Bratzillaz "Magic Night Out" Meygana

I reviewed Midnight Beach Meygana Broomstix very recently, so you might think that I'd take a break from the Bratzillaz line for a while.  The thing is, at the end of the Midnight Beach review I said, "If MGA produces another wave of dolls with normal skin and nice hair, I'd be very interested." Well.  It's almost like MGA read my mind.  I am very interested in this new doll:

New "Magic Night Out" Meygana (boxed) with original Meygana (left)
and Midnight Beach Meygana (right).

There are two new waves of Bratzillaz on the shelves--the Magic Night Out line that retails for $24.99 and a more basic group of dolls that cost $12.99.  I'll show you a basic doll later, but I want to show you the Magic Night Out Meygana first because she appears to have all of the good qualities from the first two waves mixed into one doll.  Her hair is straight (not frizzy) and yet she has the same amazing eyes and dark face paint that made the original Meygana special.  Even her outfit and accessories look good:

Meygana comes with a brush, a stand and a magic wand toy that's supposed to look like a broomstick:

The box advertises a twist and dance motion that makes me nervous.  When Spin Master tried that trick it didn't go very well.   My confidence in this gimmick isn't bolstered by the picture on the box.   Meygana look more like she's having a panic attack:

Deform my waist to see me FREAK OUT!

On the back of the box, there's a group photo of all six Magic Night Out dolls:

Six?

There is a new character named Vampelina.  Not the best name choice in the world, if you ask me.  I would have named her "Desmona" after the genus name of a vampire bat: Desmodus.  Anyway, Vampie was not in the store when I was there, but in this picture, she reminds me of Frankie Stein.

What on Earth is Vampelina's pet??  A Bunnybat?  A Dragon-mule?  A Vampirabbit?

The box is very similar to the first wave Bratzillaz boxes.

The most time consuming de-boxing steps are removing the plastic shackles around Meygana's feet and cutting all of the threads and plastic ties that hold her onto the cardboard.  As usual, the plastic ties in the back of the head gave me the most stress.

The cardboard backdrop has a pink and blue picture of a fancy sitting room or restaurant:

Here's everything that comes in the box: 

The broomstick magic wand is neat, and I guess it looks a little bit like a broomstick, although the resemblance might be more clear if the wand was brown.  The wand also looks a little bit like a $2 novelty toy.  The wand has two interchangeable fixtures, one that looks like the bristles of a broom, and another that looks like a crystal ball:

The wand shines a blue light through the fiber optic bristles:

The crystal ball attachment is slightly less impressive.  It look a bit like a plain light bulb:

The wand is taunting me a bit, I think:

Try me.  I dare you.

Meygana comes with the same broomstick brush that accompanied the first wave doll:

The stand is the same, too.  It's a nice, usable stand:

Here's Meygana on her stand:

Her face is every bit as nice as the first Meygana's face.  I just love her eyes:

A few lip paint smudges.

Given MGA's track record, my primary concern was with this doll's hair.  The fiber is much nicer than the first Meygana's frizzy mess, but it's not quite as silky smooth as the Midnight Beach Meygana's hair.  This makes me wonder why they didn't just use the same fiber they used for the Midnight Beach dolls.  Huh.    

This doll has long, bright red poker straight hair worn in a simple ponytail:

The hair attracts a lot of static.

Meygana's outfit looks like a cute layered tulle party dress worn under a royal blue coat:

The details in the coat are particularly nice.  The neckline is accented with a teal cravat and the front of the coat has criss-crossed corset style gold thread decorations:

The coat is open in front and then angles into a long tail at the back:

The problem is, the whole outfit is sewn together, and the party dress stops where the coat tail begins. There is no back to the cute little tulle skirt: 

Awkward.

Here's the dress all by itself so that you can see how it is constructed:

The skirt has two layers of glittery pale tulle draped over a shiny teal underskirt.  The underskirt isn't hemmed, but it looks like the edge is finished somehow.

The neckline of the coat/dress is very cute, although the high collar and tulle cravat seem unusually conservative for a Bratzillaz doll.  

