Sweet Nightmares: A Trio of Twylas!

I think every Monster High fan and collector finds their special favorite character to latch onto. And this is mine.

[I'm really starting to have fun with these cover photos.]

It's actually beautifully easy to find your favorite in a brand with such broad aesthetic, monstrous, and personable variety in its cast. MH may come closer to "something for everyone" than most narrative toy franchises. Do you like retro? Vintage? Preppy? Goth? Cutting edge? Eclectic? Confident? Awkward? Athletic? Nerdy? Bright? Moody? Do you like most kinds of folkloric beings?

MH has you covered!

Obviously, some characters didn't reward people as much for loving them due to having release scopes on the range of "few" to "only one doll", but there were characters with a lot of appeal.

And I feel kinda vindicated by loving this one so much.

Official G1 artwork of Twyla.

Twyla (later fully named during G1 as Twyla Boogeyman) debuted in the G1 animated special 13 Wishes. Twyla is the daughter of the Boogeyman and is a dream monster who can fade into shadows and eat nightmares. She's a bit younger than the main cast (the same age as her best friend Howleen Wolf, Clawdeen's younger sister), but she's very level-headed and often deadpan. After her debut, Twyla proved to be one of the most successful characters in the brand, enjoying several subsequent doll releases, narrative focus in future specials, and ending up as the first character from a G1 special to have doll releases in all three generations of the franchise--with pretty dang minimal changes to her look! Besides Draculaura, she may be the most directly similar to her G1 counterpart of any of the G3 dolls. Few characters from the G1 specials remained narratively relevant or got many dolls after their debut, so Twyla having lots of G1 focus plus a pretty seamless character transfer into both G2 and G3 makes her an outsized success among them.

Lucky lucky me! Because this ghoul struck a chord.

Firstly, I was simply impressed by the consistent, creative approach they took toward the fairly wide and undefined boogeyman concept. Twyla's designs style her as a moody Victorian-influenced girl with costumes that draw from antique furniture and fears of a twilit bedroom-- doorknobs, windows, beds, wooden finials and flourishes, wallpaper patterns, and bugs...with those outfits frequently cut and styled with a resemblance to pajamas! Everything Twyla wore related to something that would get up a child's fear of monsters, their house, and bedroom invasion during an anxious spooky night and I just couldn't give her monster execution enough credit. Of all the exceptional monster twists done in the franchise, Twyla was the winner to me for having a great root concept that was consistently built upon with fun new expressions and ideas for the approach. The magic of her thematic repertoire was that it felt the least static while feeling very strongly-directed and consistent, all for a pretty vague monster archetype.

I also identified a lot with her character. She was a quiet, thoughtful outsider who dressed kind of formal and mature and brought her removed perspective in to ground certain scenarios. I've felt like I lived all of those things. My fashion sense is far from breezy and trended more formal when I was younger, I love vintage antique aesthetics, particularly for houses, and I was the "not cool kid" who felt like he had a different perspective from his peers during middle and high school. With her artistic choices and personality being so exceptionally appealing to me, Twyla became my favorite MH character. I owned two dolls of her, with the amazing Freak du Chic one being my first. That one got destroyed after I stupidly messed with her wonderful curly hair (especially stupid because literally every single other copy I've ever seen of that doll had a rat's nest and I somehow found what may have been the only beautifully-curled one in the world) and her thigh split in two. After that, I got her signature doll, and now wish I had kept it.

To eBay!

Dustin, her brush, and her diary were also included but not pictured here.

That's better. Welcome back, Twyla.
The Twyla I ordered was complete with everything that initially came in her 13 Wishes doll box, and her face was fortunately well-screened.

But her hair? Ghoully geez, it's bad.

Twyla's signature hairstyle is primarily a pale minty sea-foam green with thin blue-toned purple streaks. Her overall color palette walks a fine line that almost edges into overly colorful and toylike (Avea Trotter and Jane Boolittle are good examples of this problem for me--dolls with no plausibly naturalistic colors who have themes that would have entirely benefited from them). Twyla's colors are striking and unreal, but they also feel purposeful and plausible for her monster type. Her use of purple contrasted with sea-foam green successfully conveys eerie shadows and moonbeams in a more saturated flavor that suits a young monster who haunts children. These are like the colors of night in kids' books and animation, so they fit. The purple still feels grounded, and her designs have enough black and grey to work as well.

 The hair falls past her waist in a wavy unstyled shape and features straight-cut bangs across her forehead. The bangs are cut a little too wide for my tastes, and I wish the long part of her hair framed her face closer. This head of hair isn't particularly thickly rooted and the bangs tend to be a little disorderly without some combing and boiling. 

Far from the thickest doll hair.

The hair also gets pretty straight and limp when boiled out, which doesn't suit her poorly per se, but having volume is nice given her character art and the fact that the doll was manufactured to have some. This is a doll I would discourage the owner from boil-washing.

The huge problem is that this release of Twyla is also very prone to glue leakage from her head, which was very common, if not an ultimate guarantee, for G1 MH dolls manufactured in Indonesia. The dolls’ hair from that manufacturing site would be secured in the head with a glue that was not only applied so overzealously that it practically filled the whole head of a doll and made it less compressible, but also didn’t stay solid very well at all, leading to the hair getting goopy and tacky to the touch as glue leached out of the head into the hair. I think my first copy of this Twyla release had some of this issue, with her hair feeling a little too slick and clingy to itself, but this Twyla has it much worse, with her hair being outright tacky to the touch and much less flowy. Who knows? My previous copy of signature Twyla might have gotten as bad as this one if I still had her today, since glue-leakage is a problem that worsens with time. I’m going to have to do my best to be careful with treating this hair. Goo Gone is the product people seem to swear by for degluing doll hair, so I may get that later, but as of now, I used other cleaning products and found some improvement. It's not great yet (it feels pretty dry and still a bit glued in parts), but it's not as sticky and stuck-together as it used to be. 

