A little interlude to finally review this doll that i've had sitting here for months.
I just haven't had the energy.
and the photos reflect that. I'm sorry they're a bit shit, I was and still am in the middle of a fatigue episode and getting up to do stuff is difficult, but I wanted to debox her to cheer myself up and still wanted to review her.
so here we go
We have the abbreviated biography too. (do the US boxes have more information or is this all anyone gets?) and again, I miss the full bios and diaries that fleshed the characters out. *sigh*
"monster must haves" feels like such a copout, they're always just two random accessories the character has which is like.. we can SEE that. I miss freaky flaws. Or interests, interests would be nice. What a character's purse looks like isn't a personality trait.
I am happy that Captain Penny not only got to keep her original name, but also hasn't been dog/catified. Seems the more recent g3 characters have actually been allowed to have pets that aren't kittens or puppies and i'm relieved. Even Cleo got her snake back.
Anyway, Robecca doesn't feature on the back of her own box but is on the front little name tag panel with Draculaura and Clawdeen. I wonder how they decide which characters will flank the main one, is it a draw names out a hat situation or what?
I really fucking hate this art. Draculaura looks okay but Clawdeen looks horrible and Robecca isn't much better. No offense to the artist, I just really don't vibe with this art style and I don't think i ever will.
The doll herself however is really pretty. Robecca has a coppery skin tone with a slightly metallic effect which is very close to her g1 doll's skin tone. She's also retained her little bolts and rivets across her face. Her eyes are gears like her original design though she now has a pale blue added to her black and blue streaked hair.
Her lips are a metallic copper colour that I really like.
Her eye shines are shooting stars.
Robecca's pet penguin, Captain Penny has seen some SHIT. Or she's taken something. Girl is tripping BALLS. You okay in there Pen?
I'm not a huge fan of the large areas of UV printing on this figure. The white looks grainy and gritty.
She's a pretty detailed little figure though.
We'll get back to her.
Robecca comes with the standard assortment of crap. A bag of food (I think they're chips/crisps called "gears"), a drink bottle (shaped like an oil can which is kinda cute), an Icoffin and then a tablet and a quill stylus and a stand for the quill and tablet to rest on.
She also has a large clock shaped back with quite a detailed face on but no hands. Curious. It also appears to count to 13.
I'm not totally convinced about the pen ink stand accessories because she has no desk to put them on and she can't exactly carry them around. She also can't fit all her shit into her bag which I always find disappointing. Her chips can fit, or her phone. Not both.
Her tablet seems to have a bunch of doodles of random things. A clock, an hourglass, a bolt and um... you know, I don't know what the dome thing is. A hovercraft? A bell? I really can't make it out. The arrow suggests it's related to the clock and hourglass though, so uh... nope, not a clue. Time machine?
Her tablet and phone have similar gear designs on the back but I didn't take a picture of her phone for some reason. Ho hum.
The clock here also has thirteen hours, I wonder how much that screws up the minute hand.
Penny looks slightly less out of it once she's removed from her plastic prison. She still is definitely on something though.
The little robot penguin has molded on goggles and a molded on rocket booster jet pack. Wheeeee.
Her original g1 counterpart had a jetpack too, but it was attached via a molded on belt, it wasn't bolted to her spine like this.
I actually think this version is cuter than the original, she's very modern Littlest Pet Shop like all the g3 pets, but she also reads more "Penguin" to me than the original who could sometimes read more duck-like
I mean neither of them really have a penguin beak but yeah...
Anyway
Robecca's hair is... not great straight out the box. I'm fairly sure it's saran but whatever they did to it has left it frizzy at the ends and mine has her hair so badly cut that it's significantly longer one one side than the other too. Wtf Mattel?
It also feels...crunchy. And not "there's a load of product in this" crunchy, damaged crunchy.
Her body is very cool though. She has all sorts of plates and rivets.
Her hands are especially detailed with tiny heart shaped cutouts at the knuckles
And rather unsettling finger pads.
She's kept her little heart shaped plate but she did lose the spinny gears that g1 had on the backs of her legs. She also doesn't have g1's strange backward bending knees. lol.
I think it's a nice touch that her copyright info is all fitted onto one leg plate.
I always loved these hidden details on Monster High dolls and i'm so happy g3 continued this.
Here's g1 for comparison. I prefer how g3's plates and segments feel intentional and fitted to her body shape rather than this rather chaotic jigsaw. The smaller heart plate also is more obvious that it's a heart.
Robecca's outfit definitely took inspiration from her g1 signature doll. The tank top emulating a corset, the pleather shorts tying back to her g1 dress. The puff sleeves are a nice addition but it is disappointing that this top is a one piece affair.
