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.


I don't think I have to talk too much about the reboot and my feelings about it, suffice to say, i'm one of the many who's sore to be losing the original faces, original continuity/canon and original feel of the franchise. The new dolls are quite clearly trying to target a younger audience with a lot of gimmicks and very friendly faces. There's a great deal more unarticulated lines this season too, which I hate but understand the place of. They'd have been fantastically useful as sacrificial dollies when my eldest was young and in love with MH. I was always scared to let him play without very close supervision because the original dolls were so fragile. So unarticulated dolls will be great for younger siblings and toddler children etc. I'm sure eldest would have loved his very own Lagoona (or Goona as he called her at that age lol)

But, while I don't much care for a good 70% of the reboot, there are some details I really do like. Clawdeen now has moulded on fur. Cleo has moulded on bandages. Lagoona has scales. Cleo's eyes finally actually fit her face rather than wrapping around her skull which I definitely prefer and we're still getting boy dolls.
Yes they look younger, yes they're cuter, but what else has changed and is this reboot as terrible as many seem to think it'll be?

Well you know me, i'm always willing to have a fully critical look at new things. Just like the Bratz reboot, I feel like there will be people who will hate the reboot regardless because it's different and "change is bad hissssss", those who'll love it and those more like me who'll be sitting on the fence dipping their toe in the water every so often but not being fully immersed. In a way it's a good thing I don't like much of the reboot stuff on offer, because i'm out of space and having a nice logical "finish" to the collection is a relief. It was getting pretty hard to keep up and now i'm totally up to date with "generation 1" (to borrow the MLP fandom term), I don't think i'll be getting nearly as deep with Gen 2.
We'll see.

Anyway, the box!

The new boxes are much like the older boxes in that they're mostly plastic with a card backing. Unlike the older style boxes, the colour on this line at least is predominantly white. A curious choice, but it beats pink so i'm grateful they still went with a nice neutral tone.

They're rectangular rather than an odd shape which should help them stack neatly on shelves. Much as odd shaped boxes are fun, they're really not very practical from a store display perspective and this box IS attractive on a shelf. The huge totally plastic front means you can see every detail of the dolls inside, the colours are bright and quite different to other stuff on the shelf being all whites and purples with black accents (when most dolls are pink pink more pink) and the inner card is cut in a way to make the box look asymmetrical, which it isn't. It's a good solution to keeping those wonky MH lines, but making the boxes stack better in stores.

One side of the box has some photos of the dolls, kinda like photo booth pics? they're all photos of the actual product and there's absolutely no character artwork here which is a shame. I always liked the character art, but I don't think we'll be seeing so much of that. It's an expensive extra to put on a box most parents are gonna throw away after all.

The back of the box again, photos of the dolls and some photoshopped cgi balloons. The characters still have their "child of x" subtitles, which is nice to see and to the right there's an image of the school. the new redesigned school because Mattel reconned g1. It kinda.. looks a lot more playsetty.

Good to see we're keeping the monster punnage, but the new universe is laaaame. It sounds like those terrible books that came out with the first wave and bore no relation at all to the diary universe. From what i've been told, the Lisi Harrison books were based on a very brief synopsis that was then scrapped when the line itself launched, but it was too late to rewrite the books. As a result, right from the start there was this huge inconsistency and a cause of massive frustration and confusion for younger fans. We'll that world is back again! Monsters hiding from Normies in the real world. Which means no more monster versions of cities... does this mean boo york and Scaris and Monster Picchu etc no longer exist? maaaan.
And instead of existing for hundreds and thousands of years, now MH is Draculaura's pet project... because... she's a known architect and educational pioneer... right?
It really doesn't make much sense to me that a bunch of effectively kids would invent a school to attend, don't kids of this age hate school and want to avoid going? why would they build one?
It's kinda like if JK Rowling turned around and decided "oh yeah, Hogwarts, it wasn't founded by 4 wizards thousands of years ago with a proud history and heritage, naaaah, Harry and his mates decided to make a wizard school."
It's dumb.

And then Moanica stole Ari? I just... I picture her grabbing this girl, throwing her over a shoulder and running off yelling "YOINK" and it cracks me up.
How do you snatch a pop singer and what does the pop singer have to do with anything?
Oh man... this sounds so silly.

Oh and here's the bottom of the box for anyone who cares about barcodes. Made in Indonesia... whatever that means. There's some china/indonesia thing and I honestly always forget which is meant to be the good one and which is the bad one. Most EU dolls are indonesia factory.

