Monster High retrospective - Part 2

So, it's 2011 (roll with it), the dolly  market is awesome, MH is doing well... and I was in the throws of a terrible obsession.

Oooo eee.

The 2011-2012 season saw the release of a great number of lines and the introduction of store exclusives.

there were more lines released this year, including 2 deluxe formal lines. 6 new characters were introduced as well. - Spectra, Abbey, Clawd, Cupid, Gil and Toralei

So let's start.



So first off, Gloom Beach got a 5 pack the UK never saw. *grumble* that included an exclusive Ghoulia.
But we never got it and at the time I didn't have any US contacts so ho hum....

on to dolls I COULD buy.

The first two new characters to be introduced to the lineup appeared in June, 2011 was a slow year for the first 6 months with a lot of just wave 1 rereleases and a PILE of second release Holts, I mean hooooly crud there were a lot. I remember walking into Tescos one time and they just have a whole damn shelf of only Holt.
It was bizarre.

Anyway,

Spectra and Abbey were very anticipated releases and by some fluke the UK actually saw them first. A catalogue store called Very got early stock, and when i noticed this of course I ordered them. Very does free delivery if you nominate one of their "pick up points", which are usually convenience stores or gas stations. So I nominated our nearest which happened to be a gas station and when they arrived I got a text telling me I could pick them up.
So the whole family walked the 10 minutes or so to go pick this pair up, it was a lovely sunny day, it was totally worth it.

I never liked Spectra's default outfit. It always felt a bit... gothic ballerina to me, and not in the good way.
But her transparent limbs and gaunt face were awesome.

Wierdly enough, for some reason almost all the first release Spectras have this strange choppy hair style where one side is hacked shorter for no clear reason.
Wth?

They gave Spectra a second release in this outfit  but with some changes. Her earrings were the big giveaway, they lost the black balls on the end of the chain and were now just silver.

My ghoul eventually got a better outfit in the form of a fashion pack, but this wasn't released till 2012 so shhhh.

Anyway

Abbey was gorgeous. Though her hair was a nightmare. The little nodules on the fibre they used for her glitter made her hair even more impossible to brush than Cleo's tinsel.
And her glued on glitter made her skin rough to touch.

The rerelease of this Abbey has shorter leg warmers so you can see her boots.

I restyled mine's hair so you could see her pretty coloured streaks.
I always liked the aurora colours in her hair.

She had a brand new hand mold too, giant claw hands whooo.

Her skirt, like so many mh outfits in the early days was scandelously short. I mean it's basically a glorified top with some leggings underneath.
It's not a dress!

Curiously, and this is something that was never explained, Abbey's first few releases always came with a key or set of keys. Her original doll has a key on a ring hanging on her belt and her picture day doll has a set of keys hidden behind her backpack.
Wth?

At the time, when I noticed this one's key I asked husband "what do you think the key is for?" and he declared "why for Spectra's padlocks!"
So that became a crack ship for a bit.
It was funny okay?

Both Abbey and Spectra came with pets. Abbey's a teeny little mammoth and Spectra a weird ferret (apparently) that doesn't look anything like a ferret.

Abbey's stand was pale blue like her skin. Spectra's was purple.

Both had diaries.

I miss diaries.

This line was also no longer just "signature" but referred to as "school's out" which is wierd considering the dolls seem to be still in school according to their diaries... go figure.
Anyway, not sure where that name came from. But that's what the second wave of signature dolls are called according to Mattel's boxes. (the outer shipper boxes)

And oh yes this was the year that Tesco started to stack unopened cases on top of the shelves in the toy section (Asda still does this). We'd search along the top of the shelves to find the Monster High case, pull it down, open it and hope it was a new case lol. Naughty naughty I know, but hey, they shouldn't just leave the cases around like that.

This was how I got a hold of Lagoona.

See, the school's out assortment shipped with an A and a B case and this was EXTREMELY annoying because unlike previous A and B cases, the case assortments were totally different to one another.
One case contained Cleo. The other contained Lagoona.
WHY!????

So School's out improved a lot about Monster High. Not only were the new outfits just as if not more detailed than the previous year, the dolls structural problems had been sorted out. Their legs were still elasticated but their arms had a proper little stopper on the pin so they didn't just slide out and the faces were more refined, more unique to each character with narrower eyes for several of them and just had more personality imo.

