Swimming Deeper into Shadow High (Part 2)

Here's part 2 of my Shadow High deep-dive. Go here to read part 1 for the complete picture, if you haven't already!

I also couldn't resist Zooey Electra, also from wave 2. Her alien theme was really appealing and well-executed to me and, like Rexx, she had an absolutely awesome jacket. She wasn't available anymore on Amazon at the time, so I used remaining Target gift credit instead, with a little bit of non-gift money covering the rest. It's a pretty good deal, though, since I pretty much ended up paying just $10 for the three of these dolls--the $10 for Zooey that I couldn't cover with gift-card money!

And finally, I got suckered in on wave 1's Heather Grayson. She was a really solid design and had a character I enjoyed.

Zooey came first. Here's her box. 

Nothing super unusual of note here. Zooey's character seal has generic fashion design, like Rexx's. 

And the back of the box has art of Zooey and Dia Mante, which is shared between the two dolls.

Dia is the only wave 2 doll that doesn't stand out to me at all.

Here's everything in Zooey's box. Her hangers are the foam green that most of her doll is, but her stand and earrings are far bluer, more like her eyeshadow. They'd make more sense to me if they matched her hair and body.

It already stretches the suspension of disbelief to accept the Shadow High kids as regular humans, but Zooey's outright extraterrestrial theme pushes that to the breaking point. She looks like an alien, and possibly also an android, to an extent that feels confusing. Why all this and not let her just be an alien? I don't know, but I like the look all the same.

Zooey's doll also contains multiple explicit references to Novi Stars, with it apparently featuring like an established brand within the RH/SH universe as well as our own. Good. I think Zooey's design would be entirely remiss if she didn't have those references. It'd be weird for MGA to make a kooky retro-glam sci-fi girl without referencing their earlier efforts at the same idea. 

The Novi Stars were a bizarre alien doll line from MGA that was an earlier, less successful attempt to have a slice of MH's cake than SH. It wasn't even their only MH cash-in back then, since MGA had an even more direct effort with their concurrent witch-themed Bratz spinoff Bratzillaz. I think part of why Novi Stars struggled was because the Novis were just so far out-there at the time, but it's also likely timing-based just in the sense that nothing was going to be able to touch MH because it was in its prime then. In 2022, MH isn't that anymore, and competitors like SH can now succeed by providing the darker flavor that MH is no longer serving to the hungry public who wants it from them. Novi Stars dolls were pretty low-articulation but extremely caricatured and often avant-garde, and each doll featured mechanical or liquid or light-based gimmicks built into their bodies to make them more alien and striking. The Novi Stars have gained a strong cult following since the brand fizzled out, and the dolls are prized items on the aftermarket. And it seems like MGA knew exactly what they were doing by selecting hypnotic swirl-patterned Mimi Merize as the specific Novi Star who features in Zooey's paraphernalia, since Mimi is the crowd favorite and the most inflated on the aftermarket...and I can't argue with why. She'd be the one Novi I'd pick, too.

Stock photo of the eye-catching Novi Stars Mimi Merize by MGA. Her spiral eyes had
a swirly rotating mechanism.

It's nice to see MGA acknowledging the older brand, and while some think these references on Zooey are a teaser for the return of Novi Stars, I'd hesitate to think that'll happen. If it flopped the first time, it's a risk to relaunch when there's only an underground cult following you can rely upon to buy in. Maybe MGA could do well with limited adult-collector Novis, though. Very well, actually!

Zooey has three accessories--her phone and case, her laptop, and a water bottle.

Zooey's phone has a translucent back with moons and SH initials on it, and her phone screen appears to be locked with a backdrop of Mimi Merize in a Novi Stars logo. Zooey has evidently received an email and missed a phone call since this was last looked at!

Zooey's laptop is different from Rexx's. Hers has a colored lid and features a sticker designed to look like two overlapping stickers.  I think this visual is very authentic for a teenage girl's computer, going by the laptops my fellow students had when I was in high school.

If anything, Zooey has far too few stickers here.

