Monster High 13 Wishes "Haunt the Casbah" Clawdeen Wolf

After a long dry spell in doll releases, there were a ton of new Monster High dolls at Toys R Us last week.  Many of the 13 Wishes dolls were in stock, as were the Ghoulia/Cleo and Heath/Abbey two-pack sets.  My first instinct was to grab 13 Wishes Lagoona (because of her bright yellow hair, and because she comes with Neptuna in a purse-bowl) and Twyla (because she's a new character with the shorter body mold).  But then I put Twyla back because I don't really think she's very interesting and I'm not wild about her face.  I grabbed Ghoulia's two-pack because of that periodic table dress.  Eeep!  That is the best piece of Monster High clothing I have ever seen.  I eventually put that set back, too, though, because while the dress is amazing, the dolls don't look that different from dolls I already have.  The Heath and Abbey set was tempting because Heath is a new character (and a guy) and I don't have an Abbey doll out of her box yet, but Heath looks a little plain to me.  He doesn't have a lot of detail in his face or hair.  The deluxe 13 Wishes characters (Draculara, Frankie and Clawdeen) appeared to be the most interesting of all the new dolls, and among these three beauties, I find Clawdeen to be the prettiest.  I think Clawdeen is simply my favorite character--she always stands out to me with her dark skin and elegantly threatening claws.

13 Wishes Clawdeen Wolf, $29.99 at Toys R Us.

13 Wishes is a Monster High movie that is slated to come out towards the end of 2013.  From what I understand, the movie centers around Howleen Wolf and her 13 genie-granted wishes...all of which come with a catch.  The genie is another new character, Gigi Grant.  The Gigi character makes a nice doll, with a face that reminds me of Lagoona's sweet, freckled appearance.

Clawdeen comes in a standard Monster High cardboard window box.  The box advertises the DVD, even though it hasn't been released yet.  It's confusing to me that the dolls would come out so far in advance of the movie.

Clawdeen is accompanied by a few plastic accessories, but I still think that the $30 price tag is pushing a serious boundary--at least for me.  I do not want to get in the habit of spending $30 on a standard Monster High doll.  Interestingly, the sets with two complete dolls also cost $30, and this seems like a much better deal.

This set includes a standard Monster High skull brush and a plastic purple lantern.  It also includes a plastic stand that is hard to see while everything is still in the box.

The back of the box has a cartoon of Clawdeen, Frankie and Draculaura.  I like the look of the dolls much more than I like the style of the cartoon.

There is also a synopsis of the movie plot, which is nice.  I wonder if they'd be selling more Howleen dolls if everyone had already seen the movie?

Here's the loot:

It always looks like less out of the box.

One exciting new thing about this set is that the style of the stand has been changed.  Thank goodness.  Clawdeen comes with a saddle stand:

The stand looks great.  It has a black plastic skull-shaped base and a clear plastic saddle support:

The stand also supports the doll really, really well:

The stand is a huge improvement.  Those old stands didn't hold the dolls without messing up their clothes, and my stands kept breaking on me.  I love this new stand.

The stand also works nicely as a support to prop up the collector's card that comes with this doll.  I don't care for the card because I don't like how Clawdeen looks in this style of drawing:

She looks more like a Mystixx Vampire.

The other characters look slightly better:

I love Frankie's dress.

The lantern is the featured accessory.  The first thing I noticed about this piece is that it has a very strong chemical smell.  About a week after taking this lantern out of the box, the smell is still strong enough to be unpleasant from about a foot away.

The smell is unfortunate, because the lantern is a nice-looking accessory.  It is made out of slightly flexible translucent purple vinyl.  It has very elaborate molded details:

It looks kinda like a really fancy fire hydrant.

The lid of the lantern opens with a very simple hinge to reveal a small compartment that is about an inch and a half deep with the diameter of a penny:

The lid doesn't fit perfectly on my lantern and the legs are uneven, giving the whole thing a crooked fire hydrant appearance:

Meh.

