Monster High Skullector Alien xenomorph (A patreon review)

 I don't really tend to pay that much attention to the skullector monster high dolls because I generally prefer my dolls to be core franchise rather than licensed movie monsters. Now that said, some of the Skullector dolls have been very damn cool. ESPECIALLY this one which is quite something else. 

still, I intentionally didn't order her when she was available because I didn't NEED her in my life. I figured I could admire her from afar. 

But when one of my readers offered me the opportunity to actually debox one and review her, how could I say no? An up close look at one of the coolest things Mattel has ever released? Heck yeah.  

HUGE thanks to Muinn for letting me get my grubby mitts all over this girl. 

So let's just get into this shall we? 

The box is a big un, and features a big close up of the Xenomorph's profile. the image is actually embossed and shiny while the main box is matte (hence why it shows fingerprints so easily) 

this box arrived with a little smudge in one corner just above the xeno's head but I think it's just the nature of this matte finish honestly.  

The back of the box features the alien egg and tagline from the movie. It's also embossed and shiny. 

 

 

 

This outer box is two pieces which pull open like this. They aren't attached in any way to the inner box, they're just little sleeves that protect the inner box. 

 

The inner box has a very very shiny plastic lid which I had a nightmare trying to photograph so I eventually just gave up and removed it.  

  

 

 

The main box is a two piece box with an inner box making up the backing card and an outer box again just keeping everything protected. 

  

 

 

The back of this has embossed writing. I don't know how much of this is lifted straight from the movie and how much was written to ape the ship's computer interface style just for the doll release.

 

Certainly I recognize the last bit though.

"Ensure return of organism for analysis. All other considerations secondary. Crew expendable." 

 

 

The backing card is a long ship's corridor with some acid... slime... and burned details.  

 

There is a stand and certificate of authenticity behind this backing card. 

 

 And i'm a little embarrassed to admit it took me until the very end of this photo session to figure out HOW the stand actually went together. 

The thigh grabby pieces confused the heck out of me.  So you may see in some photos the stand being used in various configurations as I tried to work it out. 

 

 

Deboxing wasn't too horrible. She had plastic ties around both ankles, one arm and her waist. The skirt was tabbed in multiple sections to the card and there were 3 plastic staples in her head but they didn't seem to be very secure because I pulled lightly and they all popped out intact. I think they tabbed them into her HAIR rather than her head lol. Nice.  

 

Her helmet is sewn to her head with black cotton thread but in this particular doll one of those threads was loose. It took me a while to work out where it was coming from. 

She doesn't actually need the thread, the helmet stays on just fine without it thanks to the curved clip sections and her very very gelled hair.  

Her tail is very long and rubbery and does pose. It could pose better, it's kinda weird how it's articulated actually because you have to really force it to get it to take a different shape and the base of it doesn't seem to pose at all so it's quite difficult to get it positioned for example, raised over her head or something. It also really doesn't like to form smooth bends but rather insists upon quite angular turns which don't feel or look overly natural. The tip poses pretty well but the rest of the tail, not so much.  

I appreciate that it's got some articulation, but I kinda wish it was properly wired or something. It could have been so much more expressive. 

You can straighten her tail out quite a bit though. See how long it is? 

Pretty cool. 

The tail is in fact removable, which is good because it does get in the way trying to stand her up and take photos. 

The connector is um... unfortunately shaped. Or perhaps very appropriately shaped... I mean this IS a Geiger design we're talking about so maybe he'd approve lol.  

 

The two prongs plug into these two holes which hold it in place very securely. Unlike most Monster High tails which fall off if you even look at them, this one holds on really well because of the double prong attachment and the large rubber stopper on the end of the prongs. 

 

Her outfit is surprisingly complex. She has this foil skirt... loin cloth sort of garment which sits very low on her hips and fastens with a single thin velcro strip. The foil is iridescent blue while the rest is semi opaque black with a silver and black trim. 

The pattern features a symmetrical design that incorporates bio-mechanical shapes, chest bursters and even the derelict ship the eggs are found in. 

the moons and planets I believe are the system they've landed in. 

though i'm not sure what the Ooo symbols are.  

 

 

She also wears a matching cropped top with wide flowy sleeves. 

 

 

 

 This features facehuggers bursting from eggs on the sleeves and a shape on the chest that looks to me like some sort of bug but might just be abstract. 

