About Face: Mystixx Azra by Playhut

Monster High was massive in the toy world, and any smash success will have imitators trying to tap into the same theme. 

Monster High's imitators, like the imitators of anything, found themselves at a pretty signficiant disadvantage. For one, they had to go against a juggernaut brand, and for two, they had to chip into the juggernaut's market without being able to do the same thing that made the juggernaut what it was. In terms of the monster dolls, the imitators concluded (perhaps correctly) that they had to restrict themselves to a focus on one kind of monster (witches for Bratzillaz, aliens for Novi Stars, zombies for Jakks Pacific Zombie Girls, and vampires, then zombies for this brand we're diving into today) while MH pirouetted around with huge horror and folkloric diversity. The other appeal of MH was its wide variety of facial and body sculpts, which was something imitator brands didn't or couldn't offer. I think they had some intrigue purely for choosing to exist in the shadow of a smash success, and it's always intriguing to me what these imitators do to successfully or unsuccessfully differentiate themselves. Does the brand develop compelling rival characters? Is the character design compelling and unique? Does the toy production and manufacturing quality stand competitively? 

Or does it just go for a gimmick?

Mystixx was a brand produced by Playhut, a company whose output I'm not otherwise familiar with, but I gather they're not generally known for dolls. They seem to specialize more in large kiddie play forts and structures. The Mystixx brand debuted in 2012.

Photos and official art of the Mystixx toys aren't too easy to find in good quality, so the images may be subpar before we get to my in-hand photos.

The concept of the Mystixx line revolved around four girls with a secret.

The four Mystixx characters from left to right--Siva, Azra, Kalani, and Talin. 

The secret was they could transform into vampires!

The quartet in vampire mode.

Yes, Mystixx was a line of vampire fashion dolls with human alter egos, and each doll had a transformation gimmick with two wigs and outfits each to make them over. But how did the faces change like that? Well, uniquely and very excitingly, these characters had just one doll head, sculpted with a face on either side! This let the head spin around to transform the doll facially, with the wigs covering the face not in use. Wicked. 

I've always been intrigued by multi-faced dolls since there's something so bizarre and fascinating about the sculpts that are needed to achieve a head that can spin around for another face. One of my most prized antique-shop finds is a three-faced doll with a porcelain head and hands. 

I call her Baby Faces.

Dolls like these with three faces were in this same format, with a set of three faces like these on a rotating head-- smiling, crying, and sleeping. These dolls have been porcelain, but were also made in plastic form. Porcelain versions like my doll had manual twist heads and cloth bonnets that covered their bizarre head sculpts so only one face would show, but the bonnet can be taken down to expose the surreal image.

The vintage Ideal Toys Little Lost Baby doll had a hard bonnet around the head and a lever to rotate it on the back so the full sculpt won't be uncovered...though the head could still be seen a little during the rotation!

Like so.

The Hedda Get Bedda doll was another famous multi-faced doll, which featured a turning knob "pom-pom" on the top to rotate the faces within a fake knitted bonnet. The doll was named such because her equivalent to the crying face had red spots to emulate chicken pox, and cycling through the faces allowed you to play as if she was sick and getting better.

I think Playhut was wise to put this multi-faced head gimmick in a monster context, since the freaky heads don't disrupt the tone on a horror doll!

I knew going into this that the Mystixx bodies were subpar close imitators of MH. Rebodying onto an MH body would be easy and ideal, and I think I knew which Mystixx doll looked most appealing to me--signature Azra. Fortunately, I was very easily able to find a listing of the doll and her complete stock. 

Beyond the idea of the transformation gimmick and the head sculpt, I don't find too much compelling or unique about Mystixx as a brand. The name of the brand seems like generic supernatural terminology made "edgy" and doesn't communicate anything about the concept, and the vampire dual-life concept feels like more transparent cashing-in on the Twilight craze than MH was...with, perhaps, a little Hannah Montana mixed in? The tagline, "The doll you can change the face of", is also awkward and clumsy. I appreciate the unusual names of the Mystixx characters, but I'm not aware of any tie-in fiction to the brand that lends these characters any depth. Tie-in fiction isn't necessary to guide kids in their play, and I can certainly understand opinions that toys shouldn't prompt kids with other people's stories, but next to Monster High's developed world and highly creative cast, Mystixx doesn't put up much competition. The brand had a few waves of dolls, including where where the characters were zombies instead, so despite there apparently being only four characters in the whole brand, the idea feels a little unfocused to me.

