Update on the Monster High bundle

 So I figured people might like to know what I did with the huge bundle of monster high dolls and how much success I had with deglueing them. 

So settle in and let me show you. 

So, the first thing I did was sort them into piles. The "don't have glue head and just need a quick wipe down and hair restyled" lot. The "yeah I need to treat these but just a good wash might help" and the "oh god I can't stand to even touch these, good god this is disgusting" pile. 

I tackled a small group of dolls I considered to not have much value first. Elissabat was my first victim as I think I mentioned in the last blog post, emboldened by the success I had with her I had high hopes for the rest.

These dolls all had incomplete outfits and sticky... sticky hair. Clawdeen was not too bad and came good with just a good wash but the rest all needed treatment.

Toralei I don't think has glue inside her head, but her original style was secured in place with a HUGE amount of gel that left her hair like a rock. Over the years that's become just flat out sticky and gross. 

I rinsed and rinsed, then I scrubbed, then I used cif and left it in her hair for a few days. I didn't think it was working because whenever I touched her head it still felt greasy but after rinsing her head one last time and leaving her to dry I found in the morning her head felt normal and no longer tacky. Thank goodness. It still has product in it, enough to retain the style, but it doesn't feel gross so i'm very happy with this. 

Ghouls Rule Frankie not only had sticky hair but she, like all of the ghouls rule dolls, suffers from frizz hair. This is, I suspect, why her hair is so short. I think the original owner cut the frazzled ends off. I remember when I bought my own Ghouls Rule dolls back in the day how disappointingly awful their hair was. Frankie's was secured with a huge amount of gel to get it into the silly gravity defying style but even once you rinsed that out, as soon as a brush went near her that hair turned to a ball of frizz. Clawdeen was even worse, I remember I ended up hacking a good half of Clawdeen's hair off in an attempt to get her hair to not be a giant ball of shit.Cif treatment worked a treat with Frankie and I tied her hair into a high ponytail which I think looks better than her wierd original style anyway. I get what they were going for, but it just didn't translate well to doll form at all. 

Clawdeen's hair is wierd, the long bits that frame her face have to be sat in just the right way or else her scalp shows. It's annoying actually.

Skull Shores Abbey was a wierd one. Her body is discoloured but not evenly. Only her upper legs and ONE shoulder/upper arm have yellowed to this soft green colour. The rest of her remains blue. I thought maybe it was the glue layer that holds her glitter but soaking her in cif seemed to strip that layer off and lightly sanding the discoloured limbs didn't seem to do much. So hmmm. 

very very wierd. 

Her hair was a pain. It has thick tinsel stuff in it which makes her hair coarse and difficult to brush nicely in the first place. Combine that with glue seeping through her scalp and you get a pretty terrible time. Cif didn't work as well as i'd hoped, it seemed to just dry out the rest of her hair while her scalp remained tacky. I even resorted to pouring cif literally INTO her head after removing it from her body. This caused the glue chunks inside her head to harden up and fall out in large clumps which was nice, but it didn't seem to help her scalp. Hmmm. It's better than it WAS, but it's not ideal. 

Rochelle's hair was really sticky and lank looking. Cif worked a treat with her and her hair remained soft afterwards. 

The Frights Camera Action group turned out the be some of the worst impacted by the glue head situation. I remember even when they were released that people had problems, especially with the Black Carpet budget line. This is why I have never actually owned any of the Black Carpet dolls because though they're gorgeous with their deco style outfits, their hair had a reputation for being awful right out of the box.

Draculaura gave me a lot of trouble. I resorted to using olive oil in her hair because the stickiness wasn't shifting at all with cif. Then of course I had to remove the oil, which was a chore in itself but at least oil doesn't feel as disgusting as glue. In the end she lost a few hair plugs and I removed a lot of glue from inside her head, but I didn't manage to completely deglue her hair. She was left with slightly oily feeling hair at the scalp which honestly felt quite pleasant (is that wierd?) but wasn't what I had been aiming for. 

Clawdia was also a pain in the arse. Her hair refused to cooperate and even after removing the stickiness, it continued to look lank and wet even when dry. You can see in this photo of the backs of their heads how Clawdia's hair looks damp. It isn't, it's completely dry. At least she's not sticky though. Interestingly, the glue that came out of Clawdia was very different to the glue that came out of any of the other dolls heads. The other dolls when I popped their heads off had white quite firm feeling glue, a bit like dried hot glue, while Clawdia had very sticky gloop that I had to scrape out in wads. Ewwww.

