I'll be honest here, this is WAY beyond overdue. I'm so sorry.
The truth is, every time I thought about doing this review I got kinda overwhelmed. This is a gold label doll, one of only 4800 in existance and she's worth a fair chunk of change so a combination of "do I dare open this" and "Someone SENT THIS TO ME!?? I'm not worthy!" kicked in and paralysed me.
But i'm forcing myself to get over it and do this. Deep breaths okay? Deep deep breaths.
Here we go.
Barbie Empress of the Aliens was released in 2012 as part of Mattel's "gold label" collection. Gold Label means a limited run of under 20000 globally apparently (yes, I went and looked this up) which is a fairly broad category. I believe they were sold in actual stores, I have recollections of Hamleys in London having these big boxes in their glass "ask to buy this thing" cases.
I believe she was around $100usd new,
I tried to find some comparable modern gold label barbies and it looks like the 2019 Mermaid enchantress, 2020's Dragon Empress or 2021's "member exclusive" Crystal Fantasy are the closest I can find, being gold label limited runs and fantastical rather than "inspired by celebrities" (David Bowie, Elton John etc are all gold label too but I don't think it's fair to compare a doll inspired by a celeb with a doll that's inspired by fantasy and science fiction, they're quite different themes).
Crystal Fantasy Barbie is $100 on Mattel Creation's site while Dragon Empress is around £55 on amazon uk and Mermaid was $75.
I didn't buy any of them because I don't like any of them much, but we'll use their stock images to give a rough idea of what's changed with Barbie collector dolls in the past 10 years.
I got a little confused by all the different "labels" Mattel uses. Pink label, Silver Label, Platinum, gold, signature...
WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN!???
(actually I could fairly easily find a list of what the labels meant aside from "Signature" which seems to be fairly meaningless.)
So let's see what the past three years offerings looked like shall we?
First 2019's Mermaid.
Now she is actually quite pretty. She has soft pink hair and a jointed body that looks to be a jointed "Model Muse" body.
The Model Muse body is slimmer than the playline body and made from a different plastic. It's got a more porcelain-like feel and colour with the white dolls being generally quite pale with very slender limbs. Typically the Model Muse body is stuck in a model pose with bent limbs and leg, but the jointed body forgoes that in favour of straight forward hinge joints (no double joints here, the made to move body this ain't).
Her outfit is quite detailed despite being fairly abbreviated. She has a molded metalised plastic shell bra with a transparent lycra? top with glittery painted bits to emulate scales and a sequin encrusted removable tail.
She also features metalised accessories. Her earrings and crown... facinator... thing are extremely detailed but a lot of it is lost in the single colour shininess unfortunately.
She has fairly plain makeup with pink lips and some purple colour around her eyes.
She also has this awkward looking belt of metalised seaweed which sticks out wierd. I don't think this piece is as effective as her other parts, it looks too static for what it's supposed to be.
She retailed for around $75usd and was produced in a run of 20,000.
Following on from Mermaid Enchantress was 2020's "Dragon Empress", a doll I recall my doll friends being less than enthused about given her price point.
Unlike Mermaid, who was the same price point originally, Dragon Empress feels extremely simple. She has a lot of plastic accessories but that's about it.
Her bodice is a metalised plastic piece which is quite cool with a molded scale effect, but her skirt is a quite plain fabric with glitter scales painted on.
Her hair is a facinating pale green colour, though her makeup is quite plain with a simple coral lip and a little green eyeshadow. I believe she has dragon pupils.
Her headdress is again metalised and looks like horns while her wings are far plainer. They have a cool scale detail on them but they're still large plastic pieces that slot into her back like a playline fairy doll. They also sit wierd, way too high to look like wings.
She is on the model muse body which as you can see, can feel a bit stiff at times with the posed arms. I definitely prefer articulation but these dolls are designed to be displayed like a statue so I get why they're mostly static like this.
Dragon Empress has a painted er... thing? around ehr arm. Is it a pair of dragons? I can't tell. It's unpainted green plastic which makes it look a bit cheap honestly. Maybe some blushing detail would have elevated it to feeling less playline.
Likewise her shoes, though a very cool sculpt, are just plain green plastic which makes them look unfinished and cheap. This is a deluxe collector line doll! These accessories should stand out!
A lot of the discussion when Dragon Empress was revealed talked about how she looked too playline to be a collector doll and I agree, she has too much plain unpainted plastic, too much empty space in her design (a little bolero might have balanced out her look for example) and a lot of the pieces just look a little too plain for a doll that originally retailed at $75.
