Two, count em, TWO new doll lines by rival companies. Both magical themed (kinda) and both released at a similar time? Of course I had to take a look at both.
Let's just dive into this.
Moonspell Magic
Moonspell Magic is Mattel's latest doll line, a spinoff of Monster High and this time it's witch themed. Huh... that sounds familiar.... *eyes the Bratzillaz*
Of course, because it's Mattel we don't have "school of witchcraft AND fashion", it's just magic. Mattel don't ram "and fashion" into every line they create.
But it is interesting that Moonspell is wearing their MH connection on their sleeve. The logo specifically states "by Monster High".
The boxes are just like the g3 Monster High boxes, not really a box and more a very large clamshell style that you have to basically tear apart to open. It means you can't really keep the packaging, but it does also mean they're fairly easy to open.
I do like the artwork here. The flat colours I think really serve the cartoony style far better than the over worked shiny wet looking artwork we had for a lot of Monster High. I hate how shiny and wet the characters look in that profile art, it's really off-putting. Here the art looks far more old school Monster High, complete with the kinda odd joint anatomy that feels a little broken lol. (see the image of all five girls below for examples)
The back of the box shows all 5 characters. All of them have a specific "type" of magic associated. We have "gemstone" "light" "clairvoyance" "nature" and uh... "love". I always find the theme of "love magic" a little uncomfortable because so often the concept of things like love potions feels a bit.... inappropriate and uh.... counter consensual if you get my meaning. I dunno, it makes me uncomfortable.
Now I will admit, I don't know a lot about g3 Monster High's LORE. The animation style they opted for is just so fucking ugly to me that I couldn't stand to watch the animated show, but also as i've gotten older my tolerance level for cheesy media aimed at selling shit to children has really diminished. I dunno why, I used to watch this crap, but nowadays I just can't stand the cringe level. I got old and cranky.
anyway, what I do know is that Draculaura is both a vampire AND a witch and witchcraft is taboo for some unspecified reason. Apparently it's aok to do magic if you're a monster type that has magic, but learning magic? OOOo nooooo.
Uh.. okay?
Not sure why they went with this but whatever.
so when Moonspell Magic was announced the assumption was that Draculaura would be the link between both.
but she's conspicuously absent instead and we don't seem to have any media that actually explains how Moonspell fits into the MH universe or that whole "witchcraft taboo" thing plays into matters.
the animated show appears to have been cancelled so I doubt we'll see any clarification any time soon.
but frankly, if I don't have to see those uncanny hideous fucking 3d models dancing again, i'll be a happy guy.
Good god those models *shudder*
Anyhoo, I picked Claire De Luna because I think she's gorgeous and I always love a doll in dark gothy clothes.
Also, for those who know, the Entertainer specific security tag should make you chuckle. For those who don't know, for years the Entertainer toy store was owned by a religious couple who flatly refused to stock anything "witchcraft or magic" themed. That means no Harry Potter, no Monster High and so on. A couple of years ago the owner retired and effectively handed over control of the company to the employees, and suddenly they've started stocking all this stuff that the original owner would never have allowed. The shelves are bulging with magic kits and witch themed dolls and so on. It amuses me. Like the moment he was gone, the company put in massive orders for all the shit they weren't allowed to sell previously.
She comes with a small assortment of plastic shit, but no food which i'm actually quite thankful for. All her accessories are actually thematically appropriate to her witchiness. As the "clairvoyant" the rather on the nose named "Claire" comes with a book of fortunes, some sort of potion and a crystal ball.
The book does not seem to open, it's just a hunk of plastic unfortunately.
She also comes with a cauldron that has a gimmick because of COURSE Mattel couldn't resist a pointless fucking gimmick.
There are no instructions that I could see beyond a tiny image that suggests you pour water in. I'm not doing that. That sounds like a great way to spill water everywhere.
But inside the cauldron a little platform rises up and there's a tiny bust with a necklace on it. You can also just pull this up using the little moon shaped handle.
what is the point of this? I really don't fucking know.
As soon as you let go of the moon the whole thing drops back into the bottom of the cauldron. Would it actually float on water if you filled the thing up? I don't know, I don't care, i'm not about to find out.
What a lame gimmick. Not even any colour change or like, dissolving paper that reveals the "surprise" or anything. Just "look inside the cauldron and there's a necklace"
what was even the point?
