Monster High - Ghouls Beast Pet Cleo and Lagoona

Last review I mentioned that I was kinda over Monster High and their reboot, which  may have some of you wondering "But Monk, why are you reviewing more of them then?"
Well truth is, I bought these back in November in Amazon US' black friday sales, with shipping they worked out about £11 each to import and it doesn't look like the UK is ever getting this line. Bummer, because Draculaura has a vampire poodle and it's HILARIOUS and I want that damn poodle so bad.

I had these laying about waiting for me to get off my butt and review em, but other stuff like christmas kept distracting me.



Now we're into new year and the chaos of late nov/early jan and all the birthdays and stress that entails is DONE for another 12 months, I can focus on reviews instead of "Has little Steven's mother RSVPed? ARHHHH" (seriously, why don't people rsvp for parties? It's so stressful trying to guess if anyone will turn up and that's the regular nightmare, that nobody comes to your child's party and you're left having to explain why people suck. Eugh... I hate birthdays.)

Anyway...

Ghouls Beast Pet wave 1 was one of the earlier reboot lines we got a peek at, Cleo and Lagoona clutching brand new super cutified "safe" pets. It gave us a taste of just how much Mattel was changing, and though they've since gone on to confirm that the original pets haven't been retconned (I prefer retGONEd) this line is a wee bit confusing.

Wave 1 features Lagoona and Cleo, wave 2 has Draculaura (with that afformentioned poodle) and Frankie with some sort of bear thing.

I haven't seen wave 2 on Amazon at all, in fact only place i've seen it is Target who's shipping to the UK is like £17 for two dolls (JUST shipping, making it close to £50 to buy Frankie and Ula, which is obscene)

There's also a playset with Clawdeen washing a wolf cub... though i'm a little confused by this because the family sets seem to imply baby werewolves look like wolves so... is she actually bathing a younger sibling? Is this the mentally handicapped kid of the family they treat as a pet or something? Ew.
I mean EAH had a similar problem with cerise being half wolf and having a "pet" wolf that was implied to be a sibling not a pet at all.... but there's something unsettling about referring to potentially sapient beings as "pets" you know? Particularly if they're related to the character. Like... wth Mattel? Have you got some really creepy sibling issues or what?
Or is Clawdeen's wolf more like a pet monkey for a human?
I don't know! But Clawdeen has it on a LEASH.

Is it a baby or a monkey!?

Sorry, i'm getting off topic.

The Ghoul's Beast Pet line is a slim box budget line and I believe should retail at about $15
In the UK they'd be about £14 because currency conversion is haaaard and Mattel like to gouge us. -_-

Anyway, as we aren't getting this line, it's somewhat a moot point.

Yeah, you can tell MH is in trouble, the UK is back to not getting half the lines. In fact, aside from toys r us, I have seen very very little reboot MH on shelves locally. And TRU are massively overpriced, asking like £30 for a doll that should be £20 and stuff like that. Morons think they still have a captive market, but when most of their stores are literally OPPOSITE a Tesco or some other big supermarket, shoppers aren't dumb and will just walk across the carpark.
Hell, I do it all the time because screw TRU and their price gouging. And their "price match" is a flat out lie.

Walking into most tescos or sainsbury or even asda these days though, you're lucky to see even 2 different lines of MH. It's almost all budget lines or really old stuff not on clearance. Only reboot i've actually seen in a regular store (aside from TRU) are the signature dolls (Dracularua, Frankie and sometimes Ari) and the super budget plastic outfit ones.
Wth?

Argos and TRU have a bit more selection but involve a special trip to them. It doesn't bode well to me, supermarkets are where most toys are bought in this country and if they're given up on your franchise.... then you're in shit.

Back to the dollies!

The back of the boxes doesn't explain much. You just get a little bio and absolutely no info on the pet or why they have them.
The pets don't even have names.
Bizarre.

Cleo

We'll look at Cleo first.

I've honestly really liked almost all of the Cleo dolls released with the reboot so far. I think her face sculpt suits the larger rounder eyes, her elongated wrap around her skull eyes bugged the hell out of me previously and the lack of tinsel is ABOUT BLOOMING TIME. Blonde streaks look so much better.

The packaging is interesting and I think worth a mention. The colours.
The whole line is packaged with this sort of reddish orangey background and yellow and black trim. Yellow and orangey red aren't colours generally associated with the doll aisle, in fact most dolls are pink, purple or pastel tones, soft gentle "girly" colours. So these stand out.

it's interesting they didn't go with a character specific coloured background like they have for the signature dolls, or a softer colour like they have for most of the other reboot boxes. BLUE has actually been the more common colour of the reboot MH boxes, which is also quite interesting.
I feel like Mattel are purposely trying to avoid pink, and that's a good idea. The black and yellow is eyecatching and ditching pink for 90% of your packaging makes you product standout in the sea of pinks and purples that is the doll aisle.
It's one of the things that made the franchise stand out originally, so i'm somewhat reassured it's continuing into the reboot even if they're screwing most everything else up.