I never much liked original Cleo, but School's Out? She was GORGEOUS.

She remains my favourite Cleo even all these years later. I just adore her.

She originally came with leggings which made her sinfully short skirt less well... sinful lol, but I didn't much care for them.

She also had her hair cut in this bizarre asymetrical manner so on half almost covered one eye, but it wasn't extreme enough so just looked a bit.. weird and unintentional. My one particularly just didn't have her hair cut very well so I neatened it up, gave her a pointed fringe instead which looked way better and at least purposeful and gave her a few accesssories from those 2012 fashion packs. (shhhh)

As you can see from her stock image, her hair was supposed to be very asymetrical. My doll just wasn't, the back of her hair was barely uneven and her bangs weren't quite blunt and sharp enough an angle to look right.

Another interesting note is the leggings. Now, apparently some versions the yellow bandagey bits were actually removable. Others they were sewn to the leggings.
Mine they were sewn on, but as it took me bloody ages to find Cleo due to the stupid way they did the case assortments, mine was probably a second version.

I found mine in Tesco, all on her lonesome long after the A case assortments had left shelves.
It took me a while to decide I wanted to buy her as I was trying to be good and not just buy everything I liked. But the more out of box images I saw of her, the more I wanted her and by then the A cases had pretty much gone from our area. ARGHHHH.

I snagged her and remember being so delighted haha.
 

And then there was Lagoona, who I didn't hesitate to pick up, she was just hard to bloody find because she was in the B case and only a couple of stores seemed to ever get those cases in.

The distribution of this particular line was so spotty. I mean, usually the go A case till they run out, then B case but this time both cases shipped simultaniously and it was a roll of the dice as to whether your local stores got ALL a, ALL b or a mixture.
most of our stores got ALL a, and by the time the b cases finally started to show up the short packed Lagoona was already sold.
*headdesk*

I finally found her (before Cleo, but not much before) in one solitary case which we totally opened with a set of keys in the store <_<
heheheh.

She had a new hand sculpt, a finned hand pulling a "hang 10" symbol. cute.

Her outfit was a blue bodysuit with a full fishnet suit underneath. It's not just leggings and a top, no, it's a full catsuit with one leg and one arm missing and then a fishnet sleeve for the other arm that's separate and a fishnet sock for one foot.

What I especially love about this Lagoona is this is the first use of this facial screening for her. The er, frog face screening as some people like to call it. She has bigger lips, smaller eyes and is kinda pouty.

You can see how much larger her mouth is painted. Some people said it made her look like a frog. I like it, I think it makes her look unique and interesting and this is actually the look Mattel used for many more Lagoonas after this point.

This line actually still contains my favorite versions of so many of the characters. I still own Lagoona, Cleo and Clawdeen from this set. They were just such brilliant dolls.

Clawdeen was freaking gorgeous. The first Clawdeen I saw and went "I gotta have her."
As you may recall from last time, original Clawdeen was not my favourite character or doll, I found her a bit... odd and not very appealing.

But this ghoul? I think it's that intense eye makeup, it's just so striking.

Whatever the case, I fell in love with this Clawdeen the moment I saw her stock images and she's been my "signature" Clawdeen ever since.

Her boots are a NIGHTMARE to get on and off because they're hard but also have holes in them. So the feet get stuck.
ARGH

Another thing to note about this wave is the bags. Several characters got bags with actual fabric straps so they sat really nicely over the doll's shoulder. Also most of them came with a little plastic school folder. (Spectra and Abbey didn't they had pets instead).

They all came with diaries too, and stands in a signature colour. Clawdeen's stand is actually purple which works way better than that strange peachy colour.
Cleo's was yellow rather than gold and Lagoona's was an aqua shade.

I also had Frankie from this wave (it's one of the few mh waves i've bought every doll in) but mostly because I wanted her outfit

She did stay with me quite a number of years though.

But I always loved this outfit. It's so preppy while still being quite girly. The shirt dress, the asymetrical legggings and that sweater, I love that damn sweater.