Okay, to open the box, you first have to peel the backing card off. This isn't too hard to do, it's taped at the top and glued on two sides but it's not glued that hard. You WILL tear the card a little though.

There's NO other way to open this for one reason and one reason alone.

These stupid tabs. You can't access them from the outside to unhook them, there's just no gap you insert your finger or jabby tool or whatever. You have to open the back to get at them. There's 4 of them. 2 on this side, 2 on the bottom.

they unhook nice and easy though, and once you've popped all four the front will hinge open like a door.
Now you can get at the dolls.

It's not a BAD solution, I mean, the box is still fairly intact after doing it. You could probably tape the back up again if you wanted to but it does mean any tampering is obvious. Also as there's no artwork on the box, it's not really worth keeping I don't think. I dunno, it's an okay box and it's not too hard to open, but it's nothing special like the original MH boxes. Man I miss those boxes. they were a pain to open without tearing the card tabs but they looked so fancy.

Anyway,

As you can see no stands, but there is a brush. Yay?
Seriously I think i'm drowning in these damn brushes at this point.

The dolls are packaged in a fairly standard manner. legs have a plastic tie each, waist has one and arms are held in place with plastic shackles. Usually I pop the MH doll hands off to get them out of these but the reboot hands? OOOO Eeee they do NOT come off so easy first time. They're really stiff and very solidly in there. I got one of Draculaura's off, then gave up on the other 3 hands and just carefully yanked them back through the hole in the plastic.

The heads are stapled in with 3 staples each, but these aren't too bad to remove as you have access to the backing card, so you pull staple, cut. No risk of snipping the hair if you cut on the other side of the backing card. Draculaura's all snipped really easily while Moanica's were quite tight and had to be YANKED to get them long enough to snip on that side.

You may also notice Draculaura is positioned a LOT lower in the box than Moanica. Why they did this I don't know, it makes them look like they're different heights. 

Draculaura's face is sticky... like.. seriously sticky. Whatever crap they put in her head has run down her face and chin. It's grooooooss. the mark on her face? that's from my fingers touching her sticky icky face. Bletch.
I took a wet wipe to her, which helped.

Moanica is packaged in a really awkward position with her head sorta.. pointing upwards. She also has one eye obviously bigger than the other but looking at her box photos, i'm pretty sure she's supposed to have this. You know.. zombie...

Moanica does stand slightly taller than Draculaura fully dressed, but i'm pretty sure it's her shoes.
She also has a bigger head than Ula, which adds height.
Moanica has a really big head man. lol.

When naked, they are however the same height. Except for that little bit of bobble head height on Moanica's part. Yeesh, her head's like Sputnik.

Yep, definitely the same height. I was wondering if maybe they'd done something like EAH and given Moanica longer legs but nope.
Kinda a shame, now was the time they could have finally given us short Draculaura.

I wasn't sure about the smiling face mould when we first saw it, and some dolls it really is still quite creepy but the closed mouth I think helps make it less sinister.

This is a new mould, marked 2015 on the back, she still looks an awful lot like Draculaura, she's just got a little moulded on smirk now.
Random.

She has this lovely pale blue eyeshadow, a little blush on her cheeks which is new for MH, and dark pink lips with little fangs painted on. Her lower lashes are painted in dark grey while the upper are all black. Not sure why. She still has her little heart mark on her cheek too. Her eyebrows are dark brown, and nicely shaped and she has her hair tied up in this side ponytail with a shorter chunk of side swept bangs.

I admit, I like blue on her. Previously Ula always got this awful yellow as a contrast and while I like yellow, it just didn't look right with the pink and black. It felt incongruous, messy even. The blue is nice and it's picked up across her outfit and accessories.

This was just the first G1 Draculaura I picked up, but the contrast is striking.
The new dolls have these very large, wide friendly eyes and much more expressive mouths. I always found the MH dolls themselves had a bit of a blank serenity to them, which while attractive, was a pity when the animation and artwork was so vibrant and lively. They did try to give us expressive dolls previously, like the grinning Clawdia but she didn't go down too well. Big toothy grins aren't an easy sell, particularly when they're fanged. lol.

While g1 Ula kinda looks a bit solemn, the reboot ula is quite pleased with herself. She's also stinking adorable which works for Draculaura, her artwork has always depicted her as smiling, happy and CUTE.

