Novi Stars - 2015 - Doe a Deer, Justina Hour

New Novis!

Yes, so The Entertainer here in the UK randomly got these in. And then after a few days having them listed at £20 each, put them on sale with all the other Novis for £5.
Naturally, I had to order all four of them because a fiver each? that's too good a deal!

From what I understand of it, Novi Stars as a franchise is dead. but before they died MGA produced these four characters. They then made them only available in Russia, of all places and the rest of the world wailed and expected they'd never see them.
But apparently the EU is, awesome!

So, let's dive in and have a good look at these new Novi Stars.

Doe A Deer

We'll start with my favourite. Doe A Deer.

She ticks all my boxes. She's brown, purple and green, my three favourite colours. She has antlers, which is awesome. Her name is a terrible pun and makes me hum.
And she's freaking ADORABLE.

So her gimmick is that's she's fuzzy. Yes, she's got flocked legs. Random.

The back of the box has a large prototype image and true to MGA's usual shenanigans, a lot has changed.
Mostly that dress really. Woah that dress is crazy. Also she has completely different antennae. These are Nita's electricity ones, the actual doll has the same antler shaped ones as Vera Tebray. Which honestly make a bit more sense.

Anyhoo...

Her bio says her mission is to "teach girls to unleash their inner party animal" so... she's a drug dealer?

Apparently she eats roses.

Interestingly, the boxes have four languages. English, French, Spanish and Dutch. The sticker is in Slovak? It's two very similar languages one of which I think must be Czech as the web address is .cz.
The bottom of the box has MGA uk info, mga Netherlands and their distributors in France, Germany, Spain and Mexico?

Doe and Justina both are part of the "Super Novas" line, so they're on the same long limbed bodies as Vera Tebray and Meme Merise.
Their boxes are pretty easy to open. Cut the tape on one side, pull the tabs and out slides the inner card.

Here's Doe's artwork. Her dress looks far more intricate and kinda mad. The positioning of her eyes bugs the hell out of me, just.. yeek. The Novi artwork follows demented anatomy, i'm not a huge fan.

Thankfully the doll is substantially cuter.

She has white skin with brown/bronze around her face and ears, and brown/bronze at the ends of her arms and hands. It has a sort of shimmery metallic quality so her hands particularly look a bit shiny, it's pretty.
Her hair is a soft lavender colour and wavy. I believe it's nylon.
She has huge antlers AND antennae which is interesting. I quite like it, it's bizarre but quite fun having what looks like two sets of antlers.
The novi ears make great deer ears.

She comes with a pale pink brush but no stand. The novi brushes are useless because they haven't got a long enough handle, so i'd have preferred a stand MGA. Bah.

Doe's eyes are purple and glittery with a deer in each pupil. It's a bit obvious but I guess there wasn't much else they could use here. Hoof symbols maybe? But yeah.

Her forehead dots are beige with two larger purple ones at the centre. The dots continue under each eye, which is unusual.

Her lips are purple with the top lip substantially darker than the bottom. Her makeup is a combination of pink and purple.
Her lashes have gold glitter at the tips.

Her antlers are really realistic, they're textured and painted with a gradient brown. They look amazing. 

The dress is a bit confusing honestly.
There's this flappy grassy bit on one shoulder than sorta just flaps about the place. the top ribbon/strap is baggy and doesn't seem to fit right. The skirts are sewn a bit roughly and the pleats are uneven and then there's this longer bit that flaps to one side but doesn't have enough width to tuck behind her leg properly like in her art and prototype.

There's a large pink flower on one hip but she's lost the little purple flowers from her prototype.

The whole thing is made from what feels a bit like taffeta. It's scratchy but thin and not hugely forgiving in how it's sewn.

The random grassy bit on the shoulder constantly gets in her face. It's annoying.

The loose strappy bit really bugged me, so I had to see if maybe it was supposed to be a strap.

Because it sure as heck fits over her shoulder and WORKS as a strap better than it did a gapey baggy ribbon.

Her boots are dark purple and black with vicious looking little studs at each toe.
Yeek, you wouldn't want to get kicked by this girl huh?

The front of the sole is cleft like a hoof.