 

 

 

Over the top of her shirt she wears this plastic corset piece which looks like a rib cage with huge chimney-like vents coming off of it. This is an element of the Xenomorph's design, but turned into a corset instead of being part of her body. 

 

 

It clips onto her body at the back using indents in the corset which match up with bumps on her back

 

These bumps blend into her body design well, so it's a really clever way to do it.

It looks like the little spike piece above these should be removable, it wobbles when you tug on it but I couldn't get it off. I suspect it's just a conceit of the molding process and this one bit had to be cast separate for some reason.  

 The corset piece is designed to be worn over two layers of clothing, so it's too big if you try to put it on the nude doll. The little bumps on her back don't clip in tightly enough. But when she is dressed, they clip in very very effectively. 

 

 

Her final layer is this textured pleather strappy bodysuit thing.

 

 

 

The garment is cool looking, but it feels quite fragile to me because it's made up of all these straps. I also worry about the longevity of the material. Pleather can be quite hit and miss. Some pleather ages fine, but a lot of it starts to peel and de-laminate after a few years. I like to think that being a textured pleather, this might age a bit better, but sadly only time will tell. 

 

I admit I didn't expect her to have so many layers to her outfit. I wasn't aware of this bodysuit layer so that was a nice surprise. 

The end result is an outfit that feels very simple and minimal, but is actually very detailed regardless. 

 And her shoes are facehuggers, which is really cool. 

Mattel has been accused of being over-reliant in their Skullector releases of "object heels" where they take a thing from the movie and turn it into asymmetrical heels. I'm glad they opted for a different approach here because these feel far more like the Monster High we remember. Using the long tail of the facehugger and its crab-like legs as straps while the main body serves as the front of the shoe is perfect and the rest of the shoe appears to be a sort of biomechanical skeletal sort of scaffolding with tubing. 

 The sole of the shoe is sorta... gooey beetle carapace. It's a very strange shape. But you can better see the tubes from this angle too. I'm not sure what it's meant to be, any ideas?

 

Her helmet has this amazing skeletal detail inside of it which I initially thought might be painted on but it's actually molded to the inside. 

How neat is this? Also, the fact it looks a little goopy in there due to shine only adds to how unsettling this molding is. 

Her hair is a  big ol' beehive of gelled to hell hair which fits inside the helmet. And I mean, it works.. but i'm not sure I LIKE it. For starters, it makes her head extremely top heavy but also, as she's usually going to be displayed with the helmet on, what was the point of her having all this hair? And there IS a lot of it. It's folded over itself and elastic banded into this shape but loose it would be about ankle length I imagine. I do know other people have washed her hair out and it's very very long and looks very well rooted, but as this doll doesn't belong to me, i'm not going to do that. 

 

 So.. much hair. She keeps falling over from the weight of it all! 

The mechanical elements on the side of her head are extremely cool though. This sculpt is so detailed. They really went all out with this. I also appreciate that they resisted the urge to give her ears. 

but I sort of wish that instead of being so heavily tied to the fashion doll thing by giving her rooted hair, they'd instead just given her an elongated head sculpt with an embedded skull or something. Kinda like what they did with the helmet, but make it actually her head. 

But I suppose much like her ribcage corset, it's taking elements of the xenomorph design but making it "fashion!" which you know, is kinda fun. I just don't think this beehive bullet shaped hairdo really looks very good and I don't see the point of rooted hair that has to be gelled to shit anyway. May as well just mold it you know what I mean? 

 

Anyway, let's finally look at her face. 

I find it quite interesting that they opted for a completely monochromatic colour scheme here. It works really well but it's unusual for Mattel who usually like to ram some accent colour in somewhere. 

Her eyebrows are unusual too. They aren't actually filled in, they're just outlines. 

Her eyes are large and buggy and appear to be almost solidly black under all those stars. I think they're a bit darker at the very center. Her makeup is silver, as are her lashes which are minimal and bold to stand out against her shimmery charcoal skintone. 

her lips are also black. 

She has very sharp features with a narrow nose and very high cheekbones. Her lips are pursed. 

She looks rather stern I think. Despite her very wide open eyes. 

 

 

Moving down, her body sculpt is extremely detailed with exposed musculature, tubing and goodness knows what else.  

 

She has very unique hands, which is actually a detail of the original alien that i'd never noticed. I mean to be fair, the monster spends most of the movie shrouded in darkness so such details aren't that clear, but look at these things! 

 

They're split with two fingers and a thumb on each side and they're very very creepy.  