Cleo's pet is a little grey kitty. Her having a cat actually makes a lot of sense, what with the whole Egyptian/cat connection.

I'm not sure what SORT of cat it is though, as it appears to have insanely long fangs, tabby stripes AND spots. Uh...
okay?

This was Cleo's prototype. As you can see, a few things changed but not a huge amount. She lost the eye makeup and her eyes got rounded in keeping with the reboot aesthetic.
I suspect that might have just been one of those BYBY 2 pack cleo's with her hair rerooted stuck onto a reboot body for the prototype pictures, especially as the box art she hasn't got the eye makeup either.

Cleo's arm looks quite painful posed like that. Wth is going on with that arm?

These blister pack boxes aren't that fun to open. Firstly you destroy the box opening it which results in well, a lot of rubbish to then throw away. The amount of plastic concerns me in terms of landfill as well. The old mostly card boxes felt a lot more eco friendly.

Also sharp edges. I nearly cut myself on the stupid thing trying to get it off, those edges are SHARP if you get them at the wrong angle.

Thankfully the glue is pretty weak so once you've yanked the plastic off, getting the doll out isn't too hard.
a few snips, 2 staples in the head and shes free. Whoo.

I hate head staples.
I always fear i'll cut the hair when i'm trying to snip them and with these blister style boxes getting behind the backing card involves ungluing the whole card and is a bit of a chore. It's easier to just stick the scissors in behind the head, pull the doll as far out as you can and then snip the staples as far from the hair as possible and use a finger to smoosh them back into the head so there's no sharp bits left sticking out.
I wish companies would find a better solution to the staples, they're not pleasant.

 As with all the reboot dolls i've opened so far, Cleo comes with no stand or brush (but I expect no stands with budget dolls these days)
She comes with her little kitty and a gold pet bowl.

She's on the reboot body which means her body, one arm and one leg have a moulded bandage effect which from a distance looks like she's been in a terrible fire.
Poor Cleo.

The cat is quite cute and chunky. It's wearing a gold collar necklacy thing.

The head is moulded separate from the body as is the tail which made me think maybe they could be posed.

I was wrong.

In fact, gently moving the cat's head resulted in a crack and it falling off.

Looks like the head is glued on and the crack was the glue failing.
Oops?

thankfully it just slots back on but it seems odd, as the only thing stopping the head from rotating is that stopper moulded into the neck socket.
Why would you bother? Why not make the cat able to move their head?

The underside of the bowl has markings on it which I think are supposed to be hieroglyphs but they're so blurred I can't tell.
Why are they on the underside?

Reboot Cleo photographs a really nice tan shade, unlike a few of my older Cleos who despite in person looking the same colour as reboot, like to photograph paler. whaaa?
Must be the plastic used or something, I dunno.

Older Cleo certainly looks more bitchy, but I hate to say it.. I kinda prefer reboot's rounded eyes because they FIT HER EYEWELLS, there are moulded in eye indents ffs, the eyes should fit inside those indents to stop the doll looking bizarre. Cleo's g1 eyes often are painted waaaaay outside these indents, leaving her with wrap around eyes that look strange.

I also feel like reboot still manages to capture a degree of haughty bitchiness while still looking young and pretty. I think it's the eyebrows.

She has box hair, it's all crimped from being tied down.
A boil wash would probably fix this, i'm just too lazy.

It's black streaked with blonde, which looks lovely. This is how her original doll's hair should have been done, with chunky blonde streaks instead of that horrible unravelling tinsel crap.

I really really like her dress. It's simple, it's clearly a budget dress but the addition of the little ribbon elevates it from "boring shift dress" to something better, something that doesn't NEED accessorising. I appreciate that a lot.
Also it's full patterned, no plain back for this dress, the cat pattern continues all the way around.
Phew.

It's amazing to me how something as simple as adding a zig zag of gold ribbon can make what would be a pretty but kinda boringly over simple dress something way more appealing.
Certainly imo one of the better budget outfits.

It's simple but it's effective and the tight fitting style suits Cleo completely.

Blue looks so nice on Cleo as well. I love her in blue.

She has a single accessory, a chunky gold bracelet.
It has a sort of zigzag V pattern on it.

Her shoes are I believe a new sculpt. They're bright gold plastic with a cat statue for a heel and a cute little cat face for the toe.
They're not quite as over detailed as old MH but they're still pretty dang cute. I like them a lot.