The retro-cartoon cat character was featured as the symbol of the SH Neon Shadow band previously. 

On the screen, Zooey has been working on totally-not-Photoshop to create a digital illustration of Mimi. It's a closeup of the same art that appears on her phone screen and shirt... so I think it'd make much more sense if the drawing Zooey was working on depicted a different image of Mimi altogether. Why would she be editing a drawing that she's already wearing and using on her phone?

Zooey's water bottle is a tall narrow cylinder with a silver cap. The cap rotates but does not separate. The bottle has more stickers on it, but these are both part of a large clear decal wrapped around the bottle, and mine is peeling, which I discovered when putting the bottle onto her hand.

I wish they had found a way to print this bottle instead.

Already from her accessories alone, we can tell that Zooey has a passion for graphics and imagery, so I can't fathom why they didn't define her fashion specialty as graphics and logo design on her seal. 

Here's Zooey herself.

Zooey's hair is really interesting. It's minty seafoam blue-green color, shot through with strands of iridescent green tinsel to give it more alien flair. The hair is parted twice, dividing the head into three sections, and each is topped with a really nice small spiral bun--very spacey. The hair also starts out a total mess from the back, with a fair amount of unneeded gel. 

Boiling the hair helped tidy it up well, and I didn't observe significant damage to the tinsel. And combing the hair while damp was an incredibly satisfying sensation. The tinsel is rougher and behaves differently, but the main hair is so smooth and easy to comb out. I could totally relax and comb this hair for a while if I was stressed. Here's the tidied back.

And here's more pictures of the rooting and styling of the buns.

The buns appear to be entirely product-free and keep their shape by being twisted and tied just right. The sizes of these doll heads let MGA do some genuinely intricate styling work. A Mattel doll would have too small of a head, and a lot of their fancier hairstyles are just gelled hair mimicking twists or ties. 

Zooey also has wavy sculpted baby hairs arcing across her forehead. I think their color could have been a little darker because they hardly look like they're painted.

My Zooey's faceup is disappointing.

My doll has too much black eyeliner under her right eye, her eyebrows are blurred into her blue eyeshadow, which is also applied too opaquely, and the white and grey printing on her face is very faint. Her brows should be darker, her eyeshadow should be more soft, and the white streaks of eyeshadow and white rings on her brows should be much easier to see. Here's a Zooey I photographed at Target with the faceup I expected from my copy.

There are flaws on this one too, but they don't stick out as much and all
design elements are coming through better here.

I can't help it; every time I look at this picture, I feel bad about the faceup of the Zooey I own. This faceup disparity is evidently not an isolated issue, since I've seen other aftermarket Zooeys with the precise flaws mine has. I hope this is just a batch error and not a consistent difference between manufacturing facilities or something. Compared to the face I photographed at Target, I would call the face I got inexcusable in terms of quality control because the errors on mine signficantly undersell the appeal and display value of the character to me. This bothered me enough that I ordered a nude Zooey on the aftermarket with a good face so I could be fully satisfied with the doll and enjoy her to her fullest. I'm sure the base doll will make for a fun custom project. 

I have to recommend that Zooey is a doll you really should only buy if you can see the face of your copy, since there's either a persistent error or an inferior job being done at a second manufacturing site. 

Zooey's earrings are like electrical fuses and feature "SHADOW HIGH" text printed on them--impressive for the size and shape. The pieces are symmetrical and both include the text.

Zooey's jacket is both conceptually genius and beautifully, impressively made. Since she's the definition of alien chic, she's wearing an astronaut jacket as a fashion statement. That's such a clever idea, and it's a creature character twist that'd fit in beautifully with the clever spins everywhere in Monster High. 

As usual, the zipper is not functional.

The jacket has ten patches across the body and limbs, and none are repeated. There are also small details in the stitching, and ribbons and plastic bits attached to make the coat feel more spaceworthy and detailed. 

While some of MGA's brand-name parodies are weird or a little lame, I'll admit the "SASSY" in place of "NASA" gave me a good chuckle. I also like the iridescent bands on the arms.

