Monster High - Monster Family - Wolf family

So when I elected to boycott Mattel I knew there would be a few things they released that I wanted, but would feel horribly dirty about buying at full price or indeed at retail in general.
So I made a deal with myself.
If I really wanted something, as in, after a few months I still really wanted it and it wasn't a passing whim, and if I had vouchers, a big sale was on or better yet, i found it secondhand on ebay etc, then I could just about manage to break my boycott and not feel too bad about it.

And so for months i've been sitting, waiting for the price of the Monster Family dolls to drop but they never bloody do.
They sit at full price, mocking me with their overpricedness. Bah.(seriously £25 for 2 static bodied dolls is a bloody joke)

That was until last week.

I stumbled upon an ebay listing for the Wolf family 3 pack, a set I ONLY wanted one doll out of and couldn't justify getting for just one dang doll. But it was a kinda squished up box and listed at half retail or thereabouts.
So I bought it.
Hey, the money already went to Mattel so it's not like i'm giving them my money, i'm giving a nice ebay seller my money instead.
Least that's how I rationalize it.

However, having purchased this I felt even more like I really SHOULD get Pawla, who i'd been watching the price of for months and months and cursing her refusal to drop below £9 on amazon.
Meanwhile everywhere else sold out or removed her listings and as reboot Monster High isn't sold in stores over here (tru had some but tru's gone bust and all closing down so yeah... no new monster high for the UK) i knew if I didn't get her on amazon i'd probably miss my chance completely. And it'd drive me INSANE to have Barker but not Pawla.

Thankfully I had a wad of Amazon vouchers i'd gained from doing bugger all on Swagbucks (shameless referral link)
I love Swagbucks, it's basically free money, seriously. You CAN do surveys if you want, or watch ads, or do any of the other stuff on their site but all I do is have their search engine as my default one and every so often a random search will give me points. Doing this (which involves literally zero effort once you've set it up) means I can get a £5 Amazon voucher about every 3 months, and that is SWEEEEET.
So I had a pile of vouchers I hadn't used for anything and were just burning a hole in my pocket...

I also noticed the price of the Forces of Destiny Endor Leia had dropped to £15, which is a much better price than the £50 they were asking originally (seriously who decides these RRPs? they need a kick in the crotch seriously. It's ridiculous)

So with my wad o vouchers I got Leia and Pawla for a much more palatable £5, and I can argue that the fiver was for Leia and Pawla was basically free if I need to HAH.

so yeah, I didn't pay much for these sets, but I had been eyeing them up for months and months and trying to talk myself out of it.

Anyway, let's dig in shall we?

As luck would have it, both parcels arrived today. Whoot.

Now for those who aren't aware of the Monster High reboot shenanigans, one of the sublines mattel introduced was "everyone gets baby siblings!"
A line they called "monster family" (not to be confused with the movie of the same name that's just come out in theaters)

Inexplicably, they decided what Monster HIGH needed was toddlers. I... don't get it.
I mean okay, some fans had asked to see more of character's home lives, but i'm pretty sure they meant their PARENTS not random baby siblings they had never mentioned previously.

And some of the baby siblings really don't make a lot of sense. Frankie got a sister (so, they dug up a load of dead 8-10 year olds to make a stitched together zombie baby? somehow that's worse than digging up dead teenagers and that was already pretty dodgy!), Cleo got a bajillion baby siblings (okay like 3?) which is just squicky because ew, baby corpses (and the way she's packaged in the box makes it look like they're HER kids which is just even worse!) and even Lagoona got another sibling, because making a decent doll of Kelpie was too much effort (and she was pretty random and out of nowhere anyway but at least got a movie appearance introduction) so instead we got a static bodied Kelpie who doesn't even quite look like her movie self and a random baby mermaid because uh... I don't even know.
Seriously it was like Mattel just decided "BABY SISTERS FOR EVERYONE!" and started throwing out random babies left right and center.

Now, the unfortunate thing here is that their refusal to picture the parents on the boxes or even mention them means that the boxes really do look like they're promoting teen pregnancy. "monster family" is proudly displayed under "monster HIGH" and then there's a teenager usually holding a baby. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see some parents, oblivious to the canon genuinely thinking Mattel was doing some sort of teen mom thing here.
In fact, even Target got the wrong end of the stick when they listed up the Cleo set with her baby er... brother? (I don't know) by describing her as "mom" in their description of the set.

!!!????!!!

