Monster High - Finnegan Wake

I've been obsessively stalking the Smyths website ever since I noticed they had Finnegan listed, and when the Sep 4th "expected stock" date came and went, I admit I was pretty bummed out.
I was even more upset when a few days later the site changed their expected stock date to "sep 18th", it didn't bode well to me.

Thankfully, others in the UK started to report seeing the doll in stock in stores, but i'm in London and thus nowhere near any Smyths stores (yeah, what?). Nearest one to me is a good hour away, a trip totally not worth taking imo for ONE toy.

But then good fortune intervened. Husband rang me from work yesterday to tell me "Toys R Us have Finn!"
He pops into tru most lunch breaks as it's right next to his office lol, so I told him to get me a good one and eagerly waited for him to get home that evening.

I'll admit it, I haven't giggled so excitedly about a MH doll in a long time. I don't quite know why but I was super excited about Finnegan Wake, probably because he's quite an unusual product. We just don't get many disabled dolls, Mattel hasn't produced a doll in a wheelchair since Barbie's friend Becky in the 90s.

Also, I totally voted for Finn. Why? Because BOY doll. I love boy dolls, and the more boy dolls the better as far as i'm concerned.

So HERE HE IS! eheh.

First thing that struck me was how plain his face was. I think it's the baldness, having no scale cap like Deuce or Gil do coupled with his strangely outlined eyebrows. The boys always have fairly basic faces, but Finn's feels particularly plain.
I feel it's a huge shame they gave him such a sad expression when his artwork has such a great grin. They did the same with Heath, turned a really vibrant character into a pretty, but sort of solemn looking doll. I can only assume the negative reaction to Clawdia's scary grin face made them rethink a grinning mould here too. It's probably the right call, grinning dolls creep me out as there's always something a bit sinister in the toothy smile.

Anyway,

Finn's box is a sort of toxic slime yellow with a green tinge, mucus yellow? it's ugly as sin but stands out.
The backing card is a skate park by the look.

He seems to have lost his "rider" nickname, his name being just "Finnegan Wake" and his symbol is a burning loose wheel.

The back of the box shows his big ol grinning head and explains him as the vote winner. For those not aware of this vote, a while back Mattel asked fans to vote for one of three background characters to be made into a doll. Much like the vote they had several years ago where Scarah won and all three ended up made in some form, the assumption is that the other two characters (Gory, a vampire and Quill, a harpy) will eventually get dolls as well. But Finn here won by quite a margin and we all feared he'd end up scdd exclusive like Scarah did.
thankfully mattel saw sense and didn't do that to us, phew.

As a result, this "fan vote" doll has different distribution deals across the world but looks like most places he'll be available in stores. Mattel claimed in the US he'd be Mattel online store only but we'll see.
He ships in his own box, making him the first boy doll to ever get a release like this. Usually the boys are shortpacked and contained only in the A assortment, soon disappearing as the B assortment starts shipping out. Finnegan seems to ship in cases of 5 or 6 and the cases ONLY contain him. He isn't, as rumoured, part of the Exchange line, he's more like Casta or Catty or Amanita. A single random release that ships alone.

Anyway, Finn's box talks about his full bio and diary inside but we know this is crap as it's an international box.
I do wish Mattel would stop lying on their boxes. Just give us a full damn diary, i'd be happier to get a whole complete diary in blood french or something than the chopped up mess they give us in the multilingual booklets. I'll have to wait for the US to get him to find out what his diary SHOULD contain.

So his box is designed to look like his chair is just about to go down this skate ramp. Judging by the tyre treads, i'm assuming this isn't his first trip down the ramp either.

There's a bunch of racing flags and flame motifs around the place along with tyre tracks.

Finn's showing off a bit of belly when he sits, his shirt is a wee bit short.

His face is unusual in that he has this heavy grey line across the top part of his eye. I'm not sure if it's just an attempt at shadow or quite what, it's a bit strange.
His eyes are very plain, just a single shade of blue with a very large pupil and mirrored white light dots, a habit Mattel seem to have gotten into of late that makes all the dolls look crosseyed.
Light should only come from one direction guys! meaning the highlights in the eyes shouldn't be mirrored like that!
thankfully Finn's eyes are spaced in such a way he doesn't look too odd, but it does make his eyes seem a little unfocussed.

His eyebrows have a thick defined black line around them and no detail like hairs they usually do for the boys, they are in fact, perfectly sculpted brows. Does he draw them on? Pluck them? We may never know.

He has no ears to speak of, no gills either (so are merfolk mammalian then?) and a large fin mohawk.

His "hair" is made of plastic and is multi tonal. It's semi opaque so light shines through it, picking out the darker and brighter blue sections. It's quite cool actually.