One thing that makes the Mystixx brand feel a little ahead of its time is the way its signature characters had monochromatic theming. Kalani was green, Talin was pink, Azra was blue, and Siva was purple. One of the biggest doll brands right now is MGA's Rainbow High, which is built on this same color-coded conceit!

I found character bios posted on the Mystixx Facebook page, so I was able to learn a little more about the dolls.

The Mystixx artwork looks hyper-caricatured and airbrushed way past the point of appeal to me, and the bio, like the brand's tagline, seems to have some grammatical issues, but Azra's character is interesting to me.

Here's the bio typed out:

Azra

Loves being outdoors. She is competitive and driven and plays on the school's basketball, soccer, and tennis teams. Her favorite sport is snowboarding, so in the winter, you'll find her enjoying the brisk air out on the slopes. While other girls are chasing boys and shopping with friends, she's busy beating the competition out on the field. Boys love being around her, but her adventurous spirit keeps her interested in other things. She's very direct and says what's on her mind, [which] often gets her in trouble and can hurt other's feelings, but once a friend you know you can always count on. [but once she becomes your friend you know you can always count on her?]

So the wintry vibes of her outfit are tied to her being a winter sports athlete--really fun for the cold undead vampire concept! I also like that she has no interest in boys and that she's a little blunt and hurtful. 

The other characters' bios don't appeal to me as much. Quick rundown:

• Siva is a royal old-blood vampire who tries to hide her background but still has a bit of an imperious demeanor as a result of her upbringing.
• Talin is a girly popular girl who splits the opinion of her classmates, wants a boyfriend more than friendship, and loves pink. Seems shallow. Still, I enjoy that she's described as exclusively carnivorous. 
• Kalani is a shy awkward nerd who was homeschooled. She only eats green vegetables, and secretly envies the popular girls' allure with boys. 

I think there's some clever color-coding with each character, though. The blue girl is a little frigid and associated with actual winter. The green girl is an envious vegetarian. The pink girl is a hyperfeminine carnivore, and the purple girl is royalty. I appreciate that color resonance and it gives me more appreciation for the line. Sure, the color theming is maybe a little basic, but it's something and it's fun. While Azra's name seems tied to color by sounding loosely like "azure", none of the other girls' names seem related to their visuals.

Siva is the only doll who wears the opposite of her signature color in her human guise, with her ensemble being mostly yellow in direct opposition to her vampiric form's purple. This might be tied to her deliberately trying to hide her prestigious background from people, given the association of purple and royalty her design plays on. While I appreciate that Talin, Kalani, and Azra's outfits go with each other to offer a more consistent and mixable fashion pack for each doll, on a conceptual level, I think it could have been fun if each girl wore opposite colors between their two forms.

Here's how my Azra set arrived to me.

The first-wave signature Mystixx dolls were packaged in their vampire guises, with their human stock being placed on a cardboard cutout of the doll with the human face displayed, and my Azra arrived in the same setup, with the dressed doll in vampire mode in one bag and the other bag containing the cutout with her human stock and her brush. It seems like she hadn't been played with and had just been deboxed at the most basic level and packed up for resale. I'll never understand the people who do this, because I always want to play with a toy, but I can certainly appreciate it as a buyer who likes to get complete toys on the aftermarket. For a doll that's eleven (!!!) years old like Azra, getting a set complete sans box is a pretty good deal and so these "instant-repacker" resellers provide a good service. Symbiosis!

The full contents of the package.

The signature Mystixx quartet had two skintones. Talin and Siva were a light purple, and Azra and Kalani were a greenish white pale tone. The signature versions of the quartet had budget rereleases with half the pieces of the full pack and a unique pale pink skin tone, likely a move to make the human guises look more natural. For the zombie Mystixx dolls, they had a more yellow-green and a darker-purple skintone. 

The set includes a small hairbrush for Azra, and it's like any doll brush--not really worth the time.

I had to mention it, though.