Now, I don't have much issue with monster toddlers and children, but I wish they'd done them as a spinoff, monster elementary or something. It would have been cute and a lot less confusing than having the "high" name and then having a box of babies.
What I do have issue with though, is Mattel pissing all over the canon to ram in whatever else they want to ram in this week but they kinda always did that. It just feels a bit more... intrusive now with the "everyone gets baby siblings!" not to mention a little unrealistic. I mean, how many families do you know with a 16 year old and then no other children till a whoops 4 year old and a whoops again baby? I mean it happens, but for it to happen repeatedly to every main character? It's pretty weird right?
and then there's the weird choice they made to have all the babies really monstery and inhuman but the adults all quite humanoid. It raises SO MANY questions about how monsters age.
Werewolves appear to lose their tails, sea monsters metamorphise (like frogs I guess) and apparently baby vampires have bat wings and bat-like features and just grow out of them?
er... what?
That's just confusing right?

Anyway, the only family I personally could accept having a bajillion children with a very large range of ages was the Wolf family. As it's been established in the g1 canon that Clawdeen's family was stupendously huge.
And I admit, I always found the image of a babysitter line for MH to be a cute idea (I wish they'd done that here instead of the confusing "family" logo, because they're not making parent dolls so how are you meant to play "house" without them?)
I loved the image of Clawdeen or Howleen babysitting their young nieces and nephews, looking all flustered and exhausted while these pups ran amok.
I thought it would be adorable.
You could have had the other ghouls come in sets with unrelated baby monsters with the whole theme being babysitting (a common teen thing right?) to earn money to go to some event or whatever.

Alas, they never made that real, but I can pretend with these dolls! HAH

Anyway, the boxes are standard reboot giant blister packs. They're fairly easy to open but it destroys the box and the backing card to do so which I don't like. I used to keep the boxes for their graphics, now I just chuck em away and it feels really wasteful.

The back of the box doesn't tell you much. It just says "monster family" in loads of languages and then has some pictures.

Pawla's smaller box has the same pictures as the 3 pack box. I find it kinda weird that Pawla's box has an image of Barker and Weredith without her in it.

And then there's the other dolls in the set.

The squish faced mermaid baby that goes with Lagoona and Kelpie and the inexplicably bat winged and claw footed vampire baby who goes with the overpriced playset with Draculaura and her father (See HE got a doll, he's literally the ONLY parent represented in this line, the only adult. It's bizarre! Why on earth didn't they package the really small baby ones like weredith and Cleo's baby sibling with a parent? It feels kinda mean to have the teenager forever looking after their baby siblings. Like man, she's got homework to do! she's got exams and teen stuff to do, looking after a kid on top of that is hard, especially when it's not her kid. Get back here parents and take your baby! Gah)

The three pack had a lot of glue around the plastic so it tore the backdrop.

The background is a bathroom scene and while some thought was put into the placement of Clawdeen and Weredith (positioned so it looks like she's on top of those purple steps), Barker is in fact levitating.
Is that his super power? He's a levitating werewolf?
wth?

and for some reason his sleep mask is covering his face. Kid, you aren't gonna have much luck brushing your teeth and all that blindfolded and floating like that.

 A better picture of hte backdrop. I'm not sure those crooked toothbrushes would be that easy to use tbh. And where are the bubbles coming from?
is there something lurking in that dirty laundry?  Eeek.

of course Barker is the reason I wanted this set. I found his little face endearing.

These baby werewolves are however a bit confusing. Why do they have tails? Why do they have such giant paw hands and feet? (ahh I get it, it was a cunning plan to make sure you didn't have to make SHOES for this line right?)
It raises questions.
When werewolves get older do their tails drop off or are they docked?
Do they shave their children or does their excess hair just like fall out?
Do they bind their feet so they can wear normal shoes?
what happens with their giant paw hands?

Still, despite his body being bewilderingly monsterous (maybe just some monsters are born more monstery and stay monstery all their lives?) I think he's stinkin adorable.

He has a tanned skin tone similar to Howleen's with blonde molded hair. I don't think rooted hair would have worked that well at this small scale, it usually looks a bit crazy on those little kelly/tommy dolls so i'm fine with this choice.
His hair has four aqua streaks in it (he got into some hair dye?) and he has beautiful green eyes. Unusual that, as every single other member of the Wolf family has yellow/amber eyes. I can see why they didn't go with yellow though, it would have made his eyes wash out against his hair and skin tone.

He also has a little painted on animal nose, kinda like Silvi Timberwolf did (so maybe it's true, some werewolves are more wolfy?), the standard werewolf fangs and cute little perky ears.

I dunno, something about his face shape makes me think of Clawd, so I like that family resemblance they got in there.

He has a molded tail coming out of his er... well his back really, he has very long legs so it looks a bit off when he's dressed.

He has molded fur from elbows and knees down.

