I continue to find it strange not only the distribution of g3 monster high (some stuff never hits the UK, other stuff gets to us earlier than the US. Why?) but also the rather arbitrary choices of characters they bring in.
Catty Noir, Cupid, Heath but no Rochelle or Howleen and Mouscedes who both have g3 designs already present in the animation.
What the heck Mattel? Do they just pick names out of a hat you think?
anyway, the newest character now is Skelita which actually isn't at all surprising as she got TWO holiday dolls. One last year and another this year. And hopefully this means we'll be seeing more new characters because I have to admit, i'm getting really tired of seeing the same dolls over and over again. How many Frankie and Draculauras do we actually NEED Mattel?
so, new character is always exciting to see. How did they redesign them, what changes have they made and what features have they kept. I always find it fun.
so let's take a look at g3 Skelita who it turns out is already controversial.
First off, they've changed the boxes. They're no longer a plastic piece that is tabbed into a backing card but rather they have a plastic tab at the bottom, but the rest is glued on so they're more a blister style pack. This means they're actually a bit harder to open as you have to tear and it damages the backing and cannot be put back together.
I wonder if Mattel have done this to prevent false returns. In the US there have been repeat cases of people taking the doll out, replacing it with a different doll and returning it for a full refund.
this sort of theft isn't so easy to do with the new blister style packaging as you have to destroy the box to open it in the first place.
The back of the box shows the latest "core refresh" dolls which are what, the third wave of these we've had? Personally I really wish Mattel would start seeding in newer characters rather than just giving us these five over and over and over again.
I mean Spectra hasn't even gotten a second doll yet!
Skelita's art is fine, i'm not a huge fan of g3's art direction personally but whatever. Her bendy arm bone bothers me a bit. Poor girl's got rickets or something. But whatever. At least she doesn't look sweaty like a lot of these character images do.
I also really wish they'd stop making the Monster High logo piece plastic. Just print it on card or something so it can be easier recycled. It's just yet more plastic crap. I also still think it's a stupid design to have a hollow section of box that has nothing in it and is there just to make the box look bigger. Damnit Mattel, give us back stands. I never use stands, but at least they'd make sense with that hollow section.
Anyway, the new backing card has this brick wall effect instead of the old gradient. It's fine, if not a bit boring. The backing cards are always a bit boring but they do at least allow the doll to stand out. In fact, I think the plain gradient was better on that front because it didn't have distracting lines. You can also see how the glue on the plastic lid tore the card around the edges.
I'm not a huge fan of blister style packaging but there is a small advantage that there's no sharp plastic tab edges to cut me now.
Skelita has a nice detailed face with swirls and cobwebs and dots. I like this. Some of her g1 dolls had rather too plain faces and I always felt like if you were gonna go with a sugar skull design, you should really lean hard into it. Her eye shines are butterflies, which is also a really nice little nod to her heritage (or should that be scaritage?)
She has a pet who is named Candelita. I think he's a hairless dog, probably a Xolo but her bio doesn't specify sadly.
In fact, her bio says very little at all. The "international" versions usually are very abridged but even the US bios of the g3 dolls are rather lacking any characterization. I miss g1 with their fuller biographies and diaries. Damn I miss diaries. I loved those things.
All Skelita's bio tells me is that she's "creative" and has a design book and scissors.
that is literally all it says.
but yeah, another pet dog. How many pet dogs does g3 have now? At least this one is actually appropriate. Though I believe her g1 counterpart was supposed to have a pet butterfly. But both are featured in Mexican folklore regarding death and the underworld. So I will forgive yet another dog pet.. this time.
She also comes with a bunch of other stuff as usual. A pretty nice satchel bag, a ring binder with some art on that's very blurry UV printed and quite difficult to make out (It's a dress I THINK but it took me a while to figure that out. Initially I thought it was a fancy cake lol), a very large um... cookie? I'm not actually sure what the skull is. it might be Pan de Muertos? I mean it's big enough to look like bread but the pink frosting throws me off. Some sort of drink that looks more like ketchup and fries, a phone and a pair of butterfly shaped scissors.
