Monster High - Brand Boo Students

I couldn't resist, I needed these three.

Weirdly this bunch aren't listed as Monster Exchange, they're "Brand Boo students"  I wonder why, especially as their diaries etc specifically mention the monster exchange program.

Anyway, here's Isi Dawndancer, Batsy Claro and Kjersti Trollson



The box they arrived in really didn't feel big enough for three doll boxes, but the newer smaller boxes do stack really well for packing and shipping.

They are NOT however, fun to open. a few of the plastic tabs really wanted to stay in, so one of them tore and left a serrated edge I nearly cut myself on. *sigh*

The boxes all arrived with some sort of white residue on them. It's on every box and it's slightly sticky... I don't think I WANT to know what it is.

Anyway, let's get to the dolls.

Kjersti Trollson

First one I opened was the cute troll girl Kjersti. Mostly I wanted to know what was under those glasses, they were covering her eyes so I wanted to see if her face was wonky or not.

Her large glasses make it a bit tricky to really get a feel for her eye alignment which is gonna drive people who fuss over eye wonk crazy. I wonder why they packaged her wearing her glasses when previous releases they'd started putting them in the doll's hand instead. Hmm.

Anyway the boxes look pretty much like the Exchange boxes, they're blue and have a bunch of lockers backdrop. But the line name is now "Brand-boo students" for some reason. Maybe because they didn't want to have to do anything sending other ghouls overseas? I don't know really, seems a bit odd to change the name of the line, especially as it implies they're permanent students rather than exchange students like their diaries outright state. (though the length of the exchange is never mentioned... yeaaah)
Seriously though, are all the other schools in the MH universe really really bad or something? Because it's like any kid who even looks at mh suddenly decides to transfer.

Anyway,

Kjersti's artwork has her hat at a really strange angle and honestly she looks like she's holding that controller at a pretty uncomfortable height but eh, I suppose it was the only way to get it into frame.

At first I was disappointed she's so pink, because honestly pink makes zero sense for a troll but Mattel seem determined to pinkify every monster at some point.
That said, the pink won me over because 1: it's a more fushiaish pink than barbie pink and 2: the idea of this hard core gamer geek girl being such a girly colour amuses me.

I was I admit, concerned how those curls would translate to a real doll, curls often suffer badly from packaging and those large ears feel ambitious given the constraints of injection moulding.

The back of the box has an abridged bio and a larger portrait cropped from the image on the front. Kjersti has no pet, she's too busy eating cheetos and pwning noobs *nod nod*

Her glasses were put on super wonky, which made me nervous about what might be underneath.

Unlike the previous exchange line, these new ghouls come with HANDBAGS instead of what looked like giant damn luggage. Ok the bags are still crazy oversized, but they're not as crazy bulky as Marisol and Lorna's were.

Some of my photos by the way are a bit yellow. My lighting was awful and I didn't work it out till i'd already taken quite a few photos. *sigh* So yeah, some of these pictures are yellow and some aren't. I didn't want to have to retake ALL of them.

Poor ghoul out the box looks a bit ruffled.

Her glasses are pixelated, and her whole outfit has a pixel effect.

The arms of the glasses are made up of little "blocks" that step up and over her ears.
For some reason they were stitched to only one side of her face with a little piece of blue thread. This is what was making them all wonky, as the arms weren't neatly tucked behind both ears.

And speaking of ears, check these things out! I was impressed. Previously i'd been lead to believe doing really large ears like this wasn't possible with the moulding process but it seems they worked it out. They may not stick straight out to the sides like her artwork, but they still jut out slightly and wowza they're awesome.
See? there really WAS no excuse for EAH's Cerise not to have her damn wolf ears after all. If they can do THIS they could do damn wolf ears.

Kjersti has an unusually shaped head, the elongation of the skull is exaggerated by her large ears I think. She has a slightly bulbous nose that upturns a little and high cheek bones.

Without her glasses she looks honestly quite mature.