The stitching in the back of the dress isn't great--the seam is puckered and there are some threads sticking out here and there.

The blue part of the dress is made out of a slightly stretchy fabric that makes dressing and undressing the doll very easy.  It's not a perfect outfit, but I like the style, and I prefer it to the skimpy bathing suits from the last wave.

Meygana is wearing a flexible gold and black vinyl witch hat.  This is better than the checkered hat from the Midnight Beach outfit.  

The hat's rubber strap is stitched to Meygana's hair in two places, but it is pretty easy to snip the threads and remove the hat:

The ponytail is secured with a clear rubber band.  

I really like how Meygana's red hair looks in contrast to the royal blue of her dress:

Meygana is wearing dangling plastic gold earrings.  There's nothing very special or creative about these:

The earrings are only painted gold on the outside.  The inner sides are shiny silver plastic.

The earrings left gold paint stains in Meygana's ears.  This is odd since the inner part of the earring isn't even painted.

That looks infected.

The shoes are blue high heeled pumps with ballet-style lacings in front.  These shoes are plain, but they look nice and are incredibly easy to get on and off.

Despite the worrisome "twist and dance" action, Meygana's body looks and acts just like a regular Bratzillaz body.  In fact, as I de-boxed her and started looking at her clothes and hair, I totally forgot that she was supposed to panic dance.

I'm chill.

Here she is with my other Meygana dolls.  Midnight Beach looks a little out of place... 

What?!  My glowing green body is way more special than her "dancing" feature! 

You can see how similar Magic Night Out Meygana is to the original doll.  The new Meygana's lips are a tiny bit lighter and her eyeshadow is a subtly different shade of blue.

Magic Night Out (L), Original Meygana (R).

Looking at Magic Night and Midnight Beach together, I find it difficult to remember what I saw in the Midnight Beach doll:

Magic Night Out (L), Midnight Beach (R).

The Magic Night Out doll has a nice bright red color to her hair.  You can see how orange the Midnight Beach hair is in comparison.  As I mentioned before, though, Midnight Beach Meygana's hair is softer and silkier...and less prone to static craziness.

Ok, so what about this dance action?  It is very difficult to tell that this doll has anything different about her body.  A few times when I was posing her arms, I noticed that the opposite arm would kick up a bit, but really, this doll poses almost exactly like a regular Bratzillaz.  

I think I can dance!

I had to employ YouTube to fully demonstrate the dancing action.  This is my first venture into the land of YouTube, so please forgive the terrible video quality and any technical errors.  

So, the dance action in real life doesn't really look like a panic attack.  I take it back.  It actually looks more like catfight action:

*Thank you to my husband for his expert doll wrangling*

Ok, here are some shots from Meygana's photo session.  

I really like this doll.  I feel like this is what the first wave doll should have been.  

I dressed her in the first Meygana's cool steampunk witch cheerleader outfit just for fun:

This outfit and this doll are a great combination.

I want to quickly show you the new basic Bratzillaz Meygana.  This doll has painted eyes and dramatically reduced articulation.  Making a doll like this is becoming common practice for doll companies that manufacture highly articulated dolls.  Reducing the number of joints seems to be an efficient way to lower the price.  Monster High basic dolls are fully jointed, but many lines (Liv, Winx Club, Barbie) have less articulated economy dolls.  Usually, I have no interest in these dolls, but this Meyagan came home with me:

She is part of a 5 doll series:

Where's Vampelina Trampolina?

I bought Meygana (for $12.99) because of her face.  I really like her facial screening.  Translating the appearance of the magical three-dimensional eyes of the original Bratzillaz into painted features can not have been easy.  Look at her, though:

Ok you might not trust me right away, because she doesn't photograph perfectly from every angle.  Give her a minute, though.  I think she has a great face.

She has long, bright red hair (same color as Magic Night Out and same silky texture as Midnight Beach) and a simple outfit.