Here's a photo showing my older Twyla and her treated hair--
it gets a very narrow profile when boiled.

I think the waves make all the difference and I like my new one
better because of them.

Mattel had this problem with the Indonesian glue throughout G1 (the latest release I personally witnessed with the issue was Ghouls' Getaway Jinafire, who was leaking glue when I bought her pretty much new in-store), but I believe, starting with G2, the glue was no longer used in manufacturing. I believe the new dolls might have their hair singed at the roots to keep them in the head, though they may just use a stable glue. 

Twyla's skin is a pale bluish-purple skin tone that is more pronounced than Operetta's pinkish-purple tone, but lighter than Jane Boolittle's. I think Avea Trotter's skin is also subtly different from Twyla's, but Djinni "Whisp" Grant's skintone is pretty much identical.

Twyla's face is really unusual and it's honestly a bit weird. She has large eyes and slightly pursed lips as well as fairly defined cheekbones. Her eyes and lips make her look more youthful, but her cheekbones and lashes make her look distinctly mature, like an adult woman's face has been put onto her early-adolescent body.

None of this is to be taken as negative criticism, though!!! It works! Twyla having a weirdly mature face gels incredibly well with her haunting Victorian vibe. Tons of kids in antique photos have a kind of harrowed, weary look that can make them seem years older than they are, and it suits an uncanny nightmare ghoul to have a face that's hard to read and place an age on. It also generally suits a character who dresses more old-fashioned and has such a grounded outlook. It's no wonder Twyla's head sculpt was repurposed for the Skullector Grady Twins--actual ghost girls whose actors had a similar haunting hard-to-place look onscreen.  

I'm really struggling to convince myself I don't want these dolls...

Twyla’s makeup is fairly simple. She has pretty heavy mascara on her top lids, but no eyeshadow, and her lower lashes are dark purple to make them more subtle. Her lips are a pale pinkish tone that seems deliberately low-key. It's not really a nude tone for her, but it certainly isn't a bold one on her skin, either. Twyla’s brows are darker than the green in her hair, but they fall in the right zone and I can imagine brows that were as light as her hair wouldn't contrast well on her skin.

You've already seen it at the start, but the best little feature of Twyla's dolls, which I believe has never been made explicit on her dolls' packaging, is a wicked little secret that will fittingly become apparent only when you go to bed. This little boogeymonster has glow-in-the-dark eyes-- all the better to terrify you with!

Let me make this very clear: I. Love. Monster. High.

The glowing eyes last a decently long time and the visual is incredible. I love that they did this on one of their dolls--and love even more that they just never warned you about it.

Twyla had glowing eyes on all of her G1 dolls up until her final G1 appearance in the Freak du Chic line...which was also the first Twyla I got. Bummer. There's no apparent reason for the eye glow stopping, and I don't believe it was present on Twyla's three G2 dolls, either, but it did thankfully come back in G3. More on that down the page!

Twyla's earrings are the first indication of her incredible boogeyman design direction--they're shaped like silver doorknobs! 

These angle inward more flush to her head and I wish they looked a bit more dangly, but they look nice.

Something about them feels very much like earrings an old lady would wear, and I absolutely love that for Twyla. 

Twyla's top is one of my favorite MH pieces. It's an old-fashioned shirt with a rounded modest neckline and a black collar with a bow in the middle.

Her bow is completely out of whack--did it come untied at one point? It's not easy to see, so I don't have an
issue with it.

The sleeves of the shirt hang down in a flared tapered shape, though at this scale, the flare doesn't feel as flowy as it should. The pattern on the shirt is lines with bugs crawling on them, marking the first of many designs on Twyla that invoke antique wallpaper. This design in particular isn't the kind of wallpaper kids are prone to see faces in (though her purse features some of that), but the wallpaper idea sets the mood of a haunted room all the same. 

Before I owned my original 13 Wishes Twyla, I had assumed her outfit was all one piece stitched together, but it's not. Her skirt is separate. 

This piece is three tiers of black fabric patterned with mint shadow wisps, and layers of purple tulle are attached under each black tier. The piece rustles a lot due to the tulle. The skirt fits on her fine, but it exposes her belly if you don't open the skirt, pull it high up her torso, and then fasten it and pull it down so her shirt's tucked in. I also feel like the piece rotates a little too freely around her waist. A ribbon strap in the middle to make rudimentary leg-holes would help the alignment issue, but it would make it a lot harder to fasten her skirt over her top. 

Here's Twyla's shirt tucked in properly:

I honestly don't know if it was really worth making Twyla's outfit two pieces at all, actually. It'd be a much tidier outfit to use if it was all one piece. 

Over her waist, Twyla wears a mint belt with a Skullette door knocker design on the front. 

This piece attaches really weirdly, meeting at a V where the two ends connect at the back--and that V 

points upward when the Skullette is facing right-side up.  

It seems like this might be warping rather than a deliberate effect. I think I recall my older Twyla's belt forming a V as well--but I think hers pointed downward! 

The piece is a fairly stiff plastic, and it can be a little uncomfortable on the fingers to undo the belt. Nice piece, but a little odd. 

On her left arm, Twyla has three very very simple thin band bracelets--two purple, and one black in between them. 

MH bracelets literally don't get any more basic than this.

Twyla’s bracelet on her right is mint-colored and shaped like a Skullette dreamcatcher with bug charms. (Put a pin in that.) 

