I know I know, it's been a while. I appologise.
I've had a huge energy lull recently which has made it difficult to do much of anything. I have boxes of dolls I need to debox, photograph and review but have had no energy to do so. Which kinda sucks.
So i'm easing back into things with a fairly straightforward review of a line i've looked at before. Or rather, a spinoff of a line i've looked at several times already.
Shadow High, the spinoff of Rainbow High and MGA's "screw you" to Mattel. I always love me some spite.
I can't remember if I mentioned this before but just in case let me explain the spite thing.
See, back in uh.. 2017 Mattel released a book version of a crossover event they had planned for Ever After High and Monster High. It was called "the legend of Shadow High". They had the name "shadow high" trademarked and everything but abandoned it a few years later.
at which point MGA, masters of "fuck you Mattel" levels of pettiness scooped it up for their Rainbow High spinoff.
As an added "screw you" they positioned the line as a rival to the relaunched Monster High, even getting their product out long before Mattel managed to.
The Monster High association is becoming clearer and clearer with each wave of Shadow High now. The original wave was all black and white and greyscale which I can't help but wonder was inspired by Mattel's "Reel Drama" Monster High dolls who are black and white with a single splash of colour and were really really badly distributed.
Mattel did a couple of black and white Frankies for g1 as well, the sdcc exclusive one and a skull shores doll.
Given MGA had already shamelessly taken a Mattel trademark and repurposed it, I would argue that them cribbing from Mattels' past work wasn't a coincidence.
But then we got the next wave of Shadow High and wouldn't you know it, they're no longer greyscale but full glorious colour. We've got one with pink skin, one with mint green skin, two with purple skin... (or is it three? I can't quite decide where Glitch falls on the whole purple spectrum lol)
And I LOVE me some fantasy toned dolls so i'm here for it.
I popped to The Entertainer to see if they had any of the new dolls in and came home with Monique. I had wanted the aqua skinned Zooey as well but she was sold out everywhere at the time. Booo.
But here's the gorgeous miss Verbena.
This second wave has ditched the second outfit in favour of a bunch of tiny plastic accessories (huh, that sounds familiar too. *eyes monster high*) which has some people quite peeved as the price point hasn't really reduced to reflect this.
I do find it disappointing because i'd rather have more clothes than miniature makeup but eh. At least the phone looks pretty neat.
The boxes are still oversized chunky things with a big plastic window showing you everything you get in the box. There's little sketch graphics of the character all over the window and the backing card which are cute, very fashion portfolio styled which plays into the whole "fashion school!" thing MGA is OBSESSED with (seriously have they ever done a school setting that wasn't a "fashion school"?)
I'm still bewildered by MGA's naming conventions here. Some of the dolls have obvious colour or style references in their names while others it feels like they picked a name out of a hat. Verbena is a plant with purple flowers so that fits, but Monique means "advisor" so... she's advisor of flowers? lol.
Maybe it's some reference to her personality in the show (which i've never watched), or just random. I dunno. I get kinda confused by the naming conventions of Rainbow/Shadow High because as I said, sometimes they feel like they're heavily inspired by the colour references (Like Jade Hunter, both shades of green) and other times they just feel utterly random (like Meena Fleur). There's no consistancy and that kinda bugs me. Like.. guys... either have a convention or don't have one. PICK ONE.
I know it's a stupid thing to bug me, but it makes my brain itch okay?
The back of the box also features an unusual choice in that unlike the usual style which would depict the whole wave together, instead they only have two characters. In this case it's Monique and Karla (Who incidentally, is named for Karl Lagerfeld of Chanel and his cat). I don't know why it's these two, are they friends? Why just two characters and not smaller images of the whole line of 6?
I dunno, it's wierd to me.
Monique's controversial accessories. We have a phone, a phone case with a snake motif, three makeup brushes, a lipstick and a powder compact with mirror.
Now I do love me mini things but makeup is not something i'm gonna get excited about. Sorry but it's not my thing. That said, I do think that for a line that focuses on fashion, the little makeup accessories do make perfect sense and are arguably more "on brand" than the random food Monster High come with.
I can picture kids play acting "getting ready" with these little pieces.
The box is thankfully pretty easy to open. Cut the top tape, slide whole backing tray out.
what's less easy is removing all the plastic ties holding the doll in place and getting the damn accessories out of their plastic bubble.
Despite not coming with any extra clothing for some inexplicable reason Monique comes with hangers anyway. To hang WHAT on MGA?
also, neither of them are the correct style of hanger for her dress anyway. The standard hanger has no notches for the straps so the dress will just slide off and you wouldn't use a skirt hanger like the bottom one for a dress. It's not wide enough anyway.
she also comes with a comb which is another "ffs" move for a doll who has unbrushable hair.