And in fact, the underside even has little horse.. uh... deer... shoes?
Now THAT is a detail I did not expect from MGA.

The boots are designed so her weight rests on the ball of her foot. I believe these are designed to look like the feet of a deer. I really dig these shoes, there's a degree of detail and attention to that detail in them that i'm just not used to seeing with MGA products, particularly not Novi Stars. I think these are the best Novi shoes yet!

Doe's hair is for some inexplicable reason plastic stapled into the box.

Also for reasons known only the MGA, Doe's hair is packaged in pigtails, complete with hair bands. Sure dolls often have their hair parted to their sides and stitched into the box to show it off in the package, but it's not usually ALSO secured with elastic bands unless that's the intended style of the hair.

Considering her rooting pattern, no... no her hair is NOT supposed to be in pigtails. yeek.

Unfortunately because of the way it had been secured into the box, her hair has warped to part unnaturally down the middle. I'll need to boil wash it to get the kink out and get it to sit properly, but for now she can just have a ponytail.

Her hair fibre is typical MGA nylon. It's dry and a bit frazzled, prone to terrible frizz and needs a lot of tlc. It should look great with a boil wash though. (the packaging tells me not to use head, I laugh in the face of their advice! HAH. )

Like most of the Novis, her hair is ridiculously long and it's HUGE.

She has a strange thing going on with her part line. There's a bit of hair swept to one side and secured with elastic, then more bits that randomly come over almost like they were trying to cover up bald spots caused by the antlers. As it stands, there's a bald patch just between her right antennae and antler anyway. I think her hair needs to be completely taken out of ALL the packaging bands and restyled properly.

It's worth noting, only her legs are flocked. But they are flocked from the hips to the tips of her teeny toes.

The only problem with this flock is that it attracts dust. I've had her out the box only a few hours and already she's got random bits of fluff stuck all over her legs. It's gonna be a nightmare keeping her looking clean.

My Doe CANNOT stand up. Her legs are very very floppy so she falls about the place like a drunk. Huh, maybe she's been sampling her own merchandise huh?

Doe works well I think as a sibling for Nita Lite, particularly knowing her prototype used Nita's antennae heh.

She has the same antennae as Vera Tebray.

Overall, I do like Doe. She's got beautiful colourings, the soft purple with the grassy green and the creams, whites and browns work wonderfully.
The double antlers is neat and her dress suits her, even if it is a really strange dress. (seriously, what is up with those sticky out bits?)

My only gripes would be that her flock is going to be a pain in the butt to keep her clean and her hair needs a lot of tlc.
Also not coming with stands, eugh. For dolls who flat out cannot and will not stand alone, and who really are more display things than actual toys due to how fragile they are, no stands is not a good idea. Not that the Novi stands ever worked that well anyway, all mine fall off theirs constantly because they're rubbish.

I wonder if there's a waist cinching stand small enough... alternately I might be able to fashion something out of wire and some sort of paperweight.

Anyway, overall I like Doe. I don't think £20 is the right price for them though. Remember the original Novis retailed at £20 and they came with a pet and a stand, two things these ones don't have.
But for a fiver? HECK yes.

I really like her, and when I get time i'll try to fix her hair. then she'll be gorgeous.

She gets 9 unguligrade effect shoes (Did you learn a new word today? bwhahaha) out of 10.

Justina Hour

Justina is green, black and pink which is a striking combo. She comes with a grey metalic brush.
Her gimmick is that her eyes move.
Though the "try me" thing is a bit ambiguous. I thought you turned her antennae because the one on that side LOOKS like a winder but it's not. I mean the arrow POINTS at the antennae! But no, while it turns, it does nothing.
What you actually do is turn her clock hand.
Et Voila:

My children have become obsessed with this. I'm dubious the mechanism will stand up to repeated use, in my experience clockwork stuff NEVER lasts long.

The good news is that you can manually turn the clock hand to move her eyes or even push her eyes with a finger to shunt them.

Here's the back of her box. Her prototype is quite different. For a start her hair is down and crimped? (I think I actually prefer the high ponytail). She has a plastic overskirt as well, and her clock belt is painted different colours. there also appears to be a winder on the top of her head. Um?

