Cave Club by Mattel

New month brings new stock at last! and BIRTHDAY stuffs!

Husband did great this year, he snagged me two of the new Cave Club dolls as soon as they came off preorder (because Amazon sucks with preorders, seriously)

A new Mattel line? NOT Barbie? NOT static bodied and aimed at toddlers? AND no surprise gimmick nonsense?

What is this, bizarro world?

Hold tight, it gets more surprising.

Now, i'll be the first to admit that Mattel has not really been endearing themselves to me lately.  What with their crappy customer service and even crappier quality control on most of their lines i've been sort of wondering why I even bother giving them any sort of benefit of the doubt.

The newest UV printing nonsense that results in gross grainy looking face paint on dolls is just icing on an already pretty gross cake made of overpriced plastic shit, unhemmed sack dresses and uninspired plastic molded clothing.

So i admit, i was not overly convinced Cave Club would actually be decent.

For a start we were promised fully articulated dolls. Secondly, they had crimped hair and we all know how badly Mattel screwed that up with the crunchy gross fried hair of reboot Monster High. And then there was the price point. £15? For a fully articulated doll with colourful hair and accessories?

What witchcraft was this? Had we timewarped back to 2010? Had we slipped momentarily into an alternate dimension where Mattel actually gave a crap about producing decent products or were these going to be hugely disappointing?

Let's take a look shall we?

As a kid I collected Trolls and I have a fondness for poofy, crazy, colourful hair. This is why Cave Club appealed to me in the first place, they reminded me of the toys I liked in the early 90s, all crazy neon colours and clashing pattern madness with big heads and cute expressive faces.

The boxes surprised me, they're so slim. They're quite frugal really. Just a plastic clamshell style with some molded on "rock" effect.

I think it's quite effective, it allows the doll to be the primary focus while also showing everything else you're getting. No surprises here, what you see is what you get and I have MISSED THAT so much.

The logo is... i think a dinosaur footprint? Or it might be a leaf, I dunno.

Each character appears to have a unique pattern/colour associated with them which is very Monster High huh?

Heck, Roralei's purple tiger print is SO Clawdeen lol.

The art on the back of the boxes is ADORABLE.

I'm sure the US versions probably have a blurb about the characters but the EU boxes just have one sentence about the line itself.

this is another of Mattel's multimedia brands so there will be, I hear, a cartoon or webshow and likely some books or comics or whatever else Mattel can throw at it. It's sort of reassuring to see them actually investing the money though.

I THINK Emberly is the engineer one while Roaralai is the animal lover. I think.

There's also a stargazer/astronomer, an artist and one who er... likes... plants? I think?

I dunno man.

It's pretty random.

The artist boy wasn't available yet, he was supposed to release today but Amazon have him backordered till August and every other shop is saying August for release date so I dunno.

The box is fairly easy to open. Peel off the plastic cover and then snip snip snip the few plastic ties holding the doll in place. She has two plastic tabs in her head but they're fastened through a plastic molded piece she's posed against so that slides out and you can fairly easily snip it from the back without risking cutting any hair.

I always appreciate a doll that's quick to remove from the packaging.

(Interestingly the copyright on the box says 2019, as does the back of the head but the body is marked 2020. Go figure)

The basic dolls are about £15 and come with one accessory, a comb and a pet.

Emberly's pet is called Flaire and is a pink baby t-rex... I think.

Roaralei's pet is a little sabretoothed kitten named Ferrel (like Feral, gettit? god, the punnage is almost MH level of cringe)

Each doll stands about 8 inches tall and has a big ol' noggin, even bigger hair and a pretty simple but colourful outfit.

The pets are cute enough, they remind me of the EAH Dragon Games dragons a bit.

They're solid plastic with a head that can rotate, though it works better on the t-rex than the tiger as the paw gets in the way.

I don't know if they use the same face sculpt or not as their face paint is SO different.

Roaralei has much larger eyes and is painted with a sort of lopsided smirk while Emberly has smaller eyes and a more even smile.

Now what's worth mentioning here is that these dolls DO NOT use the UV printing Mattel's been so fond of lately. So the faces aren't dotty and blurry and pixilated! they look to be traditionally mask printed so they're bright, smooth and SUPER nice.

This delights me. About bloody time Mattel, sheesh.

it's a damn cute face though. Sorta wide, squished with a broad nose and BIG ol' jug ears.

Adorable.

The dolls themselves are very small and don't come with shoes. They instead have HUGE bare feet which are sorta adorable.

They're chunky at the bottom but skinny at the top and as a result substantially smaller than Monster High despite sharing some aesthetic similarities.

One of the biggest similarities is the hands.

Here's Emberly's hand alongside an Ever After High hand. The Cave Club hands have less pronouced nails but the shape and pose of the fingers is near identical to multiple EAH and MH dolls I looked at. It looks almost like they just took the existing sculpt and shrank it down for Cave Club.

