The Continuing Weakness of Mattel

I really love the new Monster High show. Like REALLY love it. I think a lot of the characters are far better than their previous versions. I'm planning on eventually continuing my posts where I watch the episodes and write about them. I'm sorry I got away from it, as it's going to take me a while to catch up. 

Because I adore the show so much, it's very hard for me to keep seeing the dolls come out missing key details. The original Monster High was not afraid of pants. It was not afraid of shaved hair. It was certainly not afraid of short hair. The new doll designers or their controlling overlords are and it's incredibly disappointing to see that they've lost their integrity when it comes to giving us dolls that are more outside the box of the stereotypical "this is what little girls want." 

I've gone on about Toralei before but seeing the designs for the twins' dolls has me finally writing a post showing what we should have gotten. 

Here is Frankie's signature doll. 

On the show, they wear yellow shoes. 

Seriously, Mattel? We're afraid of yellow now? One of Frankie's frequently used accent colors in G1? 

More importantly, show Frankie has a partially shaved hairstyle. 

The Ghoul Spirit doll is the only nod to this and compared to what they could do with Venus in G1, it's simply not good enough. 

Frankie deserves this hair. And those shoes. 

While I don't have any huge complaints about Laura...

...would the hat REALLY have been that difficult to add to her signature doll? 

The only big disappointment for me with the sig Clawdeen doll is her hair. 

Mattel is fully capable of giving us hair like this. My Scene Madison had something that would have worked and she had it several times. 

Also, Clawdeen in the show needs her glasses to see, but there's been a sad trend of them being left off her dolls. Give the ghoul her glasses back!

The Cleo doll may be my favorite, but she definitely differs from show Cleo. 

Show Cleo wears PANTS. How in the hell is MH afraid of pants now? 

And she sports an awesome pair of platform sandals. They could have easily done those as a slightly more wedge style to work with the heeled feet. Or given us articulated ankles. Instead, we got the weird boots that, despite growing on me, are still an odd choice. 

Signature Lagoona is pretty good. 

But it would have been nice to see these shoes and the black net part of her shorts, as well as the yellow on her shirt. (Fear of yellow!)

 

I'm pretty sure we saw the Ghoulia doll before the show version, so her glaring inaccuracies weren't as obvious as others'. 

They couldn't be bothered to give her pigtails, much less the short pigtails the character actually has. 

Ghoulia is just as much as victim of the company's short hair fear as Toralei!

This is one of the few pics I have of Toralei with her wrong hair. 

The doll is actually very pretty with long hair. However, that isn't even remotely what the character design is. 

I wish her stripes came down more onto her face, too. And she needs the rest of her stripes as well. 

While Clawd isn't out yet, the promo pics are and he's also missing something. 

They've taken away the facial hair that I think makes him look even more awesome on the show. 

And finally, we have the werecat twins, recently revealed on the show this past Friday. 

Meowlody is on the left and Purrsephone on the right. 

I'm not going to post the picture here, as it isn't mine to share, but someone who seems to be a designer posted a sketch of all three werecats. 

Meowlody has long flowing white hair. This annoys me because, while she must have long hair to put into those buns, it just shows laziness on the part of the company when it comes to styling hair. They couldn't give Ghoulia simple pigtails. They couldn't give Meowlody her buns. 

Purrsephone got the Toralei treatment. Now her awesome bob is long hair that matches her sister's. 

I'm very disappointed in Mattel. I think they're doing a great job on the show and I hope it continues for a long time. They're taking great steps forward...with the show...and only the show. With the dolls, they've taken a million steps back behind what the original line accomplished. They're giving us less diversity than Fashionistas have, ffs. I do love the dolls for what they are. They're beautiful. I like the different bodies and the more sturdy feel. But they need to improve when it comes to matching up with their OWN show. How can you create designs that you must think are beautiful and then somehow think they're not good enough for the corresponding dolls? 

Give us short hair. 

Give us shaved hair.

Give us styled hair. 

Give us facial hair. 

Give us pants.

Give us yellow. 

Give us glasses that don't vanish. 

Give us the character designs that you created.