Monster High - Electrified - Silvi Timberwolf

Electrified, the latest movie or something from Mattel. I dunno, the info out there is pretty scarce.
Anyway, Electrified is the newest MH reboot line to hit and it features some pretty 80s inspired fashions and super crimped hair.

Now, these were revealed at toyfair earlier in the year, and were kinda interesting.

Barbie Fashionistas Curvy, Tall, Petite

Yeah I finally got around to this one, i'm a lazy bum okay?

Well actually it was more I was after specific dolls of each body shape and didn't want to buy just any ol' one.
Also the curvy ones have proven the most impossible to get in stores.

I finally ordered the curvy I wanted, and so I finally have one of each body to review. Whoo.

Back at the start of the year Mattel had exciting news, Barbie was getting some body diversity!
Not 1, not 2, but 3 whole new bodies were released alongside her regular 99 body.
Those bodies were Tall, Petite and Curvy.

Of course the doll community were keen to see how they'd done this, how clothing options would work, how the curvy body particularly would LOOK in the wake of Lammily and her potato shaped torso (seriously, she looks like a spud with a head attached, it's not overly easy to dress a doll so shapeless because they don't squish like flesh does.)

It took me a while to get a hold of each of the ones I wanted from the lineup. And as I mentioned, curvy dolls sell out everywhere. I have only ever seen ONE (the blonde barbie one) on a shelf all year. Usually it's a few petites and a couple of generic bodied ones and maybe a tall.
So is curvy super popular? Gotta assume so, which in a way is great.
It IS a pretty hot body.
ahem.

Monthly roundup!

I've been on a dolly diet this month. We're coming up to Christmas which is an extremely crazy time of year for me.
Not only do we have christmas itself, but also 3 birthdays so it's a frenzy of stress and present buying and just... madness.

It's also a point in the year where I get super down, but you're not here to hear about my mental health are you?

Anyway, this all means that November and December are points where generally I try to slow down my purchasing.
But uh..

I have poor impulse control.

I'm alive!

Man, I was slacking right?

It's been a month and I haven't posted a single thing.

Honestly, it's not that I haven't bought stuff, it's just the stuff i've bought hasn't felt "special enough" to get a review. I've kinda gone off most playline stuff in stores and i'm saving up for my very first bjd now, which means a lot of hard saving and a lot of passing even on great deals.
It's so hard.
Because I have terrible impulse control.

So i've mostly been selling stuff, rather than buying. Trying to declutter as well as trying to gather together funds for this big splurge. We're coming to the end of the year too, which is the point i'm supposed to stop buying stuff "just in case" someone wants to buy me dolls (nobody does but you gotta pretend right?). It's also the most expensive part of the year for the family with 3 birthdays AND christmas all within 8 weeks. It's exhausting.
Not to mention the fact I really hate christmas anyway so always get super depressed and not wanting to be creative anyway.
The "meh, dun wanna" apathy has hit early this year which makes it a bit tricky to motivate myself to get excited about toys.
Which sucks.

But, I finally have enough stuff to fill a roundup, a way delayed "what I bought since last we spoke" sort of round up.

I'm not meant to be spending, but that doesn't mean I haven't spent.
In fact, the main reason i'm broke this month is because someone on facebook was purging their Living Dead Doll collection for insanely cheap and had a load of dolls I really wanted... so a great deal of my savings went there. oops.
There's that poor impulse control.
We'll get to those.

Monster High - Shriek Wrecked Gil

Shriek Wrecked Gil! Whoooo. This isn't a very long review, there's not a huge amount to say i'm sorry.

Okay so, looks like yet more boy shortpacking is happening here but Gil has started to hit stores. I picked mine up from Bentzen because I can't be having with Argos and their "one number for three different dolls" nonsense.

He's a slim pack doll that retails for about £15. For that you don't get a stand or a brush, so they're a bit overpriced IMO but I was curious about what had been changed for reboot Gil and Deuce hasn't hit the UK yet.