This version of Clawdeen was appealing to me because of her carmel-blonde hair.  The glittery streaks in her hair make me nervous (those can get really tangled) but I love the color.  The shade of her hair matches her beautiful skin tone and also resembles the gold color of her lips.  The purple streaks in her hair break up the monochromatic palette, but I actually think I'd like the doll even better if she didn't have any highlights in her hair whatsoever.  

The fangs get a little lost in all of the gold and glitter.

She has very glitzy eye makeup with purple eyeliner and a thick band of glittery lilac eyeshadow.  

Her eyes are similar in color to her skin and her hair...with a slight peachy orange tinge at the bottom that looks great:

My doll has a small defect in the outer corner of her eyeball.  It's very hard to see this flaw in real life.

Clawdeen's hair is long, and has a fairly simple style.  Her hair looks deceptively elaborate because of all of the glittery gold things.  In addition to glitter strands mixed into her rooted hair, she has a gold plastic headdress that hangs down one side of her face, and a large gold earring in one ear:

 

While the texture of the hair is soft, it looks tangled and matted right out of the box:

There's one strand of hair on the left side of her face that has been twisted and tied with transparent rubber bands:

 Here's the gold plastic earring up close:

It has a moon dangling in the middle:

Clawdeen's outfit looks fancy, but it's basically a mini dress with an overskirt...and lots of gold plastic accessories:

The dress is sleeveless, but there are large gold plastic bracelets on both arms:

The molded pattern on these arms bands reminds me of a zipper, although I'm not sure that's what it's supposed to be.

The overskirt is hard to appreciate right away because it is plastic-tied together in back:

With the plastic ties removed, the skirt hangs nicely.

The overskirt is made of three separate layers of fabric:

The outer layer is a sheer purple organza with a shiny gold applied pattern.  This pattern looks even more like a zipper than the arm band pattern does--especially at the top where there's a pretty obvious zipper pull and zipper teeth:

The second layer is an semi-opaque rayon-type smooth, drapey fabric with a vaguely leopard spot print:

The bottom layer is thin gold and black lace with a bubbly pattern that reminds me of magnified xylem and phloem from a tree.  I'm pretty sure that's not the look Mattel was going for...but it's cool:

The overskirt is held on with a velcro gold waistband that is supposed to be covered by a gold plastic belt:

Here's the plastic belt up close:

The overskirt is extraordinarily simple in its construction--none of the edges are hemmed or finished in any way, but it has an interesting assortment of colors, textures, and transparencies and I think it will double nicely as a cape:

Under the long skirt, Clawdeen is wearing a very short black stretchy mini dress with metallic gold moons all over it:

It's obscenely short...but I like it anyway.

The moon pattern is very symmetric, but my dress tends to pull off to the side for a more abstract asymmetric look:

The dress has a netted halter top:

The shoes are like high-heeled jelly sandals.  They're fun, but they don't have any really amazing design elements:

These shoes are also pretty hard to get on and off.

I like the translucent purple heel and the gold soles that make them look like stilettos.  That's a nice touch.

It was hard to evaluate Clawdeen's hair with that large headdress still in place, so I removed it.  It comes off easily--there's just a single clear rubber band holding it down.

Here's the headdress:

It has a zipper (?) pattern that matches the arm bands and the print on the outer layer of the overskirt:

The hair was pretty messy to begin with, and the headdress removal left behind a few more tangles and snarls:

The tinsel hair highlights are rooted at the very top of the head only.  It would be pretty easy to just pull most of those out:

The hair is thickly rooted, and the only strange thing is that the scalp is painted a color that is much darker than both the hair and Clawdeen's primary skin color.

The hair is surprisingly easy to brush out.  The tangles release easily, and the glittery tinsel strands don't interfere with brushing at all.  

The texture of the hair is ok, but not amazing.  It feels a lot like the Princess & Me Rapunzel doll's hair.  It's very soft and fluffy, but it doesn't have any silky drape or hang to it, and so it can look bulky and shapeless.