Claire also comes with a hat that has the constellation for each of the star signs I think. Gemini and Cancer I recognise, Gemini is very easy to recognise. Though several of them don't seem quite right. Aquarius, Pisces and Aries are all wrong. Taurus has gained an extra leg. Virgo lost its arms. Scorpio has lost its pincers and Sagitarius is a hot mess. but I believe these were SUPPOSED to be the star signs, they just kinda fucked most of them up. How they managed that i'm not sure, it's not like it's hard to find images of all of them online.
The constellation on the top of the hat I don't recognise, I tried to search various star charts but I didn't have much luck.
Given how broken the star sign ones are, I wouldn't be at all surprised if this was an attempt at something that they either ran through an AI and thus ended up with gibberish, or someone just pulled out their arse.
Which is a pity because some nerdy constellation reference would be fun.
The inside of the hat has a clever design feature that incorporates a sort of headband shape molded in so that the hat will sit on the doll's head without sliding off. It doens't STAY on when you move the doll, but it works significantly better than the typical hat style.
There are also two tiny little holes that you could use to sew the hat to her, or potentially loop some elastic or something into to better hold it on.
Luna has a gorgeous face with big eyes and ombre purple and fushia lips. One eye appears to be a crystal, the other is fairly flat purple.
She's supposed to be blind, the whole "blind clairvoyant" being a bit of a trope and all. I do appreciate that this line gave us some representation for disability, not only do we have a blind character, we also have a deaf one who wears a hearing aid.
To add to this, the outside of Claire's box has braile on it. Her little book of fortunes ALSO has braile on the cover, though it's hard to make out because the thing is so tiny. That is a nice little attention to detail that I appreciate.
though i'm still not sure how she looks into her crystal ball lol.
The necklace from the cauldron is a jarring transparent purplish colour that honestly bothers me because every single piece of Claire's other jewellery is silver. Even on her box art her necklace is silvery looking. But ho hum, it is what it is.
Her top is dark blue and made of a sort of shiny synthetic material. Her skirt is a foil printed fabric that's rouched up on one side and seems to be using estoeric almost tarot card like symbols for the pattern. the rectangles definitely make me think of tarot.
her belt also has what look like tarot cards but we'll get a better look at that, hopefully, in a bit.
Her shawl? Jacket? Coat? I don't know what to call this thing. It's a mesh sort of material with foil print of moons and stars. It's really pretty and reminds me of a similar garment I had in my teens heh. Mine was burgundy though and had no foil print. I think it was my sister's originally.
Finally her boots are knee length black with a purple heel in the shape of a crescent moon.
The moon has a slightly stern looking face with closed eyes.
She also comes with a bag, some dark glasses and a cane.
There's also a star and a crystal.
The thing is, the new cards also work. The Star symbolises spiritual guidance and the wheel of fortune is just that, fate and destiny.
Her bag actually is painted on BOTH sides which I found shocking. Usually companies only do the "facing" side and leave the back unfinished.
Again, it's a crescent moon with a face.
The bag does have a little slit in it, but it's far too narrow for any of her stuff to fit into it. I had hoped that maybe the book at least could fit in there but nope, doesn't fit. Bummer.
Her cane, like her boots, has this kinda tangled vine pattern on it. I don't know what this is beyond "vines".
And her glasses have the phases of the moon around the edge of the lenses.
Mattel went hard with the moon theming here.
And here she is all together. I actually really love her vibe. She's dark, she's gothy and then the little pops of pale purple on her cane and shoes helps tie both together into the whole look.
Now, when she was first revealed a lot of people argued that she looked a lot like Monster High's Cleo. The brown skin, the blue hair. So I was curious about her body type and also her skin tone.
She actually uses the same body as Draculaura, with some small tweaks and her skin tone is quite a bit less saturated and gold than Cleo's.
Strangely, her arms are slightly longer than Drac's. This Drac arm was marked "R8" while Claire's is "R6" but I looked at some of my other Draculauras and some of them have "R6" arms too so ... I have no fucking clue.
Claire's bust seems slightly perkier too but that could simply be an optical illusion caused by the plastic colour.
I would say that, for what it's worth, they probably share a body and any small differences are just factory quirks.
My Claire has a tiny factory error where they missed one plug of her hair. It's not that the plug came out, the hole isn't actually even punched. It's a tiny defect and one you would never notice unless you pulled her hair back like this.
Speaking of hair, Claire has lovely soft saran hair that looks to be a blend of black and dark blue, rather like Robecca Steam.