This piece is bizarre to me because the charm is molded perpendicular to the wrist loop, making it lie flat against Twyla’s arm rather than being able to more realistically dangle down.

Antigravity bracelets are a lesser-known power of boogeymonsters.

If the charm was molded flat, then it would be easy to pose Twyla’s bracelet. Even more ideally would have been having a small hook and loop so the charm was a separate piece clipped in that could genuinely dangle with gravity, but at such a tiny scale, that probably wasn't feasible for the look they wanted.

I adore Twyla's shoes. They're Victorian-style pieces that have a lot of nice old-fashioned leather detail, and they stand on black platforms and heels that are carved like finials and accents of old furniture. The laces on the shoes are pretty nicely-painted for how small they are, and include bugs dangling at the ends. 

Twyla's body is the early-adolescent or "little sister" size that became one of the standard three female body types during G1. The body sculpt debuted with her friend Howleen.

Creeproduction Frankie modeling the standard teenage body sculpt
next to Twyla's little-sister sculpt.

The little-sister body is shorter of limb and a bit stockier of torso than the standard older-teen body. It still has a swayed back pose, but the body looks less mature and gives the dolls with it a shorter stature. This body type was exclusively associated with physical age, not height. There was one G1 character, Marisol Coxi, who used the taller "big-sister" body sculpt purely reflect her canonically taller height, but there were no G1 characters using the little-sister body who weren't also depicted as a bit younger than the core cast.

One unusual thing I've noticed about the vanilla G1 little-sister body is the forearm attachment. The hands and forearms pop out just like on the other MH bodies, but on these little-sister bodies, the forearm pegs seem to click into place rather than popping like the other bodies'. I don't know why this is, but I do tend to feel more confident when handling a little-sister forearm than another doll's. 

Twyla has a boogeyman body detail in that her arms and legs fade into shadows. Twyla herself can fully melt into the shadows and is more sensitive to shadowy goings-on. On most of her G1 dolls, her limb shadows were the same. 

Twyla's arm shadows are achieved with a simple spray gradient. Her hands are molded in solid grey, and her arms are purple with a thin layer of fading grey paint that's most solid toward the wrists. Any MH doll with painted-on skintone effects (either a gradient like Twyla's arms, or a translucent limb mostly painted solid to block out certain areas, like G1 Lagoona and Gil's dolls) has fairly fragile paint that can be scratched off and damaged pretty easily. 

Twyla's leg shadows are painted on in curling wisp designs. The curls cleverly use negative space at the bottom edge to elegantly end the pattern, with curls cut out of the grey color.

The shadows stop above her feet, likely so shoes won't create damaging friction on the paint. The feet could have been painted with a spray effect if they wanted them all grey, and then had solid wisps at the end of the spray painted on, but they likely wanted to not risk damage to the paint. I know the Insect Create-a-Monster doll was made with fully painted-over feet, having a spray gradient where her yellow-molded legs fade to black, but her parts pack also included shoes that slipped on more gently so the paint wasn't going to rub off. I can name a couple of pairs of unreasonably tight shoes (unfortunately within the CAM line) that I would never put on the painted Insect legs, because those shoes will absolutely damage the paint. And my sanity. On any doll they're on. They're too tight!

These leg shadows make Twyla one of very few characters with illustrative painted limb designs that encircle the whole limb. All three versions of Frankie Stein and the Skullector Frankenstein's Monster are other examples, but there are some characters like C.A. Cupid who had designs only on the front of the leg. 

Similar leg shadows were featured on fellow 13 Wishes character Whisp, the literal shadow of genie Gigi Grant. Whisp's skin tone was also similar to Twyla's, showing another example of monster types being unified by certain unique traits in MH. Vampires are pink, robots wear black and blue, and shadows are purple with grey wispy limbs.

Twyla's shadows have been played with on other doll releases, though. For Freak du Chic, Twyla only had a single small curl of shadow on each leg, her G2 Electrified doll has only one arm faded into shadow, but up to the elbow, and G2 Garden Ghouls and School Spirit Twyla had smaller curls of shadow all the way up the same arm, suggesting that Twyla can redistribute or solidify her shadowy mass at will. After G1, Twyla's arm shadows were done with solid colors and painted wisps for transition effect, not through a spray gradient. It's a good decision.

Twyla's purse is a nice piece. 

It looks like an antique pouch-shaped handbag, with a purple damask-wallpaper textured body (this is the style of wallpaper you can imagine creepy faces in) and black handle, and it has a mint Skullette dreamcatcher on the front. The purse is two pieces that open nicely on a proper hinge (it's not one piece that opens on a flimsy folded strip of plastic) and is able to hold something small. 

I appreciate that the bead clasps work like on a real bag.

I discovered in my old collection that the boogey sand bracelet piece from the Haunted doll line fit perfectly inside this bag, which was great since, in Haunted, the boogey sand comes from Twyla's house and she provides the hourglasses in the movie! Like most of it, I wish I'd kept it, but if I ever get a Getting Ghostly doll again, the boogey sand is going right in this purse.

Twyla's pet is my favorite in Monster High: Dustin, the literal dust bunny.

Dustin is so perfectly themed. He's made of lint and broken buttons from under a kid's bed in an old, scary bedroom, but he also happens to resemble a creepy, worn-out plush toy that's probably haunted by something! He's another wonderful extrapolation on the boogeyman concept. I love Dustin.

And I kept every Dustin I got.

His Freak du Chic release was mint green to match the desaturated not-so-purple palette of that Twyla doll, and he was sculpted holding cymbals to make him match the infamous Musical Jolly Chimp--a notoriously scary circus-themed kid's toy!