She's got a lot of cool pieces, but they all feel a bit incomplete and her skirt SUCKS.
She's definitely a huge downgrade from the mermaid that came out the year before as part of the same line.
I believe she was also released in a run of 20,000 but unlike Mermaid who's long since sold out, Dragon Empress is still available to buy for quite a bit less than retail.
2021's Crystal Fantasy is less fantastical than the previous two, but she has "fantasy" in her name, she's gold label and she's the closest gold label thing I could find okay? Yeah there's several fantasy themed "signature" dolls released in 2021 but signature doesn't seem to be much limited and the price range is like $20 all the way up to $100 and I don't get it so I just noped outta that rabbit hole.
Cystal Fantasy has a rather pretty purple high/low style dress with an overlong back that drapes like a train. I drapes beautifully and has a little sparkly fabric sash to complete the look. It's definitely a step up from Dragon Empress's stiff looking skirt.
She definitely has more interesting makeup that the previous two with a purple and teal eyeshadow/liner combo and little white dots.
She ALSO comes with a necklace. Fancy. Far too many Barbies don't have necklaces, it wierdly bothers me. Apparently that's an actual amythest as well. It looks a little pale to me but sure, whatever Mattel, cool. Beats plastic.
She has a silly plastic crown too. I mean, it's okay, it doesn't look terrible and the fact it's silver and semi transparent does help prevent it from looking unfinished like Dragon Empress's stuff but it's still just a crystal crown.
She has no earrings which I find an unusual choice. With her hair swept back like this some fancy earrings would have been perfect.
Her shoes are semi opaque purple plastic with fabric laces. They're fairly simple but the semi transparent nature of them makes them look a bit cooler.
I'm not convinced about the wrist cuffs though. They're supposed to also look like crystal and they're transparent and sparkly like her crown and shoes but for whatever reason when it's a large chunk of plastic like this around a dolls arm it just ends up looking a bit cheap and tacky to me.
Like Dragon Empress, Crystal Fantasy is on the model muse body (with the somewhat less awkward arms down pose) and like both, was limited to 20,000 units (which is still a LOT of bloody units)
She retails for $100 plus membership to the Barbie Signature club or whatever, which is another $10.
She comes in a large black box with a shiny "barbie" logo on the matte black. It's a very plain box, no real hint of what's inside beyond the simple "empress of the aliens" text.
The back of the box gives us a little blurb about the doll. I wonder what her "formidable power" is.
Empress of the Aliens only had 4,800 dolls produced, quite a contrast to the 20,000 of the more modern gold label dolls. I wonder how they decide the production run, maybe the more expensive to produce dolls get a smaller run.
And here she is.
Good god she's stunning.
I legitimately gasped the first time I opened this box and every time since have had a little intake of breath as I remember what she looks like.
Her hair is this rich magenta colour shot with gold tinsel with two black braids on either side of her head. The middle front is pulled up into this loose high... thing... that slots into her horned crown to give her this beehive looking thing.
She has a metalised circlet that shimmers green and purple. It was impossible for me to photograph the metalised parts, they came out looking matte but all those green parts are actually irridescent metalised plastic, they are predominantly green but brushed with yellows and purples. It's exceptionally cool.
Her eyes are slit like a cat or a reptile, they look to be a pale yellowy colour with blue around the iris. She has light purple eyeshadow, a line of purple under each eye and long dramatic false lashes.
She has the "Goddess" face mold which is one of my favourites, so that's a big plus.
I didn't initially realise she had actual inset lashes (I think they're just glued on rather than sewn in actually) but she does and they're exceptionally long.
The black braids are coiled at either side of her head which again looks really cool.
The rest of her hair is a bit flat from being in the box for so long and the tinsel makes it a bit crunchy but it's otherwise really nice. A gorgeous colour with no gel or anything that I can tell.
Her lips match her hair.
Her skirt is made from heavy vinyl snakeskin in a mermaid style with a long slit and double layered peplum. I wonder why they didn't do this with Dragon Empress, I mean, a green version of this would have looked so much better than the shitty stiff polyester crap they gave her.
It is very heavy and thick so it doesn't really drape, in real life it'd likely be an absolute pain to move in but it looks very cool.
Unerneath the heavy skirt you can make out her metalised heels, which like the rest of her accessories shimmer green and purple.
Her shoes have swirly shaped heels and the ankle cuff is a separate piece that's not actually connected at all to the shoe itself.
I couldn't get these shoes off though, they're so tight and metalised plastic is so stiff that I just couldn't get them loose.
to be fair, being a collector doll she's not really designed to be undressed. But still, this is the big issue with metalised plastics, they have ZERO flex and can be quite brittle.