The back of the jacket has one patch, and the left side has two, while the right had three. Ribbons appear on the left for more detail. 

I really love the Novi Stars patch. Brand in-jokes are more fun and resonant
than outside parodies. 

The four pockets on Zooey's coat are open and functional, though it's the larger, looser lower two that are more useful. Zooey can keep her drink bottle and her phone in a hip pocket each, which is fantastic. 

Like Rexx, Zooey had a large tag in this coat. Hers is lined with white fabric, but not patterned inside.

While the coat is great, Zooey's outfit underneath looks nice on its own. She's wearing a white cropped tee with Mimi artwork appliqued on it, and a retro-style vinyl skirt with sci-fi touches.

The skirt is really nice. I like the plastic rib pieces giving it a more mechanical and detailed feel, and the cut at the front with the shorter panel in the middle adds a lot of interest. This skirt has a white fabric strap that goes between the legs, just like Shanelle's did. 

Zooey wears a pair of iridescent mint socks and platform sandals with exaggerated silver string laces that end in electrical plugs!

Both ends are plugs on each lace--there's no sockets. 

As with Rexx, I was disappointed that MGA didn't seal the knots of these laces with glue, because they can fully untie and I don't find it especially user-friendly to recreate the effect. I was very careful with the shoes and glued the knots myself so that wouldn't happen. 

The platforms of the shoes are very textured and it feels right out of Monster High. I'm reminded of Bonita Femur's all-cutout boots. 

Since Zooey's shoes don't enclose her ankles in any way, these are very easy to take off and put back on. I think the socks help a lot in holding them on, since I later encountered SH strapless heels on a sockless character which fell off a lot.

There's nothing really notable about Zooey's body; nothing's changed for the wave 2 girls. But here's a photo showing that the hand pegs are consistently and deliberately asymmetrical.

Here's a picture I took of Zooey with her phone for another look at her outfit without the coat.

And here's the whole doll together again.

I don't know how to feel. I love Zooey's design and she has tons of charm...but I'm hung up on my copy's execution. A peeling sticker on her water bottle is one thing, but a faceup that both underpaints and overpaints some of the colors as well as having prominent asymmetry really lets down the doll for me because I know there are copies that look a lot better. My Zooey isn't the best this doll can be, and it's hard to overlook that. Her outfit is great, her hair, once cleaned out, is impressive, and she's weird and fun in the best ways. I just didn't get Zooey in her best ways.

Heather Grayson is the second Wave 1 SH character I felt drawn to. Her split half-and-half hair was striking, as were her snakeskin clothing and goth fashion elements, including a skeleton-print jacket that also functioned as a cape. Real-life photos showing her colors were very pale grey, and thus within the range of bold contrast I like, and learning she's a spooky kid who does SFX makeup made her irresistible. She's a girl who wants to do injury and monster effects in the movies! I can't help it. I'm a horror guy and a horror-focused creative, so I latch onto people like me! It's nice that Heather is said to be very sweet and friendly. Loving creepy stuff doesn't have to translate into a demeanor or performance of spookiness! I also like Heather's name, since it's now pretty out-of-date and retro and I think she gives it a good face.

Heather's box isn't meaningfully different from Shanelle's, save for her seal.

She's posed oddly in the box, with bands holding her arms to her jacket.

Here's all of her stock unboxed. Her comb and stand are translucent clear with a bit of a yellowish tinge to it. The  stand/comb color is shared between Heather and Natasha Zima.

Heather's shade of grey on the spectrum is so light that she's almost a second white-themed doll, just with the theme of black/white contrast unlike Natasha, who's all white. Her color is a yellowish pale tone that, given her goth and skeleton theming, I'd be more inclined to call "bone white". I mentioned earlier that Shanelle's dress matched pretty well to the wave 1 dolls, and Heather was the one who made me realize that--her skin is close to the lightest grey ruffles in Shanelle's skirt!

Heather and Shanelle, showing Heather isn't pure white. And these two dolls pair really
nicely together on the black/white contrast theme!

I later learned that Ash is also closest to this ruffle layer, though
he and Heather are notably different colors.

