Monster High "Ghouls Rule" Clawdeen Wolf

I was tempted to pre-order all of the Ghouls Rule Monster High dolls from Entertainment Earth a few months ago, but the case price was overwhelming (I think it was $180...maybe more).  I decided to wait and look at all of them in person and just choose my favorite.  I was lucky to find all of the dolls at Toys R Us about two weeks ago.  This is a fun, elaborate group of dolls and they make an excellent (and tempting) first impression.  At the store, I grabbed all of them greedily into my arms and lurched towards the checkout.  As I got to the front of the store, though, my head cleared and I did some quick mental math: $26.99 times four equals...ugh.  Too much.  I sulked back to the shelves and put them all neatly in a row and began making my agonizing decision.

I won't bore you with all of the details of how I made my choice, but let's just say it took a while.  Like maybe forty five minutes.  The tenth time I circled the Monster High section, I think the TRU employees were getting ready to call security.  The problem was, my favorite dolls from the pictures (Frankie and Draculaura) were not the same as my favorites in real life.  In the store, Clawdeen struck me as the most unique (and there was only one of her), Draculaura didn't dazzle like I thought she would (there were ten of her), and Cleo was about twice as beautiful as her pictures.  Cleo was putting some kind of Egyptian spell on me from inside her box or something, because I found her very, very hard to leave behind.  The saving grace was that all of the Cleos had some minor defect or another, which gave me an excuse to abandon them.  In the end, I liked the dolls in this order: Clawdeen (awesome, unique hair), Frankie (I have a soft spot for Frankie), Cleo (putting a spell on me...), Draculaura (amazing wings!), but I would have been happy with any of them.  Here's Clawdeen:

Ghouls Rule Clawdeen Wolf.

She's very different from all of the other Monster High dolls.  Her 1970s jumpsuit reminds me of ABBA (and I like ABBA), but in the promo pictures, this outfit was a deal breaker for me.  I don't particularly like anything about 1970s fashions.  Too many embarrassing family pictures, if you must know.  But Clawdeen's face paint, funky hair and mask look fantastic:

Take a Chance on Me.

This version of Clawdeen does not look fantastic:

Mama Mia.

I like the doll so much better than that picture.  That picture also made me think that the doll came with a DVD.  This helped explain the $27 price tag, and got me a little bit interested in sitting down and watching the show.  The doll does not, in fact, come with a DVD.  She's just really expensive.

Here's the back of the box:

If this is what the Monster High girls look like on the DVD, maybe I don't want it after all.  

Actually, some of them look ok, I guess, but check out Frankie:

Dum Dum Diddle.

I'm better off looking at the doll, because she is great.  The theme of this collection is based on the plot of the DVD movie.  Instead of staying indoors on Halloween, the girls decide to, "take back this haunting holiday in fang-tastic, over-the-top costumes."  

Clawdeen comes with two strange accessories that probably make a lot of sense if you watch the DVD.  She's got a coffin filled with something green and a purple trick-or-treat bucket.  She also comes with a black stand and a hair brush.

I love Monster High boxes more and more every day.  They are so easy to manage compared to so many of the other play doll boxes.  The outer cardboard window box comes right off with no cutting or ripping--you just have to release some tabs.  The tabs aren't even taped in place.  Once you get the insert out, there are just a few stretchy rubber bands to cut, and then about five plastic ties holding the doll in place.  All of the cardboard can be very easily separated and recycled.  The only thing that worried me was this small grease (glue?) spot at the back of Clawdeen's head.  Maybe from the hair product?

I'll have to be careful where I set this doll.

Within moments, I had all of the items removed from the box:

Stand, brush, coffin, bucket, card, doll.

The collector's card has the freaky pictures from the box duplicated so that you can save them.  Um...no, thanks.

Here's the little purple bucket:

And the coffin with green stuff.  I have no idea what the green stuff is supposed to be:

Is it something like spider guts and centipedes?  I dunno...maybe it's candy?  Bug candy?

Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!

The coffin closes, but the oozing bug gut candy prevents it from snapping all of the way shut:

Here's Clawdeen with her mask still tied to her hand:

The hair doesn't look quite like the promotional pictures....

The best things about this doll are her hair and her eye makeup.  She has this long, curly purple mohawk with flocked "shaved" hair on the sides of her head.  The flocked hair has a print that looks  like leopard spots.  Each of her wolf ears has two green plastic earrings that look like cogs or gears.

She has mismatched green eye shadow and a gold glitter slash running across the bridge of her nose.

She's groovy-fierce.

The pattern around her right eye kind of matches the pattern in her shaved hair:

Is it supposed to be phases of the moon?

Her left eye just has normal (heavy) eye makeup in two shades of green:

The flocked hair is a gutsy move.  That could have been a complete disaster, but I think it looks good. I have no idea how long it will last with normal play, though.  Could be a problem.  I think she'd also look great if she were bald on the sides of her head.  If my doll starts to shed, I'll probably just pull off the flocked hair completely.