My Gloom Beach Frankie actually ended up stealing the outfit most of the time. I love Gloom Beach for her sort of "nude" lips, that dark greenish blue colour is so attractive.

This was a period of time where I had money and could justify buying dolls for their outfits. Because honestly the outfits were SO detailed and SO good. But also there was a decent enough secondhand market that I could recoup some cost selling the nude dolls.
Which is exactly what I did when this line came out.

I stripped most of my first wave dolls and sold them because I was trying to keep a "1 of each character" rule going (hah, we all know that never lasts)

And I don't really regret it. I mean looking back at the photos, the original wave, while cool, did have a lot of issues with their facial screenings that were improved upon so much in later waves.
The original dolls had very wide, staring eyes that often were a bit wall eyed and lacking any real attitude, while later dolls managed to capture a lot more personality in the way they were painted.

This wave also had a 2 pack, the "forbitten love" set that introduced the seasons new boy.
Clawd Wolf, Clawdeen's brother.

Now for whatever reason I don't seem to have photos of this set.
I purchased it for 2 reasons.
1: New character!
2: Draculaura's dress
Oh my god Draculaura's dress is amazing.
I mean, it's sort of a bit clownish with the yellow spotty leggings (why do mattel always put yellow on her?) but the dress itself was so lolita I just... I needed to own it.

Now you must remember, this was the absolute height of Twilight mania, so the whole vampires/werewolves thing was HOT HOT HOT.
They even had a whole animated special revolving around how much vampires and werewolves hated one another (Fright on) lol.

Anyway,

Draculaura was adorable, I always have loved those high pigtails but her faceup was a bit intense for my taste.

She had much smaller eyes than previous releases which made her look even more hamster cheeked and sadly, a bit of a dull stare in reality (her promo is adorable).
So I stripped her out of her clothes and sold her.

But that outfit? I still have it. Because I love it.

You can see it here on Skull Shores Draculaura paired with the infinitely more tasteful tights/socks from the Day at the Maul fashion pack (which was released the same year)

It's such a cool dress. It has little buttons down the front, there's lace, there's frills, there's puffed sleeves. I mean oh my god... for such a small garment it is so detailed. And it's adorable.

Clawd's outfit is pretty complex too, the shirt has little fake buttons and cuffs, the jeans have stitched decorative seams and fake pockets and it's like, this level of detail and these lovely fabric choices you just don't see now (Clawd's jeans are a thin feeling denim sort of fabric, while later dolls just got cotton printed to look like denim. Lame)

I do remember when this set came out everyone being a bit bewildered as to why Clawd dressed like a (and I quote here) "gay hairdresser" (lol mh fans, you crack me up). His diary actually mentions this, that Clawdeen picks his clothing for him and he just rolls with it because she knows fashion and he doesn't.
That's a pretty trusting brother don't you think?

He had a real problem, the doll that is, with his flock too. Because he was packaged with those stupid plastic staple tags in his head, removing them often removed flock leaving bald patches.
He also had bald patches anyway from how they applied the flock around his ears.
His diary mentions he has alopacia (where your hair falls out) but I don't think the bald patches were intentional.

We also saw the release of the Toys R Us exclusive 3 pack. This would become a common thing for TRU, but this was the first one we in the UK got (there was a Walmart exclusive 3 pack as well which we never saw, the Dawn of the Dance 3 pack)

This set was a sport themed set featuring Cleo and Draculaura in their fearleading costumes with Ghoulia as coach.

I only wanted Ghoulia.

The previous year we'd had our first set of fashion packs which had all been sport themed. A casketball outfit for Deuce, swim class for Lagoona, Soccer for Clawdeen and Fearleading for Frankie.
This set was a sort of continuation on that theme.

Cleo was awfully similar to her original release, only somehow with even MORE horrible tinsel.
Draculaura had weird hair tied up in sort of knots.
Their fearleading uniforms were identical, as were the shoes, but they got little touches to make them unique. Drac got some pink footless fishnets and Cleo got a set of bandage panties (lol), a sock and a sleeve and a neck thing.

They even came with a foam finger (which was sewn from a felt-like fabric) and tinselly pompoms that while packaged flat, opened up into 3d pompom things.
they were made of scratchy tinselly stuff though. Not very pleasant to touch.

