Monster high reboot - Signature Clawdeen First Day at School

After months of being advertised and shown off on social media, the new signature dolls for Cleo, Clawdeen and Lagoona FINALLY hit the UK (Very and Bentzen's toys are the only places i've seen them so far)

Be aware if you are thinking of ordering via Very, their "pay by paypal" function doesn't seem to actually work. I tried this myself and they took my money, but didn't generate an order. then they duplicated the payment so they took payment twice and took no order. took me over a week to get them to find and refund me, and another week for paypal to process.
So yeah... headache. Very lost themselves a customer there, I didn't even get a proper apology so screw em. 

Today i'll be looking at  Clawdeen.
I was going to order the other two as well but Cleo's tinsel hair put me off and Lagoona's sewn together one piece looking outfit made me go "nooope"

It's a blast from the past seeing the price point though. £14:99, which is what MH dolls cost when they were first launched heh.

UNLIKE the original release however, being 2017 now there are budget cuts. The boxes are slim line blister boxes more like budget releases, they come with no stand and no brush and no diary either.
They're quite simple releases, but as most dolls these days are now £17 and over, it's nice to see Mattel at least trying to keep costs down by removing small unimportant bits and retaining decent outfits.

This is the first of the reboot signatures i've gotten, I absolutely hated Ari (her face is SOOOO bland) and while I think reboot Draculaura is cute, I couldn't justify the cost for one of my least favourite characters. As for Frankie, I love her outfit but I haaaaate her new face. Poop brown eyebrows? Big blank eyes and a super blank face? noooope.

All the characters have unique coloured backgrounds like older style dolls, which I like to see. It makes them look so colourful on the shelves.

The back of the box has a very very brief bio. I wonder if the US version might have a proper little bio, we just get "daughter of werewolves" and nothing else.
Her art is kinda cute, she has a lollipop head but that seems to be popular with dolls. Her art doesn't look much like her reboot doll though. Which is a shame, her art looks more like older g1 style monster high. *sigh*

The blister boxes are relatively easy to open if you don't care about ripping the backing card to heck. The tab hook thing at the top so the boxes can be hung from hooks on store shelves really gets in the way. It's a standard blister style box, which means no saving the boxes. But the new boxes are pretty bland anyway so eh.

The main problem I have with this style of box is that it's impossible due to them gluing the backing card together to access the back of the plastic ties. That's not a problem for the ties around the feet, hands and waist, but the plastic staples in her head? I like to snip them from the back so there's card between the scissors and the doll's hair. You can't do that with these boxes, you have to just snip and pray you don't snip the hair. I HATE that. I hate plastic damn head staples, they're sharp and they hurt if you don't manage to ram them back inside the head and cutting them is always always nerve wracking.
Stop doing this Mattel. Cut it out. The head staples serve no damn purpose anyway grrr.

Also, there's an elastic band around Clawdeen's hand making it attach to her hip so she can pull this sassy pose. Problem is, it's completely mishaped her fingers. WHYYY!???

Look at those mangled fingers!

Mine also has some wonk. Her eyes are shunted just that little bit too much to one side, so they're now lined up with the middle of her face. oops? lol.
At least they're even though.
She also has a wonky fang (lol it's all lopsided.) and I think they've started to print the eyebrows a little more angled, this Clawdeen looks way less worried than my other reboot Clawdeen.

I was worried when I saw Lagoona that all these signatures would have sewn together outfits. I'm relieved to report that no, Clawdeen's outfit is all individual pieces. PHEW.

Her hair is lovely and soft, but a bit frizzed thanks to the elastic bands from the box.
Her hair is kinda just... bleh in style. there's no real style to it, it's side parted and curled and then just.. left.
I don't know, it feels a bit unfinished to me, particularly as she has such a simple face.

It's a very very dark brown with a vivid purple streak. Now I like purple streaks, but ALL the reboot Clawdeens thus far have had very similar hair styles. Long, curly, dark hair with a purple streak. Yaaawn. One of the main things I always loved about Clawdeen was how her hair was always different, though in recent years we've been getting more and more just "brown with purple streak" styles.

Her eyebrows are definitely at a better angle, and she still has the asymetrical brows. One is kinda quirked and the other is flatter on both dolls. I have to assume this is intentional. The angle of signature's quirked brow gives her more attitude and makes her look less worried I think.

Signature has dark purpley fushia lips and pink eyeshadow. She also has pierced ears, a pair of little gold hoops.

Her outfit is interesting. She has a little lime green tee with stitch/zipper motif, it's made with some sort of thin soft fabric. Then over that she has a fur collared jacket with fishnet sleeves, which I really like. The fishnet sleeves are so cool.
Her pants are made from thick denim feeling cotton and unusually, have absolutely no velcro. The waistband is slightly elasticated. Is velcro super expensive or something? Mattel's been doing this more and more with their dolls and I don't quite understand why. It makes the pants a little more difficult to get on and off.

