Monster High - Casta Fierce

Here in the UK Monster High prices have become a joke. A really bad joke, where nobody is laughing.
You see, Casta Fierce hit our shores a few weeks ago, but with a hefty £26:99 price tag. (that's almost $44 to our US friends)
The price alone was enough to make me blanch, so naturally, I was in no rush to order the doll till Mattel saw sense and stopped trying to rob us blind (yeah not gonna happen).

Thankfully I managed to get a hold of £16 in Amazon gift vouchers thanks to doing surveys and other random things. Yay vouchers?
But even so, I was reluctant to order Casta at full price. Her full price made me too unreasonably angry.
So when Amazon temporarily (like for a day) dropped her price to £21, I pounced and ordered her. Used my vouchers, got her for a brilliant £5:45. SWEET.

Now once again, excuse these photos. My phone camera is absolutely rubbish and even with the flash on, it taking super dark photos no matter what I try.
I'm so sick of it. I bought a new camera but it won't be here till next week, boo.

Casta's box is quite large and has a lot of swirling smoke effects all around it.
The way she's packaged totally looks like she grabbed her mic and then is shoving her mic stand away lol. She's all "don't need you no more, get outta here."

Her artwork is wonderfully dynamic. Her hair seems a lot poofier in her art though, more beehivey.

Casta is the daughter of Circe, so yet another nod to Greek myth here. the MH team seem a bit obsessed with Greek myth atm. This is less "monster high" more "greek legend high" right now. We've got minotaurs, the gorgon sisters, a harpy girl supposedly coming soon... much as i like greek myth, it'd be nice to see some more mythical monsters from a different culture soon. (We have a lot of cryptids too, hmm)

I think someone else has mentioned, if she's the daughter of Circe, does that make her a relative of Manny Taur? Manny's the son of the minotaur right? Which means Circe is his great aunt (grandmother's sister). So Casta and Manny would technically be first cousins once removed.

Is it just me or does Casta's arm in this art look SUPER awkward and a bit broken? I know MH hardly has realistic anatomy but that one arm is really bothering me.

Anyway, her bio is kinda cute. If she isn't careful with her lyrics, she can accidently cast a spell in her song and turn the audience into frogs lol. It's a neat way to avoid her having a pet too. Lately it's felt a bit lazy the excuses for not having pets, this one is just a silly little joke which is less irritating. Besides which, why would a pop star have a pet? It'd be a pain in the butt on tour.

Casta's dress worried me initially. It's all glitter encrusted and I feared it'd be a sparkle shedding nightmare.
But actually the glitter seems pretty solidly attached, no stray sparkles anywhere. I'm impressed.

I love this backing card. I want to know more about this band! They look like they're made of shadows or smoke or something. That drummer totally looks like she's made of fire. Do you think they're magically summoned musicians or something? Like, part of Casta's spell?
Also, Keytar! omg keytar lol.

 

See what I mean? this is a cool backing card. 

It helps it's also my favourite colour combo, orange and purple hehehe.

Casta's pose in the box and her outfit make her look like a no necked monster really. I mean, where the heck is her neck? Her head looks enormous! it's not an attractive look. 

Her eyes are awesome though. She has these sorta starburst patterns in each iris. 

Her eyeshadow is purple and gold and there's a gold stripe on one cheek. Is it makeup? Is it a scar? Goodness knows. 

She has a mole on her lip/cheek and attitude eyebrows. 

The dress itself is orange and purple and very very sparkly. The fabric feels very stiff and kinda scratchy to touch. I can't see this being a comfortable garment to wear. 

Casta comes with a large hollow broomstick/mic stand. I think it's cute. The bristles are a shiny purple which is a bit random (why are they shiny?) but there's even a wood grain effect on the handle! cute. 

It has a black ribbon and an orange ribbon with buckles tied around it rather loosely. 

Her mic itself almost looks like it's made of bone. It's also shiny purple and slots into the mic stand nicely (of she can hold it if you elastic band it to her clenched hand. )

The mic stand is a nice height for Casta, and she can grasp it with her clenched hand which is nice. 

Unfortunately for posing purposes, her legs CANNOT and will not splay in this dress. She's stuck with her legs straight like this because the dress is so tight around her thighs that she simply cannot move. She'd be shuffling around that stage in this dress. It really isn't cut for movment at all. 

Casta's hair is a bit of a mess as well. It's cut a bit haphazardly and in layers so it needs some tidying up. 

the top section is gelled into a solid mass of helmetness, but that's ok, this sort of style really WOULD be bulletproof with gel irl. 

even out of the box, her cage shoulder pad things make her look neckless. 

they do kidna remind me of an Iron Maiden though, or some other medieval torture device. Maybe a dunking cage? I'm not convinced that's not intentional. Dark Mattel.. dark. 

I have no clue what her earrings are supposed to be. They just look like balls of spikes. 

I do wonder at the durability of this dress with play though. It's made from such stiff fabric and the glitter while currently fairly sturdily on there, may start to flake off after time if she's played with a lot. She feels less like a toy, more like a display piece. Which would explain the price, but her price in the US doesn't seem to reflect that at all. 

Her hair is knee length at the longest section, but it's cut really choppily. It's soft, but it's a bit flyaway and light. I think it's Kanekellon which I always struggle with in photos, it looooves to stick out in random directions. 