Her jaw-line is a little squared off, her lips are small and neatly shaped and she has downcast somewhat grumpy eyebrows painted in purple.
Her eyes are blue and inexplicably pixilated. I'm not entirely sure how liking video games would magically change her eyes but eh.. maybe it's a joke on having square eyes or something, I dunno.
She has a lot of spiky eyelashes and two toned blue eyeshadow.

Her hair is styled into pigtails and a blend of pinky purple and a more blue purple. It's a bit crunchy out of the box as it's CAKED in product, but the curls seem to hold thanks to whatever they put into it and it looks ok with a quick finger comb. I wouldn't put a brush near it though, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see this frizz completely. She has a teeny shorter curl to one side of her face which helps soften her face a little.

My general rule is "if it ain't broke, don't bloody touch it" and her pigtails are relatively neat and tidy. One is a little lower than the other but overall it's ok.

Kjersti is on the little sister body, like Howleen, Twyla and Lorna. it's nice to see more use of this body, I have a fondness for short dollies being a short arse myself hehe.

Her body is pretty standard, no fun secret details here which is a little disappointing after more recent releases but eh, her ears I suppose count as interesting detail right?

Her outfit is a t-shirt and skirt. I wasn't totally sure about the skirt but it works with the overall look, despite being ugly as sin in my eyes.

The tee is black with pixel effect sleeves in aqua, blue, black and purple. There's a pixilated Skullette on the front wearing a horned helmet, I assume this is Kjersti's own Skullette and it's always nice to see the unique character specific Skullettes being used.
The skirt has a lower layer of pixel blocks matching the shirt sleeves with a mesh overskirt which has this metallic purple geometric pattern. It kinda looks like crystals, or some art deco design. I'm not entirely sure what it's meant to be, if anything.

The top and skirt were stitched together with black plastic tags, presumably this was to stop her tummy showing in the box but maaaan, I hate having to snip tabs off clothes. Thankfully this sort of fabric takes those tabs a lot better than the more fragile mesh or shiny fabrics do.

Strangely, Kjersti's skirt is elasticated around the waist rather than velcroed, kinda like original Spectra's skirt. It makes it a little more awkward to get on and off but does mean the skirt puffs out more evenly.

Her other accessories include a pair of blue earrings with the same skullette on them, a plastic "knitted" horned hat and a pair of sneakers with moulded on socks.

She also has a plain black bracelet but it's just a solid black band and not in the least bit interesting.

I couldn't get a very clear image of the earrings, it's difficult to make out because they're such a dark colour.

The shoes only painted detail is the aqua sock. A shame as I feel like the rest of the shoe would look a lot cooler with at least the skullette painted or something. I might have a go when I get some new white acrylic.

I don't really like moulded socks, but i will say this, the shoes are very soft and SUPER easy to get on and off, which is really nice.

The shoes themselves are some sort of high top sneaker/trainer with a platformed sole made up of more blocks.

The hat is also plastic, but I will say this, the knitted effect is VERY convincing. I don't really think horned knitted hats would have worked so well in production, the weight of the plastic horns would distort the wool right?
The hat itself is distorted anyway, it's not actually round. It's a little more squared off and flat at the back, though i'm not sure if this is just from being squashed in the box or if it was moulded that way.
The horns themselves are painted a bone colour and have sculpted tips and even a little texture to make them look more like actual horns.

The hat fits well over the glasses. It was plastic tabbed to her head but thankfully it mostly sits ok without them. It does fall off as soon as you move her, which is annoying, but at least it stays ON when she's on a shelf. UNLIKE Lorna and Marisol's stupid hats -_-

Kjersti's handbag is a giant game controller. It's cute. The handle is designed to look like the cable (there's even a connector plug) and there's a moulded on zip pull sticking up.

It opens as well, it's hinged at the side and opens out. Mine was rattling and inside was this sprue. Random.

It's a big bag, but it looks stylistically oversized rather than ridiculous and awkward. It's a cool bag and I like it.