His shirt is cut shorter at the back to accommodate his tail.

He comes with a toothbrush that's a bit bent and an eyemask.

I have no use for either of these things and honestly the plastic eyemask feels more like some sort of weird blindfold but it does have a cute monster face on so... that's something?

He and Pawla share a body, only it seems to be mirrored. I think their straight arms might be slightly different because whole Pawla's is very straight, Barker holds his at an angle away from his body. I think it's just inserted into the shoulder differently or something because otherwise it looks identical.

They both have skullette embossed underpants and surprisingly detailed limbs. their legs are VERY long which is sort of in keeping with puppies isn't it?

I'll get back to Pawla.

But while we're on the topic of puppies...

OH GOD kill it with fire!

This is Weredith and she scares me. She honestly makes my uterus clench in horror and i'll tell you why.

THIS is momma Wolf okay?
Like Clawdeen, she's really quite humanoid. Her only really monstery trait is a little body hair and some upright wolf ears right?

somehow, this VERY human looking woman, birthed a dog headed infant.
Not just birthed it, but likely breast fed it.
SHE HAD LITERAL PUPPIES and it makes me want to cry.

It's like that bit in the remake of the Fly where she gives birth to a giant maggot. It's horrifying and it makes me cringe.

Now I know, some of you are thinking "sheesh, you're really overthinking this" and yes, yes I am, because the implications are horrifying!
Baby werewolves come out of momma werewolves, and Mattel is telling us that humanoid mommas like this lady can birth actual canines, bipedal canines, but still canines.

My womb clenches up in horrified sympathy. Worse, Mattel posted THIS image on their official channels:

AIEEE There's MORE OF THEM!

She didn't just birth one puppy, she had a whole freaking LITTER!

*curls up in a corner and cries*

It's just so horrible. Why can nobody else see how horrifying this is? Did seriously no women at any point in the design process of this go "uh.. this is kinda icky."? seriously!??

These are NOT cute babies, they're scary.

These creepy little thing has a large molded tail like her older siblings, paw hands and feet and a giant dog head.

She also has a shock of bright purple hair. Who dyed the baby?

She can sit down and raise her arms, so her articulation is, for something so small, fairly decent.
She's only about 3 inches tall.
Her paintwork is a bit fuzzy, especially around her eyes and her painted on shirt.

She has a snaggle tooth as well because her fangs are wonky lol.

But oh god she's creeping me out, I can't keep looking at her.

Meanwhile Clawdeen really isn't a very interesting doll.

She's on a static body which wouldn't bother me that much, if it wasn't one of those bloody POSED static bodies. I HATE THESE. She has one twisted raised leg so she can't stand up or balance in any way and her stupid bent arm won't even sit on her hip and makes her look like she's swooning if you raise it up.
It looks DUMB.

this is the same body that Emoji Clawdeen was on. I hated it then, I hate it now. Please Mattel, can we at least have two straight legs? Like a fashionista barbie doll? they're easier to dress, easier to play with, just better. The bent leg provides NOTHING, it doesn't even look good.

Her hair out the box is pretty bad. It's quite coarse feeling anyway but it's all squashed and split into two sections and just looks weird and bad.

She looks kinda startled right? like you just walked in on her with the camera. The arm position doesn't help, it makes her always look like you caught her in the middle of something.

She has pale pink lips and pink eyeshadow.

Her paintwork is a bit iffy as well.

I actually thought she had eye wonk in the ebay auction photos but i don't think she does actually, least not badly. What she does have is a bit of blurring around her pupils and some black running into her iris.

This stupid body just looks weird and the way that bent leg is means the hip socket doesn't even sit correctly in the hip (seriously it can't sit flush like the other hip does, you can always see a bit of the peg)
As these peg hips have barely any movement anyway, her legs can't splay beyond this width so you can't balance her easily at all.
and it doesn't even LOOK like an intentional pose. She looks like she hurt her leg.

Her box hair is still terrible. Finger combing it achieved nothing and it doesn't feel very nice to touch.

I had to take a brush to her hair which helped make it fit together at the back but it made her hair rather GIANT and puffy. Hmmm...

Barker and Pawla's limbs are so strangely elongated, particularly alongside the more normal limbs of Clawdeen and Weredith.

Clawdeen's outfit is a pair of PJs, the pants are a fairly stiff fabric with an elasticated waistband and a thin cotton shirt with a completely different pattern on it. The shirt is half print but the pants are full print.

The slippers have a cut out heel but seem to be a mold of a mold of a mold so they've lost a lot of detail. They might once have been the cute monster slippers from g1, but the mold is really blurred and ill defined, something i'm noticing a lot in more recent Mattel shoes. It's like they're using either very old worn out molds or just not very good ones.