I actually really wish her bio told you what these foods were. I feel like that would be a really nice way to share the culture you know? The US bio may include them, but I feel like an American audience may already recognize these things better than Europeans anyway. So it's a real pity we don't get that context.
She was actually not too awful to debox. Like the Xenomorph, her head staples weren't actually very securely fastened into her head so they fully came out when I tugged them. I approve. I hate cutting those things, i'm always scared i'll cut the hair and then you can't get them short enough and have to push them back into the head and they stab your finger and grrr. I hate them so much.
Anyway,
Skelita is a standard height doll, meaning she's the same height as Cleo, Lagoona and Clawdeen.
Her outfit is a one piece dress that's made up of multiple layers and ruffles. The fabric on the lowest ruffle really does call back to her g1 signature doll.
This is in itself I believe a reference to the crepe paper colourful cutouts used during the Day of the Dead as bunting and garlands. I believe it's called Papel Picado ("pecked paper").
Her headdress/headband is marigolds, another symbol of the Day of the Dead celebrations. One of the marigolds has a sugar skullette inside it. I'm tempted to paint it so it stands out a little more but i'm not sure if that might make the whole thing a bit too busy.
The headband is, as is typical, stapled to her head. I know it'll just fall off if I snip the plastic staples so I won't.
Her face is bright and made up of a surprising number of colours. Blue eyeshadow, grey to give the illusion of sunken eyes, orange dots, purple cobweb, red spirals and fushia? swirls too. It's certainly a far more complex and colourful design than her g1 counterpart.
Interestingly, her eyebrows have individual hairs painted making them quite detailed. They could have gotten away with "painted on" eyebrows which might have actually made a bit more sense but I don't hate them by any means.
she also has a little black shape on her nose to emulate the hollow of a skull. It's a little more complex a shape than the simple rounded triangle of her g1 dolls and I think I prefer it as it's a bit less Wizard of Oz scarecrow and more actually skull.
her lips are also painted to look a bit skeletal with very visible lines that emulate teeth. This is a feature her g1 doll had as well. They're even a similar colour.
Skelita's body is pearlescent by the way, which is pretty neat. Not very skeletony, but still cool.
Now for the controversial bit.
g3 Skelita uses the curvy "glam" body that Cleo uses. This means a cinched waist but wider hips. So while Skelita does have a molded skeleton, she also has this transparent plastic section around her middle to "flesh" out her body shape.
Some people HATE this because they think it detracts from her skeletal-ness but personally I think it's a great solution to the problem g1 Skelita always had regarding her clothing.
You see, g1 Skelita was always packaged with a little plastic insert tucked up into her clothing to fill it out. Otherwise it gapes strangely and doesn't look that good. This plastic insert is very important for her clothing to actually fit her correctly. So what Mattel have done with g3 s simply integrate this into her design rather than having it as a separate and easily lost piece.
And her legs do the same thing. There's an actual gap between the Fibula and Tibia.
Her legs are also less wavy and bowed than g1s legs, which look like that because they're so slender and both bones are merged together.
The do both have skeletitties though. Lol.
g3 also has a bust joint like the other dolls, it's partially hidden under the ribcage and designed to look like part of the spine, albeit a bit of a chunky segment lol. I also think it's cool to be able to see the joint in action, visible joints are always fascinating.
The clear plastic casing feels like you might be able to pry it off if you really really wanted to, but I didn't want to risk breaking anything.
I do find it interesting that despite doing a lot of gaps in her long bones, her pelvis is fused into one piece. This may be for structural integrity of the hip joints and to hide the pegs, i'm not sure.
Her back is a little strange in how they sculpted the scapula. I assume they're this elongated for structural reasons, but they do look a bit odd.
Still, she's a fashion doll and a monster so we can't really demand she be totally anatomically accurate can we? What details she has are pretty cool and I appreciate that they actually did this embedded skeleton rather than just giving her a pearly white solid body.
From the front the changes are less overt, but like all the g3 dolls, there's a very clear softening of the entire face.
I will say though, I do very much prefer how g3 does eyes. The dolls tend to look more focused and less wall eyed than g1 dolls do.
