It's been a while since we had any Monster High content to review huh?
And though the line ended on a very sour note (good god those gappy reboot bodies were unforgivable) I still have a great deal of fondness for the franchise as a whole. It was the first doll brand I was an active collector for the release of rather than picking dolls up secondhand after the event. I have very happy memories of trawling every Argos across two cities to get the new releases (lol), the excitement of new argos catalogue day or new stock coming into Toys R Us, trips out to the nearest TRU for their latest exclusive. Oh so many doll hunts.
I miss doll hunts actually. I mean yeah it was a bit frustrating when things didn't hit your region for ages but the thrill of going into a store and seeing all this NEW stuff was awesome.
In the UK now we just don't get that so much. Argos doesn't do new catalogue days anymore, they just kinda... add stuff as and when to their website. TRU no longer exists. Smyths have no stores within 2 hours travel for me (wtf smyths? wtf?) and the past few years we've just been seeing less and less stuff hitting physical stores as everything goes online only.
and I miss physical stores. I miss sitting in the aisle going through all the boxes to find the "perfect" one. I miss the friendships I made with store workers who came to know me very very well (that one argos guy who would yell across the store "No new dolls today!" or "we have a new shipment! come see!" lol.
But still, it's nice to see Monster High making a comeback. I'm just not totally sure I trust Mattel not to cock it up like they did last time.
But when they annouced their collector Haunt Couture dolls I knew I needed to get Clawdeen. After all, I have a ridiculous number of Clawdeen dolls in my collection, she's like.. my girl you know?
Now granted, the release was pretty shitty. Very short notice for both Frankie and Clawdeen, the price was OBSCENE especially compared with other "collector" dolls being produced and the line was only available from Mattel's online store. Thankfully they've fixed their international shipping. Last time they had a webstore exclusive their online shipping was asking an eye watering $60 to ship ONE freaking doll. I was relieved to see it's now a far more reasonable $15.
But even so, at $75 each, plus shipping and whatever customs fees I may have to pay, I was pretty anxious about it all. But I didn't want to pass and regret it. I sold a bjd to get funds together. I was lucky to find a buyer quickly.
So, was Haunt Couture worth the inflated price tag? Let's take a look shall we?
Clawdeen comes in an attractive coffin shaped box with metallic purple detailing and this large card er... diamond... glued to the front.
I'm not entirely sure about this piece, it feels like an afterthought or like it should be removable or something but it feels pretty securely glued on there. I wonder if just like... embossing this onto the coffin lid itself might have been a better look? I dunno.
Anyway, it's a cool box regardless. It's sturdy too.
The back continues the pattern, leaving all the copyright and product information for the bottom of the box.
What's quite fun is that the pattern on these coffins is unique for each character. Clawdeen's has a lot of motifs including moons, zippers, spikes, safety pinks and her personal skullette. There's even a little heart surrounded by a fur shrug and pawprints. It's all very cute.
The coffin isn't overly easy to open. The lid is fairly tightly on there so it took a bit of shaking and prying to get it to come off.
inside we get our first look at Clawdeen under a clear plastic inner lid (a lot like the Living Dead Doll coffins in fact)
It's an attractive presentation, though my girl has one hand twisted upside down lol. That looks uncomfortable.
it's a very easy fix though as the plastic lid isn't taped down at all. You can lift it off, reposition things and then close it again if you really want to.
The inner card lifts out completely so you have access to the back of her backing card. This makes deboxing a lot easier as you can see what you're doing.
Her hair is sewn in and then taped. She has two plastic staples in her head which are simple to cut from the back here. Then there's a lot of little plastic pieces which while sharp on the edges, are fairly straightforward to fold and slide through the slits in the card.
I only had to snip the thread, her head staples and the elastic band holding her bag because it got tangled.
everything else can be removed without scissors which I like.
I did have to remove her hands to get her hands free from their plastic shackles though.
And here she is freshly deboxed.
Her hair i'm pleased to say has no gel or product in it so it's beautifully soft and doesn't shed.
Her hair is knee length, softly curled and has a bright sort of salmon pink streaked through the underneath. I think we've only seen this colour on Clawdeen a few times, she usually gets purple streaks, but her reboot Emoji doll had this same colour.
So that's an interesting little nod there.
It's also very similar in colour to her original release's salmon pink shirt.
Clawdeen has rooted lashes for this release, which makes her look extra fancy. Her eyes are also far more detailed than any of her dolls have ever had. They're sort of brown and amber with a lot of lines which from a distance make them look very shiny and bright.