Since she started in vampire form, let's look at Azra that way first.

Vampire Azra reminds me quite a lot of Ghoulia Yelps' Freaky Fusion doll, which is styled in a faux-fusion costume to emulate Draculaura. A blue-haired vampire image with bangs and dark lips will do that!

Mattel stock photo of Fusion-Inspired Ghoulia.

I'm struck by the point that Kalani is the only Mystixx character who can't really be compared to an MH vampire design. MH did pink and girly with Draculaura, purple and royal with Elissabat, and blue with bangs for fusion-cosplay Ghoulia. A green vampire was done by MH with Batsy Claro, but her shade is so much lighter and her overall aesthetic and execution is so different that I don't really see any comparison to be made. However, the first Mystixx dolls pre-date the releases of Elissabat, Fusion-Inspired Ghoulia, and even Batsy, so those parallels, if they're there, are all Mattel's doing. Playhut can only really be accused of imitating Draculaura.

Azra's vampire wig is an electric blue color with a small tie at the back of the head pulling some sections backward.

The fiber feels glossy and pretty nice, but it's a little messy and could benefit from a boil. The styling is unnecessary, so I think I'll be taking that out.

The vampire face is sharp and angular and has a few similarities to MH faces, primarily in the paint.

The nose shape doesn't feel as elegant as MH sculpts, and the eye reflections are subtler. The mouth is also smaller than it would be on an MH head, but the similarities are there. Azra's eyebrows are brown, which bugs me. Her mouth has two crisp and well-aligned fangs painted on in the MH style and the lips are dark red. Her eyeshadow has glitter in it, and her cheeks have blush. 

Vampire Azra's outfit consists of a shrug jacket, a dress, tights, and slipper-like shoes.

The shrug is two types of dense mesh fabric, with blue trim and a white body. The dress is a shiny sparkly smooth grey fabric with blue lace trim, a belt with a blue strap and silver buckle, and white fluffy velour on the bottom to suit Azra's wintry side. 

Azra's tights are very reminiscent of signature Draculaura's, being mesh leggings that don't go over the feet. Azra's are blue, while Draculaura's were black.

The shoes have wide sculpted fur trim and silver bows, and are shaped like wedge heels.

I like the design of this vampire character. The colors are restrained and the costume feels personalized but mature and cohesive. There's a somewhat grounded quality to the Mystixx outfits that reminds me of the darker early MH days. 

Now let's look at human Azra, the look that drew me to this doll.

I had to unfasten the wig and outfit from the tags holding them to the cutout, which left the cutout more dismembered than it was.

It never had legs, though.

A plastic dress form, similar to the ones used in MH fashion packs and to fill out the clothing on Skelita Calaveras dolls, was used over the cutout to hold the dress.

The MH equivalent is much more contoured to 
the shape of the doll body.

Here's the human look.

Human Azra's wig is a black shoulder-length bob, but it does not look good as it came to me. It's not hanging flat or long enough and the hair fiber feels coarser and less pleasant. It seems like the vampire wigs have been reported as nicer than the human ones in general in the line, and I don't get why that would be. I could kind of squash it into a nicer shape...

...but this wig will need proper treatment.

The human faces are a little odd, but I don't dislike them.

The sculpts are weird with the round cheeks and pointed chin, but it's not too off-putting to me. The faces look sweet enough. They're less glam on this side because the makeup doesn't have glitter. 

All of the Mystixx dolls had the same head sculpt and their signature faceups on either side weren't meaningfully different from each other. The human faces looked the same on pretty much all of the Mystixx releases, but the monster faces changed with the zombie Mystixx dolls. The standard zombie faceup had pale pupil-less dead eyes and no fangs, and the two Rococo Zombies had ghoulish white paint covering the face and tiny heart-shaped lip paint. The Grimm masquerade/fairy tale line had more elaborate fantasy makeup for the characters on both sides, and since they were framed as unique fantasy figures when transformed, the dark side had more divergent gothy humanoid faceups which weren't specifically monstrous. I believe every single Mystixx doll had the same sculpt, or at least every Mystixx doll after the first wave did, given that the wig system changed a bit. This means the human faces were always roughly the same and the spooky faces were reliant entirely on the paint to change the monster type a given doll was depicted as. 