DC Superhero Girls - Bumblebee

I could talk at length about gender politics and all that rubbish, but i'm tired and lazy and don't want to get into it. If you're ever curious, pop onto the facebook page for Let Toys Be Toys and i'm sure you'll find one of my many long rants on the topic.

To be brief: Yay comic themed dolls. Boo comic stuff "for girls".
DC hardly has a good track record in recent years of their division of the sexes and their general "we don't want icky cootie filled girls reading our titles" crap, so obviously their solution was to make stuff for those icky cootie filled girls so they wouldn't get their gross girly hands on the rest of their stuff? I dunno, it's like a small pink cordoned off area just for us vagina having folk.

This pisses me off because i've been reading DC comics for years and never cottoned on to the whole "this isn't for girls" rubbish. Maybe I was just reading the wrong titles, because there were lots of awesome girl characters to root for too and until the new 52 (argh) and certain writers... the titles I WAS reading were really engaging and fun and not chauvinistic or irritating.
I'm still not over the way Shadow Lass was written in the last iteration of Legion Of Superheroes... it still pisses me off. Or how Saturn Girl's epic one woman quest was haphazardly chopped short and just magically resolved to make more space for yet more "isn't Green Lantern awesome?" crap. Eugh. I'm with Vril Dox on this, the green lanterns can all sod off. 

Anyhoo, if dolls like this get little girls to actually read comics, so be it. They might mean we get well written shows like young justice back once DC and WB get their heads out their arses and realize that cootie filled pink dollars are totally worth the same as the boy money. http://www.themarysue.com/warner-bros-animation-girl-market/ See this article for more information on THAT load of steaming sexist horsecrap.

Monster high SDCC Robecca and Hexiciah Steam 2 pack - Comic con exclusive

I know I know, I promised you guys DC dolls but then my SDCC 2 pack arrived and it was way more pressing to review.

I'll get the other stuff done at some point but i'm a slacker *ducks* Don't throw stuff!
Heheh.

So here it is, the SDCC exclusive Steam 2 pack!

July roundup - Living dead dolls, monster high, birthday!

Yeah i've been lazy and kinda, just slacking off on reviews. And then my birthday came along and I bought loads of stuff.
but as usual, it's mostly older stuff that doesn't NEED a full review so much, so it's purchase roundup time!

This month I took advantage of a fair few sales, tru had a 50% off sale going on so I picked up a couple of g1 MH dolls i'd been umming and ahhing over for like a year.
My preordered DC super hero girl shipped out (i'll do a review of that line in a while)
My preordered Living Dead Dolls from Forbidden Planet never dispatched so I cancelled that order and reordered via a third party seller on Amazon. Those arrived too.
I got a great haul at the local charity shop of MH dolls, sweet.
I bought a ridiculous 90s sindy thing.
My husband gave me one of the new petite fashionistas
and I got a 1/6 scale Moped scooter thing for my Makies.

So I guess we go through the list as we usually do. Some things i've got more to talk about than others. Some really kinda speak for themselves as "I saw this, it was ridiculous, I bought it" lol.

It's annoying though because I had intended to save up for my first resin BJD, but then sales happened and I couldn't resist. Ahem. Oops?

Monster High - Welcome to Monster High - Monsterous Rivals Moanica Draculaura 2 pack

Well here it is, the MH reboot.

I know many, including myself have been kinda dreading this. Change is scary, we don't like change, but sadly it's inevitable and while I still don't much LIKE a lot of the very kiddy looking stuff Mattel's bringing out for this reboot, I did like Moanica when I first saw her. She's sassy looking. A kinda cross between Venus and Ghoulia and I dig it.

I had the option or ordering this 2 pack, or waiting another fortnight to get just Moanica single packed. I thought about it, and decided that i'd rather have an existing character to compare and contrast as well. Also it was only like £10 more to get the 2 pack over the single pack.

This pack retails at £29:99 which is about standard for UK 2 packs, and there's no stands or diaries so be aware of that.
I'm not sure any of the new dolls will have stands or diaries, we'll have to wait and see.