 

 

Due to this symmetry, I don't believe she actually HAS a left and right arm, they look to be identical to one another.  

 

That little elbow spikey bit makes undressing her a bit of a pain, so i'm thankful they made taking the whole forearm off easy. These arms actually have thicker pegs than the g1 dolls so feel a lot more secure when inserted into the socket but also are much much easier to remove as well.  

 

 The peg is longer and wider with a much broader stopper. The hands are also quite a bit bigger than Monster High hands usually are. 

This is Bloodgood's arm. As you can see, the forearm is the same size, but the hand is significantly larger.  

 

I don't know if these better engineered pegs are a new thing or something Skullector has been doing for a while. I don't own any Skullector dolls so I can't check. But I do appreciate that Mattel are trying to make their dolls more robust. Much as I like g1, the dolls are VERY fragile. 

 

Moving down to her legs, again we have a load of exposed musculature and bony shapes. Her toes are clawed and let me tell you, those things are actually SHARP. She cut my thumb when I was getting her shoes back on! 

 

 

It didn't quite draw blood, but it still hurt! I have to say, i've never had a doll's pedicure injure me before. 

 

From the side you can better see all the bumps and tendril pieces. 

 

Even her heels have these tendrils which is interesting because it means they had to design her shoes to accommodate them (regular big sister shoes will fit if the back slit is low enough). It would have been significantly easier to give her regular shaped feet, but nope, the designers went for the extra detail and I appreciate that. 

 

 

And of course the incredible spine. 

 

Her skintone looks very silver in these pictures but she is, as I mentioned earlier, a slightly shimmery charcoal colour. 

 

 

Her starry eyes and narrow nose made me think of Astranova the first time I saw her face and I stand by it. She could be a relative. They have very very similar noses and of course the very wide starry eyes but that's about where the similarities stop. Astranova is obviously a much more youthful chubby faced sculpt while Xenomorph is very mature. 

 

Xeno's head isn't easy to pose, mostly due to the weight of that hair. I do wonder if perhaps she'd have more mobility and better balance if it was loose, but ho hum. 

Xenomorph uses the "big sister" body sculpt, albeit with modified joints to make them more structurally sound. But she stands a similar height to Bloodgood if you ignore her silly hairdo. 

Which of course means that Nora here can actually wear the Xenomorph's clothing. 

And her paler skintone helps to show off the details a little better. 

 

this bodysuit is very... very abbreviated. lol. 

 

 

She actually looks really gorgeous in the full outfit I think. She's giving space princess vibes. 

 

 Although, the back of the outfit is a bit um... scandalous when you have no tail. 

 

 Bonus picture for those who don't have a big sister body doll. Xeno is quite a bit taller than the standard Monster High body. 

 

 

 Back in her full outfit I also learned something new. Xeno has double jointed knees! Like Robecca Steam, her knee bends too far forward, resulting in this rather strange position. Both legs do this and it does rather add to her creepy alien-ness. A bit odd though. 

 

 

 

I put her onto her stand once more but even correctly put together, I have to say it doesn't really hold her well. The thigh grabby bits do indeed clip around her upper legs well, but the saddle piece doesn't align with her groin anyway so she's very loose and wobbly on this. It also suffers the same problem as all Monster High stands, namely, the base is far too light. This means that a top heavy doll like this girl is will topple over far far too easily even with the stand. If anything, the stand actually makes her MORE unstable because at least without it you can splay her legs to give her more balance. The thigh grabbing section forces her legs into one position, which throws her balance off. 

  

Again you can see the unnatural sharp angle her tail likes to curl into. 

 

But for these minor gripes, she is still a pretty dang spectacular doll. Her body sculpt is incredible and her outfit is really cool and surprisingly detailed. 

 

A very cool doll. I can see why she sold out so fast. But she's also set the bar quite high for Mattel's next Skullector release. A lot of their previous ones have very much felt like "human doll wearing a halloween costume" so it's always fun to see something properly monstrous (Greta Gremlin was, previously, the best Skullector imo because she was, like Xeno, not so human looking.) 

 

I would personally have liked even MORE monstery-ness, you know, a molded embedded skull head instead of the beehive for example, maybe narrower eyes, but I also have to consider that these Skullector dolls ARE supposed to still look like Monster High dolls. 

 

I love her body and I really enjoy her outfit, i'm just not totally sold on her head. But that's just me i'm sure. She's beautiful, I just can't quite get past the stupid hairdo I think.