I really like this girl, I think she's beautiful and I love the representation. I mean how often do you see a BLIND doll who uses a cane? That's really neat.
Of course, while such visibility is great, I can't help but wish we'd gotten a little more with these dolls that fleshed out their character and their world. It could have also been a cool opportunity to teach kids some really basic braile or something. Just like you could have done some ASL with the deaf girl.
I also think it's a pity that her bio wasn't also replicated in braile. They put it on the box for the name of the line and doll, but then her scanty bio is completely devoid of anything. Not that you'd be missing much, it tells you absolutely fuck all. Maybe the American boxes have more info on them, but the EU ones are as useless as ever, repeating the same three lines over and over in every language.
Gorgeous doll though. Shame about the very bare bones world building.
She can hold her book and potion but can't hold the crystal ball unfortunately. I tried to balance it on her hand but it just falls out. Alas.
Moonspell Magic retails at £29.99 but are currently on sale for £21.99 just about everywhere which i'm not sure bodes well for the franchise.
So for £30 you get a doll with 12 points of articulation (knee, hip, shoulder, elbow, wrist, neck and bust), a three piece fabric outfit, necklace, earrings, glasses, hat, bag AND belt as well as five accessories (cauldron, cane, book, potion, crystal ball).
Not too bad and about on par with the parent line Monster High. Only in this case the accessories are more useable and thematic than fucking FOOD. Why is Mattel so obsessed with doll food? What are you supposed to do with it? Set up a doll cafe? Have doll mukbangs? I don't get the play element that yet another bag of chips or another bagel really provides. At least here you have a book, a potion, a crystal ball and a cauldron which you can use for various "doing witchy shit" stuff. She's not just in a corner stuffing more cupcakes into her gob.
The pros:
Nice hair straight out the box.
A multi piece outfit with layering and some fun foil fabrics and moulded details.
A decent few accessories that fit thematically with the whole school for witches thing.
Disability rep! Whooo
The cons:
Her bag cannot fit any of her accessories. Booo hissss.
Her hat doesn't always stay on
that gimmick with the cauldron feels half baked and half arsed
I couldn't even keep the artwork of her from the front of the box because it was glued to the plastic in such a way it tore a chunk out of the picture when I tried to remove it. This is a small gripe but for people who like to keep boxes or graphics, it's a bummer. Particularly as the style of the packaging means you have to destroy the box to get the doll out in the first place. That's another bummer for people who reuse packaging as it has to go straight into the trash instead. But it DOES make for a much quicker and easier deboxing experience so it's sort of swings and roundabouts there.
MIRROR MI
Anyway,
moving on to MGA's new line. A line I would argue actually are more likely to be directly countering Monster High than Moonspell Magic but whatever, they came out within a month of one another so i'm pitting them against each other.
Can I start by saying that "mirror mi" is a fucking stupid name? What the hell does it even MEAN? What does it have to do with the concept? There aren't any mirrors, there's no reflection element, they're emotion themed. "oh but don't you see, they're a REFLECTION of emotions". No, they're anthropomorphised concepts and half of them aren't even a fucking emotional state.
I suppose we should at least be thankful that they don't attend a school of "emotion AND fashion". Though give MGA time, i'm sure that's coming.
Anyway, moving on from how much the very concept of the line just feels like they pissed up a wall and went with it. Let's look at the actual product. Because ultimately that's what really matters right? The background fluff is just fluff, what we're here for is the DOLL.
I grabbed Suki because I felt she was the most unique. While the rest of the characters all feel like humans with maybe a teensy little bit of whimsy (like fairy shaped vitiligo), Suki here is the one most clearly NOT human. She's a living porcelain doll themed around the Japanese art of kitsuagi.
This isn't the first time MGA has flirted with this porcelain doll idea. One of the character concepts in the Shadow/Rainbow High animation featured a character who was also blue and white china themed and a lot of people believe this girl is that concept simply reimagined for the new line.
It's worth mentioning that in the US Suki here is a store exclusive alongside the sheep girl Shai, while here in the UK all six dolls are widely available everywhere.
I feel like MGA may have shot themselves in the foot there making TWO of the six dolls store exclusives (one target, the other walmart) because all it does is make the dolls harder to find and put people off.
Anyway, thankfully here in the UK we aren't suffering that nonsense so I had free pick of whichever one I wanted from Smyths.