Ghoulia was awesome though. She came with these knee high socks that stained her legs (boo), a pair of cute little shorts, a belt, a little vest shirt with a brain pattern and a cropped hooded sweater over the top.
Her glasses were a unique new sculpt too, not her usual horn rims.

She has pink lips painted a bit differently so they were kinda pouty, grey eyeshadow and her hair in a high ponytail.

Interestingly, later they'd release a fashion pack for Ghoulia with a skirt with the exact same brain pattern as this top. Perfect combo!

My Scaris Ghoulia now wears this outfit.

I never kept the other two fearleaders, they were immediately passed on to new homes.

This year we also saw the release of wave 2 of Dawn of the Dance
Curiously, the UK never got the first wave, but Argos DID get wave 2 in.
We all here in the Uk hoped that meant we'd see the 3 pack but alas, it never happened. We in the UK had to wait till 2014 for the slim box rerelease of DOTD in order to get a hold of Frankie. We never got Clawdeen in any form.
We had to import.

Alas, the early days of MH were pretty hit and miss for the UK. We might not get entire lines and we very seldom saw multipacks unless they were exclusive to Toys R Us.
It was really frustrating.

But Argos got wave 2 of DOTD, which came with a DVD of the animated special.
Nice.

They weren't cheap, if I recall they were about £20 which at the time was REALLY expensive for MH.
Most of the dolls were still at this point retailing at about £15 but DOTD was pretty fancy.

We got Cleo, Ghoulia, Lagoona and Deuce.
Cleo was a rerelease from wave 1, but as we never got wave 1....

I bought em all.

The girls weren't hard to find, but Deuce was seriously massively short packed.
I only ever saw ONE in store and his glasses were broken completely in half and he had really errored eyes so I passed.

I eventually got lucky and found one in a completely mangled up box for retail. Doll was perfectly fine, just his box had been crushed.

He was a nice doll. A really detailed formal outfit and a whole new sculpt for his snakes, hanging down instead of sticking up.

He came with a single black rose for Cleo (awwww) and his outfit is all individual pieces. I think even the tie comes off.

Cleo came with blue tinsel in her hair, and a short bob that was glued into a solid mass on her head.
I had the wash it soooo much to get it to lay decently and not look like a helmet.

She had lovely purple lips and a rather striking yellow and green dress.

The whole line had metalised heels and accessories so everything was shiny and metallic and pretty deluxe feeling.

I loved that she had a bob, it felt so appropriately Egyptian you know?

Ghoulia was freaking gorgeous with dark lips, another new glasses sculpt and this very retro hair style. her dress was extremely 1930s movie starlet, dip dyed with red so it looked blood stained almost.
Her shoes had a bone heel.
Her tights were fishnet but made of really thick white thread instead of usual mesh.
everything was glittery.

She was a beautiful doll and one I actually regret selling (why the hell did I sell her?)
I might have to buy her again. <_<

And then Lagoona I don't seem to have pictures of, she had bizarre sea horse hair.

Her hair I think was very much a "you love it or you hate it" situation and while I liked her dark blue lips and dark makeup, her hair was just too weird for me.

She looked a bit like she'd been electrocuted.

Now, Lagoona, Cleo and Frankie all got budget rereleases in 2014, but to date Deuce, Clawdeen and Ghoulia only got the one release and Draculaura was exclusive to a 3 pack (with frankie and clawdeen) that the UK never saw.
Grrr.

Each doll came with a fabric clutch and a sliding Icoffin phone. They also came with coloured stands. Deuce's was green, as was Clawdeen's I think. Ghoulia's was yellow for some reason while Cleo's was aqua. Lagoona's was blue and Frankie's was pink? They all went with their outfits (well except Ghoulia's) which was a nice touch.

We also saw our second SDCC exclusive this year. The previous year it had been a black and white variant of signature Frankie, who was later sold in Hot Topic or somewhere like that because they had overstock.
Year 2 saw a totally different approach, we got Ghoulia in cosplay!

She was awesome.

thankfully Matty Collector did after sales this year, so I managed to get 2 sets. Cost rather a lot to import to the UK though, but was more cost effective to get 2 than 1 (same postage). The spare went to another UK collector.