New Ula is also a different colour to my g1 ones. It's hard to describe and even harder to photograph but my older dolls, heck, even ones bought last season have a slight yellowish undertone to their plastic which the reboot doll doesn't have. It's subtle but i'm pretty sure reboot ula is actually PINKER, who'd have thought that was possible?

Their noses look to be the same, as do their jaw shapes.

They both have pointy ears too, though reboot's actually are a bit crisper in their moulding, the point is just that teeny bit sharper and more defined.

I'm pretty sure they just took the original Ula mould and sculpted a smile onto it though, because everything else is so similar.

Worth noting, my reboot Ula came with two little dents in her face. I think they're from her earrings jabbing into her in the box. Kinda annoying.
I like to think they're little bites hahah.

Reboot's hair does come out of that ponytail, it's actually rooted with a half parting so it can sit loose quite nicely.

It IS cut asymmetrically though, clearly intended for the side pony. But you could neaten this up and straighten it out if you wanted.

It's nice hair, it's soft and fairly thickly rooted. My only gripe would be that the front where the bangs are, they literally just took the front section of her rooted hair and hacked it short. This means there is a bald patch if you move the bangs slightly. I'd have preferred them to add a little more hair in that section, just to thicken it up but oh well. Most MH dolls don't have properly rooted bangs and use this "just chop it" method so it's nothing new.

Her outfit is simple but quite cute. It's a little A line dress with a mesh section at the collar. the pattern is bats and pink uh.. splotches. The blue outline around the bats really pulls in her accessories and eyemakeup nicely. it's a cohesive design which is nice to see. Someone who designed this had an eye for colour and detail, and I appreciate it.

She has a matching blue belt and a bracelet, and a little pink clutch.

The belt features a bat winged heart with fangs, which is adorable.
The bag also has fangs and looks like it's smiling. The handle is a bat.
the bag doesn't open.

But it has little wings moulded on the back. cute.

Her dress is made from stretch fabric and very nicely sewn together. AND it's full print!

Her bracelet is a bit annoying. 1 it's tiny, and 2 it's not a full ring shape, it's designed to clip on and clip off, so it falls off very easily. I'd have preferred it to be a full ring shape, and with pop off hands there's really no reason for the bracelets not to be.

the pattern is hard to make out but it's a broken heart, one side is all bubbly? I don't really understand what it is, it's bizarre.

She has funky black boots with 4 bats running up each. the boots don't have a heel, which is interesting.

they have this ridged bat wings platformy thing instead. I expect shoes like this must be a pain to balance and walk in but I guess at 1600 she's had practice heh.

You can't see them properly in the blurry picture but her earrings are simple little hearts with beads or whatever dangling down and then more hearts. there's two small hearts and one big heart dangling from a heart... yeah.. how many times can you say heart?

I also snapped a pic of reboot alongside my rebodied signature Ula. She's on EAH Bunny Blanc's body so she's short heheh.
but it shows the contrast in face styles. Those eyes make a huge difference.

I prefer the neater painted fangs on reboot. I always felt Ula looked a bit bucktoothed with that white line between her lips too. They've done totally closed mouths on her before, and I always liked them more.

The bodies are also new. This is obvious as soon as you pick them up, they're heavier and feel just generally more robust.

the new knee joints are FANTASTIC and honestly it's well beyond overdue to have those fragile joints sorted. The new joints are more similar to EAH but they feel stronger and more securely anchored in. The legs are a little stiff to bend but they bend smoothly and unlike g1 legs, when removing shoes and shoving new ones on I never once thought "i'm going to snap this leg clean off."
So this is a really really good move.

The arms also have a new elbow joint. The new peg is thicker and stronger and fits into a much wider hole. It makes yanking the arms off a lot easier at the elbow and infinitely easier to stick them back in. I find sticking MH hands and lower arms in really difficult, as the pin is so thin and I always think i'll break it. Not so with the new dolls, the arms lock securely into place and with a firm tug, come right on out again and slide back in smoothly.
Ooo thank you Mattel! Maybe this will result in less armless, legless dolls!

Full body comparison. The WHOLE body is different. the torso is thicker, the legs and arms are thicker.

Even the hands are thicker, with slightly thicker fingers.

There is no backward compatibility of parts. The new hand peg is way too thick and the old way too teeny to fit the other doll's wrist socket.
Look how chunky that peg is! and it has a little notch in it that makes it lock into place. The hands are actually quite hard to get off and require an awful lot of force to remove, while the lower arm is much easier.

The new bodies have a more defined belly button even.