Now I know people will want to know "so how pink IS she?" and she's pretty damn pink. But she's a very different pink to the other pink skinned characters (and there's rather a lot of those).
She's darker than the vampires, more purplish than Gooliope's somewhat neon bubblegum but darker than Operetta's. So... yeah... I'm not good at identifying shades of pink, it's like my least favorite colour heh. I do however think it works for Kjersti and rather like that she's a totally different shade than the copious other pink dolls.

She came with a stand, a brush and a diary. Because these dolls came from the US, FULL DIARIES Y'ALL! I'm so happy about this. The UK keeps getting stupid crappy international versions that don't have proper diaries and it's painful.

Kjersti's writing is very clear and easy to read. Her diary doesn't reveal anything hugely earth shattering, talks about the exchange scheme and how she's friends with Heath which I like. I always like it when the guys and girls hang out as friends. Apparently Heath thought she was a dude online because she was so good at video games hahaha, good ol' Heath, as misogynistic as ever.

It took me way longer than it should have to click that "screecha" was "pizza" doh. 

She lists Heath and Ghoulia as her bffs, though Ghoulia is more a friend/arch nemesis hahah. They're both super good gamer ghouls, it's cute to see that side of Ghoulia's geekiness given some more time. I love Ghoulia eheh.

Finally her box, the backing card of these dolls is very much the same as the exchange backgrounds with a corridor and lockers. Kjersti's locker has a controller and an... axe... guitar? but it's too small to be a guitar.. axeolin? maybe a guitar hero style controller? It does look to have a cord. 

Kjersti's cute and sassy and I kinda really like her. She REALLY reminds me of the candy themed Novi Star though

It's the pink skin with the purple pigtails and poofy skirt I think.

Overall though, I really like her and that's saying a lot given my general dislike for pinkification.

I give her 9 axe/guitar puns out of 10. This set of dolls feel more like the quality of MH we've come to expect and while there are a few cost cutting measures (moulded socks) they don't feel cheap or detracting from the overall feel and look of the product. Her hair isn't nearly as bad as I feared (see novi above for my fears lol) and her outfit, though simple, is well put together and feels complete. I dn't feel like she needs any other accessories to pull the look together, and that's actually pretty refreshing.

Isi Dawndancer

So Isi is our first Native American inspired mh doll and apparently, according to those who actually know this stuff, Mattel didn't do so well with the representation.
I can't really speak about that though, as I know pretty much ZERO about Native American tribes and cultures and symbolism. From what I do understand though, the Deer Spirit or Deer Lady is a myth from one particular tribe and the dreamcatchers are problematic.

Politics aside though, she's a beautiful design. Teal combined with brown is such an attractive combo and the addition of red is very eyecatching. I've longed for more naturally coloured MH dolls, there's such an over abundance of pink and purples it's always refreshing to see some brown. I'm odd and honestly really like neutral tones like brown and cream heh.

Photo isn't great, but yeah. Her artwork has Isi mid dance... I think. I find it interesting that in her art her left ear is pierced, but her doll had the right ear done.

The back of the box has the limited bio. Yet another excuse to not have a pet, but at least with this wave it doesn't just come down to "i can't decide". Her freaky flaw is that people fall in love with her. Uh... ok, that's one of those traits that could SO easily be an awful Mary Sue sort of flaw, but from what I know about the Deer Lady, it does fit. She made men pine away for her or something right?
Still, if it ever comes up in the webisodes I can see it being SUPER annoying. like.. gag, everyone's in love with you? You sure that's not Frankie's secret power?

My Isi has slight wonk. Her eyes are mostly even but her eyebrows? are set a little off centre.

Was there really a reason to strap her hair to the box THIS much? I mean ffs.

Here she is free. In photos her facial markings have the unfortunate effect of making her look like she has a 5 o'clock shadow, which really isn't very attractive. The blend from white to brown is a little less obvious in natural light but she does still look a wee bit um... beardy.