Her face is gorgeous.
Monique uses the narrow eyed sculpt that I absolutely love, exentuated by a dramatic eye wing and white under the eye to make them appear even more angled than they are.
her eyeshadow is silver and nicely understated. It adds a little sparkle without feeling overbearing like some glittery makeup can.
her lips are only a slightly darker shade to her very saturated deep purple skin. She's an incredible colour, one that unfortunatley my camera cannot quite pick out accurately. It's a very deep reddish purple that I don't think i've ever seen on a doll before. It's very striking.
She has molded baby hairs and purple eyes which ties in with her whole theme. I gripe a lot about MGA's obsession with purple and blue eyes for Rainbow High but at least here they make sense and are in keeping with the whole "purple, everything is purple" theme they were going for.
Monique's hair is microbraided and styled into two high pigtails. Some pieces are shorter than others and there's some unravelling but that's to be expected from this sort of hair. It's purple shot with blue and possibly black? (it might just be a darker purple, it's hard to tell) which adds further texture.
Here's everything that she comes with. The phone case slips onto the phone and remains in place no problem so that's nice.
her brush and hangers are, as I mentioned, pointless extra plastic that isn't useable for the doll they come with but maybe kids like extra combs, I dunno.
Her stand is glittery purple and identical to the other rainbow/shadow high stands so not overly interesting. I still find them too bulky to want to use.
The accessories are nice enough. The lipstick actually opens up which is pretty neat. The brushes are soft rubbery plastic and a little distorted as a result, I also think the big rubbery "bristles" at the end, especially on the big brush look silly and don't look like brushes.
The tiny compact closes and has a little winged? head on which I assume is a copyright skirting reference to Versace's medusa logo.
I really don't know my fashion houses though, so i'm probably missing a load of little nerdy fashion house references here.
I do have a gripe with these accessories though.
where do I put them?
there's no makeup bag to store them in and they're TINY and very easily lost. I feel like instead of yet another comb or two hangers we can't use we'd have been better served by having a little makeup bag included you know? Which would enhance play and allow you to store the tiny pieces somewhere.
Monique doesn't even come with a handbag so where she's keeping all this stuff I don't know. Poor girl doesn't even have any pockets for her phone.
I'm sure the snake motif on Monique's accessories is a reference i'm just missing.
Her little compact has a very shiny mirror in it and thematically appropriate swatches in purple and black. Both are just stickers but they're effective enough.
Sadly Monique cannot hold her little brushes or lipstick, which is another thing I think is a missed oppertunity.
she can however hold her phone, it has a little thumb notch/clip thing on it.
Monique's dress is impressive, even if it isn't to my taste. It's very very ruffly and very "petal" shaped.
the outer layer is this irridescent silver and purple material which is gathered in ruffles. Underneath there's a tighter dark purple underskirt for modesty.
It's quite an impressive piece of miniature sewing with a lot of elements and multiple different fabrics. MGA is often very good at making teensy tiny clothing feel like real human clothing and while there's some obvious conceits for the sake of being so small (the overlocked edge instead of a lace trim for example) it's still a very effective piece.
She also comes with little dark purple/blue pleather? fingerless gloves but I didn't bother taking those off. It's a pain to get them back on and as they're completely unhemmed/edges I didn't want to risk damaging them.
I'm not sure the fingerless gloves really go with the super frilly girly dress but then, what do I know about FASHION?
Her earrings are purple flowers with three petals. I thought they were Verbena which would make sense but I looked up Verbena and these don't look like those flowers at all.
Verbena flowers have four petals, each of which have a little dip in the middle. They also don't have the yellow detail or white outline.
these earrings look more like African Violets to me
Or maybe even Primroses.
but like.. super stylised and missing a petal.
Which is odd because you would think having them look like Verbana flowers would be a no brainer. Her name is Monique VERBENA, she has flower shaped earrings. Make them the flower she's named after.
But I searched and couldn't find a single example of Verbena flowers having the yellow center or the white outline. Some have white in the middle, some have variagated petals, but no yellow with white trim.
Wierd.
Her necklace features two dragon? Snake? Horned reptillian heads clasping a purple gem between their snouts. The gem looks to be clear plastic rather than painted like the gem on the belt which is interesting.
Her belt is unusual in that it has no fastener at the back, it just clips around her waist.
It's not overly interesting imo. I mean it's nice enough, but it's just an oval with a little purple gem in the middle.