Hmm.  On closer inspection, maybe I won't pull off the flocked hair after all.  Look at her hairline--there's a cut line in her scalp all around her flocked hair.  Did they cut the flocking right up against the head?  Are those score marks to direct the placement of the short hair?  It looks ok, but she'd be much more customizable without it:

There's a small flaw in my doll's left ear.  The earring holes were not cut correctly:

It's as if the ear was marked in one place for the earrings, and then the actual hole was placed slightly off target:

It's sloppy, but you have to look pretty close to notice.  Not a big deal.

Clawdeen's mohawk is braided at the top and then secured in a small ponytail that runs down her back:

The braid is a bit lopsided and will have to come out:

The rooted hair is set in rows and looks a bit thin under the ponytail:

I detached the mask from Clawdeen's hand so that I could start posing her, but the rubber bands that held the mask in place deformed her right hand:

I understand hot water will fix this....I hope so.

It might just relax over time, too.

The mask looks like a wolf's forehead and nose, with gold plastic chains and scythes (?) that cascade down one side and serve as a decorative handle. 

There's a hand grip on the bottom of the handle, which suggests that Clawdeen can hold this mask up by herself.

Maybe Clawdeen can hold the mask using that handle, but the only way I could get it to work was by balancing the bottom of the handle on the palm of Clawdeen's hand like this:

Clawdeen's outfit consists of a stretch purple print jumpsuit with black fur sleeves, gold shoes, a gold plastic breast plate, a gold plastic belt, fur leg warmers, and two gold plastic ornaments that sit just above the leg warmers:

The gold plastic breast plate sits very high on Clawdeen's chest and tends to ride up and bulge out when she's posing her arms:

The purple fabric has shiny gold printed zipper details against a background that looks like black lace with green blobs on it.  Maybe the green blobs are the same concoction that's inside the coffin accessory?

Here's a closeup of the ornaments that sit at the top of the fur leg warmers.  They're like calf bracelets:

The breast plate has four straps with small peg-and-hole fasteners.  These attachments make the removal of this piece really simple.

 Here the jumpsuit without the breast plate and the belt:

Underneath the giant fur leg warmers, Clawdeen is hiding some pretty great shoes:

They are gold plastic to match the rest of the outfit and have molded buckle details and spikes along the front and the heel:

Here are the legs of the jumpsuit with the fur removed:

The shoes look very nice on their own:

Funky Feet.

The outfit comes off pretty easily.  The sleeves can slip over Clawdeen's complete arm (no detached limbs are necessary...) but the fur leggings are a bit trickier.  These have to come off after the shoes, and the plastic calf bracelets have to wait and slide off after the leg warmers.  I still haven't figured out how to get the leg warmers back on.  They're narrow at the top and so it's a tight fit to get them over the legs of the jumpsuit.  It's not easy and I'm not patient.

The black fur on this outfit sheds quite a lot.  It's like having another dog in the house.

Here's Clawdeen with everything removed:

The gloves are great.  I love the bright green color and how it contrasts with the purple of her hair and her jumpsuit. The fingers aren't painted perfectly, but it's very hard to notice

You can see the paint imperfections better against the black fur:

I undid the lopsided braid in Clawdeen's hair and brushed her hair out with the brush that was included.  The fibers of the hair are very soft at the top, but get frizzy at the bottom.  It's possible to brush the full length of the hair without hitting too many snarls.  There's quite a lot of hair when you get it all fluffed up!  It's like a cloud:

The hair is rooted in a straight line across Clawdeen's forehead, so it falls back nicely between her ears.

The kinks from the braid and the widely-spaced rows at the back of her head make the hair fall a little less gracefully from side to side:

The bright color of her hair, her elaborate makeup, the green in her gloves and earrings, and her rich skin tone combine to make her a visual treat...even with no clothes!

I Am Just a Girl.

Here she is back in her outfit for some more posing.  I never was able to get those fur leg things back on.

The combination of the puffy wing-like fur sleeves and the plume of purple hair offer what seems like endless posing potential.  I kept wanting to try new ways of getting those explosions of contrasting color to frame her exotic face. 

The breast plate and the fur sleeves inhibit the arm movement of this doll.  I had a hard time moving the arms, and I even pulled one off a few times when trying for some more dramatic positions...

Dancing Queen.

You can probably tell by the zillions of pictures that I really like this doll.  It is effortless and entertaining to photograph her.  Every time I think maybe I've seen too many Monster High dolls, and that they must have lost their magic by now, these sly ghouls prove to me all over again how inspiring and captivating they can be.  I appreciate the successful execution of a creative vision in this doll, and so her little flaws don't bother me at all.

As the price creeps up, though, I have to ask myself--are these dolls worth $30?  For thirty bucks, should we tolerate the little problems that crop up again and again in the Monster High line?  The poorly aligned eyes or sloppily pierced ears?  The loose joints and the frizzy hair?  The marked faces and the bent hands?  Probably not.  But if Mattel keeps rolling out dolls like this that feel new and different and are so much fun, I'll keep turning a half-blind eye to the imperfections.  I paid my $26.99 and I'm happy that I did.  In fact, if given a chance to pay it again for another one of these fascinating creatures, all dressed up for some Halloween trouble, I'll probably take it.  Tag me a sucker and call it done.

Head Over Heels.