I got my set from http://www.bentzentoys.co.uk/ but Argos also have them listed. Bentzen just got them a bit earlier for the same price heh, he's pretty good at checking for obvious wonk issues too before posting.

Anyway, let's delve into this.

Bratz Music Festival Vibes - Sasha

Eeee it's SASHA!

Okay let me compose myself.

So... back in 2010 when the first Bratz relaunch happened, it all looked promising in terms of diversity. The 10 "new characters" released as part of the celebration came in very varied skin tones.

Of the 10, there were 4 who had darker skin, and 4 outta 10 ain't bad.

Sadly it wasn't to last. Sasha was excluded from all cases shipping to the EU and none of the dark skinned 2010 characters appear to have gotten a second doll either.
So once the 10/10/10 cases were gone, that was it for ethnic diversity and Bratz in the UK.
It was frustrating, it was insulting, it was extremely baffling but according to US collectors, it all stemmed from the understanding that in some parts of the USA black dolls simply do not sell. And in other reasons they are in high demand. So MGA started shipping 2 cases. A case of Cloe, Jade, Yasmin (or in several cases, only Cloe and Yasmin) and a case of just Sasha.
the just Sasha cases made sense in heavily black populated areas where she would be most representative of the local community and thus most desired, but this resulted in the unfortunate side effect that stores overseas, given the option of the "assortment" case or the "1 character case" always opted for the assortment, hence the lack of Sasha dolls over here.

Now, in the UK, we're not really a big enough island for such divisions like there are in the states. We don't have areas where there are not ethnic minorities, well, unless it's a teeny sleepy seaside town of like 20 people. Our population is very diverse and really quite integrated.
But we didn't get toys that represented that diversity (which we as a nation should be damn proud of) instead we just got no black dolls at all, which was insulting as it implied there were no kids of colour who deserved representation. No white kids could get a doll that looked like their bff from school. The cases did not represent the multicultural society that IS the UK. To not see that represented in our toys was troubling.

I won't bore you with the politics, i've already spoken at length about this on social media. Suffice to say, doll segregation has troubling wider implications and a lack of representation in the toy aisle is unhealthy and unfair.

Ever after high - Dragon Games Dragonrider Apple

So, it's no secret that EAH is not a franchise i'm hugely enamoured by. Princesses were just never my thing, but Dragon Games caught my attention. It's got this sort of medieval D&D Fantasy vibe that I dig, so of course I had to get a few of these dolls.

Darling I got in a 342 at Toys R us a while back and only just got around to deboxing. Apple and her dragon were on clearance at Argos for a bargain £10 so i made a special trip to pick it up.

So let's have a look at these shall we?

Monster High - Clawdeen - A retrospective of sorts.

My Clawdeen collection is complete!

No, it's not every Clawdeen ever made, this is the ones I decided I wanted of all of them. I went through the checklists of past releases and this 25 were the ones I decided I wanted most of all. The others were rejected either because I didn't like them so much (sweet 1600) or because I felt they were too close to an existing release to justify.
then I promptly got a bunch that look really similar anyway lol. Doh.

Anyway, this blog post is mostly a sort of "here's my Clawdeen collection" show off thing and a chance for me to ramble away about my favorite MH character to collect, what it is about Clawdeen that inspired me to collect so damn many of her over any other character and so on.

So let's start at the beginning.

Monster high Fierce Rocker 2 pack and 3 pack

It's taken me weeks to both these damn sets, rargh.

Okay, so fierce Rockers, a surprise release from Monster High and exclusive to Toys R Us. By some miracle tru UK actually got these in only a month or so after the US, instead of the usual 6 months later *sigh* but they then promptly started a 342 deal along with a load of vouchers which meant surprise surprise, multipacks sold out.

Because tru uk's website sucks,  you can't can't check stock prior to a trip out nor can you order into store to collect, these haven't even made it to their webstore and likely won't for several more months because tru.co.uk is a worthless rubbish website of pointlessness.