Empress is on the Model Muse body with straight arms. One is flexed inward, the other with the wrist flexed out. It's a far more natural looking pose than the hands on hips pose used in some other dolls.
The model muse body is really awkward to get to stand though, as one leg is molded in a flexed position. She came with a stand, but it's a leg stand and really awkward to slid up her asymetrical legs and inside her skirt.
Her skirt is longer than her legs, even with heels, so it drapes around her like a puddle.
The sleeves or.. cape? are long strips of fabric. One magenta coloured transparent and one black glittery.
You can see how odd her hairstyle actually is from the side. That pulled up piece looks a bit silly from the side, a little "something about Mary" lol. Old reference alert!
Empress has no earrings but I don't think she needs them. She's got so much else going on.
I think her outfit is one piece, but I can't easily check as I couldn't work out how the hell to get the plastic molded bodice off. it has side seams, but they're very very tightly wedged together.
The shoulder piece is separate to the corset piece but also doesn't seem to actually come off as it's one piece that looks to have been put on the doll before her head was.
She has matching wrist cuffs in that same metalised plastic. They're a little loose on her slender wrists but as they're hard as shit, they're very difficult to get off regardless.
Unlike Crystal Fantasy, these cuffs I think work because they tie in with the shoulder pieces and the corset, making everything match together rather than kinda feeling a bit thrown on randomly.
I genuinely don't think any of this is supposed to be removed and attempting to do so will probably damage it.
But the upper part of her dress? her top? is completely transparent and shot with silver and black.
As with all the collector Barbies, Empress of the Aliens came with a certificate of authenticity. This is actually printed on a thin card, unlike the regular printer paper of the much cheaper signature dolls I own (BMR, Looks)
It actually feels like a proper certificate. I hope the modern expensive dolls still have proper card certificates.
Overall i'm honestly extremely impressed by this doll. She's beautiful (of course i'm biased because she's using one of my favourite Barbie sculpts of all time lol), her outfit is extremely detailed with some very satisfying mixes of textures and fabrics, the metalised plastic pieces look fancy rather than tacky and cheap and her makeup and hair are unique and distinctive.
I would have prefered the articulated body on this girl of course, the model muse body is a pain in the arse to pose or even get to stand, even with a stand. I'd have also preferred an easier to use stand because while I understand not using a waist stand, this upper leg clampy model is not easy to use, especially as you can't easily remove the skirt to see what you're doing, and with one twisted leg you NEED to see what you're doing. I'd have preferred maybe a saddle stand or something.
I also wish her lashes were actually sewn in because one of them is already looking a little squished and peeling.
That top part of her hair is a bit silly and i'm not totally sure what they were going for. A beehive? it would have been nice to have finessed that a little more so she didn't look so odd from the side.
I love the coiled braids though, and the tinsel shot through the hair works really well. I usually hate tinsel because it makes brushing hair impossible and ages poorly but for an alien girl, when she's already got all this shimmery stuff going on, it works well.
When I look at this doll and compare and contrast her with the modern Gold Label offerings, she really does stand out. I think it shows how much simpler a lot of the collector dolls have become, and it's a real pity. If modern collector dolls were more like Empress of the Aliens, I might actually buy a few of them.
but as it stands, aside from a couple of Signature dolls (like the Day of the Dead dolls) most these days are either celebrity of brand inspired or just a bit lacklustre.
Maybe it's just that my taste is more toward the slightly macabre, but I definitely know which doll i'd prefer out of the ones I looked at today.
I still can't quite believe I was sent this doll to review. The generosity of strangers really is astounding. I feel extremely privilaged and I want to thank my patreon for not only sending her to me, but being so astoundingly patient while I waffled and dithered all this time.
I'm sorry I couldn't get her undressed. I did try, but Metalised plastic doesn't flex and I became terrified i'd shatter something.
Now I just wish I had a shelf worthy of such an impressive doll.
I mean damn. Mattel outdid themselves with this one. (in fact, all three of the Galaxy dolls are damn impressive)
Empress of the Aliens was designed by Bill Greening, who incidently ALSO designed Crystal Fantasy AND the Barbie Looks dolls.
I'm glad to see he's still working for Mattel.
I give this girl 11 "unconventional choices of hair gel" out of 10. (again with that old ass reference. I'm OLD, sue me.)
She's spectacular. Definitely a "collector line" doll. THIS is what I expect when I see "collector line". Glorified playline this girl sure as heck ain't.
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