Of course, first thing to do was to see if his face was too much like the other sea monster boy Gil. I'm pleased to say that no, it's not, they look nothing alike.
Finn has an angular jaw with a squared chin while Gil's face is actually a lot rounder and softer. Finn has a straight nose with a slight bulb at the end while Gil's nose has ridges and is pretty flat.
Finn also has much larger eyes, though his head isn't that much bigger, it's just because he was closer to the camera when I snapped this shot.

Looking at them side by side I can see which elements are missing from Finn's face paint though. Not only his mirrored eye highlights (I'm gonna need to fix that aren't I?) but he's missing an eye fold line (the dark line above the eye representing the lid). That may be why his face looks so unfinished and overly simple to me. Hmm.

Back to the deboxing.

This is Finn's "diary". The front warns you'll "crash and burn" if you read it without permission. Well Finn, given there's bugger all written in this thing, I think i'll take my chances kay?

The diary is pretty badly folded up from the way it was put into the box, which annoys me a bit.

Anyway, we have his full bio which was written by committee (Mattel put up options, people voted for which they liked best.). and the single page of diary repeated for four or five pages in different languages.

It's not hugely interesting imo. It just talks about Finnegan going to hang out with some sick monster, screwing with him to get him to take up physio and then that's about it.
Confusingly, the male monster he talks about is named River. I dunno, I find that kinda annoying because it's confusing to have multiple "characters" with the same name in a franchise. We already have River Styxx, so it seems a bit odd to have another character with the same name. Sure in real life same names happen a lot, but this isn't real life, it's a fictional universe and they could have picked literally ANY other name to avoid people confusing this River (a boy) for that River (a girl). Giving Finn a friend with a name that's already used for a completely different character also means we're never seeing a doll of this guy huh?
And Mattel keep doing it. Haunted had a gag octopus called "Kali Mari", a name they're reusing for a squid girl in the next special. They also had "Finn", the ex boyfriend of Lorna McNessie who isn't the same Finn as THIS Finn. like.. arghhhh whut?
Why Mattel... whyyy?

So the backing card is indeed a skate park, though i'm not sure i'd want to skate there, it's all run down and crumbling!

There's Deuce, nice to see him actually engaging in one of his canonical hobbies and a girl who I thought was Robecca but then I started to doubt myself. She seems to have pointy ears and claws. Also she's hovering randomly. Like, what is she even doing? Deuce is positioned so he's going down that ramp (and is about to fall on his butt) but she's just like.. floating.
strange.

And yes, I opened up the ramp part because I feel this need to explore all random cavities of boxes (lol box cavity search). Sadly there was no contraband, just some legal copyright.

Finn out of his box horah.

so first things first, goodness he has a teeny little waist. I suspect they shrank the proportions down to save on plastic costs for doll and chair to be honest. He's strangely disproportionate and his chair is really unnaturally narrow. But MH dolls are freakishly slender, so it's probably about in keeping with the "everyone's a step off skeleton or in fact an actual skeleton" look of the franchise heh.

His tail has a shimmer effect and moulded scales, and the fin at the bottom curls softly upward.

The fin actually comes off, not sure why, maybe so you can get other clothes on him?

He has this random arm.. bandage... thing.. made of plastic. I think it's meant to be a support bandage. 

He has a rather buff upper body with defined muscles (he has pecs omg), it tapers from broad shoulders down to this waspish waist and slender tail, which looks a little odd in my opinion because the shape of the hips and skinny waist seem decidedly more feminine to my eye.

His back has some paint splotches, there's a few on his butt too. Sloppy work Mattel.

But he does have sculpted in back muscles too, wowza.

He can't stand on his own for long. His tail's "knee" joint is pivotal allowing him to move it side to side a little as well as back and forward. But this means it's pretty floppy and because he's so top heavy, he just collapses when you try to stand him up. (which is strangely appropriate for a wheelchair doll isn't it?)

So, standing on the tip of his tail fin, he's about the same height at a regular MH boy, but standing with the fin flattened beneath him for stability, he's a lot shorter. And BULKIER.
His waist is a little narrower with his tail tapering down to little more than a single leg width, but his upper body and neck are substantially bulkier.
THIS is the sort of shoulder span Clawd Wolf and Slo Mo should have had!

Because the whole body is a totally different shape, Finn can't really wear the other boy's clothes. Width wise the vests seem about the same but the seam on Finn's is tapered to be wider at the top and the arm holes are HUGE. He couldn't fit into Gil's shirt at all.

He's nowhere near as bulky as Manny though.So this is a whole new somewhere in between sculpt. Cool.

I.. couldn't resist this shot.

Finn has painted on fingerless gloves, and tattoos on each arm. Flames on this one.

And a skull with a race flag and flames on this shoulder.

His skin tone is a very clear pale blue, closest I think to 13 wishes Lagoona, though she's a teeny bit more green than he is.

You can see his tail rotational articulation here. The bottom fin fully rotates and also hinges so you can position it in various poses.