Azra's human outfit is very appealing to me. 

The costume is less complex in terms of piece total, but is more intricately made. The outfit is a silver vest over a dress and paired with the boots.

The vest is made of a scratchy fabric with glittery silver thread, and works well due to the wide sleeves of the dress. You can't use the vampire shrug jacket with this costume because of them, so the vest was the only over-layer that worked here. The dress itself is a one-piece high-waisted style with a large collar, wide lace-cuffed sleeves, a neck ribbon and buttons, and metal chains around the waist. The bottom of the skirt has more lace. This outfit strikes a very interesting balance of demure, punk, vampiric and academic. It's probably exactly the kind of outfit that would have been ideal for signature Draculaura if she was the intended protagonist of the G1 Monster High franchise--if she was the character whose design needed to encapsulate "school for teen monsters" in the way G1 signature Frankie's did. I think Azra's human outfit does that visual-narrative job for vampires in the way that Frankie's outfit did for lab monsters!

The boots are very similar to the slippers, having wide fur trim at the opening, but their color balance is reversed in a fun contrast between the two forms. The boots have fur stripes on the sides, and surprisingly delicate bootlace paint on the front.

They seem to have yellowed a fair bit with age.

The pieces and faces offered some fun mix-and-match possibilities.

Alright, let's look at the mechanics of the Mystixx body now.

The head dictates the wig system, so let's get that out of the way first. The Mystixx dolls have conjoined opposing faces on their head sculpts, complete with ears for each. The vampire ears are subtly larger and more pointed, but in a more restrained way that doesn't seem too inhuman.

You can appreciate the pointiness contrast of the sculpts this way. The
vampire side has a lower chin.

The decision to include ears makes sense and I think it's effective, but it does have the effect of making the head longer or wider to make room for both ear pairs. I think the head could have been more compact if some other approach was taken, but it's not bad. 

The mythology nerd in me is getting strong Janus connotations.

 Now, the wigs.

The top of the Mystixx head has a circular hole flat on the top center of the doll's dome--a necessity given the need for the wigs to sit the same for both faces. The hole seems to be in a separate plastic disc like the heads of the MH Create-a-Monsters.

The wig hole on a CAM MH head.

The wig caps are firm plastic and come down to cover a fair amount of the face the hair is covering, so the hair can't be parted to expose the entire hidden face underneath. That spoils my plans to make this doll into a literally two-faced character. Some later Mystixx dolls had much smaller wig caps that didn't cover the opposite face, leaving only the hair to do the job like I had expected (or misremembered based on a review of a later doll). This change might have been done to facilitate a unique box-display gimmick Playhut developed where the opposite face of the doll peeked out a window in the back of the box. From the photos of boxes I've seen, it seems like maybe all of the Mystixx dolls after the first wave made this switch to the rear window two-face display, and thus, "peekaboo wigs" on their dolls as well. I'm thinking my best option for a two-faced character would be one of the budget rereleases of the signature dolls, since their pink skin color seems like it would work perfectly with a Draculaura body.

These first-wave wig caps have a round peg with a small bump to pop it into the hole and keep the wig on more securely.

The wig cap's shape over the covered face.

The wig caps aren't formed super tightly to the head, allowing you to conveniently spin the wig around while it's still plugged in, making it easy to flip the face and keep the same wig without taking it off.

Or to show off two faces from one side.

Wig swapping between Mystixx and CAM doesn't really work. The CAM dolls' angled wig placement changes the look and the Mystixx caps are overly wider than the MH heads. Conversely, the flat tapered peg of the CAM wigs doesn't go all the way in the Mystixx head because it gets too wide.

Maudie's loving the work, though!

The Mystixx body is highly similar to the Monster High shape, but feels significantly cheaper and less fun to play with.

The Mystixx torso and arms feel longer and the torso is thicker from the side. The most prominent difference between bodies is the articulation disparity. Mystixx dolls have single-jointed rubbery limbs that only rotate at the point where they attach to the torso. No hinge joints. The arms seem to be so flexible to make dressing Azra easier, but there's no reason for the legs to be bendy, and her right foot is warped because of it. The bendy legs also make putting on the shoes, especially the boots, more challenging, and the flexible material makes it harder to turn the joints at the shoulders and hips because you'll bend the limb before you move the joint. The articulation is disappointing, but even other low-jointed dolls are better because their limbs are rigid. Mystixx just doesn't offer a lot of posing or charm or elegance, and fashion dolls benefit immensely from being able to vogue a little!