Suki's "emotion" is Fragile. I feel like maybe they'd have been better off using something like "theme" or "vibe" rather than emotion because while yeah, "i'm feeling fragile" is something people say, is it really an emotion? I mean google doesn't think so.... and neither do all the stupid occupational therapy cards I keep finding scattered around the house.
of course it wouldn't be MGA without a stupid nickname.
"fave lyric" is an interesting addition, particularly as it doesn't actually quote anything in particular. Is this a real song? Is it just a quote? Is MGA just making shit up?
I will say the artwork here is really nice. It's sort of sketchy, maybe a bit watercoloury and I think it works quite well. The hand is a bit odd but hands are hard to draw man.
there's a teensy tiny sketchy image of the five other characters at the bottom of the box
The sort of fairy themed purple haired girl (her "emotion" is Dreamy) also at least feels fantastical but the others are just some girls. It's a bit baffling honestly because the whole group just don't feel like a cohesive whole.
But whatever, it's my blog and i'll bitch if I wanna.
So first things first, getting Suki out of her box was a chore and a half. MGA boxes always SUCK to open and the Mirror Mi boxes continue the tradition. They use thin, razor sharp plastic tabs that refused, no matter how much I tried to lever them with various things, to actually release so I had to resort, after nearly cutting myself on said sharp plastic, to cutting the box open instead. This of course resulted in MORE razor sharp edges which I nearly sliced myself on when throwing the box away too.
*huff*
much dislike.
Suki herself was a bit awkward to remove from her backing card due to the molded gold element of the box which I couldn't manage to get off the card itself. At this point I was too paranoid about slicing myself on the plastic pieces and really didn't want to mess around much more than strictly necessary.
Now i've seen others rather graciously claim the gold piece can be "used as a stand" but it really can't. It's thin plastic and just falls over. It also has a load of plastic tab pieces which make it pretty clear it's JUST packaging. You'd have to cut those off to make it look decent and then you're left with again, razor sharp bloody plastic that doesn't hold the doll up anyway so why bother? No, it's just a packaging element to make the doll look more fancy in the box. it serves no purpose beyond looking fancy and it is, as is usually the case, a waste of bloody plastic.
But I got the doll removed without drawing blood, so I consider that a win.
of course, then it became clear that her hair was absolutely caked in gel all along its length so it was crunchy and stiff and horrible.
*SIGH*
I figured the sticky up pieces would be gelled to shit, but the WHOLE length of her hair? COME ON MGA.
So i decided the first thing I was going to do was strip her off and wash her hair to try to deal with the sensory nightmare of cronch and get her bangs and little side tendril thingies to actually SIT. As they were I felt like if I touched them they'd snap off, they were that stiff and crunchy.
I mean look at this mess! LOOK at it.
Her hair is shoved into two segments so it looks fuller in the box but because it's also gelled to shit, it continues to SIT in two segments and even after I brushed the shit out of it with a fine tooth comb it still didn't fully sit as one, there was still a small gap where the fibres wanted to splay to the sides.
As a reminder, this is Claire's hair straight out of the box:
No brushing, straight off the backing card.
Now granted Claire uses saran and Suki probably uses Kiwi, but both are lovely soft fibres and both SHOULD sit nicely. Suki's hair however, does NOT feel nice. It's not soft, it's not silky, it feels coarse and chunky with gel.
I brushed it a lot, gel came off. I washed her. Gel sat on the surface of her hair as a white powder.
what the fuck?
I washed her again. Still white residue, particularly on her bangs and around the top of her head where the majority of the gel was. I tried using conditioner, I tried hot water, I eventually gave up because I was sick of washing the goddamn doll.
so enjoy this ONE photo I took of her before I waterboarded the shit out of her for half an hour.
And I will grant you this, she IS a very pretty and unique looking doll.
but god the state of her hair....
Anyway, speaking of her hair.... while the majority of it is two shades of blue (well, blue and a periwinkle sort of shade), there are four thick "gold" streaks in the back. I say "gold" because they're not really metallic, they're more a kinda ugly yellowish blonde honestly. I get what they were going for, but I can't help but feel a teensy bit of tinsel (and I say this as someone who fucking hates tinsel) might have worked better. The colour they opted for just feels a bit clashing honestly, I don't think it looks very nice. Yes, it IS technically the same colour as her gold top, but for whatever reason it just looks ugly to me.