Her mission is to bring back the cool fashions from the past or the future... uh... ok? I can't help but now wish she was in more vintagey looking clothes then.

She's either too late or too early and wants to learn to stay in one place for more than a minute.

Her body sculpting is really obvious in this prototype and for a bit I thought "oh they ditched the sculpting" but then I looked closely at the actual doll. I was wrong, she has this detailing across her face, it's just really hard to see from a distance and extremely difficult to photograph.

Her artwork is vibrant. Her hair is very different, she has no clock on her head and of course that overskirt thing.
Not sure what drippy gloop has to do with time but she has a lot of drippy motifs. (Melting clocks ala Dali?)

Unlike Doe, Justina comes with instructions!

They explain her arms come off and how to work her eyes.

Yes children.. gaaaze deeply into the alien's eyes... she won't hypnotise you with her swinging eyes.. noooo not at all. Hahah.

Her eye symbol is a swirl, which seems in keeping with her hypnotising kids. "buuuy moooore Novi Staaars... MGA are the best... Mattel is eeeeevil"

Justina has quite narrow eyes, unlike other Novis. It's to do with the mechanism in her head. But it does give her either a really sultry, or a kinda angry look.

Her name irritates me. Justina Hour isn't a freaking pun. Justine Time IS, why isn't she called Justine Time? Was there already a copyright for that? Justina Minute even (Just in a minute) would be more punny. Who says "just in an hour"? That's not even a thing man.

Anyway,

Justina's hair is a wig, but unlike previous wigged novis is CANNOT come off. It seems to be glued into a ridge around her head. The problem is, the wig cap is super visible. There's a very obvious ridge all the way around her head.

The hair itself is half black and half pink and actually quite soft, a little prone to flyaway. Making me think it's not actually Nylon. (maybe Kanekellon?)

Her eyes are sparkly pink and her makeup is a line of vivid pink and then a line of silver.
She only has central dots which are pink with silver around then. The rest of her markings are engraved into her skin and they're a series of gears that run across her forhead and under her eyes.

The clock on her head is embedded into her skull. It's not a hat, it's part of her body (or a really unfortunate accident)
It makes sense given the clock is the winder, but it does mean she looks a bit strange from the side with this rod jammed into her head.

The wig cap is particularly obvious at the back. Her hair is pulled up into a high ponytail with a smaller ponytail that holds the front sides of her hair back and out of her face.
It can all be taken down but it gets in the way of her clock and still sits wrong because of the wig cap. It's rooted to be pulled up like this, so I don't think it'll look too great down.

Justina's lashes are tipped with pink/purple glitter.

Her antennae are the same as the curl and coil Novi ones, but inversed. Two gears, one of which has a heart inside.
They make sense, so at least some effort was made to ensure the reused antennae worked for the characters.

Her dress is pleather sort of stuff, it's all wrinkled and distressed looking. It's surprisingly soft actually.
Down the middle there's a pink ribbon and a "zipper pull2
Over this she wears a plastic clear jacket/capelet thing. It's made of the same stuff as a raincoat, I think a few of the other novis have similar stuff. it works for aliens, it's got this retro sci fi quality to it.

Her belt is studded and has a large drippy clock with a pendulum. The pendulum actually swings, which is neat.

Justina's shoes are simple little heels with a heart painted on the front. I'm not sure if they're a reused sculpt or not, I can't find an example of them in my collection but I don't own every single Novi.

Here she is with her antennae sister anyway. They both have a similar mechanical thematic and their colours are pretty much inverted which I think is cool. They even have similarly coloured eyes.

Overall, Justina is an interesting doll. Her gimmick is a bit cheap and does rather limit her I think though. The rod through her head isn't attractive, nor is the wig cap. I'm not convinced she'll last long. Wind up stuff never does.

I do like that she's got this moulding across her face, it's a neat touch and her narrower than usual eyes do give her quite a different face.

She's a lovely shade of acid green with a shine to it that I enjoy, and her outfit though simple, is perfectly fine.

I do wish she had a better wig with a less obvious plastic rim, but oh well.

I give her 7 melting clocks out the 10. I like her colour combo and winding her up seems to amuse my children far more than it should.