Isi wears a plastic headband with antlers attached. The antlers pop off fairly easily, in fact mine kept falling off and it was annoying. I think the symbol in the middle is a dreamcatcher, Isi has several of them in her outfit including one dangling from her headband.

She has one pierced ear, it's some sort of squared off horseshoe shape. her other ear has a dent but isn't pierced.

Her ears stick up like the werecat or werewolf ears, but they're much pointier and at a slightly different angle.

Her ears sort of splay outward rather than being directly on top of her head.

The antlers, while the do come off leave a big hole in the headband. I feel like the dreamcatcher really needs some paint work.

With the headband removed Isi's hair is rooted a little unusually. The front section is centre parted but then behind her ears it has no part line at all. I suspect this is because of her ears.
Her hair is a beautiful rich teal colour and very soft, though it's a bit scraggly at the ends.

Her eyes are HUGE, brown and surrounded with purple eyeshadow. She has these dark brown brows that extend down her nose and should I believe be centred but mine is a bit wonked. Her nose is turned up and half painted with a little animal nose, while her lips look to be sculpted ever so slightly open.
She has white dots freckled across her cheeks and forehead, but honestly I think they're a bit too uniform to look natural.

Her hair looks a bit frazzled at the ends. Pretty sure it's kanekellon.

In profile she has a deep indent between her eye and nose and you can see better her slightly parted lips.

Her outfit is two pieces. A baggy overshirt with handkerchief hem and elbow length flared sleeves, and a black bodysuit.

the overshirt is made of soft thin fabric with some sort of tribal pattern. The black bits look like hourglasses to me but maybe they're drums? I dunno.

She has triangular bracelets on each arm in a dull reddish orange to match her headband and teal to match her hair and other accessories.

Her bodysuit has kinda baggy legs, they I think are meant to tuck into her high boots into them but it's super awkward.

The pattern has stripes, geometric shapes and skullettes

The little "woven" skullettes are cute.

Her shoes have very high platforms with more of that woven tribal patterning on the soles. There are pink dreamcatchers on the front of the shoe (because Native American = Dreamcatchers, always dreamcatchers? Methinks they couldn't think of any other motif)
There are three tiers of fringing.
The shoes are very soft and easy to get off, a little more awkward to get back on thanks to being open toed rather than being because of Isi's uniquely shaped feet.

Yes, Isi has HOOF feet. They even have sculpted hair, but it's very very faint.

Her feet have two extra "toes" at the back of the foot.

For reference, this is an actual deer foot taken from Wikipedia.

And here's Isi's foot. Cool right?

Isi's foot is roughly the same overall general shape of the regular MH foot, just altered to have hoofy bits rather than toes. This is actually quite clever as it means she can still share shoes with other dolls despite her unusual anatomy.

Also regular MH dolls can fit Isi's shoes no problem.

Isi's outfit and accessories. I didn't bother to take her bracelets or her necklace off though.

Her necklace is in fact a recast of one of Clawdeen's crescent moon necklaces and the bracelets I think are Cleo's.

You can see the two necklaces here. Isi's is bright yellow while Clawdeen's is gold.

Isi's skin tone is more "reddish" than the other brown skinned MH dolls.

Isi's bag is YET ANOTHER dreamcatcher. It opens with a hinge and has the same pattern on both sides. It also has the same brown painted trim on both sides which is nice, usually Mattel only paint the "display" side of a bag and leave the other unpainted.

Isi lists her friends as Twyla (fellow dreamcatcher enthusiast?) and Gilda (fellow "deer" girl)
Nice to see Gilda mentioned.

I couldn't read Isi's diary, her handwriting hurt my head.

Much as I like the whole unique handwriting style for each character (I wonder how they decide), it does make some of the diaries much much harder to read than others.

In Isi's case it's small and curly and given I was at this point already in pain thanks to my stupid old person back I wasn't much in the mood to try to decipher it.