Mystixx would eventually add better MH-style jointing to their bodies late in the game, but they still fell below the MH standard, with the shoulder hinges not letting the arms come down very flat and close to the body, and the rotating wrists not having hinge joints. The only Mystixx dolls I'm aware of with these more articulated bodies are the two Rococo Zombies, meaning the improvement came far too little too late in my eyes. Maybe it was a last-ditch attempt to keep the brand afloat that didn't succeed?

Clothes-swapping between the two doll bodies is entirely viable, but Mystixx wears a bit looser on MH and MH is a bit tighter on Mystixx. It's not really a problem with Azra's school outfit, but her evening dress didn't work so well on MH. Good thing I prefer the school dress.

The Mystixx head also feels limited. Its peg and neck hole seem smaller, and there's very little tilt offered by it. The Mystixx head rests on top of a flat-cut neck, while the MH head encloses the top of a ball-shaped neck. This means the Mystixx head mostly just rotates.

 So I had every intention of rebodying Azra onto an MH frame to unlock her potential.

But what to use?

Well, I think I found, and already own, a perfectly color-matched MH body for Azra. It's one which came out several years after her, and is thus a solution that wasn't available when Mystixx was current.

...Problem is, it's the Bride of Frankenstein!

Uh-oh.

Can you say "dangerously invasive idea?"

So, look. I'm making this call because I felt it would be irresponsible and not worth the cost to get a lone nude Bride doll for the body to swap in...but hey...maybe I can commit a little doll-collector heresy. Maybe the Bride could get a new body too, and give hers to Azra. After all, the Bride doll body being the basic sculpt, while not an actual problem for me, isn't actually faithful to the movie. And I'd already thought the fully-bandaged CAM Mummy body sculpts should have been considered for her...

So I ordered a CAM Mummy for her body. If I wiped off the gold paint detail, I thought the bandages and greyish color would suit the Bride doll well to make her more textured and film-accurate. And I prepped the Bride to give her body to Azra.

Since her hair is so delicate, I needed to heat and loosen her head with a hairdryer rather than hot water, but miraculously, she popped off without incident. No damage to the hairdo or neck peg.

Thank. Goodness.

I then sawed the neck peg down for Azra's use.

Popping off Azra's head was very easy, since it was just on a static ball knob.

Azra's neck hole is smaller than an MH head's, and the head is hollow, but has a layer of vinyl blocking it off at the bottom. 

I pierced through this thin layer and cut the neck hole wider so it could pop onto an MH body.

And here's the result!

The Mystixx head doesn't work absolutely perfectly on the MH neck since the head doesn't have the sloping inside the hole to catch the head on top of the neck at the right spot. The ball of the neck comes out a little more with Azra's head than it should. But the fit is functional and it gave the character a whole new lease on life.

Just take a look at how much vampire Azra is animated by this body!

The Bride's right elbow flaw is still an issue, and I still don't believe the forearms can safely pop out, but with looser sleeves, posing isn't inhibited nearly as much as it was in the Bride costume.

The CAM Mummy doll I ordered to re-complete the Bride arrived later--minus the shoes from her pack, and plus a pair of Dragon CAM wings.

Right after I'd used the pair floating in my parts bag, the wings are going right back into it!

I love how mummyish and decayed this doll was portrayed. Her grey head skin and full-body wrappings continue to make her the most undead and mummified mummy released by the brand, and it could be really fun to turn another copy of this doll into a more classic horror-mummy inspired iconographically by the Universal film!

Her body is accentuated with gold paint dusting, so that'll have to be wiped off for the Bride. Normally, I hate the weird awkward hand pose she has with the middle fingers pushed together, but for the Bride, I think it'll work perfectly. 

However, I was shocked and slightly annoyed to find no success at removing the gold paint from this body. It seemed strongly resistant to nail polish remover that pretty handily wipes off any other painted features I've encountered on dolls, and sanding was more liable to damage the plastic and sculpting on this particular body, so I resigned myself to keeping the gold there. Most of the body is covered by the costume, anyway, and the gold isn't that distracting on the Bride. 