I never opened her, and ended up selling mine a few years later. Sometimes I wonder if I should have kept one but she was just sitting in my wardrobe collecting dust.

I liked the idea behind this doll though. Ghoulia's little comic she comes with is drawn "by Ghoulia" and the box details how excited she is to be attending SDCC and getting her Dead Fast merch signed.
Dead Fast is basically zombie flash lol. It's adorable.

It was a very comic themed exclusive for comic con, much more in keeping, I felt, with the whole point of comic con exclusives than later "let's release signature versions of characters to be jerks" technique.

We also got the "classroom" dolls this year. A set of 3 characters who came with various accessories for their specific subject.

Frankie was sewing/Home Ick ad came with a teeny plushy Watzit, a cute pincushion skullette, some scissors and a locker to keep it all in.

They also all came with a second outfit, though both outfits were, admittedly, a bit simple they were all mix and matchy which was nice.

I loved Frankie, sewing was the perfect subject for her and the little scissor earrings were sooo cute.

The headband wasn't hers. It's from a liv doll.

Her primary outfit was a sort of shirt dress that was weirdly put together (longer on one side and totally asymetrical) over stockings. Her secondary outfit was this dress with a black bodice and lightening bolt skirt.

I never much liked the strange construction of her shirt dress. It only had a collar on one side, the hem was wonky, it looked half finished and it was way too short to be worn without pants.
It looked silly to me.

Now this is also the point the UK releases started to become another gamble. Would you get the US version with the complete diary thing or would you get the "EU" version with one page in english and the rest repeated ad nauseum in other languages.

The Classroom sets sadly, were EU version.

So while the US got these cute "survival guides" written in character about the respective subject, the UK versions were just the bio on the back of the box repeated over and over and over.
LAME.

The stands were also problematic. They were clear plastic which looked really cool but was crazy brittle. The waist pegs on both of mine shattered. Lagoona's in fact pretty much exploded in my hand when I picked the doll and stand up.
Scary, it hurt!

I rang Mattel UK but as Mattel UK are utterly useless they just boredly told me they didn't stock replacement stands and it was my problem
Assholes.
I was like "it HURT ME you jerks!" but they didn't care about my exploding stand related injuries.
*sigh*

The lockers were neat, they actually stacked so you could make a whole wall of them if you so desired.

and the little padlocks actually clipped shut.

I also had Lagoona, who as you can see in this picture has one bug eye. It's not so obvious irl honest!

I loved her outfits, and  her lab coat. She was science themed for some reason and came with an adorable 3 eyed frog.

Sadly, poor girl had wretched hair. It had the dreaded glue seep issue but even just out the box it was frizzy and awkward.

I never could get it to look decent, so I just sort of dreadlocked it lol.

I always felt like this Lagoona looked so much younger than the other versions. She had much bigger eyes and they were placed lower on her face making her face appear rounder and more youthful.

She was so dang cute, just a shame her hair sucked.

Like Frankie, I always preferred her secondary outfit. It's a little tank top thing with abstract waves and a pair of long shorts.
Her original outfit is a very very budget looking dress.
I mean it's nice but it's kinda boring.

Her shoes are incredible

They have this rope effect that runs up her legs. It does kinda get in the way of  her fins (notice in her stock image she's not got fins?)

They also came with stickers to decorate the locker I suppose. I dunno.

Lagoona came with her little froggy and also an egg. I dunno, it's an egg in a box.

At some point this year the hips of the dolls were also switched over to peg joints rather than elastic but i'm not sure when this happened. some dolls have elastic, some have pegs. I know my School's Out Clawdeen had elastic, but I don't think Abbey or Spectra did (i'd have to go grab them down to check). Weird right?

Ghoulia also got a doll in this line, but she was Physical Deaducation themed and I don't much like sport themed dolls. She wasn't spectacular enough to bother with for me, so I never owned her.

The US also saw the release of the Khol's exclusive Frankie and Draculaura who came wearing a variant of the fashion packs released globally.
Drac came in a version of the Day at the Maul 2 outfit set with slightly different socks, and Frankie came wearing pretty much the exact outfit from the fashion pack but with different leggings. Both of them appeared to be Gloom Beach dolls redressed.