I also found it interesting that the two can share clothes. I admit I only ever put really stretchy g1 clothing onto g3 dolls as I found the hips too narrow, but because Skelita's outfits tend to have these quite flared skirts, that's not a problem.
Of course they can't share shoes, but it's still neat they can wear one another's clothes.
This also highlights how detailed g3's dress is. Art Class Skelita has a very pretty dress, but it's quite a simple design while g3 has all these ruffles and layers that make the whole garment substantially more fancy feeling.
The outfit is, in typical Mattel fashion, made of shiny polyester material. The vast majority of the skirt is made of that printed material that's white on the back and the entire lower hem is unhemmed. This isn't a major issue because this sort of material is designed for this, it doesn't fray, but it does lend a vibe of "cheapness" I find. Still, I don't think you could do this drippy hem any other way. But did it need a drippy hem?
The other two layers are hemmed and the sewn on ribbon belt is a nice touch that finishes the whole garment off.
Alongside this she wears a yellow necklace with a sort of filigree design of swirls and a pair of chunky heeled sandals.
These shoes feature a marigold detail on the side and inexplicably drippy heels. Why drips? Are drips and ooze typically associated with skeletons?
The front and back both feature sugar skullettes. The front one has a little spinal column included to make up the front "t bar" of the shoe which is a cool touch.
The heel skullette has another skullette as a headband along with a garland/headdress made of presumably more marigolds.
Like most (but not all, i'm looking at YOU Abbey) of the signature releases, Skelita's hair is saran. It's soft and pleasant to touch but it doesn't really want to hold even this mild curl. It's styled with two strands at the front pulled back and tied underneath the rest of the hair. It's not very obvious from the front but it does keep her hairline neat.
It's mostly black with a couple of streaks of orange and a single streak of fushia pink.
the pink appears to be a blend of colours as I can pick out the individual orange strands in it. So that's interesting. It shows Mattel is perfectly capable of blending saran to get the desired colours, so they really have no excuse at all to use poly beyond cheapness.
Her foods. Still not sure what the drink is supposed to be. That red slime is really giving ketchup to me.
I also can't work out how to get her to hold her bread, it's just too bulky.
Her Icoffin has a candle design on the back. I couldn't get a decent photo of the grainy uv print on the front but it appears to be celebrity drag queen "Skelly Vonderbone" from the animation.
The scissors are made of soft rubbery plastic and shaped like those antique sewing scissors. That is to say, butterfly shaped.
the thing is though, scissors feel like a fairly random accessory to give to a doll who has nothing to cut. If she'd come with a bolt of fabric, or a sewing machine, or even some embroidery stuff but instead she has scissors with nothing to cut and a sketchbook with no pencil/pen. It just... feels a bit disconnected you know?
The ring binder sketch book has a blurry image design for what I think is a dress and says "call frankie" at the bottom.
I do wish this printing was clearer. Both the phone and this piece had a lot of details in them but they're so washed out by the poor quality print and the pixilisation that it's hard to make any of it out.
I know stickers didn't age as well, but at least those were clear. I really really hate this UV printed shit.
Her pet is, as many of the pets, extremely top heavy so doesn't like to stand up. He topples onto his face constantly and it's really damn annoying. Like come on Mattel, weight their feet or give them bigger feet to stabilize the damn things.
He's cute enough though with a big pink mohawk and painted skull makeup with two random bones on his back.
As always, the uv printing lets things down by giving a grainy blurry sort of look. But it's not so bad here because there's no tiny details, everything is quite bold.
The final accessory is a pair of butterfly shaped sunglasses. These are cute but suffer a couple of design flaws. First, Skelita has no ears to hold the arms of the glasses. Second, her nose is so small that it can't support the bridge EITHER. As a result the glasses slide off very very easily. The only thing holding them on are the two tendrils of hair tied behind her head. Maybe that's the real reason they styled her hair like that lol.
I won't say they don't look cute on her, but yeah... they weren't that well considered. Perhaps a different accessory for the girl with no ears and next to no nose yeah?
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