I also appreciate that she has full bangs, so many Cleos in the past got these silly half bangs that just look a bit messy to me.

I really love this Cleo, she might be my favorite reboot doll so far.
She's everything I feel a budget doll SHOULD be. She's simple, but elegant, she doesn't come with a lot but what she does have feels cohesive and finished rather than as is usually the case, a doll that feels like they forgot to add the last tweaks to their outfit and is incomplete.
The addition of that little ribbon at the neckline removes the need for a necklace, she has no earrings and her whole look is very very minimal, but it WORKS.
I do wish more budget lines went in this direction.

Overall, I love the doll.
I wish her cat could move his/her head.
I really would have liked some blurb on the back of the box to explain wth is up with these unfamiliar pets and what the line is about, you know, like they used to.

But she's gorgeous and her kitty now needs a name.
Suggestions?

Lagoona

 
 Now we move on to Lagoona.

I passed on buying the other two Lagoona's currently available. Shriek Wrecked was just too expensive (she's over £20 and that makes me cringe) and while her culotte shorts amused me, I wasn't overly fond of her overall look. And the Welcome to Monster High Lagoona's outfit and stars on her face did nothing for me.

I knew Ghoul's Beast Pet or signature would be the first reboot Lagoona i'd want, and as the signature 2nd wave is goodness knows where, this girl was the one I picked.

I really liked her fresh, rather natural looking faceup and the soft colour pallette they chose.

Lagoona comes with a turtle... a weird turtle with one snaggle tooth tusk thing going on and a bow glued to her? head.
Uh...

Pretty sure it's not very kind to glue bows to a turtle Lagoona.

Lagoona's actual production doll and her prototype are pretty much spot on... which is cool. 

Lagoona is packaged looking a lot less broken armed than Cleo.

She comes with her snaggle toothed turtle and a ball.

Cute. Though she can't hold the ball at all so it just rolls about and gets lost.

The turtle is adorable, though the bow still baffles me. It looks so awkward perched on top of that big bald noggin.

It's a bit awkward to get Lagoona to hold the turtle, her arms don't bend very well. One of them is particularly awkward, i'll explain why at the end.

But she's so bright and pretty.
I always liked big fishy lips and huge eyes on Lagoona hah.

She has large pink lips that match the turtle's pink, big greeny blue eyes ringed with purple, like a lot of her older dolls, GREEN eyebrows instead of her old doll's inexplicable purple and nice bright blonde hair with a mint green streak at the front.

Ooo I do like the mint green, it brings out her eyes.
And matches her eyebrows.

She has a little coral bracelet as her sole accessory.

The purple brows never made sense to me, and reboot Lagoona's hair is SO much more yellow, it makes g1 Lagoona's hair look dull and kinda... ugly in comparison.
Her eyes are definitely bigger, but the shape is similar and she's actually gained more natural looking freckles. Her eyes are now a sort of teal colour rather than green, but all things considered I feel like she's pretty dang close to her g1 counterpart. A little younger, a little more vibrant perhaps, but still obviously Lagoona.

I do like this new blonde on her, it really brightens up her rather dull greyish blue skin.

Like Cleo, Lagoona's dress is simple but effective. It's full print as well, with shells, flowers and turtles. I like the pattern.
It's aqua and pink, two colours that always look nice on Lagoona and it's styled to look a bit sporty with the sleeveless but high collar neckline and then a stretchy elasticated hem.
It's nice to see Lagoona in something sporty but feminine, so many of her g1 dolls I always felt were dressed in a manner that didn't quite feel in keeping with what we were told her character was like, all a bit too generically girly. I like the design here, it calls back to her position as "the sporty girl" and i've missed the ghouls having character specific STYLES as well as patterns. So many previous budget lines have given us basically the same dress just in different fabrics. Nice to see they've gone back to the original idea with Cleo being the "glam" (posh spice? lol), frankie the preppy one, draculaura the girly one and Lagoona as the sporty one.

Of course Lagoona still has platform sandels on.  They have a fish scale effect on them and this sticky out.. fin? bit.
They're actually pink like her dress and lips but photographed a lot brighter here for some reason.

I don't like these shoes as much as Cleo's. They're a little TOO simple for me. Yes the patterning is nice but it's just a texture and it's just.. eh.. they're okay but they're nothing special. Lagoona has had a lot of far cooler shoes.

For some unknown reason reboot Lagoona's lost her finger webbing.
I think this is a huge shame and a bit of an oversight on Mattel's part. I can see really no genuine reason to do this, they didn't have to keep the webbing clear, they could have done what they did with Gil and just had it the same colour as her fingers!