This Dustin is a little chubbier and stouter,
and his round button has no holes or ridge.

I also picked up, early in the old collection, a Secret Creeper Critters Dustin. This line of toys was designed for hiding and passing secret messages in mechanical and electronic large-scale figures of the MH pets.

Mattel stock photo of SCC Dustin.

I recently modified my SCC Dustin to make him a bit more realistic and cute. I sanded down his ugly brow ridge, took off his arms and repositioned them, repainted him a textured, fluffy matte grey with enough purple left visible, and I bored holes in his cheeks to add crooked wire whiskers.

Repainted SCC Dustin with an actual dust bunny.

Dustin's secret-creeping gimmick is that his head pulls up to reveal a hollow neck where you can stash a small scroll. The scroll has a little clip to hold on slips of paper.

After you have the message ready, Dustin works as a pull-string windup toy. Pulling on his fluffy tail draws out a string that winds up a hopping mechanism in his legs, and he'll jump forward until the tail is back in his rear. My modifications made Dustin too front-heavy to hop without faceplanting, but the visual is worth it to me. I'm not passing notes anywhere.

So that's signature Twyla. She's a good doll, but not without issues. I don't like the angle of her dreamcatcher bracelet, her belt falls in a weird shape, her outfit would have been better as one piece, and her hair came as the bad kind of nightmare due to the crappy glue. I still really love her, though, and I'm glad to have her back.

[UPDATE: Later, I gave Twyla a Goo Gone hair treatment, and it improved her hair texture significantly. And much later than that, I got myself a good paper backdrop to take photos with, and instantly thought of producing a fancy picture for her. 

She deserves it!]

Now I have one signature Twyla and two signature Dustins. And signature Twyla is getting my first signature Dustin, the one I kept. So what if I repainted that second Dustin? And for who, you say?

Well, Coffin Bean Twyla, of course!

Mattel stock photo of Coffin Bean Twyla.

The Coffin Bean line was a slim-box budget line of dolls without stands and offered new simple everyday looks for the characters paired with accessories representing the drinks they ordered at the Coffin Bean café. Not necessarily remarkable as a toyline theme, but some interesting dolls were in it, and most of the characters' looks felt like they offered something unique.

This release of Twy has intrigued me ever since my old collection. A few MH characters have markedly different "everyday" doll releases that play a lot more divergently with the character's palette or makeup or fashion sense. This doll was probably the most striking departure for Twyla, a character whose aesthetic is so consistent it survived two reboots largely unchanged! This doll shifts Twyla's palette heavily toward dark purple, reversing the color balance of her hair so purple is dominant, and giving her a romper with dark purple as the color of the body. I kind of hated her hairstyle and lip color, since I don't think she looks as shy, youthful, or awkward this way, but I thought the doll had potential and I wanted to see if I could restyle her to make her feel more authentically "Twyla" to me. 

The copy of Coffin Bean Twyla I chose and received is complete as a dressed doll (most listings I found on eBay were missing her belt piece for some reason) but her mug accessory of haunt cocoa is absent. The cocoa is super cute, but the stuff attached to Twyla's person is more essential to me. Her face also looked like it needed some slight cleaning. Fine by me.

In later photos, Twyla will be modeling a bootleg Ever After High stand that was included alongside a genuine EAH doll I ordered for parts in a custom project. The stand matches this Twyla's violet colors and the padlock theme works pretty nicely for an antique ghoul who dresses like scary nightmare rooms.

Note the generic typeface "Fairy Tales" text replacing what would be the
"Ever After High" logo. The lowercase "e" and "a" on the lower left section have also been
altered. I hate infringement, but I adore a solid doll stand, so I'm pretty glad to have it.

Here she is right out of the package.

I had zero intention of humoring the original rooted hairstyle of this doll for any length of time (did you see the stock photo???) but it warrants some discussion. Twyla's hair is mostly purple on top, using the same blend as her signature doll's streaks, and a blend that would later be used for Amanita Nightshade and Fierce Rockers Clawdeen. It's a pretty mix of blue, bluish purple, and reddish violet tones. There are mint streaks mostly underneath and on the sides of her part.

The parted hair is actually mostly held down out of her face with a thread, which leaves too much forehead showing and doesn't let it look as nice (well, "nice") as the stock photo.

Undoing the thread and combing out her hair did not yield gorgeous results.

Two for two on bad hair.

Twyla's hair also felt fairly tacky to me, making me concerned about glue. Uh-oh.

I set to work on Twyla immediately. I boil-washed her hair and re-combed the sections that were parted and trimmed them to form bangs more like her signature doll. This was the result of the first treatment:

The bangs point only one way, and the sides have too much volume,
 making this feel more like emo hair. I don't want that.

I did a second wash with more re-combing and I got this:

A little uneven, but much better. I trimmed the bangs more later.

The hair leaves a few bare spots on top of her head due to the re-combing not matching the rooting pattern, but it's not a huge issue. There was also no glue problem-- it seems like her hair was just clingy from its factory state.

With her hair styled this way, I could even accept her lipstick, but I decided I'd like it better with her lips dark purple. 

And then I found a new direction when I removed her lip paint. With her lips uncolored, she looked much more striking and interesting, so I decided to repaint her lips with a nude bluish tone. Her lip pout is too deep to fully remove the paint and I was bleaching her lips with my efforts to do so, so she needed a new color over them, and I like the subtle one I mixed. 

The acrylic paint doesn't look as good up-close,
but from a distance, it's perfect.

I think this Twyla is completely transformed now. She looks more youthful and wide-eyed, but also more somber, mysterious and creepy. I think the change in lip color aids the shift toward purple and makes her look more moonlit and shadowy. 