Isi's backdrop has her school very uh... wooden. She has a dreamcatcher in her locker, because OF COURSE she does. How many dreamcatchers does this ghoul OWN? sheesh. There's also a drum.

All in all, I give Isi a solid 8 excessive dreamcatchers out of 10. Her 5 o clock shadow just ain't pretty and her hair is a bit raggedy but she's beautiful. She just doesn't "wow" me as much as the other two but that might be because we've already seen SO MANY images of this one ghoul on the internet.

I do like her outfit though, I always like a doll who's wearing pants and in the MH franchise, that's a pretty damn rare occurrence. I also adore her colour combination. Red, teal and brown is gorgeous and not a combo we've seen before.

Batsy Claro

 Batsy Claro is apparently daughter of the... white vampire bat? Uh...

this?

Wtf Mattel? That's not a bloody monster! It's a bat! This isn't Anthro High!

It makes me feel better to think of her as a werebat. At least werebats and similar are actually monstery and not just an animal. I mean sheesh, what next? Daughter of the walrus? Son of the puppy dog?
It's like Bonita who's daughter of "a moth" which... just raises so many questions. Her... momma slept with a moth? How does that even? I don't think I want to know. Mothman sure, but just moth?

sometimes I feel like Mattel aren't even trying.

Because she's a vampire (bat) Batsy is pink... heh, getit?
Yeah I still have no idea why the MH vampires are pink, but it is kinda funny.

Her artwork has her head looking over her shoulder at an awkward angle and she's holding what I assume is the Ghost Orchid mentioned in her diary and the webisode introducing her.

She's YET ANOTHER eco warrior like Venus *headdesk* I hope she's not as preachy and obnoxious as Venus.

My Batsy has slight eye wonk, one eye is printed a little lower than the other. The perils of ordering online. Thankfully tilting her head slightly conceals it heh.

I really love the combo of the grassy green and pale pink, it's really unusual.

Batsy's skin has a slightly pearlescent quality to it, it's very pretty.

She has a pretty little face that's eerily familiar to me. Her large eyes have inner lashes which is unusual for MH. Her eyes are brown which is also unusual for MH and there are two "shine" dots  instead of the usual line.

She has dots under each eye, stripes on her cheeks and a pattern of lines and dots running up her forehead with a bat in red.

Her lips are bright green on the top lip and pale green on the bottom lip, not sure why, but it ties in with her eye makeup which is the same green and lime shades.

She has a really snub nose, much like a bat which is really cute. It's pointy too. She has pointed ears, they're a bit more pointy than regular vampire ears.

Her earrings are white and really hard to photograph. They have an abstract leaf pattern on in the shape of a bat.

The same leaf bat is on her headband.

And her handbag.

Lots of leafy bats.

Her handbag opens like the others, though the hinge looks really fragile. It's already showing wear. I can't see this lasting long.

Batsy has no special moulding on her body, but she does have some pretty impressive wings.

I can't say they really look like bat wings, they look more like tribal inspired angel wings to me.

They connect into her back the same way Rochelle's wings do. Two rectangular holes in her back. They're pretty sturdily fitted one they are in.

There's a stamp on her back CHL41 H321. I dunno, presumably some manufacturing thing.

For some reason Batsy's outfit actually covers up the holes in her back for her wings. Once the wings are in they just push this bit down but it does make fastening all the velcro a bit awkward with the wings on. And it's wierd because usually Mattel designs the outfit to have a space for the wings or to be cut a lot lower at the back.

Batsy comes with a handbag, a pair of white earrings, her wings, a headband, some awesome knee high shoes and a one piece outfit.

After the other two dolls, I really didn't think this would be a one piece. Both the other ghouls had two piece outfits, a top and a skirt or bodysuit but Batsy gets a rather unattractively stitched together ensemble that looks like it SHOULD have been two pieces and was likely designed as a top and shorts but for whatever reason they decided to cheap out and stitch together. It has these random black and green and pink ribbons trailing from a plasticky bat sewn to the hip. I feel like this should be part of a belt, she needs a belt to cover the ugly seam between top and shorts. Just a teeny bit of ribbon would have worked for goodness sake!