Honey's hair was fine. I'm not even sure she has glue in there, her head felt squishy so I left her be. 

Elissabat had stickiness and ended up with quite dry hair as a result of my treatments. But it's glue free. 

Viperine I just washed. She had slight tackiness to her scalp but she didn't feel too bad so I decided to just leave her be. 

In a way i'm glad I now know how to get the stickiness to at least reduce, it means I might actually be able to salvage any black carpet dolls if I ever come across them. But it sucks that I have to you know? it sucks that such a cool budget line was so sabotaged by Mattel's stupid decision to fill the heads with unstable glue despite being told "it's wicking into the hair!" by customers over and over and over again. It took them nearly a decade to actually stop using that shit, they didn't care and it's left so many dolls so damaged. 

What an absolute waste. 

Another doll who was DISGUSTING straight out of her box was Twyla. Twyla's hair was in fact so bad that I sold my one on years ago. It wasn't sticky so much as it was lank and constantly looked wet even when it wasn't. It was horrible. 

Interestingly, this Twyla's hair wasn't as bad as my original Twyla. Perhaps years of dust gathering had helped a little. Her scalp was sticky though and her hair was looking lank and gross. She got a good cif shampoo and left to sit for a day or two. I'm absolutely astounded by how well that worked. Her hair looks full and decent, and it shocks me because i'm so accustomed to 13 Wishes Twyla's hair looking constantly greasy. 

This gives me hope for my personal collection.

Gigi was another doll with a double whammy of stickiness issues. Her scalp was oozing but she also originally had a LOT of gel in her hair to keep it in the wierd updo style she came with. There was no way I was going to restore that style, but I also couldn't stand to touch her without wincing so she got a good cif shampoo and a sit for a few days as well. 

the end result is beautiful soft glue free hair. 

YES!

Meanwhile Catrine didn't have glue head, but she DID have gel in her hair originally and that gel meant her hair was sticky. She was also absolutely filthy, by far the dirtiest doll in the bundle. Her hair was GREY! EWWW. 

She got a good wash and comb and her hair came up lovely and soft and shiny.

Poor Catrine, I always felt like she was a really wasted character design. She's not even a character in the Scaris movie, she's a fucking scene transition. Seriously, she's used to transition scenes. She doesn't talk or interact with anyone the whole movie, she has no part, she's a prop. 

I sometimes wonder if she was supposed to actually have a role in early development before being relegated to scene transition. So wierd. And she didn't get any real development in the web show either. So what was her purpose? Why does she exist Mattel? 

Poor pointless Catrine. 

Anyway, the vast majority of the dolls scrubbed up well. I only have Gooliope and Jinafire left to deglue and Jinafire is being stubborn (sigh)

So I turned to the faceless dolls. 

Apple's hair is disgusting and sticky and her face is stained to shit. Her body is good though so I am tempted to just use a different head for her. not sure what I have that's this pale though. 

Clawdeen's hair was practically glued to her scalp, it was so disgusting. She also had lost all the hair at the front. I assume the original owner intended to reroot that part but never got around to it. She also has no eyebrows, no lips, no eyelashes and more of her makeup gone. 

Toralei is in a similar state. Her hair is sticky as all hell and she's lost most of her face. She has new eyebrows pencilled on but they're messy and uneven. She has no lips, no makeup, no eyelashes and the whole edge of both eyes is gone. She's also lost all the paint on her hands leaving her with red smears all over them. 

The Descendants pirate girl (I can't remember her name okay?) has had her boots partially painted which is.... pretty random. That's gonna be a pain to remove. Her face has been started but i'm not sure what with, i'll repaint her.

Anna's face is only partially removed and if I want to do anything with it i'll have to finish the job. 

And Descendants Evie has the ghost of a face and smeared paint where her painted on gloves were removed. Or rather, an attempt was made to remove them. Evie has really frizzy hair too. *sigh* dangit Hasbro.

Toralei got a wash and I figured that her hair had been cut a little at the front anyway. So I restyled it into this cute bob which I suspect was the original intention of the first owner. 