She also comes with a gold crescent moon necklace, a black belt style wrist cuff that's a bit too big and falls off a lot, and a little handbag with a crescent on it... I think the pattern is meant to be fangs but it makes it look like a croissant lol.

Her shoes are belted/buckled little ankle boots with studs on the heel.
They're nice shoes, but quite plain for MH shoes. ALL the reboot shoes seem a little... plain. They're lacking something the older style MH shoes had and I can't put my finger on what it is.
Still, they're cute and probably quite versatile.

New Clawdeen's outfit really made me think of her original doll. (okay my signature g1 Clawdeen is actually the first rerelease, she has better eyes)
The jacket and patterned shirt particularly.

But man, looking at reboot alongside a much older mh doll makes me sad. The reboot dolls are cute in isolation, but as soon as you put them alongside a doll with the older screening they look so... blank and soulless.

This image is the moment I realised I just cannot and will not ever love the reboot the way I loved original Monster High. I look at my older rerelease Clawdeen and she still takes my breath away.
The reboot dolls just don't do that.

It also reminds me of how much I wish we'd seen a few more Clawdeen's with orange/auburn streaks in her hair. It's really pretty.

I fixed reboot's hair here, tied the front parts which kept getting in her face back and underneath the rest of her hair. That tiny thing made a lot of difference to my eye.

Reboot Clawdeen's hair is very dark and a but more curled than most of the older Clawdeen's.

I do quite like the similarities in outfit here though. Gold hoop earrings, check. Gold necklace with pendant, check. Fur collared jacket, check. Patterned tee in contrasting colour, check. Purple bottoms, yep.

But here's my dilemma with the reboot. I really do like a lot of their outfits. I love the new bodies (they're so much sturdier feeling and the slightly wider hips fill clothing more attractively to my eye) but the new faces are lacking so much. They're just... so plain.

In an ideal world i'd have older heads on newer bodies but the cost involved there makes it not really worth it. I guess if I had broken or damaged older dolls it might be, but as it stands I can't see any real reason to decapitate my older dollies. Well, except the couple who have elastic legs that mean they're floppy as all hell and can't stand.

£14:99 is a bit much for an outfit.

I mean if you like the reboot faces, and some people will, they are cute, it's a nice price and the quality is fairly decent. My reboot Clawdeen has some wonk but it's not too bad in the grand scheme of things and she has a little scuff on one thigh but otherwise she's fine. Her outfit is well made, her hair is soft and gloop free (for now) which is quite nice, especially compared to my older signature Clawdeen who's hair was a sticky mess straight out the box (there were grease stains on the backing card! EWWWW) and the body feels like it'll withstand play soooo sooo much better than the older honestly pretty damn fragile style dolls.
But I really wish their faces had... well... more personality.
It looks like it's the same face sculpt, so I guess I could repaint her. No real loss given she's super wonky anyway, but the lack of "passion" i'm feeling for the reboot makes me very reluctant to buy them, particularly not at full price.

I'm pleased to report that the signature line seems to have okay quality control, unlike Electrified which appears to be an absolute train wreck of a line (what the heck is going on there? so many reports of mangled dolls, nicks, gouges, cuts, air bubbles, the hair issues... it's bizarre). Signature is more in keeping with welcome to monster high or ghouls beast pet in terms of quality.

So if you like the faces, they're worth the price.
but for me, I feel like MH has lost too much in translation to generation 2, the reboot has sucked the souls out of the dolls and I know there's people who think it's unfair to compare a 2017 doll to one made in 2012, but let's put it this way... when I put a reboot doll alongside a 2015/16 pre reboot doll, I STILL feel like they're lacking something. they feel incomplete, unfinished, just.. that bit bland and some characters suffer it far more than others. I quite like reboot Cleo's face, i think she's really pretty. I like reboot Lagoona as well. Reboot Venus looks very much like her original self. But Frankie and Clawdeen have lost all their soul, they've become very bland and sort of blank which is a real shame, as Frankie and Clawdeen are the two characters I own the most dolls of.

I think if i'm going to continue with the reboot, it'll be mostly for outfits and bodies, with the occasional character who's survived the reboot transition without losing a great deal of personality. Because the clothes are generally pretty nice, especially when they do nice mix and match bits like this girl, and the bodies are excellent.

It's hard because there's so much I like, but there's also so much I miss.

On the whole, First Day at School Clawdeen gets a decent 7.5 snaggle toothed fangs out of 10. Like the outfit, disappointed by her face. Maybe i'll repaint her eyes. Or find another head for her heheh.