 Wider hips and brand new underpants. G1 have these sort of diamond shapes, reboot have skulettes and dots. They're really cute.

Reboot dolls have a butt!
You can see here how much sturdier the knee and elbow joints look, but also how much more shapely the whole body is.

The new dolls don't have as much of an exagerated sway back either. They still have a bit of one, but it's not quite as distorted as the g1 doll body's S shaped spine.

The new arm pegs have a hole in them which seems to help lock the whole thing into place. It's about 3 times thicker than the g1.

 The new body actually made me think more of Ever After High, so I got out the few EAH girls I had laying about.

The legs and arms do look to be the same mould as EAH, hands too but the joints are different. the new MH knee joints are stronger and the arms actually come off while i've never been able to actually yank the whole upper arm off an eah doll. Also the hand pegs are broader. But the overall shape of the limbs themselves are the same.

the torso however, isn't.

The EAH body is much more pear shaped, while the MH body doesn't have quite so much "junk in the trunk"
New MH body is marked 2015 just like the head.

The knee joints are similar, but EAH legs have much easier rotational movement in their lower legs. the new MH body really doesn't have much lower leg rotation. It will rotate but only a teeny bit and it's very stiff. The price you pay for the extra stability I suppose.

Likewise the new MH dolls have no hip movement. Like.. at all. the legs flat out will not splay. This is an EAH doll with her legs spread as far as they go, and that's as far as Ula's legs will spread... that is.. they don't.
This might be another stability concession, but it's slightly annoying if you want to say, make her ride a horse or a motorbike or something. She can't straddle anything really.

So I know people are asking "if they have totally new bodies, does that mean clothing no longer fits!?"

Actually, it's okay. the shoes all fit fine, the feet are unchanged. In fact, putting the really hard old shoes on the new body was a lot less nerve wracking due to the stronger knees.

The sleeves of this Draculaura fashion pack are a bit tight, but everything else fits.
Only problems I think you'll have is leggings, much like how EAH dolls can fit most MH stuff, the only real problem comes with super tight fitting leggings with no stretch (like Cleo's original mummy wrapping jumpsuit thing) not fitting over the hips, and leggings or tights designed for the newer legs being loose and gapey on the skinnier old legs.
Chest size seems to be about the same, as is leg length and torso length so most shirts, pants, skirts and dresses should fit. Just be wary of super right fitting things.

Interestingly, Skelita's original dress fits the new body really well because it's super gapey on the old MH body. Go figure.
The backward and indeed forward compatibility here is better than say, the bratz reboot which is really hit and miss. The new MH should fit EAH leggings perfectly.

Moanica is on the exact same body as Draculaura, but she's a dark grey colour.

She doesn't have any macabre features underneath her clothing either, but that's fine. I think they used up all the "creepy" factor with her outfit.

She has a really characterful face with one eye hugely bigger than the other, this lopsided smirk and quirked eyebrows. I wish wish wish Amanita had come with eyebrows like this, because her doll felt so BLANK faced alongside her art. So I love Moanica's quirky cartoonish face, I like that she has such an expression. She doesn't look serene, or placid, or blank, oh no.. she looks up to something.

Her eyes are vivid green and the green bleeds a little out of the iris at the bottom. Her bottom lashes are grey like Draculaura's, seems to be a theme for the reboot. I think it's to make them look less made up maybe? I dunno.
Her eyeshadow is a light purple and her eyebrows are dark grey. Her lips are a really rich purpley pink colour. That lopsided smirk is actually moulded on, it's awesome.

She has blush like Draculaura, only in Moanica's case the person applying it looks to have touched it before it was dry, as there's two little fingerprints on each cheek lol. 

Her hair is pale purple, similar to roller maze Clawdeen actually, and like Clawdeen, she also has an acid green streak in her hair.

Her hair is soft and slightly wavy, and has a half part just like Draculaura.

 She has a bit of styling gunk in her hair I need to comb out. Her hair is a little frizzy at teh ends

Her outfit is an interesting blend of colours for Monster High actually. Green and yellow aren't colours you see too often, certainly not such a slimeish green.

Moanica wears a pale yellow tee with a pink, grey and green ribcage motif painted on. Over that she has a denim vest in green and grey. She wears a ribcage around her neck on a chain too.

She has a brain patterned belt in squishy brain pink, bleach spattered pants with a green contrast stitch and even a brain bag!

She has worm earrings. We've seen these before in a deluxe Ghoulia fashion pack. they're cute.