So now that we've turned this into a totally different doll head and I've satisfied myself and done this totally out of order, let's look at the rest of this release.

Twyla's outfit is a one-piece dark purple romper. 

The neck section has a mint mesh fabric and a black ribbon bow at the top, and the body of the romper is patterned with mind spiderwebs and black spiders. The webs could be standing in as dreamcatchers, but it's not overt enough for me to say they are. This costume piece feels youthful, informal, and cute, but still looks enjoyably vintage and awkward. It also resembles pajamas, like several other Twyla outfits.

The belt piece, which I was so intent on getting, is really interesting for MH. It's a thin pleather strap attached to a mint Skullette buckle, and the strap actually threads through the buckle to mimic a real belt. 

I wasn't able to thread the strap more tightly though both sides of the buckle, but I'm impressed with the way the belt works at such a small scale. It's a good choice for making a tight belt, too, since I've dealt with some pin-and-hole vinyl MH belts that were just too tight to easily fit together. I really like the belt, too, since it kind of transform's Twyla's outfit from sleepwear to day clothes.

On Twyla's right arm, she has two basic bracelets--a chunky thick band in violet, and a small beaded one in a darker mint that matches her belt buckle. 

Her New Scaremester doll also had these two bracelets on the same hand, just not in the same colors. Her Freak du Chic doll had a very similar bracelet, but hers had larger and fewer beads with scowling faces sculpted into them.

Like her bracelets, Twyla's shoes also seem to be sculpt repeats from her New Scaremester doll. 

They're a light blue color that vaguely matches the shade of the web pattern on her romper, and are platform takes on Mary Janes with wallpaper patterns on the heels. Not her greatest shoe design, but they're fine. They looked better on the Scaremester doll, where the toes were painted black more like Victorian pumps. 

I'm surprised her mug, which I don't have, wasn't the same color as the shoes. That would have been more cohesive.

Now, to build the doll up a bit from her basic standing and give her more parts.

I received an Enchanted Picnic EAH Blondie Lockes doll for parts (the same doll who came with the bootleg stand), and I noticed her bear purse would be easy to turn into a creepy teddy bear for Twyla. I wanted a piece that balanced her shoe color further, and thought that would be a good avenue.

Blondie's sweet and bland bear bag...

...repainted, spooky-style.

This purse is a little annoying since its strap is so tight it has to function like a bracelet--you need to pop the doll's hand off for them to wear it on their wrist. Still, I like the way it looks with Twyla. You'll see that soon.

The bag is just a solid hunk of vinyl, by the way. Purely decorative. 

The new Dustin from the signature copy I ordered got repainted darker to match the shift in palette for Coffin Bean Twyla.

I painted his tail unlike the other small Dustins.

So here are the two G1 Twylas together!

Coffin Bean Twyla was the "different" doll for the character already, but after her restyling, man! The two Twylas look almost like two totally different people…but both look good. I think I turned Coffin Bean Twyla into a rather dramatic case of what I want in another release of a character I have--meaningful aesthetic differences that make the doll cohesive, arresting, appealing and unique from their other dolls.

Now, at last, it's time to see what G3 did to my ghoul.

Twyla's first and so far only G3 release is as the "mascot" character of the Creepover Party specialty line. It's fitting, since she's a boogeymonster, and her release thus doubles as her G3 signature doll.

[UPDATE: And now we know more about Twyla's character. In G3, she's apparently a bookaholic (again, we're very similar) and she's now portrayed as autistic, having some physical stimming behaviors and having heightened sensitivity to noise, leading to her using cobweb headphones to muffle sounds. Mattel had said they'd tackle neurodiversity in G3, but I wasn't quite expecting Twyla to be our first confirmed character, given that Ghoulia had that subtext in G1 and Frankie seemed to have some as well in G3. Representation is welcome, though, and I'm certainly fine with Twyla's direction.]

The G3 boxes are not too exciting and don't feel as edgy or unique or "monster" as G1 boxes. This started back in G2, but it's still disappointing. The box is a large plastic window over a flat backing that needs to be unfolded or torn apart to more delicately undo the fastenings of the items, but I just cut everything from the front. The end of G1 had similar box construction that wasn't made to be re-sealed, but at least their boxes had prettier, more bold and vibrant designs.

A stock photo of Amanita Nightshade's box. Look how striking and gorgeous it is
for something with the same basic construction as G3's. This box made Amanita
into my very first doll--when I hadn't even planned to get her!

The Creepover Party box art shows a comfy room with the character in question in the foreground. 

The profile sections on the G3 boxes are extremely brief and undetailed, and since there's no diaries, this is all the buyer gets to learn from the toy.

Here's everything out of Twyla's box. G3 dolls don't come with stands or diaries, much like G2. The dolls have wider shoes to let them stand more freely, but not every doll is very stable due to joint looseness or uneven shoe soles. Twyla stands fine on her own, but I'll be using a stand with her anyway.

Twyla and her extras.

I ordered a pack of these unbranded stands from Amazon. 

The stand is constructed and shaped very similarly to an MH one. The pole is taller, the clip is wider, and the base is wider and untextured. The base also has tabs on the front and back that might be for holding small namecards or labels? The clips are not made to be loose enough on the pole, making the attachment on the pole much tighter than I'd like, the bases on some of them aren't firm and flat, and G1 dolls are not held tightly by the clip at all. On G3 dolls, though, the stand is sufficient.

There were two things I noticed on Twyla once she was removed from the box.

For one, her bunny hood isn't attached for real on her in the box. It's just slid on the front, with the ribbon still tied and the parts that wrap around the side of her face squished behind the head.