The UK never got these two dolls as we have no Khols or anything like Khols

We did get the Day at the Maul pack though, which has a full outfit for Draculaura and Frankie and some accessory pieces for Clawdeen. And of course we got Gloom Beach so we could pretty much make our own version.

The problem with the clawdeen pieces is they're quite hard plastic so don't really bend well enough to fit the doll.

but you may recognize a few of these pieces from previous photos. I certainly got a lot of use out of this set heh.

We also saw the "School Club" fashion packs, which featured various themed outfits for several characters' extra curriculars.
I liked these much better than the sports packs.

Drac had a newspaper outfit, Abbey had a snowboarding outfit (snow board club?? Man MH has everything), Clawdeen's was a business outfit with a pencil skirt and briefcase and everything, and Ghoulia's was comic club, a continuation of her Dead Fast outfit for comic con, she got a shirt with him on and came with a little copy of the Dead Fast comic book and an action figure of him. (like her sdcc doll did)

I also miss fashion packs. They were great for all the budget swimsuit dolls lol.

toward the end of the year we finally got the Dead Tired dolls, a budget set of dolls in their PJS. I never bought any of them as I already had the signature versions and like swimsuits, I just have zero interest in dolls in sleep wear. They were cute though. Ghoulia came with a box of mini brains instead of popcorn, Draculaura has "scary normie movies" which I like to believe are sappy rom coms and they all had sleep masks and adorable monster slippers.Why on earth did mattel never market human sized versions of those slippers? I'd have SO bought a pair! 

Some time near christmas we also started to see Sweet 1600, the second "formal" line of the season.
Themed around Draculaura's birthday, each doll came in a fancy party outfit with an item of clothing as a "gift" for Drac.

They also all, with the exception of Clawd, had tinsel in their hair.

Like the previous formal line, this was an expensive set. I think they were about £25 which hurt.
As a result I only bought a few.
Also the tinsel in their hair bothered me, it makes brushing their hair hard and becomes staticky really easily.

 Clawd ended up getting 2 dolls in the same year, which was quite unusual. Deuce had to wait most of a season to get his second doll after all, and poor Jackson and Holt had to wait YEARS.

Clawd's Sweet 1600 doll had fully rooted hair instead of flock, and teal streaks.
His outfit is all individual bits except the tie which I think is sewn to the shirt.
He came with some sunglasses too but who wears sunglasses indoors? lol.

His gift for Drac was a necklace, a big tacky pink plastic necklace that said 1600 on it. And a white dress with puff sleeves made of really hard taffeta-like fabric which meant to sat wierd and never looked quite right on any doll.

The whole line also came with a key, which apparently did something if you had an Iphone? But I still don't own any Apple products so I have no clue what the hell the key did.
They also all came with a digital code that did something on the website, but again it seemed to require a tablet or phone to access.
Did kids all have Iphones in 2011?

Oh and they had an invite to the party as well, it was just a piece of card shaped like a coffin.

I did end up with a Draculaura and a Clawdeen for their clothing. Clawdeen had an awesome magician thing going on lol, and Drac had a bodysuit I wanted. I got them on clearance and never kept the dolls, that tinsel hair was just too annoying and i've never been big on really over blown sparkly dolls like that.

 This line also saw the release of our first reused face mold and random special edition character.
C.A Cupid.

She uses Ghoulia's face sculpt and actually got two releases, one branded with Sweet 1600, the other almost identical in a regular signature box (the hair is rooted differently and one has white legs painted black, the other has black legs painted white. I don't remember which way around though) and the later sig release had sparkly wings for some reason.

Cupid was a strange release. She's sort of spectacularly creepy but also bafflingly non monstery. Her bio in fact claims she's a "bone golem", which sounds like someone played too much D&D and was clutching at straws for a monster.

She has this lace effect on her arms and legs, a lot of hearts and awesome rib cage wings.

honestly the rib wings were why i needed her in my life. Those things are so macabre!

She had awful hair, it was cemented with gel and just looked off. Tying it back solved a lot of problems.

It's amazing how different the same face sculpt looks in a different colour.