I dunno, YMMV or whatever but for me, i'm not a fan of these random blonde bits.
This is as good as i could get her hair after brushing the ever loving shit out of it. Water was going to be my only option. So I prepared the dunk tank... aka, the sink.
But first let's revisit her face and remember why I picked her out in the first place.
The Mirror Mi dolls I believe all use the same head sculpt, MGA typically do this with all their doll lines. I can't think of any where they've actually bothered to do different sculpts for different characters honestly.
I don't mind this however and I think it can be quite fun to see how different makeup and hair styles etc can really change how the same face looks.
Suki here looks deeply, deeply worried. I think she's well aware of what is about to happen to her and she's not looking forward to it.
She's also a pain in the arse to photograph because her skin is paper white.
she has quite subtle makeup to be honest with soft pink blush on her cheeks, soft pink semi parted lips and blue eyeshadow that matches her blue eyebrows. She has a blue line at the edge of each lid that arcs up and inward but doesn't quite connect to her lid line and a dark blue cats eye flick at the edge of each eye.
she has three blue bottom lashes and her upper lashes are black inset ones that sort of clump together a bit. I feel like they're maybe a little overscaled for the doll and that daintier ones would have looked nicer but probably wouldn't have been as robust.
these look like the same lashes they used for Rainbow High, but Rainbow High had much much bigger eyes.
Mirror Mi are 1/6 scale with a big head but their head is closer in size to Monster high than it is to any of MGA's current doll brands.
The inset eyes are beautiful. MGA usually do quite nice inset eyes but have had a couple of real flops with Mermaze and the Project MC2 dolls having an unsettling stare. Suki's eyes are blue and purple with an oversized iris and pupil that makes her look more soulful than staring. And I have to say, the glassiness of them coupled with her eyebrows really does make her look like she's about to burst into tears any moment. Poor girl.
the head sculpt is unusual, it's very bottom heavy, if that makes sense. Her whole face is sort of squished to the bottom of the sculpt with a massive forehead. This is a doll line that really benefits from bangs.
Even her ears are strangely low set.
But even if she is a bit strange looking, I do think she's quite pretty.
there's a bjd sort of aesthetic to the faces of these dolls, one that's further reinforced by the design of the body.
she also has double jointed knees that use the peanut style joint Rainbow High used, only they're hidden so even more elegant.
for some reason however, this engineering does not extend to her upper body. She has no bust joint and her elbows feature a simple hinge design that means she can't even bend her arm a full 90 degrees.
Booo.
So she can kneel like an absolute champ, but she can't touch her own face.
Why Mga? Why do you hate arm articulation so much?
Basically, their mobility feels an awful lot like Rainbow High's, no real changes here.
But their body shape doesn't make me think of the rather boxy Rainbow High bodies, it's far closer in fact to the LOL OMG.
Specifically in fact, the OMG Fierce line.
The new body is shorter and has better engineered articulation, particularly the legs. It also has even wider hips, a more exaggerated pinup sort of shape which I actually really dig. But aesthetically this feels the closest body MGA have previously produced.
Mirror Mi is, if you boil it down, basically the bastard love child of LOL OMG and Rainbow High.
Which i'm actually here for because I always wanted a doll line with OMG's body shape and variety of hair and makeup but with a less infantile head.
Mirror Mi also have really beautifully sculpted hands that remind me a lot of the Mermaze hands (which this specific OMG body actually has right now because I stole her original hands for a different doll lol)
Now at this point I got so distracted trying to fix her hair I didn't take many photos of her body details. I'm sorry about that but she was a pain in the arse to undress the first time, even more of a pain to redress and I don't want to go through all that again just for a few shots.
so instead i'll tell you about it.
She has china patterns on her arms and knees and an actually engraved crack running down one leg which has been painted gold to emulate the kitsuagi visible repair. I was actually surprised this detail wasn't just paint but actually moulded into the leg. That's neat.
So why was she so difficult to undress and redress? The culprit is this dress.
But before we go into that, I want to talk about the dress itself.
i'm not totally sold on it i'm gonna be honest. Like yeah, it looks like a teacup, but it also feels a little... i dunno, unrefined? It's fine, but also stands out as more simple than any of her fellow Mirror Mi dolls who all feature quite layered and textured elements. There's also a few elements that I feel kinda cheapen the overall look of the thing.