But, man. Mattel ought to have tried to replicate this level of paint seal or adhesion for their dolls with painted-on skintone effects!

Here's the Bride reassembled. The queen may preside again over the shelf!

I'll never tire of how well the Monster carries her!

I cannot believe I had the single MH doll whose body was a perfect match for Azra...and that there existed another MH body which wouldn't need a color change so I could cleanly re-complete the Bride and continue to cherish my precious collector doll!

I wonder which MH character has the best match for the color of Talin and Siva. I'd guess the closest is probably Twyla...but perhaps it's Avea Trotter, which would be very far from a standard body! It seems like the darker purple zombie color might match well to Jane Boolittle. 

Okay. Phew. Now what?

Well, I didn't want to keep Azra as a vampire, but without a wig that could show both faces at once, I was left with making Azra into a doll with mutually exclusive personae. She couldn't be a literally two-faced character like Janus. And in some ways, that was probably for the best. I like Azra's factory faces enough that I wouldn't want to change them too much...and the transforming concept left me room to make a new take on a monster that disappointed me pretty heavily in MH. 

Jekyll and Hyde. 

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is probably the most widely-spoiled work of thriller storytelling in human history. The story revolves around lawyer Gabriel Utterson investigating his friend Dr. Henry Jekyll (initially intended to be pronounced "jee-kul" by author Robert Louis Stevenson) and the strange appearance of an ugly, malicious man named Hyde. The end of the story reveals the concept that everyone now already knows-- Hyde is a transformation of Jekyll spawned by a potion designed to bring out his uninhibited dark side, and as time progresses, Hyde is becoming stronger and taking over Jekyll without the potion's aid.

Monster High's take on this monster didn't appeal to me. 

Mattel stock photo of signature Jackson Jekyll. This was actually 
his second doll, and it was released after Holt Hyde!

Jackson Jekyll was the only human or "normie" enrolled in Monster High, and was a shy nerd with a really ugly color scheme and hair. However, he transformed into another person-- blue-skinned punk DJ Holt Hyde, who was also inexplicably flame-haired because Jackson and Holt had a fire elemental dad for no good reason. Initially, Jackson and Holt were transformed at night before their trigger shifted to loud music. 

Mattel stock photo of signature Holt.

I never liked Jackson and Holt as an adaptation of this monster archetype. Since they were recurring characters, they had to be separate dolls to make it easy on Mattel, but honestly, a one-off character who was a transforming doll could have landed the idea in a more fun way. Also, Holt's design didn't strike me as anything near what I'd expect for a Hyde form, and for descendants of a famous work of Victorian horror, the two guys were overwhelmingly modern. They were also both conspicuously voiced by a female actor and had no reason to be, and were used for a love triangle thing with Frankie in a weird way.

So I thought Azra would be a great doll to make into a more classic Jekyll and Hyde doll--a doll with a sweet and evil face and old-fashioned clothing was already right on track. 

Have a profile!

Jacqueline Haydn

Monster Parentage: My great-uncle(s) were Jekyll and Hyde. I didn't inherit anything from him like my cousins did, but as a baby, I had a run-in with his formula. I think I'm more in control than anyone in my family has ever been, but transformation is still part of the package.
Killer Style: I go formal Victorian, in an outfit that'll suit me whether I'm feeling wild or proper. So much of the feeling of an outfit truly comes from the person's demeanor, and it's such a hassle to change clothes whenever I change faces. 

Freaky Flaw: While I'm more controlled than you'd expect, my life is still a constant struggle between impulse and restraint, and it's hard to know which side will be the correct one in any given situation.

Favorite Activity: There's nothing so exciting as a midnight stroll out on the town. There's so much possibility for high-culture entertainment...or unrestrained knavery!

Biggest Pet Peeve: When people refer to my two sides as if they're different people. The truth is, both are equally me...and a lot more similar than one might think. More people need to accept their complexities as real parts of them like I do.

Favorite School Subject: Chemistry. It's in the blood, and refining formulas to streamline my condition just that bit more is a rewarding and compelling pursuit.