The other thing I noticed is that her hair looked terrifying to deal with.

Boy, was I right.

Starting in G2, Twyla's hair color shifted more bluish than pale mint, and her purple colors became less blue. That holds true here as well. Her hair is meant to have some wavy volume, and she has a small top ponytail on the upper left side of her head, kind of like her New Scaremester doll. Her bangs are a single row of hair at the front and curled downward. They're very heavily gelled out-of box.

This hair was difficult. Combing it out was a fierce ordeal, since her hair was so snarled and tangled at the bottom, and her hair poofed out into a clingy, somewhat wiry mess. The hair fiber feels more plasticky than some other types of doll hair, and not super pleasant.

I eventually boiled and treated her hair more aggressively, and chopped off those most scraggly lower centimeters of hair because I couldn't deal with it and she had way more hair than she needed. I took out her top ponytail, too, and relaxed her bangs with the hot water.

This is the nicest Creepover Twyla's hair will ever look.

I wasn't really rewarded for my efforts, though, since the hair seems to have reverted to its poofy state and it's always everywhere all the time (the hit A24 multiverse sequel, coming to theaters soon!) So I give up. This hair fiber seems pretty much unmanageable, even after treatment. 

Three for three on bad hair...dang!

I'm not sure how to feel about Twyla's G3 face.

On the one hand, it's adorable and friendly. It looks youthful, kind, and still resembles G1 Twyla. Most of all, it resembles G1 Twyla's 2D artwork in a way the dolls never did, aided further by her hair. But the face loses something of the old Twyla's specificity and eerie mature features.

G3 looks like this...

But this is more interesting.

Creepover Twyla has more pronounced makeup, but it doesn't seem to age her much.

Twyla's eyes bring back the glow-in-the-dark feature which had been absent since her G1 Freak du Chic doll, so that's excellent.

Her glow covers the entire eye, unlike G1 Twyla, whose eyes only glowed in the white parts. I think there's something more classically cartoony-spooky about the G1 glow effect, but seeing the whole eye glowing is still really creepy. G1 Twyla's eyes seem to hold the glow for a fair amount longer.

Twyla's irises changed to blue to match the bulk of her hair back in G2, where they also had a swirled pattern echoing her shadows. The color is the same in G3, but shadow pattern is gone now. Instead, she now has eye reflections shaped like buttons. It's a cute touch, but I don't know if it works for a character who isn't themed on a creepy rag doll herself. For Dustin, sure, but Twy? I feel like she could have had a bug reflection like her Monster High Minis figurine, or perhaps a wavy shadow-wisp line similar to the lightning reflections used for G3 Frankie and the Skullector Bride of Frankenstein dolls.

I don't love the weird dashed lines in her iris. Sparkles shouldn't be staggered like that.

G3 doll ears are more pronounced and cartoonish in general, but there's another change with Twyla, as her ears have new sculpted detail!

To add to her boogeyman theme, the outer fold of her ear meets her head by fanning out into a cobweb shape. That's super creative and elegant and I really love that Twyla now has a sculpted boogeyman anatomical detail. Fantastic stuff. More like this, G3! More characters with more detail than before!

[UPDATE: I had wondered if this was meant to depict Twyla's noise-cancelling earphones rather than an anatomical detail, but I leaned toward the latter. I was much later proven right upon the emergence of photos of Twyla's second G3 doll, which includes her earphones quite explictly. They're depicted as white wireless earbuds.]

Twyla's earrings are new pieces, but they're eerily similar to her Electrified ones.

Close-up on Mattel stock photo of Electrified Twyla.

Both pairs of earrings are chunky round spiders with web patterns on their bodies. The older ones had two beads the spiders hung from, legs that weren't defined by the mold as separately, and the circular shape and web pattern were accompanied by more subtle details that made the spider shape double as the woven hoop of a dreamcatcher. The new earrings sit closer to her head with no dangling and feel a bit more cartoony and have no hint of a dreamcatcher design, instead having a carved spiderweb like a quilted cushion.

Like her G1 signature, these feel like old-lady earrings, and I like that that seems to have persisted. The earrings have an iridescent blue shimmer effect over the purple color.

But let's quickly talk about the dreamcatcher thing. G3 Twyla doesn't feature any dreamcatcher imagery at all, and those earrings tell me she's never going to, given how they recreate an older Twyla earring design while removing the dreamcatcher aspects with precision.

Why? Well, it's likely out of concern for cultural sensitivity.

The dreamcatcher is pretty widely and generically known to be a talisman from Native American cultures, but most non-Native people (including me before looking into this) don't know it specifically comes from the Ojibwe tribe. From what I found, the talisman is tied to the tribe’s belief in a protective spider-woman spirit who watched over children, and as the Ojibwe moved around and spread out and grew in population, they worried the protective spirit would be unable to reach the entire community, so they created the woven hoop to resemble a spiderweb and invoke her protection, with the hoop intended to entangle misfortune in the weaving. It later became well known and marketed as a dreamcatcher, a charm meant to catch nightmares in the web so children will sleep well. 

I can't say if it's unacceptable to portray the talisman under that newer definition, but I can certainly understand the concern that it's inappropriate to depict a dreamcatcher as an accessory and visual pattern for aesthetic value. Twyla's character design was trying to use it for resonant purposes because her domain is bad dreams, but it probably wasn't the best move to use dreamcatcher visuals so frivolously at all. I know Mattel got some backlash for their G1 Native American MH character Isi Dawndancer, who mashed together elements from multiple tribal cultures in an attempt to cover multiple tribes who held deer-woman folklore. People got upset that she was blending tribes together and felt she implied that Native culture wasn't as rich and varied as it is by homogenizing a wide sphere. After all, Isi was portrayed as "Native American" in the generic and not stated to come from any group, and Native tribes are rich and nuanced in their individual cultures and deserve to be recognized for that. A Mattel higher-up apologized for the insensitivity with Isi's design and stated that such feedback would be imparted to the MH team to help inform their future work, so maybe the complaint really was passed down and made an impact. Still, it's almost certain that Isi's character is never coming back and is probably confined to that messy doll design, because it wouldn't really be worth redeeming such a flawed concept. A new character could probably be made if they want to tackle more nuanced and less stereotyped Native representation in the future.