I repainted the edges of her eyes, her eyebrows, her lashes and lips. Added a cat nose and two stripes and a white "blaze". I also gave her different coloured eyes to further differentiate her from Toralei. I then repainted her gloves a dark red to match her lips.

Now Evie only had the faintest ghost of her original face paint left and I couldn't scrub it off so I painted over it. That's why she has a smile, ordinarily I would have given her a more neutral expression but the original paint forced my hand. 

But then I repainted CJ who also needed a new face and after finishing her all the thick uneven lines on Evie annoyed me more so I wiped her eyes and tried again. 

I'm insanely proud of how CJ came out.Evie's eyes aren't even, bah. But oh well. It's good enough I suppose. 

I had fun with these two. It's not a head i'd usually care to repaint but it was an interesting experiment. I think the Descendant dolls generally use the same face mold, or it's very very similar because Evie and CJ have the same nose and everything. I dunno. 

A shame Evie's hair is so frizzy. I might take my straighteners to it later, see if they help tame it.

Now Clawdeen needed a lot more work. Her hair was a wreck but I learned when I washed it that it was a lot longer than I thought it was. It had been cut into a bob and the whole front section cut to stubble. I stabbed those bits back into her head and rooted over the top in black. Originally she would have had black and neon green streaks at the front but I figured just black would work fine. It's actually not all black because I was working in a dim room and had two "near black" nylons in front of me. The back section where I started is it turns out, a very very dark brown, while the front is pure black. Whoops? It actually works pretty well though so let's pretend it was intentional. 

The purple part of her hair was actually cut pretty decently, so I didn't need to do much to neaten it up beyond just combing it out. 

Her eyes needed the shape repainted, the lashes reinstated and all the makeup redone. I went with the original green but a shade darker because there was a tiny remnant of it at the inner edge of both eyes. 

She got purple lips and freckles too, because why not?

She got dressed in an assortment of bits. Scarah's shorts, Apple's fishnets (they're a little big in the leg lol), Sirena's top, her original boots, a belt from one of her other dolls and a Bratz jacket (I think it's bratz anyway, i'm not actually sure). I also added a ribbon around her neck and another as a headband.

It's hard to believe she's the same mangled looking sticky doll.

 

Draculocker Draculaura was the first doll in the bundle I fixed the face paint of. She was missing quite a lot of her face including both eyebrows, her whole upper lip and half of both of her eyes (as in, only the inner halves were left. What?) and even her little heart was gone. I'm not sure what the original owner was trying to do there, because at least with Toralei and Clawdeen it was clear they were trying to retain the original eyes but remove everything else. With Drac here, i'm not really sure. Maybe they slipped and removed too much of the eyes and gave up? Maybe she was the first attempt.

She'd also lost a hand. 

I gave her Create a Monster hands, filled in the missing paint, gave her whole new eyebrows and dressed her. I love this look on her, she's channeling Sandy from Grease lol. 

Her hair is a bit annoying because I think it's kanekallon, or however you spell it. It's very light, like cotton wool and very flyaway which means it doesn't like to sit nicely and tends to get all staticky. 

But the rest of the doll is so dang pretty I suppose I can forgive her questionable hair fiber. 

I wish i'd taken a before photo but I was too eager to fix her. She really was in quite a state.

Another of the "TLC" dolls was Scaris Frankie with incredibly sticky yellowed hair and only one arm. 

Cif treatment removed a lot of the stickiness, but the white of her hair has yellowed to a sort of blonde tone. It's very odd.

I mean, it's YELLOW right? 

It looks kinda cool with the black streaks but it's wierd that it's turned so blonde. 

One of my big issues with Scaris Frankie was the way they blended her hair, most of the dolls i've seen had the white and black streaks near even to one another which resulted in her hair just looking an ugly grey tone. This particular one has a lot more black in the front of her hair and somehow the blonde colour instead of the white helps the segments stand out better. 

Though her original style I don't like either, it looks wierd with the sides puffing out so I ended up tying it all back into this punky look which I think works nicely. 

But now there was the problem of her missing arm. She came with a werecat arm attached but it had a left hand on it, meaning she had two left hands. That bothered me so I dug through my box of random stuff and found this old create a monster ghost arm. 

Now, the Create a Monster parts aren't designed to work with the regular dolls. The pegs are a lot thicker, but that's what a dremel is for right?