Least Favorite School Subject: Ethics. Oh, it's incredibly useful, instructive, and enlightening, but with my entire waking existence being an ethics debate, it can get overwhelming to take a class on it, too.

Favorite Food: Black-and-white cookies.

Pet: I don't have one, because I don't think the two of me would be fantastically equipped to take care of any animal who's not as dual as I am.

Best Friends: Jackson Jekyll, Holt Hyde, Robecca Steam

With this direction, she just needed a couple more pieces.

Before I did the rebodying, I gathered some things. I dug into my Mego horror figure collection, since its figures have some really nice doll clothing, and grabbed the sleeveless velvet coat from the Phantom of the Opera...

...and the top hat from the Young Frankenstein monster.

I think these come together well as gentlemanly ominous Mr. Hyde streetwear.

The owl would work for a character with a spinning head, but he's not
associated with this doll project--just in the photo at the same time.

Freak du Chic Frankie's headbanded top hat would be the ideal piece in place of the Mego one, but right now, no listings for it are showing up. 

With the new body, I think the Hyde persona really comes alive as a nasty, feral little lady! I can differentiate the two forms just by the postures I give them, and Hyde being hunched or stooped is a key physical trait that the MH body can communicate. 

The wild shape of the wig now works for this, but I still want to tame it a little to keep it from revealing too much of the opposite face.

And here's the opposite wig and face for a poised, tamer Jekyll side. Contrary to Playhut, I think the black wig works best for the evil face!

I also decided WitchiWonderland's striped socks left over from the Dahlia costume would work with this look, with one slumped in Hyde mode. And I'm obsessed with the menace I captured with this leaning pose on the bench!

You see why rebodying was necessary.

At this point, I decided I really liked the faceups. I even felt like I could keep the fangs, since the outfit successfully shifted Jacqueline out of vampire territory, and they gave her evil face a lot of personality.

I also ordered some pieces to complete her. She couldn't keep the fluffy shoes, and I wanted a bag for her. And there was an easy idea. Because, you see, there was an MH character with a face motif.

Kiyomi Haunterly was based on the Japanese folkloric noppera-bo, or faceless ghost. Noppera-bo are often characterized as tormentors or pranksters who mimic people before vanishing their faces to startle travelers, and Kiyomi is portrayed as a girl in search of an identity since she can only project the outline of a face onto her head. Kiyomi's accessories all had faces to make up for Kiyomi's mostly lacking one. For this character, I got the purse, which has perfect contrasting happy/unhappy expressions on  its two sides, and her sandals, which have masks on the back as heels. 

Meanwhile, because I wanted the hat to stay on, I tried to find a headband I could put it on. And Getting Ghostly Twyla's worked pretty well because the sculpted bow squeezed pretty well into the hat!

This allows the headband to be used on its own as a bow, or to serve as a mount for the hat with no gluing at all!

I thought the pink cauldron mug would work as her potion.

The headband is far from the best shape for the head with the wig on, but with fiddling, it'll stay on. 

Then I found a couple of wooden pieces in my craft supply and made a simple walking stick for Jacqueline. It was essential to complete the Victorian ensemble, and because Hyde beats someone to death with a gentleman's cane in the book. 

Yeah, that's kind of a whiplash sentence.

 I don't think Jacqueline is a murderer, but it was a fun devilish reference to include.

The stick balances well under her hand...

And the knob allows it to rest delicately between her thumb and forefinger.

As I treated her wigs, I decided to do some minor touch-ups to Jackie's faces.

The good face got nude-toned greyish lips to remove the more jarringly prominent pink while suiting a moody MH take on sweet makeup, and the eyebrows became blue.

The evil face got shadowing under the eyes in the prominent hollows that were there and the eyebrows became black, untamed, and bushy for more of a beastly tone that's traditional for Hyde monsters.

I also found a better headband to mount the top hat on-- Spring Unsprung Cedar's, which I only hadn't used first because I briefly misplaced it. 

Unaltered, this headband fit snugly and smoothly onto wigged Jacqueline, so I knew it would be better to hack this piece up and wedge the remaining flowers into the hat for a more sturdy accessory (and a more subtle headband). The flowers are held on with internal pins that go through two loops on the band, so I had to cut off one of them, and I sliced my knuckle pretty badly because I'm seemingly never unscathed by X-Acto work. Oh, well.