Her eyebrows are thick but sculpted with subtle little hairs.
Her makeup is a soft purple plum sort of tone with gold on the eyelid and her lips are a matching muted pinkish purple tone.
She wears a black studded headband, two metalised gold hoops in one ear and two purple diamond shaped studs in the other.
Clawdeen's coffin lid has a little pocket in it that contains a diary and a loose certificate.
one side of the fairly flimsy paper certificate has a message from Clawdeen herself. And jokes on you girl, i'm not wearing any shoes!
The other side of the certificate is dark grey on black so very hard to read. It just says "this certifies this is authentic" blah blah blah.
But more interestingly, for the first time since... oh goodness... I can't even remember, we have a new Monster High diary! I used to love these. First thing i'd do before deboxing the doll was read their diary.
And this does not disappoint. It's a fully diary and dishes some juicy gossip for us which i'm curious to see play out in playline. I hope this means we get diaries there too.
I'm sure someone's transcribed all three of these already, I need to read Frankie's and Draculaura's!
Anyway, back to the doll. Under her giant fuzzy coat she wears a mesh shirt with gold trim over a colourful singlet top and a high waisted purple pleather skirt with a pleated hem.
All of these pieces are beautifully sewn and easy to get on and off.
The jacket is fully lined in bright yellow which helps make it feel like a complete and finished garment.
It also ties it back to one of Clawdeen's earliest fashion packs.
Which used the same garish yellow and pale purple fur combo.
The outside of the coat is dark and light purple striped.
Clawdeen has had a few purple fur coats and jackets over the years, but never one quite as bulky and over the top as this one. I kinda dig it.
All in all Clawdeen comes with a decent amount of stuff.
Her fur coat, mesh top, singlet top and skirt. A pair of lace mesh stockings (that her toes like to stab through so be warned of that), her studded peep toe boots, handbag, metalised ring and bracelet and a gold necklace.
Her bag is designed to look like she upcycled her original jacket. It's a cute idea, but I can't help but wish they'd done this in fabric like they did with Draculaura and Frankie's bags. The metal chain is nice and all, but it doesn't stop the bag from just feeling like a generic hunk of plastic and ultimately, considering it's supposed to be literally made out of a jacket, why the fuck isn't it fabric?
It also will NOT stay on Clawdeen's shoulder. Shoulder bags always have this problem. Monster high shoulders are too narrow and that coupled with her bulky jacket means the bag constantly just slides off. it's really annoying. I do wish Mattel would work out a way to make bags work so they'd stay ON the doll. I have to wonder if a little clasp on the metal strap would have helped, then you could have it actually across her body. As it is, the chain is too short to slide it over her head for that anyway and her extremely bulky coat means it doesn't sit correctly like that anyway. *sigh*
there's gotta be a better way.
Her jewellery consists of a very odd bracelet with a little purse... charm? on it. I don't fully understand this. Is it supposed to be a working purse? is it just an oversized charm? It gets in the way and I think it looks a bit silly honestly.
She also has one of those big knuckle duster rings that says "monster" on it.
Both these pieces are metalised so very very shiny.
In contrast, her necklace isn't metalised. It's made from softer rubbery plastic and coloured gold. It looks a lot like previous Clawdeen necklaces with the multiple chains coming from a choker. The choker part itself is clearly inspired by her original choker while the crescent moon and chains are something a few of her later releases did.
I believe all these pieces are new molds though. Which i'd expect from a deluxe collector doll damnit.
I believe her boots are unique as well, even if they feel extremely familiar. They take a lot of design elements from other Clawdeen shoes.
Clawdeen also comes with a metalised brush that I didn't bother deboxing and a stand with a metalised base but a clear plastic prop and clip. This is a good compromise. Mattel tried doing fully metalised stands with their classroom dolls and they had an unfortunate tendency to kinda... explode... violently into your face. (I'm lucky I wear glasses because lagoona's stand tried to blind me!)
The stand does have a problem though. That being that it has to be attached UNDER Clawdeen's bulky coat and then sort of slotted up underneath the coat which is a bit awkward. I feel like in this case a saddle stand or something would have been justified.
I had to get down my "display" Clawdeen to do a comparison of course. This girl is Back To School Clawdeen on a reboot body (prior to the gappy bullshit)
She only looks taller because of her insane boots.