 

I do find it easy to trust that Mattel at their worst is still genuinely trying their best with representation, though, and they've done some really good work with diverse characters post-2016. And, yes, perhaps this lesson in respectful Native representation from Isi could be considered delayed since G2 Twyla still used dreamcatchers, but hey. G3 not using them is nice.

Does this make G1 Twyla problematic now? Honestly? I think there's billions of bigger fish to fry and more meaningful root causes to pay attention to, and Twyla's usage of the imagery seemed entirely innocently motivated by what was an extremely mass-popularized and mass-marketed understanding of the charm. I like and respect that the new Twyla no longer features the imagery, but it's not enough to damn the G1/G2 designs. And I can be critical of what I love. Her signature doll also has the imagery on pieces that are easily taken off. Her New Scaremester/Freak du Chic beaded bracelets would be an good replacement for the one signature has, but her purse can just be left off to the side or turned backward.

The Creepover Party Twyla outfit is a pretty clear comfier, more modern riff on the 13 Wishes one.

Twyla wears a baggy sleep shirt cut wide around the shoulders. The fabric feels pretty casual and cozy. The shirt is purple with printed shadow wisps, and has thick knit trim in mint, plus a black ribbon bow at the collar.

The shirt pulls down a fair bit over the skirt.

The skirt is a separate piece. It's two tiers of similar cozy fabric with similar mint trim. The tiers are black with pink webs and mint bugs as a pattern. The skirt is elasticated at the waist, not velcroed on.

On Twyla's right wrist, she has a purple iridescent bracelet of an hourglass, feeling very similar in style and angle to G1's dreamcatcher. This is a further sign her lack of the imagery was done entirely consciously.

It is not that easy to pop her hand on and off with this bracelet in the way. 

The bracelet is loosely similar to the Haunted boogey sand bracelets from G1, but the Haunted piece was more dangly and attached to a single loop. It's giving me ideas, though. A boogey sand bracelet repainted in solid mint could be the perfect replacement for signature Twyla's dreamcatcher bracelet, and her purse could hold the one I'm not using.

[UPDATE: I've heard that fiddling with this bracelet is shown to be a stress-based stimming behavior for G3 Twyla, so the costume piece is derived from the G1 doll, but has its own impact in G3.]

Around Twyla's waist, she has a mint-colored doorknocker belt, but this time, the head is Dustin, not a Skullette. At least for this doll, G3 Twyla likes dressing with images of her pet a lot. 

This piece is more flexible than the G1 signature belt.

Twyla's shoes are awesome. They're definitely the best I've seen from G3 so far, because they feel on par with the detail, character specificity, and creativity of G1, and I'd rank them pretty well among those G1 shoes!

These ain't just G3 sneakers.

The shoes are platforms with purple tops and wide black bases, similar to Twyla's G1 signature shoes. The tops have multiple straps done up with simulated sewing buttons and the shoe has a web texture. The bases of the shoes have a ridged vertical texture and both sides of each have bedroom windows with curtains sculpted on them...

...and the windows are cutouts all the way to the other side!!! Electrified Twyla had windows on her shoes, too, but they weren't cutouts like Creepover's.

The last detail of the shoes was a surprise that was nearly worth the price of the entire doll by itself.

You're not ready.

BAM.

On the soles of each is a mirrored spooky relief portrait of Twyla and Dustin! That's so far beyond the expectation--no other MH shoe has ever done something on this level with the soles before (Dmitry, maybe that's because G1 didn't offer much of shoe soles to begin with), and it makes them feel super special. The Twyla portraits also only feature her eyes on her face, which might serve as a hint that they glow.

G3 Twyla's shadows are pink. And I don't like that. Why do we need to pinkify characters that were successful without that?

The technique of the shadows has changed. On her arms, there's just small wisps blending into the hands, and they don't encircle the wrist.

And on the legs, the wisps are only on the front. They come down further than they did in G1, so Mattel must be confident about the paint's hardiness.

The color choice is weak and the execution could have been more impressive.

Twyla's body is not too different from other G3 bodies. Her torso seems to be the same, but her legs are just shorter.

Creepover Twyla with G3 Ghoulia, who has the most "neutral" sculpts.

Here's a full spectrum.

The G3 bodies are a fair bit thicker than G1's, and the deluxe G3 dolls have torso joints that G1's don't. G3 Twyla is shorter than the average G3 height, but taller than G1 Twyla. 

In G1, most of the cast started at 15 and "grew up" to age 16, where they remained for the rest of G1. Characters with the little-sister body were thus aged at 15 to make them younger than the main cast. In G2, the cast got aged back down to 15 like they were at the start of G1, so it left characters like Twyla ambiguous as to whether they were still meant to be younger than the core characters or not. The same may be true for G3, where Twyla could just be a shorter ghoul who's exactly as old as the main characters. Who knows. Not like we're getting detailed profiles anymore.

Now let's get into all the accessories.

The first thing is her bunny hood. I think it looks silly and too bright and her hair is such a nightmare I won't dignify the hood by putting it on her properly.