The top has a big ruffled collar that sits just off the shoulders. The top part has a woven leafy/flax pattern and the bottom looks to be some sort of bright geometric pattern with a few leaf bats hidden in there.

I have to assume this outfit is the trade off for those large wings, but it's a shame they couldn't at least just put a little ribbon to hide the seam and make the outfit look a little more finished. As it is, the bat and tassles just look strangely tacked on.

Batsy's hair is a light curl to it and while a little messy out of the box, it feels soft and looks fine with a quick finger comb. There doesn't feel to be much product in it, which is nice considering how kinda crunchy Kjersti's hair was.

Batsy's hair is pale blonde streaked with a lime green. 

Her wings really get in the way of her hair, or her hair gets in the way of the wings? either way, it's extremely awkward to comb her hair with the wings in place.

The wings also seriously restrict Batsy's ability to move her head.

Her shoes are awesome. They're flax or vine woven boots with a leafy sole. They're a bit of a pain to get on the doll because of all the holes, her toes get stuck but they're soft and fairly easy to get off.
The sole is actually indented, the leafy bit overlaps leaving a "hollow" looking heel.

That same woven flax effect is used on her headband, which is made of the same soft plastic that makes it nice and easy to get on and off.

I finally did work out who Batsy reminded me of. It's not just the colour of her skin, her features are very very reminiscent of Draculaura or Elissabat. So not only do all the vampires have pink skin, they all have soft, cute features. Huh.. go figure.

Batsy also really reminded me of Viperine for her "albino" feeling colouring. Her wings make me think of Bonita's overly ornate ones. While Batsy's aren't nearly as massive, they do have that same ornate styling.

In the "pink spectrum", Batsy is the palest pink of the MH group. Her skin is a very soft pink that's just a fraction lighter than the standard vampire pink.

Her diary has one particular tidbit that interested me. Batsy has a boyfriend back in Ghosta Ricca!
He's never named, nor does she describe him, but she mentions him and deciding on a long distance relationship while she's off on this exchange for an unspecified amount of time.

Batsy's writing is nice and easy to read, which i'm thankful for. It's sorta spiky.

She lists Venus and Jane as her BFFs, which makes sense.

I really do wonder how long this monster exchange is meant to go on for. I mean, Lagoona and Ula weren't gone long but the others seem to have just stayed at MH. What the heck?
When do they go home? Or did their parents say "exchange" when they actually meant "getting rid of you"?

Batsy's school corridor is really ornate. Her locker contains a decorated skull?, a candle I think and i'm not sure what the thing at the bottom is.

Overall I do like Batsy, so I give her 8 animalsaren'tmonsters out of 10

Her downsides are a one piece outfit that feels unfinished to me and a bag that feels like it's going to break in half pretty fast. But her shoes are amazing, her wings are cool and she has a darling little face.

The Brand Boo students are, in my oppinnion, one of the strongest complete lines to come out of Monster High this season. All three are well designed, they all have pretty unique looks and their outfits suit them. There's no terrible grandma outfits here (like Mousedes), no characters that look pretty much like another from a distance (like Elle) and they all have stands and diaries, which is such a relief. Their hats and headbands stay ON once you remove the plastic tabs, unlike the last wave of exchange and aside from Batsy's disappointing one piece, they have detailed impressive outfits and handbags that are actually usable, not ginormous.
Their price point is good too, at $19:99 and likely £19:99 when they finally hit the UK, they're not really breaking the bank like the Boo York dolls.
Least I HOPE they're only £19:99 when they hit the uk. UK stores are taking the piss with the price of MH lately.

I'm pleased with my three new dolls. There's not one of the three I feel I got just "for completeness sake" which honestly isn't something i've been able to say for a while. I really do like each and every one of them. YAY.

It's a good line, well worth picking up. It's dolls like this that remind me of why I fell in love with MH in the first place.