First there's the bodice. The strange winged parts above the bust pieces are a... choice and stick up in a way that makes the whole bodice look like it doesn't quite fit. I'm not sure I understand the vision there.
Then you have a scalloped layer of some sort of printed polyester with a big blue plastic flower sewn to it. Now the flower is fine, but the scalloped polyester looks cheap to me. It's just this unfinished ruffle of cheap printed fabric. Yeah it's fine and for the price point, I get it, but still. MGA treated me with Rainbow High and Bratz clothing being so ridiculously detailed even at tiny scale and even at decent price points. I feel like ribbon or lace or something would have been nicer here than printed raw edge polyester.
the main skirt is two layers (well technically it's actually three but we'll get to that). There's the thin semi transparent material that makes up the overskirt, and a much stiffer holo material underneath (it looks and feels like the same material they made Krystal Bailey's second top out of actually. It's really stiff and sort of plasticky feeling)
Now I had, when I was looking at this doll, pondered how I could alter her dress to make it just a little more deluxe feeling for my taste and I was thinking maybe a little lace around the hem would be enough to elevate it. I don't dislike her dress, but I don't love it either and I feel like such a unique concept deserves a little more oomph. I mean she's a porcelain doll, she should have LACE right? Am i crazy?
Anyway, let's get to why the dress was such a pain to get on and off.
you see, in order to keep its structure the designers made a plastic cage piece to fit underneath. This is then sewn to a tight underskirt and all of it, dress, underskirt, cage etc is sewn together into one piece.
The problem with this is that the cage piece, even though it undoes like a belt, is tight to fit around her waist and because it's sewn TO the rest of the dress, can't be removed without snipping a lot of threads and risking the whole thing no longer sitting correctly. So you have to shimmy the entire garment over her wide hips with this stiff plastic element in the way and it's really awkward and required quite a bit of force on my part.
it was just as much of a pain in reverse.
So no, this is not a doll designed to be undressed.
The cage piece itself has been designed with chips and broken sections too which is clever. I do like that little detail. it's not something you'd see unless you lifted her skirt up, but I like that they did it. Particularly as the positioning is such that the break is in line with the gold "repair" lines on her skirt. Now that's some attention to detail.
Suki's shoes are quite unusual. They're pink strappy sandals but they have a double heel that brings to mind Japanese Tabi shoes or something.
I mean that does make some sense given she's inspired by a Japanese art, but they are quite strange looking shoes all the same. They also make her a bit unstable to stand.
The back of the heel has a little gold decoration and the soles are also painted gold.
It makes the shoes look a little fancier than just plain pink, though i'm still not sure I really understand WHY she has random pink in her design in the first place. It feels really out of place.
Her dress has really tiny pink straps but those really could have been blue or white and aren't obvious enough to really tie her shoes in with the rest of her outfit. Pink shoes with a blue and white outfit feels about as egregious as brown shoes with a black suit you know what I mean? It just looks jarring and off.
And it's a little confusing to me because when it comes to arbitrary pink stuff, that's Mattels' shtick.
I feel like these shoes might have looked more cohesive if they were blue, then they'd also look like they were made of china too.
The pink comes back for Suki's accessories.
Her headphones are a soft pink and come with teacups you can attach to the headphones for... some reason. Okay it's sort of cute to have teacup shaped headphones but the problem is they don't actually stay on very well. One would latch into place but the other, no matter how much I tried would stay secure. it would fall off after a few minutes every time and even resorting to blu tack didn't help.
the gimmick is a cute idea, but in actual practice it creates an accessory that's too delicate to actually use.
I also feel like the whole setup would have looked so much more intentional had the headphones been either blue or white to actually blend in with the cups. Another pointlessly pink piece that shouldn't have been pink. What is this, fucking Barbie?
it also bothers me that she only came with one saucer.
And look, even MGA have decided all dolls need to come with food! Suki has some little rabbit shaped uh... onigari? (or are they Jelly Doughnuts? Ahem, sorry, that was a 90s Pokemon reference. IYKYK)
They don't come off their tray, i tried. They're glued to it.
Finally Suki has this chunky pink bag with a gold ring handle and big fat moulded on tassels.
the bag is really hard feeling and quite bulky.
I think the moulded on tassels look bad, they're too chunky and rigid looking for something that should be soft and elegant. Could they not have done some sort of hanging charm element with them so they had some movement or something? The solid moulded block-o-bag just doesn't feel as high quality as i'd expect from MGA and the lack of painted detail on anything other than the handle only makes it look more unfinished and like a solid block of plastic.