The hole in the back is for her hair to go through,
 and the ribbon ties under her chin.

I like that one of the ears of the hood is folded, but it looks a little juvenile for the Twyla I know, and it's not easy enough to use. 

[UPDATE: But knowing her G3 characterization, I can see how the bunny hood might be comforting to Twyla by covering her ears. I still don't know what her general demeanor is, since I haven't watched the show, but maybe it's my G1 bias making me feel like the hood is ill-suited.]

Twyla also has a bunny sleep mask. 

The piece closes with a pin and hole like most MH belts, but I couldn't get it to work properly. If the mask was over her eyes, the strap couldn't reach and close (it's not closed in the photo)  and if the strap could close, the mask wasn't in the right position. The strap should have been just a bit longer.

I also can't fathom why the closed eye shapes are cutouts. Isn't the entire purpose of a sleep mask to block your eyes out? Are they trying to say Twyla never really sleeps? I feel like that'd go over kids' heads...in a "you failed to communicate the joke" way, not a "that's really sneaky" way.

[UPDATE: Maybe that is the joke--in her intro music video, she says she can read even while she's asleep, so maybe closing her eyes isn't necessary--or even a part of her sleep cycle!]

Twyla's next accessory is a small silver doorknob barrette.

I'm so done with her hair, but I like this piece, so I've clipped it onto her belt as a little charm.

Twyla comes with a backpack, like the rest of the G3 signatures. Hers is a round quilted bag shaped like Dustin's head.

If only it matched his G1 face...

There's a slit in the top of the bag to squeeze things into, but it's not the easiest to use. Twyla wears it okay, but on the doll stand, it's easier to sling it over one arm.

All of the G3 signatures come with unique iCoffin phones, distinguished by different screen displays and phone cases.

The G3 accessory-printing technique looks horrible, but
you can see a Dustin app, Twyla's 
shadow Skullette, and a doorknob home
button.

The back of the phone is Dustin--
flash photo to show the iridescent 
color!

It's pretty clever how the bunny ears work on both sides of the phone.

The G3 phones all have thumb brackets on the left side so they can slide into dolls' hands, but I haven't been at all impressed by them. Most of the dolls' fingers aren't sculpted in a good pose for holding the phones, so you just get bizarre poses like this:

What a waste.

You'd think the designers would actually test these phones on their dolls, right? I think they should have sacrificed the phone-case idea and put a wide bracket handle on the back for the fingers to slide into horizontally so it'd sit easily in their palms...or maybe they could have molded a round pop-socket detail that could slide between the fingers for a more natural integration. On Twyla's phone, the pop socket could be a doorknob!!! Come on, Mattel! This thumb loop design is over-engineered and not functional.

Twyla comes with an Intro to Talismans textbook in mint. 

It's all one piece and doesn't open, but it's pretty nice. I prefer to display it with covert aspiring witch Draculaura.

I don't know if I have a review of her in me, but I really recommend this doll.
Maybe my favorite G3 doll so far, and definitely the best out of box.

The last essentials for the creepover party are things to eat and drink.

My favorite accessory of Twyla's is this mug of tea.

I knew we were kindred spirits!

The mug has a spiderweb-patterned lid, a coffin-shaped handle, and embossed molding of stars and a tea bag. The lid comes off the cup!

Coffin Bean Twyla very quickly stole this piece to be fully extra-complete.

Creepover Twyla's snack is what I'll have to assume is called a ghoaster pastry!

It's really cute and I like the web texture, but I don't use this piece on display with anyone. Based on the position of the loop, the pastry is meant to go in Twyla's right hand so the face is toward her, but I didn't do that for the photo.

The last thing Twyla comes with is her pet, Dustin. Brace yourself.

Yeah, I don't like him past the folded ear. All of the G3 pets have this problem of infantilized "cynically cute" designs that wipe out all of their original charm and personality and seem to follow market analysis of what girls and kids are supposed to think is cute--massive heads, disgustingly oversized sweet eyes, and happy expressions. The G1 pets could be creepy, grumpy, mean, or haunting if they wanted to, and they had tons of appeal for it. And Dustin's design just doesn't make as much sense anymore. Before, he was literally made of dust and buttons, but now, he has organic eyes with button reflections? How does that work? How is that clever? 

Strangely, G3 Dustin's ears are separate (but non-removable) pieces from his body.

Here's my complete Dustin collection:

So glad I kept my older ones.

And that was Creepover Twyla.

She's a real mixed bag. I like her face, her ear detail is great, her lack of dreamcatcher imagery is respectable, and her shoes are my favorite so far from G3. However, her hair started messy and proved untameable, her face feels less unique, her color palette shifts too pink, and her shadows are weaker. I don't find myself impressed by most of her accessories, and I'm hoping the "dresses like Dustin" thing won't continue to define her character going forward. She's a faithful translation of the character, but the minor differences become more stark and disappointing as a result. [UPDATE: Knowing Twyla's unique G3 character traits gives me more appreciation for the doll, but as a visual design and toy, it still doesn't hit the best marks for me.]

That was quite a long trip into the shadows, but I had fun! I'm glad I got all three of these dolls, for different reasons. Signature Twyla is flawed, but a good character design and a doll I'm glad to have back. Coffin Bean Twyla became a very fun and rewarding project. Customizing her and building her out to the level of a full-price release was very satisfying, and it felt like I forged a fun relationship with the toy through transforming her. Her hair was also by far the least problematic and easily treated to feel very nice, as well as amenable to reshaping to my whims. Creepover Twyla is the doll I'm least happy with, but she has some strong points and is nice to have around. 

I'm glad this quiet little dream demon has had such a strong run in Monster High. May she have more great dolls to come.