She also has a ribcage bracelet.
Ribs on the front.... complete with sternum

And spinal cord on the back

her brain bag is designed so the brain is "plush", as in the little wrinkles have stitches! how cute is that?
Sadly despite having a slit in it, it's made of really hard plastic so doesn't really open up. I'm squeezing it here, there's no give.

Also interesting, her belt has two holes, so you can have it looser or tighter. There have been times i've wished this was an option on some MH belts.

Her boots are seriously macabre, with a brain upper and a brain platform too. The level of creepy on Moanica's accessories really does feel more g1 Mh than the supposed softer more kiddy friendly reboot. I mean, this girl is covered head to toe in body parts!
I LOVE IT

ALL her outfit pieces are separates, which came as a huge suprise. I honestly expected Mattel to cheap out as they usually do and sew the vest to the shirt or something.
They didn't, and i'm delighted they didn't.

Her t-shirt is actually a sleeveless vest and I think that's a bleeding heart? It's a funky top, i want one in my size.

Her vest motif reminds me of viruses under a microscope... or mucus... either way, it reiforces the idea that Moanica might be supposed to be a more modern viral zombie rather than the more traditional zombies of older horror.
I like that she has her own motifs separate from Ghoulia, while they share the brain and ribcage fun, Ghoulia has cherries and stripes and blood spatter, while Moanica gets bleach and viruses. Also Moanica is more punk while Ghoulia is more vintage/retro.

Speaking of Ghoulia...

Unlike Ari who shares a colour scheme and hair and skin colour and just about everything with Spectra to the point she may as well just be her twin, Ghoulia and Moanica are quite distinctly different.

For starters, Moanica is a lot darker in hue.

Her skin tone is a dark grey, a touch lighter than Neighthan but darker than most of the other MH dolls I have. While she looks grey to the eye, when you start to hold her next to other grey dolls the faintest purplish tint becomes apparent. Somewhat like the very slight brownish tint to freak du chiq Clawdeen.
It's VERY subtle though.

Moanica has a very different face to Ghoulia as well. A squarer jaw, a different shaped chin and nose...

She also has very different ears. While Ghoulia's are quite long and every so slightly pointed, Moanica has teeeeeeny little ears that are definitely rounded at the top.

As I said at the start, she makes me think of some sort of freaky fusion between Ghoulia and Venus. I love her. I really do.

She has a lot of personality.

Interesting thing about Moanica, this was a name used waaaaay back in 2012 in the Lisi Harrison books, she was Ghoulia's older sister.
now clearly that's not the case now as her surname is "D'Kay" but I still like to think "screw you mattel" and have her as Ghoulia's half sister heh.
I know a lot of people who read the books wanted dolls of various of the characters who never got dolls, so it's a shame to see them use the name but not the character. Yet more confusing.

Interesting also to note that Ari's surname "Hauntington" was Spectra's original pre production surname. I wonder what other names we'll see resurface.

So getting to the point,

what do I think of the reboot thus far?

Well, I like this set. I didn't think i'd like Draculaura at all but she's actually quite cute in person and I love the new bodies. they feel so much sturdier! so much more well.. able to withstand being played with!
They feel strong and well made and I really do appreciate that.

I like that character expressed in the faces of these two, but sadly looking at photos of other characters, it hasn't translated across the whole line. A lot of them are just blankly smiling insipidly.
I feel like as with the Bratz reboot, some stuff will be great and some will be "what the hell were you guys thinking?"

But like the Bratz reboot, a lot of the changes to the body and such are for the better, the quality is high and the product feels worth the money.

I'm disappointed no stands but that's common of multipacks, older stands fit the new waist just fine. Whether the single packed deluxe dolls will have stands remains to be seen.

I don't like the new canon story, I think it's tacky. I don't like the new characters Ari and Dana because they feel bland and uninspired. Moanica is an example of taking an already represented monster type and making a new character who feels like a new character, not a clone of the original. Like Elissabat before her, Ari feels like a poor clone. And that annoys me.
Dana just feels like a mess of half formed ideas, and her gimmicky skirt and moulded on clothing makes me want to punch someone. but kids might enjoy that crap.

I'm sad to see MH move away from the tween market to safer waters of the little kid market, I think it's a dumb move honestly. But i'm hopeful we'll still see glimmers of brilliance like Moanica amongst all the ballet princess fairy lines and moulded on swimsuits.

I feel like the reboot might not be so catastrophic after all...