It might look nice painted up, but I don't think I like it enough to bother.
While it does have a slit in it, it's such rigid unflexable plastic that you can't really open it and it's too narrow to fit anything into anyway. Her accessories don't go in so it's a pretty pointless bag, just like Claire's was.
She also has a little bunny hair clip but I forgot to take a photo of it, forgot it existed til I had restyled her hair and only remembered it right at the end. Oops?
I took her hair out of its sort of confusing style and I did try to take photos of the process as I disassembled it, in the hope i'd be able to redo it once she was glue/gel free but I couldn't figure it out and just got myself confused.
Also i'd have had to reinstate gel to get those spikes back anyway and I prefer my dolls to have soft hair thanks.
So here she is with her hair completely taken out of the style, which only actually used two elastic bands. It's sort of tied into a loose bun with the ends pulled forward and spiked and then tendrils on either side criss crossed over and tied underneath to hide the first elastic band.
But once I washed her hair out I couldn't easily figure out which bits were the shorter upper layer and where everything went so I just did my own thing.
Anyway, she has no rooted parting, her hair is rooted specifically for bangs and a high ponytail of some description.
it took a lot of washes, a lot of combing and then rewashing when the white powder residue would reappear, but I got her hair to a point where it at least feels soft.
Her hair is still damp in these pictures but I wanted to get her hair restyled asap because it bothers me leaving things unfinished like that.
As I couldn't do her original style, I instead opted for a high/low ponytail situation where the shorter upper part of her hair, which would have formed her loose bun, instead was tied up into a high ponytail and the rest of her hair could be loose.
washing the gel out of her bangs revealed how uneven they actually are but also how kinda meh the styling of them is. She'd have benfitted i think from a big ol' rolled bang but instead she has these flat ones that stick out a bit from her face. I feel like they could have shaped these better and to look a bit fuller.
I also took the liberty of adding my own touches to her. I really liked her face but I felt like the whole "broken china doll" vibe was a little too minimal with her only broken and repaired piece being her leg. I had some ultra chrome gold paint which matched her factory gold beautifully so I used it to give her a couple of cracks on her face and a teensy subtle one on her torso too.
I just wanted the whole kitsuagi vibe to be a bit more overt you know? And I really do enjoy how it turned out.
I tried putting her headphones on, which incidentally fit her head better now she doesn't have the spikes, but I wasn't jazzed about how they fit nor how regularly one of the teacups would fall off and bounce across the floor and under furniture.
I did end up elastic banding her oversized bag to her so she could hold it purely because without it, her shoes really looked wrong. Adding the bag helps to tie her shoes in with the rest of the outfit, means the pink neck straps and her blush suddenly pop far better and just pulls everything together.
So much as I don't much like the bag, it is an essential piece to my eye simply to make the pink make sense.
Of course, had they just made her damn shoes BLUE and her neck straps either blue or white, she wouldn't need the bag.
but it is what it is.
remember I mentioned the bunny clip? Yeah I only found it right at the end. It was hiding in the box under her other accessories.
So,
the Mirror Mi dolls retail for £29:99, just like Moonspell Magic, so both lines are the same price. But what do you get for your £30?
Suki has no jewellery. Her ears have holes for earrings but she doesn't come with any. She has no necklace, no bracelets, not even glasses. She has a bunny hair clip and that's really about it as far as jewellery goes.
She comes with a bag, some headphones with detatchable teacups, one saucer and some food.
Her outfit is one piece, though it IS sewn from multiple layers.
She has a lot of painted detail on her body and a brand new body sculpt, inset eyes and inset lashes.
Compared to Claire she does feel like she comes with less stuff, but that said, the actual base doll feels fancier. So yes, you're getting fewer pieces with Suki, but you're also getting a more detailed base doll.
So hmm.
Of course, all this said, I had a lot less of a good time with Suki than I did with Claire. With Claire I kept discovering little details that made me smile, the braile on her book, the tarot cards on her belt, her completely fucked up zodiac stars lol. With Suki, the more I handled her, the more I found I wanted to FIX.
Now I have said before that I rather like dolls I have to fix because it helps me bond with them, but when i'm talking about a brand new doll I don't really want to put that work in.
Claire came out of the box and could go straight onto the shelf or I could go straight into play.