I don't think the cave club hands come apart at the wrist though. I had a short tug and it didn't give and the box says nothing about removable hands so I think they're solidly in there.

The Cave Club body is adorable. It's really bottom heavy with chunky legs, huge feet and a teensy tiny upper but I tell ya, there's a real similar feel tothe way her body is sculpted, especially the torso.

I wonder if the same person worked on these bodies as did the EAH bodies.

Emberly's outfit consists of a separate tank top that ties around the neck and a two layered skirt with an unhemmed spiky bottom to it. It's basic and made of thin printed fabric. It's nothing special, it's decently sewn but it's made from pretty cheap feeling fabric but it serves its purpose.

She also comes with a cute molded tool belt with removable hammer, a little bone "bow tie" that clips to her neck, some pink leg decoration... things... and a stone club.

The club opens up to become a torch, though it doesn't light up at all. The flame is made from a semi transparent plastic so it's pretty effective at looking "glowy" anyway. As with all bulky accessories, it's not hugely easy to get the doll to hold this thing without it just falling off.

Roaralei comes with an outfit that consists of a bizarre and not particularly well fitting dress thing. The top piece is a tight little boob tube type thing sewn to this long somewhat shapeless tiger stripe sack.

Over that is worn a fur shrug and a purple plastic belt with two teeth in it.

Her legwarmer/leg decorations are chunkier than Emberly's and honestly a lot harder to get back ON again. Theyr'e quite a firm plastic.

She comes with a bright orange bag in the shape of a sabretooth tiger. The bag's ear piece is removable.

I think it's a headband though the packaging makes no reference to it.

it has a clip kinda spike thing inside it suggesting it's a hair piece anyway.

Wierd.

I'm impressed by the articulation on these.

Each doll has knee, hop, shoulder, elbow, wrist and neck articulation. The head only moves side to side, it's too fat to really do up and down motion which is a shame but oh well. The shoulders pivot outward 90 degrees, the elbow bends a similar amount as do the knees.

Another cool feature is the knees don't just hinge but actually rotate in the knee joint as well, so you can twist the legs outward or inward to point the toes differently.

The dolls can touch their own face which is always nice.

And pull really coy poses with their hands behind their back and their knees twisted inward.

The joints feel fairly solid, about on par with the reboot pre shitty gappy joint Monster High dolls. The knees can be a little stiff.

The hair surprised me too. The crimping isn't crunchy or coarse, it's actually quite soft. Like crimped hair SHOULD be.

Emberly's hair is totally crimped and this very vivid orangey pink colour that's kinda ridiculously eyegouging. I love it. It's streaked with yellowy orange and part of it is held up in this silly top knot.

It's quite uneven at the bottom.

Roaralei's hair is just solidly purple and crimped only at the top where it's pulled into two top knot pieces.

I assume this stuff is nylon rather than kanekellon, it has actual weight to it but isn't nice enough to be saran.

Overall i'm actually quite impressed by this line.

They're nicely made, though you can see where the costs were cut. Their clothing is simple and somewhat cheap feeling. It works, but it could be better.

The lack of shoes is also going to cut costs, though I have to admit, I kinda dig the big bare feet look. I think it's really cute.

Now that said, the bodies are really cute. They're well articulated and adorably sculpted (What can I say, I love me some chubby legs) and their faces are insanely cute and expressive. Their brightly coloured hair is such fun and pretty decently done. The crazy styles remind me of trolls hahaha.

The tribal facepaint is very ME too. Anyone who's seen my faceups knows I can't resist patterns on the face hahah.

For the price, they feel like pretty good toys honestly. They remind me a lot of the sort of toys I would have played with as a kid, brightly coloured, small, a little chunky and of course, DINO THEMED ehehehe.

ahem. I loved dinosaurs as a kid okay?

At £15 these dolls are a pretty damn good deal I think. There are deluxe sets which come with more accessories for £20 and a huge dino rider set that I WANT but is like £30 and not due out till September but the £15 budget dolls are quite fun.

The quality control on the two I got seems pretty decent. The joints aren't hugely gappy or unsteady, the hair is thickly rooted and the uneven ends could be argued to be rather in keeping with the prehistoric vibe (or easily straightened up with some scissors lol) and their faces are pretty even and well painted with no obvious major wonk or smears.

Given how boring and bland a lot of Mattel's output has been recently and how obviously cheap a lot of their stuff is, i'm pleasantly surprised these dolls are as good as they are. No molded on clothing, no uv printed grainy pixilated faces, no wierd shiny patches on the body. The dolls are small, pretty hefty and gloriously colourful.

And now I want the boy one damnit! GRAGH

oh and in  terms of size, they can fit the tops for Bratz Kidz but the dresses etc are WAY too short.