The band works well, though, with the clump of remaining flowers fitting tightly in the hat, and the band working very easily on Jackie.

I love her dark mode, but we need to give her light mode some
attention, too!

This worked out pretty perfectly, since I not only feel a lot better about taking the headband of a doll I ordered for parts and who was becoming a custom project, but the second attempt is the more effective and functional one.

Then the Kiyomi pieces arrived. 

Her shoes are translucent black strapped sandal heels with masks on the back, depicting a smiling and frowning image of Kiyomi's face. The hair doesn't correspond to Jacqueline, but the contrasting faces and blue color do!

The extra-nice thing is that Kiyomi was a socked doll, so these shoes will be wide enough to accommodate Jackie's stockings. 

The purse is a translucent purple heavy bag with a chain handle and charms, and features cutouts and zippers that form contrasting faces.

I repainted these parts to match Jackie's color palette. I made the shoes black and left the blue eye paint untouched, and made the bag black and replaced the pink with light blue. I also cut off the top two floaty charms on the handle.

Now the doll is complete! Here's Jekyll mode:

And Hyde mode:

It's pretty tricky to pose this doll due to the joint issue, the weight of the bag, and the tricky balance of the cane, but it's also very rewarding due to the way this doll's body language can change, and her cane adds tons of dynamism. I think the cold, restrained colors make her very striking and creepy, and the doll works great as a transforming character who doesn't need a change of costume. As long as her head, hat, and purse flip around and you switch her hair and posture, she can go from one persona to a very different second one! I love how she came out. 

And so, after all that, what do I think of Mystixx? 

I think the dolls offer an appealingly unusual play feature paired with pretty cohesive character design and nice clothing pieces. While it's plainly derivative of Monster High, that also kind of works to its benefit because the two doll brands are largely clothing-compatible. 

This doll's greatest letdown is its bendy and minimally-jointed doll body, which utterly pales in comparison to the display and play value offered by its inspiration's doll engineering. It also irks me a little that there were no compatible MH body colors for this doll release when Mystixx was active...and that the only option was from a much later and pretty much unexpendable (to most sensible people) collector doll when it happened. I would have been stuck with a very limited doll body if I bought Azra before 2022, or else I would have had to make a more fragile and unpolished recolor repaint job on another body.  The body swap worked out fine for such a big risk, but I feel like I would have ended up frustrated by Azra during my original collection due to her being stuck with a cheap body. Maybe that's why I never sought to get one of these dolls back then. Had I known about the budget rereleases of the signature dolls, I could have gotten that copy of Azra and completed her with an easy Draculaura body purchase and the original pack for the rest of the Azra stock...but that's a waste of money I would have resented as well.

I also felt a little creatively limited by the way the wig cap covered the opposite face and prevented both from being treated as present at the same time. The first wave of Mystixx was the most limited. Later dolls had wig caps that didn't cover the other face, and the line got more articulation toward or at its end...but the bodies still weren't as good as MH and the appearances of the more jointed Mystixx dolls were extremely few. I am mentally considering getting one of the pink budget Mystixx dolls, maybe Talin if I can track down a good deal on her (nobody is really selling these dolls; they were not a phenomenon), and giving her a Draculaura body for another, genuinely two-faced character, since those releases have "peekabo wigs" and offer a much easier rebody color option.

Ultimately, it's hardly a compliment to conclude that a doll is its best when turned into another character and put onto the doll body it was modeled on. That casts negativity upon the creativity, personality, and build of the doll as sold....but at its core, that's just the reality of it. Mystixx was a weak imitation of MH that harnessed appeal with the purest definition of a gimmick--a single unique exciting feature hoping to smooth over the inferiorities of the product. I still value Azra as a wildly fun doll gimmick who inspired me to create a custom character I truly adore, but as a standalone toy, it needed to be able to match the appeal of the toys it was cashing in on. With that body, it just couldn't hope to.

The least a toy should do is inspire the imagination and creativity, so in that light, Mystixx succeeded. I don't know. I love Jackie more than Azra, but Azra is the root that made Jackie possible.