But this comparison makes it clear how different the haunt couture dolls are. The eyes are wider, somewhat younger looking and the eyebrows distinctly wider.
Haunt couture uses the original style body, with the skinny arms and legs and no molded hair. It's a perfectly decent body, though the knees are a bit weak.
What's interesting though, is that this isn't EXACTLY the original body.
The arm pegs are different. The original dolls used a very narrow quite fragile elbow peg while the Haunt Couture dolls are using a much thicker peg with a hole in it.
in fact, this peg is the reboot body's elbow peg.
This means the hole in the upper arm is thicker to accomidate it. It results in a substantally sturdier elbow joint which I appreciate.
Her wrist pegs feel sturdier too. The peg is a little thicker and shorter, which makes them a lot easier to get on and off.
Looks like Mattel elected to use the better engineering of their pre gappy bullshit bodies for this line and presumably that'll carry over to the playline as well. I'm pleased to see the good part of the reboot bodies retained, whatever you want to say about the reboot, the initial release had very sturdy, well constructed joints.(which they then fucked up by changing to those gappy messed up bodies. EUGH WHY MATTEL!??? no, i'm still not over that crap okay?)
ultimately, she IS a gorgeous doll. I really like how they did her eyes, they look so much more alive than any other doll I have here and it's really stunning. I also enjoy her outfit.
However,
is she a $75 doll? I'm not convinced.
I mean, let's put things into perspective here.
For Bratz, you have GCDS Sasha who is $50 and like Clawdeen comes with a lined fur coat, metallised accessories and a certificate of authenticity. She isn't however articulated like Clawdeen, but does that justify the $25 extra cost?
With Rainbow High there's Lily Chen, their chinese new year doll who retails at $79:99, so she's a similar price to Clawdeen here. However, for that extra $5 you get a fully articulated doll who comes with two very detailed complete outfits with shoes. She's also substantially easier to find, having been released to regular stores instead of being artificially limited.
I'll not be the first to say that dolls have become really really expensive, but I can't help but resent this trend of slapping "collector" onto something to hike the price.
The Haunt Couture dolls are really nice dolls and it's lovely to see Monster High back, but they're a good $15 more expensive than they really SHOULD be and their limited release was just a way to try to generate panic buying which I find quite cynical of Mattel.
If MGA can release their expensive as shit dolls to regular stores, why couldn't Mattel? Why did they make so few? Did they have such little confidence in their product? or did they just want to make them feel more "worth the price" by limiting their availability?
All it seems to have done is make a lot of fans pretty resentful.
I'm glad I got Clawdeen, but I do wish we'd had more time to budget for the whole line. Some of us can't magic several hundred dollars out of thin air with only days notice thank you Mattel. We need time to assess and budget and decide if we can really justify the frivolity of it all.
I passed on Frankie because I didn't LOVE her, but with Draculaura I didn't even get that oppertunity. She sold out in minutes. Why? Likely because Mattel promoted her a lot more than they did the other two. She had a solid week of publicity in the lead up to her release and was the first of the dolls to be leaked, so people had time to see her and make a decision about whether they wanted her or not.
Honestly I wish Mattel had arranged a store release for these and just flat out made more of them to satisfy demand. As it stands, a lot of the dolls they shipped out had errors like wonky eye paint or chips in their paint, some literally got lost in the mail and Mattel just shrug and go "sorry, can't replace it" which means those who spent what is, honestly a lot of money on these dolls are left being told to buy replacements on the inflated secondhand market.
There's someone who was sent the wrong item by mistake and Mattel who made the mistake won't remedy it. You simply cannot do that, it's unproffessional and it's unfair.
You would think they'd have made a few extra for these inevitable situations, but nope. They would rather make a bunch to ship out free to "influencers" and tell legitimate customers "tough luck"
Which I think tells you a lot about Mattel's priorities.
Publicity is all, actual customer service doesn't matter.
I do hope they fix their attitude going forward and the playline dolls aren't only worth the wait, but have a decent distribution.
I was really nervous awaiting my Clawdeen having seen the Frankies with some major wonk going on. But thankfully it looks like Clawdeen got better quality control, or I just got really lucky.
Damn she's a pretty doll though. It's been really nice to debox a brand new Monster High doll that actually feels of the same quality as the original releases.
I'm overwhelmed with nostelgia. And a lot poorer <_< hahaha.
heyy i know im late but do you still have sweet scream draculaura for sale?
ReplyDeleteOh goodness afraid not. I kinda regret selling those dolls but such is life.
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