Yet they gave her scales... on her lower legs and arms there's a random patch of scales that feel very added on at the last minute. There's a very obvious moulding line (a rectangle) around each patch which rather spoils the effect and makes me think it's like a plaster they just shoved on afterwards.
However, they have fixed her fins. Her leg fins now slot solidly into her legs, meaning they don't need to be held on with elastic bands. She came with no elastic bands at all on her legs. This is a huge improvement, lagoona's leg fins were something constantly lost in the past and it was frustrating.

But I do find the scale patches a bit... weird. Lagoona's never been depicted as a scaly sea monster, she's always been described as more an amphibian than a fish or aquatic reptile. Hmmm.
I get that they wanted to include more monstery traits, but why give her scales and remove her webbed fingers? It makes no sense to me.

My Lagoona, though beautiful, does have one small flaw.
One of her arms is on backwards.

See how her arms bend? Which side the fin is one? Yeah, one of her arms the elbow stopper is in front of it so it can't actually bend the way it's supposed to, it instead bends backwards resulting in her looking a little bit awkward at times.
It's a minor thing, but it's a bizarre flaw to happen.
How do you put the wrong arm on?
They're literally MARKED "l" and "r" ffs.


Overall, I really do love this Lagoona's face and I think her dress, though very simple, is extremely cute. The style actually suits her and the high collar means there's no need for a necklace. The bold pattern and interesting hem also makes me think she doesn't need a belt so overall it's a very successful budget dress.

Her shoes are a bit dull, but they're fine for what they are and she has really lovely soft hair with a gentle wave to it.
The pale mint in her hair is pretty, and I do like that she now has GREEN eyebrows instead of purple, green makes more sense and ties into her hair streaks, purple made absolutely no sense and was super distracting.

Her face is fresh, vibrant and adorable.

I think I made the right call here. She's a really pretty Lagoona and so much more vivid than any of my g1 Lagoonas (except perhaps freshwater lagoona and her crazy oversaturatedness lol)

Like Cleo, THIS is how a budget line should be done. Simple, but attractive, feeling complete and cohesive rather than unfinished and incomplete.

If ALL of the reboot was more like these two dolls, then i'd be a lot happier with Mattel but sadly these two seem to be a real minority, kicked aside in favor of more gimmicks, more "girly cliche" crap, more static bodies and more lazy half arsed-ness. Fairies? Little baby monsters?
How depressingly Barbie.
And I didnt get into MH because I wanted Barbie. I'd buy BARBIE if I wanted Barbie crap with the pink and the glitter and the babies and the fairy/mermaid/princess nonsense.

The reboot might give us more doll lines like this, but sadly I think they're going to be few and far between, which is a real shame.
I can't get excited about a good 80% of the reboot stuff that's come out and even that 20% I HAVE gone "ooo that might be nice!" a vast majority has then been crushingly disappointing when it's actually been released.
Electrified could have been good, had they not screwed up the hair so badly.
MH COULD have done fairies in an interesting manner like they did with the mermaids, but instead they've opted for the lazy barbie approach of "ram some wings on it, that'll do"
The passion and attention to detail is flagging, I feel like the designers of MH these days don't really CARE and if they don't care, why should I?

The most frustrating part is that the lines that actually look interesting are it seems majority upper level budget lines which the UK simply is not getting into stores and importing them is prohibitively expensive.
£10-15 is what i'd be willing to pay for the other two from this line, but Target wants £25 each once you factor in postage and that's ridiculous.
With the pound being so cripplingly low, importing from the US simply isn't viable any more, not unless stuff is on super clearance.

To put it in perspective, these two cost me $8:99 on sale. That's just over £7 each. Shipping cost me more than the dolls themselves, £14 (about $18) became £22 ($27) once shipping was added on.
That's not a small jump.
It means buying stuff at full price from the US just isn't viable any longer. And till the pound recovers, it means a lot less dollies from the USA for me.

This wouldn't be a problem if the UK GOT HALF THE LINES but we don't. A lot of stores appear to have given up stocking MH and EAH is gone completely.  This doesn't bode well.

Certainly my interest is waning.

Opening these two rekindled a little of my love for MH, but it also brought home a very sad truth. "This is the beginning of the end", and I glance over at Silvi on my shelf and I know in my heart that if that is the direction we're heading, then my love affair with MH is over.
In a way, I should be thanking Mattel for breaking the addiction. My cocaine has become icing sugar, and icing sugar is still nice and all, but it's not something you jones for you know?
Yes.. I totally did just compared dolls to crack.

<_<

In summary

I give Ghouls Beast Pet wave 1 a solid 9 lines of icing sugar out of 10.
They're a lovely addition to the collection and budget the way budget SHOULD be. I think their full retail is a bit steep for what you're getting and I wish the pets had head movement but otherwise, a really sweet line.