Suki not only was an absolute nightmare to get OUT of her box in the first place, but the state of her hair was such that I didn't want to do anything else until i'd washed all that shit out of there.
and despite washing her head multiple times she STILL has white residue at her roots. Wtf Mga? w... t... f?
Maybe the other dolls feel more deluxe, but my experience with Suki hasn't exactly made me eager to grab any more. We're back to the age of MGA boxes demanding blood to be opened and the dolls needing tlc straight out of the packaging which just isn't how things should be. Especially not when you're paying £30.
I have seen others talking about the redheaded girl Blaze having her skirt peeling immediately upon deboxing as well, which makes me a little anxious. These are dolls that look beautiful in box, but is that all they really are?
so let's get into it:
the pros:
Beautiful bjd-like face with gorgeous inset eyes
An entirely new body with excellent leg articulation and an attractive shape
Detailed painting and sculpting to her body
An unusual concept that makes her stand out
cool attention to detail on her dress, particularly the under cage piece.
the cons:
horrible box hair that requires multiple washes to get feeling decent.
really really difficult to undress
really really difficult to debox without injuring yourself on the sharp plastic
teacups don't actually remain attached to the bloody headphones
Bag is an ugly fat chunk of molded plastic
So here they both are together and I suppose the question is, which do I prefer? Which one would I pick if I could only have one?
And it's a tough call because Suki IS such a unique looking doll and such a striking concept.
but I think, all in, for the overall experience? Claire wins this one.
I came away from deboxing her feeling quite happy, while I came away from dealing with Suki feeling conflicted.
Claire is the far less innovative doll, but she also feels like a doll that you can immediately start to play with. Her accessories fit with her theme and add to the play, her hair feels really nice immediately, her layered outfit gives different options for mixing things up if you want to and I mean, she took me 30 seconds to unbox and I didn't risk slicing my hand open, which is a huge plus in my book.
Suki on the other hand, while she is quite special, has too many factors that bug me. Her accessories feel like just random crap thrown in the box to increase piece count rather than something that adds to her world, the random pink bits of her outfit I find really jarring and discordant, her hair straight out the box is unforgivable and her box tried to cut me several times! I even nearly cut myself again when throwing it away!
Both suffer from their world building feeling half baked and I really would have liked both of them to have had a little something MORE to explain their world and how they fit into it. But I feel like this is especially important when you're launching a whole new franchise.
Once upon a time dolls were sold purely on "oooo she's pretty, look at how pretty she is" but even in the 90s we had franchises that had story, world building and a whole vibe based around it.
Heck, even "Bratzillaz school of witchcraft and fashion" at least felt more of something than "oooo i'm a nebulous concept of an emotional state/vibe and I like tea!"
I dunno, I can't articulate this well.
I just feel like both new franchises feel shallow and superficial, more so than usual.
maybe we'll get some sort of web media that fleshes things out, but right now all we seem to have is music videos and i'm sorry but watching models dance around is NOT world building.
But where we stand right now? I still have no fucking clue what the hell mirror mi is as a concept and no idea how Moonspell Magic fits into the Monster High universe or who either of these girls are as characters.
I miss monster high's diaries. God I miss that era of every doll having a full biography and a whole load of relationships and interconnections with other dolls.
Anyway, tldr, I doubt i'll get any more Mirror Mi dolls until they on clearance and I have worked up the courage to fight the boxes and the box hair.
£30 is too much for me to risk injuring myself and having to spend a good hour washing, combing and restyling a doll's hair. It's not something I enjoy doing. It requires me to stand for a significant bit of time which is exhausting for me, it often hurts my fingers messing around with elastic bands (why you ask? because my hands almost always just hurt and my fingers are stupid and weak and my ligaments don't work), I don't want to do it if I don't have to. There's a distinct difference between restoration of an old doll that your work and effort is bringing back to life and having to clean and fix a brand new doll. If I wanted to spend an hour fixing a doll's hair, i'd buy a vintage sindy.
I'm sorry that this is quite a negative way to end things. I'm tired and not feeling overly well which I think is making me particularly cranky.
Don't get me wrong, I don't regret getting Suki. She IS a unique doll. But I do resent the work required to get her to that point and that I had to sacrifice her original styling in order to get her hair to not look and feel disgusting.
But, in order to avoid ending this all on a sour note, here's one last picture of her with her hair all nice and dry. Just to show off how pretty she really is.
"I'm a little tea.... cup?"
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