Cupid ended up being shoved over into EAH, where she made more sense anyway, but I always appreciated the creepy little details they included with this girl.

Cupid's release was actually held back, least in the UK, so she could be released in Febuary. For Valentines day.
So technically she's a 2012 release, but it all gets pretty dang confusing because there were huge delays in the UK getting a lot of lines. Sometimes a line would hit the US a good 3 or 4 MONTHS before we saw it here, suffice to say, it was extremely aggravating.

Into 2012, new catalogue day in January saw the release of Skull Shores and the Create a Monster sets.

The create a Monster packs were an interesting idea, allowing Mattel to produce some backgrounder type monsters with really simple fashions and so on. Problem was, because the mixed up colours looked weird, almost everyone just put the matching pieces together and called it a day. It would probably have been better to release them as super budget complete dolls.
The biggest problem with the Create a Monster sets was that the 2 packs only had ONE torso yet two sets of heads and limbs. WHY!? why would you do that!?? it meant you had to pick which one you wanted or buy another set.
The add ons didn't come with a torso at all.

It led to such a problem that people started casting extra torsos to sell, in colours that would match the dolls who didn't have matching torsos (like the sea monster girl here)
Mattel caught on, and finally offered a pack of torsos that matched the add ons and so through their parts store. I had a US friend send me a set.

The other thing the cams were good for though, was customs. A lot of people used them for custom fodder, as they were already such a blank slate.

they had no names, no personality, the idea being the kids could make them whatever they wanted them to be.
But looking back, I still can't help but think maybe they could have either done it better (two torsos in the starter set first off!!) or just done them as full dolls you customised the fashions and wigs of.  Later sets they did start including two torsos, but the add ons still had none so eugh... still had to buy a second set if you wanted them to have bodies too.

The earliest ones had soft squishy heads with a little hole in the middle you could ram the peg of the wig into so the wig stayed on (kinda like liv dolls) but later ones they made the top of the head hard, presumably to make it easier to plug the wig in?
It meant the earlier ones could be rerooted a lot easier, so when the switchover happened there were a few people who wanted old styles for reroots.

Another interesting thing about the CAM sets is that each of them had a unique face sculpt, and most of them we've never seen since.
Amanita used the vampire girl here's face, a sculpt I never much cared for.
But most of them were never seen again.

And a lot of them were quite clearly inspired by background characters from the webisodes. Like the three eyed girl who appears in a lot of the early shorts.

The first lot of Create a Monsters. A bee girl, a three eyed ghoul, a werewolf (her ears were on clips that didn't work, they couldn't clip strongly enough to the wig. I cut the clips off and stuck them in the sides of hte head for a more goblin look), a sea monster, a dragon and a vampire.

They all came with a really simple outfit so of course most of them got new clothes.

You can see the mismatching on the three eyed ghoul's upper legs, the add ons came without upper arms, upper legs and no torso. They were just an outfit, a head, some arms and some lower legs. Not very useful.
I painted the bee girl's to match, it bothered me too much.

And yeah, i had to buy like 4 sets to get them all bodies. *headdesk*

SO annoying.

January also saw the release of Skull Shores.

Oh Skull Shores.. what a mess.

Not the line, the line was actually a very good swim line, arguably even better than Gloom Beach, the problem was distribution.

Mattel totally screwed the pooch on the distribution of these cases.

See, Skull Shores had 5 dolls, just five in the set, yet for some reason Mattel decided this required multiple case assortments.

Case A, Case B and possibly even a case C

Case B had Draculaura seeded in, she was missing from the first case (who knows why), Gil only appeared in case A and for some inexplicable reason, Ghoulia was 2 to EACH CASE across all assortments. WHY?
It's like they thought "hey, everyone loves Ghoulia, let's flood the market with her."
And flood the market they did. There were soooo many damn Skull Shores Ghoulias that she shelf sat, and Mattel didn't give us another Ghoulia doll for ages after, almost like punishment for not buying 5 Ghoulia's each or something.
It was nuts.