This girl has a lot of hair:

The halter top of the dress was tied in back with a double knot.  It took me several minutes to losen this tiny knot with my fingernails:

The armbands can be removed by taking off the doll's hands.  Clawdeen has great hands.  Look at those fingernails!

This Clawdeen has the standard Monster High body with ball jointed hips.  Here she is next to my first wave Clawdeen--still my favorite version of this character:

There's a little more orange in the new doll's skin tone.

The only real differences between these two are the hip articulation, the skin tone, and the fact that the new doll can't look down.  Her head is always tilted up just a bit and it can't be made to stay in a downward-facing position.  This is frustrating.

Ooh!  Nice earrings up there!

Flaws aside, I think that 13 Wishes Clawdeen is easily my second favorite Clawdeen doll.  These two dolls go nicely together with their contrasting hair and lips.  This picture really makes me want to get rid of the purple in the new Clawdeen's hair, though:

With her clothes off, you can see how nicely the new stand fits Clawdeen:

Back in her original clothes, Clawdeen tried out the overskirt as a cape.  I really like this look--capes are so much fun:

I also thought maybe the skirt could work as some kind of veil, but that wasn't such a great idea.

Clawdeen doesn't pose very naturally with her lamp.  Because Monster High dolls don't kneel very well, she can't kneel next to it and peer inside without looking like she's praying at the porcelain altar:

Urg...too many raw steaks...

The lantern can make a decent little chair, I guess, but not a very comfortable one:

We all know about canines and fire hydrants...

Or, Clawdeen can sit next to the lamp on a couch...but this just looks like an awkward first date:

It's not you...really.  It's me.  

If the lamp is sitting on a table, however, then Clawdeen can work her magic:

I really like the twist in Clawdeen's hair, but I wanted to take it down to see if I could hide some of the purple color.

The twist comes out easily and leaves behind some nice waves in the hair around Clawdeen's face:

Here she is with the purple showing and with the purple hidden:

I like both, but slightly prefer the all-gold look.

I can hide the purple even better with a simple ponytail:

Here are a few more pictures to show off what I consider to be this Clawdeen's best features: her excellent saddle stand, her dramatic skirt that doubles as a cape, and her voluminous sparkly golden hair:

 

Bottom line?  I love this doll's coloring.  She has a sun-kissed glow that makes her radiant.  I also love the new stand.  It has a very simple design, and yet it offers a wonderful improvement over the earlier stands.  I didn't realize how bad the last stand design was until I played with this new one.  

I like the clothes on this doll, but here is where my enthusiasm looses a little momentum.  The tight black and gold dress is great and the three-layer skirt is dramatic and works really well as a cape.  No complaints there.  I'm ambivalent about the copious gold plastic accessories--they go nicely with the doll's golden hair, but they are right on the verge of being too tacky.  I would almost always prefer a bit more subtlety.  The shoes are fairly cute, but they are irritatingly hard to get on and off.  This ensemble is fine overall, it's just that I don't feel that it is special or elaborate enough to warrant the $10 price hike.

If the clothes don't validate the $30 price tag, then it falls on the accessories to be really great.  I don't feel that this is the case.  The awesome stand aside, this doll really just comes with a lantern and a brush.  The brush is dismissible.  The lantern looks great with all of its molded decorations, and I like that it can be opened and closed, but the strong smell and rickety balance take away from its appeal.  It's nowhere near as neat as Lagoona's fish bowl purse.

Having said all of that, I really do like this doll.  I just feel like if Mattel wants to jump up into the $30 price range with this line, they should stick with the two doll sets.  Those seem like a good bargain.  For a single doll, I wish they'd do something a bit more unique to warrant the price.  13 Wishes Clawdeen is a great doll and she has beautiful coloring and nice clothes...but so do most of the $20 Monster High dolls.  In the end, my 1 Wish is that I'd left Toys R Us with a $20 Lagoona and an extra $10 in my pocket.