but till then, there's no way she's going back into that ice skater dress of fail.

She can keep her ugly shoes, but that dress needs to burn.

I should also mention, Bonita's diary? ADORABLE! She's so stinking cute! Very endearing and you know what? She supports my shipping of Neighthan and Sirena! Thank you Bonita! thank you!

<_<

Ok so... overall?

I give Bonita a fairly solid 6 out of 10 irritated lepidopterists. 

Bonita has a beautiful face, her body sculpt is stunning but there's a lot wrong with her design to me. Her outfit is dire, her pinkness is bland and stupid, her hair length is frustrating and ridiculous as are her wings and perhaps worst of all, there is very little in her outfit that screams Skeleton and little that says MOTH. Most of her motifs are in fact Butterfly related and MOTHS AREN'T FREAKING BUTTERFLIES OMG YOU GUYS.

A flame motif perhaps? You know, moths to flame? A night inspired design as most people think of moths as nocturnal (they aren't all, but it's the cliche) would have made more damn sense than butterflies. It's like having a werewolf wear chiuauaua patterned clothing, or giving one of the gorgons a lizard motif instead of snake. It just makes it look like someone didn't bother to do their research and the butterfly motif feels like a lazy copout. There's several things that would have said "moth" much more than just sticking butterflies on things, they've managed it with every other character thus far, having motifs that are nods to their monster type without just flat out depicting a full creature (Clawdeen's ridiculous wolf sweater aside). 
Cleo doesn't wear a shirt that has shambling mummies on it does she? Ghoulia has brains and worms and stuff, not just brightly coloured zombies marching across her clothing. 

I dunno, the butterflies (even if they are in fact rainbow coloured moths) just feel like someone couldn't think of anything better. With the exception of the moth eaten elements, nothing about her outfit suggests a monster type nor feels very character specific. It feels like a wasted opertunity for something cute and subtle that said "moth/skeleton monster". Why no skeletal elements to anything except her belt? (which is a cool blend). I have to tell myself that lace is supposed to be micrograph bone because otherwise, I have to assume zero thought was put into anything here. I have more faith in Mattel than that. 

So yeah. Bonita is a disappointing use of a cool idea. Skeletal fairy chick is clearly what they were going for, but sadly it just didn't quite work. She also feels like a huge waste of a very interesting cryptid (mothman) and I do hope this other trademark "Luna Mothews" gives us a much more "mothy" mothman monster. 

Redressed and restyled I think Bonita could look cute, but she'll never look incredible and she's most definintely for me, the weakest of the four new hybrids in terms of overall design. 

That face though... so pretty.