The slippers are cute, but they feel unfinished. There's no detail or texture on the sides or any tread underneath like older mh shoes and the monster "face" on them just looks really faint.

She also has a random er... I think it's supposed to be a towel but it's not made from towelling, it's like a piece of cheap fleece that's not overly pleasant to touch.
It feels a bit like that fabric they made Frozen Anna's cape out of. It's velvetty on one side and kinda cotton-like on the other.
Is it supposed to be a blanket instead? It looks more like a blanket but it's so small...
I dunno man.

The pants and top are well made, the pants particularly feel extremely robust. They're made of a very stiff fabric and they're quite easy to get on and off which is nice, even with that dumb broken leg thing.

I kinda liked her shirt so I stole it <_<

But these two just do NOTHING for me. So they'll be looking for a new home shortly. (seriously I want that nightmare fuel baby thing outta my house asap)

Finally Pawla.

I fell in love with her little face.

She has a little plastic bow necklace thing that won't stay on without elastic bands.

As mentioned, she has the same body as Barker, just mirrored.

Her dress is sadly half print. It has a hole for the tail and a little frilly lacey bit around the bottom

She's substantially darker skinned than Barker, in fact she's darker skinned than most of her siblings except perhaps Clawdia. I no longer own a Clawdia sadly, so can't compare but i'm pretty sure she's a shade between Clawd and Clawdia.

She has little white freckles which are just adorable.

Her rooted hair is a deep brown with teal streaks (what is up with the youngsters in the wolf family and hair dye?) It's styled into two very curly pigtails that are omg sooo cute.

She also has an eyemask that honestly looks more like a cat face to me than a wolf. I guess Barker's was like a frankensteined monstery thing so maybe it IS a cat?

It was stapled to her head. -_-

All four dolls have thematically similar outfits. Even Weredith's painted on top has this pattern with the jagged black areas with peering yellow eyes and then pawprints.

I like this, it gives them a cute matchy matchy look without being too matchy. Each have their own colors and outfit styles, but the similar pattern ties it all together.
It may not be overly realistic (How many families really dress alike?) but as they're all supposed to be in PJs I guess it makes more sense than everyday outfits. Matching pjs is a thing, a thing i've never much understood, but a thing.

Thankfully both Barker and Pawla's outfits work as everyday outfits as well. Pawla's dress isnt' overly "nightgown" in the cut.

Pawla comes with three accessories. A er... I think it's a pillow? a threadbare bear (I wish the stuffing was painted white) and a book.

The book actually opens AND has images on the inside (castle on one side, wolf and moon on the other)

This is a really cool detail BUT

Opening the book, even very gently, caused massive white stress marks to form on both sides.

Damn...

so yeah, the book is way too fragile to actually be opened and closed repeatedly.

It locks shut thankfully so shut it is remaining.

Because both these dolls have a curved arm that cannot be straightened they look a bit strange if they're not holding something.
Pawla has her teddy which is really cute, so I gave Barker her book as the pillow was too wide and wouldn't fit.

Their mobility isn't great, they're on par with the Chelsea dolls in this respect and as they're a similar size and price point, that seems fair enough. They can sit, though their tails get in the way quite badly, as do their straight arms.

Of course i had to get a family picture. I'm not sure yet whether i'm canoning these two as younger siblings or neice/nephew.

I was though struck when taking the previous picture by how blank Pawla and Barker's face paint made reboot Clawdeen (Who I call Pawleen) look. The detail and the way the eyes are painted on these smaller dolls really feels a lot more reminiscent of the older style of paint work.

I feel like they actually fit in pretty well with the older dolls. They don't have articulation and Barker's got molded hair but their sculpts are cute, their bodies are suitably weird (even if they raise a lot of questions about werewolf biology) and their facepaint works I think really well with the older g1 doll faces.

All in all, I actually really LIKE Pawla and Barker and i'm glad I got them at last.

Clawdeen is a very "meh" doll but her PJs are fairly nice. Just a shame her actual doll is so bland. If you want a reboot Clawdeen there's better reboot Clawdeens out there, not just with better bodies but better hair too.
And Weredith, I can see why some people might like her as a weird sort of monstery baby but she freaks me out something terrible and the idea that there's multiple of the damn things makes me sob.

I dunno what the other ones are named, but at least it seems momma Wolf have bought a big book of puntastic names and moved beyond her "Clawd" "Clawdeen" Clawdia" phase. I suppose when you have like a bajillion kids you stop feeling overly creative in names huh?

Now I just have to rehome this nightmare baby before it comes alive in the night and eats my soul.

Sweet dreams readers!