Anyway...

Rewind Review - Cutie Pops

An old doll line today, and a review i've been meaning to write for a good 4 months now. I'm such a slacker.

Anyway, Cutie Pops.

Cutie Pops were a line made by a company called Jada back in around 2012. Now I know next to nothing about Jada and even less about the release of the Cutie Pops as I never really noticed them in stores at the time. In fact, the first time I remember seeing them was in B&M Bargains and thinking "ok those are freaky and weird."

The franchise didn't stay long, after a few lines they disappeared off the market, relegated to bargain discount stores.

Now, as the years have gone on i've become accustomed to giant headed dolls with teeny spindly bodies, i've started to be able to appreciate them and look beyond their terrifyingly distorted proportions. So when I found around Christmas an ebay store selling Cutie pops for £3 a er.. pop... I couldn't resist finding out a little more about these weird dolls. I have a strange fondness for failed and discontinued doll lines, they fascinate me.

So,

Monster High - Maul Monsteristas 5 pack

Stock picture, because I don't have the box.

Right so... let's get right to it.

The infamous and illusive Maul Monsteristas 5 pack.

Monster High - Haunted - Getting Ghostly Clawdeen and Spectra

It's Getting Ghostly!  and this is a short review.

Monster High - Freak Du Chic Clawdeen and Twyla

I'm ALIVE!

I know right? It's been like over a month but I am alive! We had some... life stuff happen. It got in the way of dolly purchases.
But it did give me some time to open some stuff I had laying about for a "rainy day".

Remember in my last "I bought this stuff" roundup I talked about some Monster High dolls i'd bought but not deboxed? Well I have now, so here's my rather muddled review of them!

Hopefully things will settle down irl soon and I can actually get into some sort of routine with this. I feel bad slacking off but there's not much new hitting shelves atm and all the "old" stuff i'm getting second hand off ebay. I will cover those purchases too.

So... Monster High purchase SPAM shall happen over the next few days/weeks! Prepare yourselves.

Monthly roundup! - January 2016

Whooo eee January was a big spend month for me, so this is gonna be LONG.

It seems to be the combination of "omg I have money" from Christmas, the general "arghh" of christmas time making me depressed and in need of retail therapy and the fact that lots of new stuff hits stores and older stuff is clearanced around new year.

So... what DID I buy this month?

I'll be honest, I went overboard. I got a lot of cash for christmas for various family members who didn't want to think about actual gifts, and that's fine because it meant I could order myself a few things I was putting off because they were expensive ehehehe.

So, first things i ordered were of course the Monster High mermaids. I had managed to earn £20 in vouchers for Argos but because i'm cursed, a few days later argos dropped the price anyway. -_-
oh well.

You can see them in my previous review.

Monster High - Great Scarrier Reef - Down Under Ghouls

Great Scarrier  Reef looks like it might be the last really interesting line Monster High is giving us.
I've said a lot about this "reboot" thing on social media, I don't really feel I have the energy to repeat it. Suffice to say, i'm not happy about it but i'll enjoy the last few truly creative dolls we get before it all turns into doe eyed safeness.

And wow talk about going out with a bang because this mermaid line? it's awesome.

I joked a while ago that Mattel would inevitably give us mermaids and fairy mh because it was a cliche of "girl" franchises, and yeah... the have given us mermaids but oh my goodness they're not just a humany doll with a fish tail tacked on.

These here are merfolk done right, with creativity and craziness. I honestly really dig this whole line.

Anyway, I had Argos vouchers so I bought the three new characters.

Monster high - Boo York Boo York City Ghouls 3 pack

This is a waaaay belated review and i'm sorry about that. Christmas time is super stressful for me, lots of birthdays around christmas and the general angst and awful that is the festive season puts me in a bad mood and not much wanting to write.

But it's the new year and i've got some time on my hands since Star Trek online booted me off the server for the night (lol)

So here's my promised review of the "city ghouls" 3 pack.