The other problem was how these assortments were released. See, it seems they only made a very limited number of case A, and by very limited I mean that within 2 weeks of being released in the UK, there were NO MORE A cases anywhere. Which meant no Gil.
The problem was the same over in the US. Gil wasn't just short packed, he was short packed in a case that was produced in insufficient quantity, meaning he sold out immediately and never restocked. And the prices on the resale market skyrocketed as a result. (thanks Mattel)

I got lucky, I got mine by fluke the day the line released in the UK. But I only ever saw 2 Gils. Both that one day. One in Argos (mine) and one in Boots (who used to stock toys, omg remember that?). After that one day, gone... totally and completely gone.

There was so much anger about how screwed up the distribution of this doll was, but Mattel obviously didn't give a damn, they never do.

Anyway, Case A was something like 2 Ghoulia, 1 Gil, 1 Lagoona, 2 Abbey

I'm sure there was also a case that contained Abbey, Lagoona and Ghoulia, I believe 2/2/2 to a case of 6, but there's no record of this in the stock checkers. Still, i'm certain I saw full cases with no Drac and no Gil. A sort of.. case A.5 so to speak. Case B was released a month or so later and had Draculaura instead of Gil in a ratio of 1 Lagoona, 1 Abbey, 2 Ghoulia, 2 Draculaura. This meant there were also a ridiculous quantity of Skull Shores Abbey dolls too, just not as many as bloody Ghoulia. I mean toward the end the only dolls you could find on shelves were Abbey and Ghoulia, endless shelves of Ghoulia and Abbey. Sooo many of them.
I mean you could build forts out of the Ghoulias, there were that many of them.

And she wasn't a bad doll either, she had amazing shoes but she was just so dang common everyone was sick to death of seeing her.

Skull Shores Draculaura was gorgeous. She had narrower eyes than a lot of her previous releases and her lips painted closed, so she didn't have that almost drooling look the white teeth give. I vastly prefer the way she's painted to the older Draculaura's here (Gloom Beach and original)

And she had a little sailor hat! eee cute.

I don't like swimsuits on dolls so Abbey was stripped of hers almost immediately.

But I liked her. She had paler lips than original and smaller eyes. Also her hair had more normal tinsel rather than that thick noduled stuff of original.
thank goodness. Way easier to brush.

 I had a Ghoulia as well but don't seem to have any pictures of her.

Her shoes had a blood effect. I always liked how macabre a lot of Ghoulia's stuff was.

She had a rib cage earring too! and a brain bow!

Her hair was a gel nightmare though, it wasn't nearly as full or fluffy as her stock would suggest.

Still, she wasn't a bad doll. She was just massively overproduced.

Each of the dolls came with a little tropical drink, a map of the skull shaped island (how convenient that the map is shaped like a skullette huH? lol) which had a picture of the character on the other side and a stand/brush.
Originally these were different colours for each character but only for case A. Case B all had teal stands.
Interestingly, Gil's was teal anyway.

Go figure.

Skull Shores Lagoona is the one at the far end against the wall, holding the frog.

She has a very similar facial screening to my favourite Lagoona, School's out, so of course I thought she was gorgeous and needed to own her.

And she is gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous.

She has the frog lips I love, the smaller rounder eyes and darker blonde hair.

All of Skull Shores actually had great faces. I really liked the line, just unfortunately it hung around way too long due to overstock.
Especially those damn Ghoulias.

And finally for this season, we got Toralei seeded into the "signature" cases alongside Abbey and Spectra.

She had helmet hair, but the stripes were painted on so washing the gloop meant rinsing out the paint. I never bothered.

Her tail, interestingly, was actually bendy. It has a wire or something inside. Later werecat tails would be made of hard plastic and not bend like this. Toralei remains the only character to get a bendy tail.

She also had molded gloved hands.

There's 2 versions of this Toralei. one with a darker splotch over one eye and this one, where the splotch is barely visible.

I'm not sure which is earlier or if they were released simultaniously, but it's a curious thing.

Toralei came with a black stand, and marks the point we stopped getting stands individually coloured to each character.
Sadtimes.

And I think that concludes year 2... phew... that was long.

In summary, we saw the introduction of 6 new characters, 2 of whom were boys, across 8 lines.

Excluding cams and the sdcc exclusives, 38 dolls were released this season.

Which brings us into year 3, March (in the UK) 2012.

See you next time!