(this is a terrible picture of her boots). Her shoes are spikey boots in shiny purple with stiletto heels. Yes, more spikes, Casta's motif seems to be spikes spikes and more spikes. 

More torture chamber references? because i'm getting a little uneasy now. 

Casta's outfit actually surprised me. Firstly, her shoulderpads are a removable piece. Once removed they reveal that Casta's dress is actually a strapless number with a short overshirt... thing on top. 

it's made of vinyl-like fabric with poofy tuel sleeves. (the fishnet is actually an individual piece as well.)

The only problem with removing the overshirt and shoulder pads is that Casta's dress actually really doesn't fit her properly.

It gapes oddly around her bust (girl needs to invest in boob tape) but worst of all....

It doesn't even bloody fasten properly at the back! Seriously, this is as closed as it can be. The dress is flat out TOO SMALL for her hips.

Wth? It's almost like it was cut for a regular bodied doll, then they hastily shoved it onto this larger body and thought "nah, it'll be fine".

This is QC I didn't expect from Mattel. This is the kinda crap MGA pulls, not Mattel. It's a huge oversight. How on earth did they manage this?

Putting her oufti back together is a bit tricky. The overshirt goes on in a manner that looks, when it's not on the doll, like it's upside down. The "curve" you'd assume was the collar is actually the piece that goes around her bust, while the collar is a totally flat piece across her neck.
It's slightly too short to properly overlap her strapless dress, but it's neccisary to tuck the edges of the ill fitting bodice IN.
the shoulderpads then hold everything down with two little plastic tabs that push against the edges of the bodice, presumably to keep it in place. But I needed to get an elastic band and wind it around the shoulderpad piece to make it actually stay in place and hold that whole top section in a decent manner. Otherwise I ended up with a tiny flash of green skin or puckered bodice fabric sticking out from under the overshirt.
Eugh.

Casta is the fourth character to utilise the "big sister" body mould and the first to feature a non human skin tone. Awesome.
Her boots are quite high so make her look a bit taller than HHMBG. the hair bump only adds more illusion of height.

She also uses Abbey's hand mould, at exactly the same scale. So while Abbey has overlarge hands for her body size, Casta's hands are about right.
Her right hand is a modified version of this, moulded to be clenched so she can hold her mic and stand.

When Casta was first annouced, there was a lot of chatter about whether she'd share the witch CAM's face sculpt.
Certainly they share a skin tone.
Both heads are marked 2011.
However, I cannot for certain say these are the same sculpt.

they have similar chins and noses yes, and the same pointed ears.

 

But i'm not sure the jawline is the same. It's very very hard to tell. I think you'd have to blank both faces and try to compair. 

What I will say though, is that the copyright markings, though both 2011, are different looking.

The font is different, the copyright symbol is different. It's very very strange. I'd expect with a reused mould that the copyright on the back of the head would be identical, as it is with Cupid and Ghoulia. 

So hmmm... 

Certainly these two could be sisters. they are VERY alike.

Casta also comes with a little booklet, it's some sort of event pamplet.

The inside is just a series of scrapbook-like images and song lyrics. I don't know what the song is, but it all seems to be the same song. 

The Warhol inspired print made me smile. 

So... Casta Fierce (or Casta Witch as Amazon seem to have decided to call her, lol wth?).

What do I think? Well she's got attitude. I love her face. Her hair is a bit haphazard though but it's ok. Her outfit LOOKS decent but in actual execution? it's shoddy as all hell. The main dress doesn't even fit the damn doll properly, which I think is just unforgivable. And she cannot pose in the dress either because it jams her legs together in such a way as she cannot actually move them. 

Another gripe I didn't picture, she didn't even come with the correct stand. Her stand was a generic stand, black with a clip but the clip was too small to go around her waist!?? HOW? Wierdly, the clip could fit around Clawdia's waist but when I removed Clawdia's stand, her stand clip is wider than the one that came with Casta. Um... 

So Casta stole Clawdia's stand and Clawdia got Casta's. It worked out, but it's kinda bizarre. 

I assumed the taller bodies used the same clip as the regular and short bodied dolls, but there was absolutely no way I was getting the clip that came with Casta to fit her without doing serious damage to her dress. 

For the price they're asking, Casta's quality control issues are too huge. She's not a budget doll, she's supposed to be a deluxe release but illfitting clothes and stands that don't do their core function? that's seriously shoddy. 

I like her, I think she's a very cool looking doll. Her outfit is lovely colours and not too blinged out for me, her broom mic stand is a cute touch and her skin tone is a lovely shade that stands out amongst the other characters (only Iris has a similar yellow based green, all the other green girls have been more blue-green). She's suitably halloweeny and it's nice to have another tall girl, BUT, I cannot forgive dresses that don't fit. Choppy crappily cut hair I can fix, dresses that flat out don't fit I cannot.

Get it together Mattel. Sheesh.

Overall, Casta isn't worth full price. She's massively overpriced here in the UK and it's just insulting. Even at US full price, i'm not convinced she's worth it unless mine is a fluke and others actually have fitting dresses and stands. (let me know in the comments)

I'll be contacting Mattel regarding the dress, but I am certain i'll get their usual "we don't give a damn" response. 

I give Casta Fierce a solid 7 out of 10 wardrobe malfunctions. Had her clothing actually FITTED, she may have scored higher.