I cut the very tip of the peg off as the CAM pegs are a fraction longer than the standard ones and then sanded it with the dremel til it looked about thin enough. 

It's a perfect fit. Tight and secure, it comes out with a firm tug and slides back in with a firm push. It bends and twists like it should and it even doesn't look that jarring. I think Frankie has the advantage that as she's a frankenstein monster anyway mismatched parts don't really seem as "wrong" on her you know? 

She needs a proper outfit but i'm really warming to this girl. Of course, it helps that i'm a sucker for blue lips <_< heh. 

I also ended up hanging onto a few of the dolls, even though I don't really NEED more monster high dolls. Along with the repainted and restyled ones, I kept Dead Tired Lagoona and Scaris Cleo. I used to own Scaris Cleo and I can't remember if I still do. The big purge I did several years back resulted in me selling quite a few of my Monster High dolls and I still find myself thinking "wait.. do I still have that one or not?" and then getting confused and feeling much regret. 

Pro tip, don't sell things in a fit of rage/depression. You WILL make poor decisions and you WILL regret it. 

My poor battered old Dead Tired Draculaura also finally got a replacement hand from Draculocker Drac heh. So it worked out pretty good there. 

All in all I ended up with about 9 dolls i'm hanging onto. Which isn't bad going. 

I've really enjoyed repainting and customising them and I still have a few left to work on. I love big bundles, they really are just such a lot of fun. I love the sorting, the redressing and restyling, the whole process of getting the dolls back to their former glory as well as the treasure hunt aspect of not knowing exactly what you're getting. The problem is, these big bundles are ADDICTIVE and take up a lot of space in my very small house. 

Oops? 

Also, I now have to try to pry the school playset away from middle kiddo who's claimed it as his own lol. Or you know, just find somewhere to store it so he can play with it. 

 Another thing this big bundle has reminded me of is how special Monster High really was and how much nostelgia I have for it. I'd only been collecting dolls for about a year when MH hit stores and it was my first big toy line as a collector. But above all that, looking at the dolls and handling them again reminds me how beautiful so many of them are and how detailed they were. 

we really were spoiled weren't we? 

Such a shame Mattel seems determined to self sabotage. MH was cursed with the glue head nonsense and the even older ones have weak hips and knees. So many dolls are broken or yellowed or sticky and disgusting thanks to Mattel's short sighted bullshit and it sucks, it really sucks. I have 50-60 year old dolls that have held up better than a lot of modern ones after only 10 years and it honestly pisses me off because it's such a waste. Toys don't biodegrade, but they DO have many many more years of life in them if they're made well. I still have some of the toys from my own childhood (not many mind, as i've mentioned previously.) and my own children like to play with them. Selling on these monster high dolls as I fix them up has also shown me that kids are still playing with them. A bunch went to a little girl who lives locally, another pair today to a teenager who was just getting into collecting and the ones I posted yesterday to another child.

For all toy companies like Mattel like to claim "kids don't play with dolls anymore", I simply do not see evidence of that. Nor do I see any evidence that older toy lines suddenly lose all appeal and never find a living home ever again. Kids are still playing with ten year old monster high dolls ffs. Hell, the local nursery has 1980s my little ponies the kids still play with! The speech therapist for my kids has an Amanda Jane doll she still uses for therapy. A doll she's had in her kit since the 1970s. 

Make a toy well and it'll get generations of use. And that's how it should be as far as i'm concerned. Because the only other option is landfill. And so much stuff goes to landfill due to companies being shortsighted and not making their products to last. I suppose their rationale is that if they make things that break or go gross and sticky, it means you have to buy NEW toys, capitalism at its finest there. 

But Monster High was a really special line, it'll always hold a special place for me. The passion that went into these designs is evident, it's just a pity Mattel's manufacturing screwed so many of them over with poor decisions like unstable glue. 

I'm hopeful for the threeboot that's due out in October, but i'm also wary because I know Mattel have a real tendency to shoot themselves in the foot with stupid decisions. Already i'm wary of their case assortment thing and multiple store exclusives making it very difficult to find all the dolls at retail and seeing Clawdeen's hair straight out of the box makes me itch in discomfort. Like.. YIKES. 

We'll see. 

in the meantime, I need to go back to treating Jinafire's sticky scalp. *SIGH* this isn't the fun part.