She's wearing a light blue sundress with a gold wing print.  She has a navy blue tulle cape that looks a bit like a clown collar.  She's also wearing a wing-adorned headband that makes her look a bit like Wonder Woman.  Her dark blue tights are actually just her legs.  She has blue vinyl legs.

The wing theme is slightly overdone.  Just slightly.

Here's the tulle cape.  It has a cheap plastic snap fixture and the plastic wing decoration falls off really easily.

Look at her awesome wing earrings, though!

Love 'em.

The hair at the sides of Meygana's face is tied at the back of her head.  This arrangement didn't survive the de-boxing procedure very gracefully, so I decided to cut the little rubber band and release this part of her hairstyle.

The Wonder Woman headband is sewn into her hair in four places.  Even though the thread matches the color of Meygana's hair, it doesn't look very good from the sides:

I'll probably remove the headband eventually, but for now, removing the tulle cape is good enough:

She has a bit of Jessica Rabbit sultriness in her face:

Meygana's dress reminds me a little bit of pyjamas.  I like the simple style, though, and the baby blue color goes really well with her eyes:

This doll's shoes are the same mold as Magic Night Out Meygana's shoes, but they are made in a slightly lighter blue color:

The body is the same overall shape as other Bratzillaz bodies, but this doll has only 7 points of articulation.  She has internal click knee joints.

She has excellent hip, shoulder and neck mobility:

The blue legs are a little strange.

Girlfriend. Seriously?  Are you wearing tights under your panties??

She's half Na'vi.

These basic dolls share clothes perfectly with the other Bratzillaz:

The Magic Night Out doll has a slightly sweeter face, maybe because of her wider eyes and more parted lips, but the basic doll does an excellent job of capturing the essence of a Bratzillaz character:

Basic Meygana (L), Magic Night Out (R).

I really like Magic Night Out Meygana's casual appearance when she's wearing the basic wing print dress.  I left her in this dress and decided to take her ponytail down to see how that would look.

The rooting is a little thin, and the ponytail's rubber band has left some crimping, but the hair looks fine overall:

Magic Night Out Meygana in the basic Meygana's dress.

Bottom line?  Overall, the Magic Night Out Meygana is a significant improvement on all of her predecessors.  Her hair isn't perfect, but it is good.  Her outfit isn't as cute as the original Meygana's outfit, but is has style, nice color, and it is easy to work with.  The broomstick wand accessory is fine, but it is a bit of a gimmick.  Personally, I'd rather have a less expensive doll with no wand.  The dancing action is not very impressive, but what is impressive is how MGA engineered this feature without changing the basic flexibility of the doll.  Nitpicking this doll too much feels petty because MGA has fixed so may of the things that bothered me about this intriguing line. To me, Magic Night Out Meygana is the best Bratzillaz doll made to date.

The real surprise is how much I enjoy the basic Meygana doll--despite her reduced articulation and blue legs.  For $12.99, this doll delivers the personality of a Bratzillaz doll for almost half the price of her Magic Night Out shelfmates.  My only significant critique of this doll is that while I like the look of blue tights, I think perhaps skin toned legs would have been a more versatile choice.

	First Wave Meygana	Magic Night Out Meygana
Packaging	Large box, difficult to remove the doll.  Hard to recycle.	Equivalent.
Accessories	Stand, brush, broom, goggles, cape, earrings, hat, two-piece outfit.	Stand, brush, broom/wand, earrings, hat, one-piece outfit.
Articulation	12 points	12 points. Mechanical dancing action feature that doesn’t interfere with normal posing.
Price	$19.99	$24.99
Hair	Nice red color, horrible coarse, tangled fiber.	Nice red color, ever-so-slightly coarse fiber, but smooth and easy to manage.  Prone to static.
Face paint	Fantastic side-glancing inset eyes, wonderful dramatic face paint.	Fantastic side-glancing inset eyes, wonderful dramatic face paint.
Outfit	Pleated skirt and cropped top.  Simple blue cape.	Dress with attached coat.
Overall	Fun, dramatic doll with horrible hair.	Fun, dramatic doll with good hair. Price increase.