Her shoes on the other hand are scary as all hell.
They have SPIKES!
the toe strap has a little purple gem which looks to actually be transparent plastic instead of painted just like the necklace. This gem is then flanked by two spiked heads which are shaped like reptillians (dragon? Snake?) with a massive "horn" on the top. Much like the horned snake on her phone case.
I don't know what that thing is supposed to be because I can't think of anyreptile that has a massive curling horn out the top of their head like that. Some sort of mythical beast? Is it a reference to a fashion house?
Whatever the case, the horns look vicious. You wouldn't want to accidentally tread on this girl's feet. YIKES.
The heel of her shoe is an unusual flanged shape as well.
The inside of the shoes say "shadow" which I thought was interesting too.
I'm pleased to report that Monique's heels are nice and easy to get on and off, unlike a lot of the older Rainbow High doll shoes which are a nightmare. Her dress also stands up well to dressing and undressing. It's very bulky though, and coupled with her belt it makes it very difficult to get her stand on as well. Her frilly shoulders also obscure her dangling earrings and get in the way.
She's an odd doll in that her draconic accessories and all the spikes, the gloves, even her hair style all screams "edge" to me. And yet her flowery earrings and frilly dress scream "super girly glam" and that forms a bit of a disconnect for me. I'm sure that dicotomy is intentional but for me it just feels disjointed. Also i'm not a big fan of frilly girliness anyway so that's probably also contributing to me not feeling this ensemble.
Unfortunately I don't have a huge amount of rainbow high clothing that's the right sort of colours (most of it's pink because MGA love their pink) so this was the best I could manage for her.
I do like how the blue tones of the skirt brings out the blue in her hair though.
I feel she'd look amazing in the Storm twins' clothing.
I also found her a bag for her makeup. Yes yes, the name is wrong but hey, at least it fits all the bits. (the compact does fit into it, I just had it sticking out to show the opening)
this little makeup bag came with a Glo Up girl and I wish the Shadow High dolls had come with something similar.
it's a simple little rubbery bag with a slit in the top to allow you to store things inside. Tiffany only came with a single little bottle of something who's lid wouldn't stay on anyway.
Now yes, it IS difficult to get the rubbery brushes out again, but at least they won't get lost so easily now.
I little fabric bag with a fastener would have been amazing. Get on it MGA!
Monique is a stunning doll though. Her skin tone is absolutely unique and I love it when we get hair variation. MGA has a sad tendency to stick with the safe "slightly wavy ankle length side parted" style so it's always refreshing when we not only get a different style but a different texture too.
now if only they'd give us some tight curls and afros. We know they can do it.
When I popped into the Entertainer they only had three of the 6 dolls in stock. Monique (2), Dia (2) and Rex (2) so I wonder if they're shipping in two case assortments. Are Karla, Reina/Glitch and Zooey in a different case?
I haven't had to think about case assortments in years.
At £30 these dolls are expensive, particularly in comparison to their similarly priced previous wave which had a whole second outfit. But they seem to be selling well regardless.
they are beautiful dolls, that's the thing. MGA are generally really good at capitalising on current trends and seem to actually pay attention to their target market rather than that market's parents (cough cough like mattel cough) which results in dolls that are generally a little more edgy, a little more current feeling and a little more mature.
Interestingly, my middle kiddo doesn't like the direction Shadow High is going in. He says he liked them when they were gray scale because it messed with his head seeing them, but the colourful ones he argues "aren't shadow coloured" which bugs him.
Me? I quite like having rainbow skinned dolls. I love colourful dolls and fantasy skin tones are my JAM.
But I would like to see MGA steer away from yet more purple. Wave 2 has THREE purple toned dolls in it, half the wave, which feels a bit lazy. Like guys... there are other colours!
I hope in later waves we get a few warmer tones as well. I'd love to see orange and red. I'd also like to see a more grassy green and a few different blues. Their only "blue" Shadow High dolls is ALSO FRICKEN PURPLE.
-_-
See?
Someone tell MGA that purple is NOT blue.
(Also yeah, I know, I didn't review Neon Shadow. Sorry.)
So, coming up in my schedule, if I have the energy, I have some collector line Monster High to debox, collector Bratz, plus random ebay purchases and so on. You know how it goes with me.
I'll try to schedule those as and when I have the spoons to do it. Taking the photos, editing them and then writing things out takes a lot out of me unfortunately, but I do love sharing my thoughts and observations.
I hope you enjoy reading them.
Take care all, and rest assured, i'm still alive. Just coming out of hibernation.