I appreciate that they tried to make it LOOK like two pieces, but I still always wish they'd just make them two garments so I could mix and match things you know?
I'm not overly keen on the pleather shorts because I think pleather shorts are a bit ugly anyway, but I also worry for how they'll age as pleather is known to peel and flake after a few years.
I'd have preferred a normal fabric but ho hum. Maybe i'll replace them with some more bloomer-like shorts some day.
Her bustle cage thing is really detailed and again, really calls back to her g1 signature doll who also had a blue cage bustle thing. This one is more detailed than her g1 version, I dig it.
Interestingly, the gears are actually molded, even though they look like they're just painted on. So one side of the boot has a large molded gear that the other side doesn't feature.
I really do like these boots, they're very victorian in their shape and styling, except of course, the rockets attached lol.
They're also very soft and easy to take off and put back on again. I always appreciate boots that are easy to put on a doll. So often they're really stiff and quite difficult to remove.
g1's boots are more detailed, but they also feel a bit more biomechanical rather than steampunk. Both are cool. g1's shoes are a pain in the arse to take off though. I'm always terrified i'll pull her whole damn leg off. I'm so glad g3 fixed that issue with softer shoes and more robust joints.
Robecca has asymmetrical earrings. One side is three gears.
The other is a sort of ear cuff made up of gears and tubing.
This one doesn't fit as well. An attempt was made in the form of the little hook thing that goes around the ear, but it doesn't quite line up with the curve of her ear which is a bit annoying.
I'm also not totally sure about the colour chosen. I get that it's the same blue as her paler hair streaks and some of her clothing pieces, but it's a little insipid and I feel like a darker copper tone like her g1 doll's earrings would have worked better. I might repaint them, I haven't decided yet.
Her necklace is a clock again. And while it's a decent enough piece, it's not very well designed when it comes to the rest of her outfit. Her blouse has an upright collar and the necklace has little hook pieces on either side which would keep it on with any other doll, but with this blouse is ends up rucking up the collar instead and looking weird. In order to get it to sit correctly I had to very carefully tuck each tab under the collar and then pull the collar up with tweezers so it all sat properly again.
Removing the little tabs/hooks might fix this issue, but that's not the point, the point is they didn't apparently think about how this accessory would fit with the blouse and that lack of oversight is frustrating.
I ended up taking her hair out of the half up style and washed it to try to sort out the strange texture. I also snipped the thread that was holding the front pieces in place so I could comb those out and rinse them too.
I had intended to keep part of her hair down but I decided I actually preferred it all pulled back from her face so you could see her details.
Washing it and trimming the uneven ends helped the appearance of the hair but the texture is still strange. The black parts of her hair feel almost like they've been crimped or textured, it doesn't feel like saran which is usually kinda greasy and slippery, it honestly feels a bit more like human hair in that the individual strands all have a porous texture to them. Hmmmmm. It's hard to describe but the hair feels... off. Dry almost, but not dry, just kinda... textured and crunchy. Pretty sure it's not poly though because it sits flat, the fiber is thin and it isn't hydrophobic. It must be saran, Mattel only use those two hair fibers these days. But whatever they did to her hair, I think they damaged it.
It looks okay though, and it's not that it's unpleasant to touch, it's just... not NICE to touch. If you know what I mean?
Anyway, I pulled most of her hair into a single high ponytail rather than the half up one she came with. I felt this style looked a little more mature and tidy, particularly given how odd the texture of her hair is. The gold ring (gears?) is a little too small for all the hair when it's styled like this, I pried it open to force it around the ponytail lol.
I also redid the thread around the front pieces to hold them back out of her face. I did try to curl her hair after messing with it for a bit but it simply wouldn't hold a curl and I didn't want to get boiling water involved. Saran is a bitch to get to keep a curl, even if you boil the fuck out of it and I wasn't feeling energetic enough to go through all that anyway.
It is a shame I think that g3 lost the little upturned nose of g1 and her eyebrows are definitely less shapely and more just a big ol' block but I am happy they kept all the rivets and the seams, even if the forehead one is far far more subtle now.
I like g3's silhouette here, the cage piece adds a nice curve that g1's cage doesn't.
g1 has better goggles though, they're actually goggles and not weird sunglasses.
Overall i'm happy with Robecca. I think she's translated to g3's style well. She's not too far from her original design but with the younger more cartoonish look of g3 and the thicker more shapely body.
Were I to change anything, I might be inclined to shape her eyebrows a little more. They're a bit too rectangular I think, they could do with a teensy little bit of tapering.
in fact...
I chickened out on shaping the brows any more than this, I got scared. But I did paint her earrings gold to match her other jewellery.
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