The rotational joint in the "knee" part of his tail allows for some pretty realistic poses actually. Because it's quite a floppy joint, it doesn't hold the poses too well but it does mean sitting Finn looks quite comfortable and natural.

Speaking of sitting, that chair!

It's a pretty lightweight item, and it has four wheels. Two large spinny flame wheeles and two smaller guide wheels.

the wheels wobble a bit and the whole thing feels pretty flimsy but it works, it rolls along at quite a pace and the flames on the wheels blur into pure orange. However, Finn does have a tendency to flop OUT of it if you aren't super careful and the guide wheels spin uselessly, much like a shopping trolley.

The main part of the chair is textured and even has little seam stitching moulded in in parts like the foot rest.
The handles at the back are just the right height for the mh girls and boys (but not little sisters) to hold.

The backpack slung over the back does come off, and it opens but there's not much room inside. most of it's taken up by the structural pillars for the bag itself.
The bag is a kind of shiny bronze/brass colour and is pretty big. Finn's shoulders are too wide for him to really be able to wear it comfortably though, it looks a lot better on the back of the chair.

So who can fit in the chair? Well not MH boys that's for sure. Their legs are far too long. Though width wise their hips are narrow enough to fit into the chair part.

The girls don't do much better. Their legs with shoes and the heeled shape foot mean they overshoot the foot rest and the restriction of the girl's hip joints means she can't sit deep down enough in the chair anyway.

But oo, what's this? the little sisters look a bit awkward but this is due to the heels on her shoes getting in the way. Without heels she could probably sit flat down in the seat and her legs are short enough that she doesn't overshoot the foot rest too much.
Certainly the little sister body is the most close to being able to use this chair and not look ridiculous.

Bratz probably could use the thing if their feet weren't so stupidly massive and their lower legs weren't so long.

Jules (a barbie) just looks like she's stumbled and fallen onto the chair. She's way too long and her hips are too wide to fit into the chair part.

Makie hips, like barbie are too wide to fit between the arm rests without squeezing and distorting teh arm rests. but leg length wise it's a great fit. Fizz looks the most natural of any of the dolls I tried.

Sirena's tail is too long but that didn't stop her having a go. Finn sits a lot better than Sirena can.

Here you can see the evolution of MH mermaids. From the create a monster who couldn't even SIT DOWN and is forced to stand ridiculously on her tail fin, to Sirena who has a two finned clamshell style tail and a mostly static moulded in a slight curve tail, to Finn with his articulated tail that allows him to actually pose.

YAY for posing.

I hope the new mermaid line uses tails more like Finn's, so they can sit down and pose on rocks and all that sort of mermaidy stuff.

Finn does manage to stand out amongst the other sea monsters, and not because of his chair. it's because he's a much clearer, brighter blue than the rest of them. Most of the MH sea monsters are actually shades of green, so that's nice.

Finn's goggles actually magnify, and make him look HILARIOUS.

And while they can be worn on his head, they are a really tight fit and distort his face a bit.

So, overall? I do like Finn. Yes he's a fairly cheaply made doll but I understand why. Dolly wheelchairs aren't cheap to produce, and they made some cunning choices to cut the costs down here. The chair is minimalistic, it's simple and it's narrow and small but that's all it needed to be.
It feels a bit rickety, but so do a lot of wheeled doll toys.
Finn himself is quite simple, but mostly true to his animated form. he uses a completely unique new body and head sculpt, not only his upper torso but his tail is brand new for MH so that's where the money went, tooling these sculpts. it means we get a doll who comes with very little actual STUFF yes, he has a pair of goggles, a vest and a bandage. Oh, and a backpack. But the boys have seldom if ever gotten elaborate costumes and there's not much more they can do with a doll for whom they can't design pants or shoes.

I wish his face was a little more expressive, but I wish that of a fair few MH dolls. but he fits in with the aesthetic of the line. He's a unique shade of blue, he doesn't take up a huge amount of space on the shelf (which I genuinely did worry about) and he can pose beautifully (well, his lower body can. His bulky arms are a bit difficult to position)

I'm very pleased to have been able to add him to my collection, he may not be perfect, but he's good.

What would I have changed? A less solemn face, a slightly bulkier tail to put him more in proportion and a more cross compatible chair that other monsters could borrow. But all in all, these are minor gripes.
His narrow tail is a bit strange, but so is Manny's piddly little legsies and the flared shape of the boy doll's legs in the first place.
MH boys are strangely shaped, that's kinda.. part of the whole look of the franchise. not that the girls aren't oddly shaped too, but the boys have some very wierd anatomical quirks.

I hope to see more of this sort of pivotal tail, and I hope we see more of this bulkier torso too.

Still not entirely sure it was appropriate to name a character after a drunk irishman and the brawl that broke out as his wake but ahh well hah.

Finnegan Wake gets 9 bottles a whiskey outta 10. Huzzah!