I love that Shan's dress encompasses the greyscale. You could assemble the five other Wave 1 dolls and compare each to the dress! It also lends a sweet element to Shanelle's character--her outfit is a reminder of all of her best friends!

I wouldn't have been as interested in Heather's doll if she was more solidly grey like Ash, Nicole, or Luna, so this off-white tone is pretty good. It resonates with her goth theme and still has enough graphic contrast. This specific character design just wouldn't have looked as good to me if she were greyer.

Heather's hair is really complicated. On her left, it's black, and on the right, it's white, with grey streaks featuring in both. The style is pretty intricate, too. She has two locks of hair in front that are loose and hang down to frame her face, which are gelled into shape, and she has braids with plastic ring jewelry threaded around them, with these braids entering her pigtails.

The center ring on each braid has no charm, and the rear ring on both has a safety pin charm, but the front ring on her right is a studded S, and on her left, it's an unstudded H.

The most unusual feature of her hairstyle is at the back, where Heather has loops of hair poking out of her pigtails which hold real metal rings, onto which apparent locks of her own chopped-off hair are tied in some sort of weird fusion of hair extensions and keychains!

While the pigtails and locks at the front of her hair feel like they have notes of e-girl fashion, the weird severed-hair rings are firmly edgy and goth. I love how strange this hair is!

Also, Heather is the first doll I've had from this brand whose hair gel was both warranted and neatly-placed. There was utility for gel in the front bangs, and it didn't get in random places elsewhere in her hair.

Heather's face is really nice. She has the wider-eyed head sculpt from the first Rainbow High dolls, and her makeup feels graphic and stark. She almost looks like a drawing from a comic--or perhaps a horror manga! She has heavy mascara with translucent grey eyeshadow and blocks of white under her eyes enclosed by her lower eyeliner and lashes. Glitter features on her brows, black lips, and white undereye makeup. Heather's lips are a little uneven, but not in a way that really bothers me.

The only thing I don't like too much with her face is her airbrushed pink cheek blush. I feel like that's a color too far for this doll, and it breaks with the appeal her otherwise bold and flat greyscale makeup has. 

See how little filtering it takes to turn her into a comic?

While Heather does SFX makeup as her focus, she's not wearing any fake wounds or monster features on herself, which is a little disappointing because they could have totally gotten away with giving her monster makeup. They could have made her look like she was wearing fantasy character contact lenses and given her fake fangs or something. It's odd to me that some characters have generic focuses with heavily themed and characterized specialty outfits and styling, then there's characters with specific focuses who aren't demonstrating them on themselves.

Heather's earrings are silver hoops with a texture that feels a little bony, and both feature the same "Shadow" text in them. I'd have expected the left earring to complete the brand name with the word "High", seeing as dolls with initials in the earrings are "S" and "H", and not just "S". But maybe MGA thought providing earrings that just said "High" would lead to unwanted implications. Besides, her hair rings already cover both initials in the form of the earrings on other dolls.

These earrings love to fall out. I wish MGA gave them longer
pegs.

Around her neck, Heather has a goth studded choker with an SH logo in the middle. The piece clips around her neck pretty easily.

Heather's jacket is awesome. It's imitation leather that matches her bone-white grey tone. It features lacing on the sides, patches and fake zippers on the arms, and a skeleton pattern on the arms and back. The piece has elastic loops inside allowing the jacket to be worn around Heather's shoulders sleeveless as a cape, but it can also be worn like a jacket.

Front zipper not functional, as usual.

The laces are tied into bows, and while they didn't seem loose (I wasn't pulling at them to try to untie them, obviously), I decided to tie the tail strings into one more knot to make sure the bows were sealed and not coming undone.

Here's the cape loops inside the jacket while Heather's wearing it capewise.

Heather's dress is a strapless asymmetrical textured imitation leather piece made to look like snakeskin, and features a few fake zippers and black accents under the folded top edge.

A small black panel hangs underneath with an angle that runs counter to the main body. 

Heather's boots are iridescent white with black heels that have silver snakes wrapping around them. I love these boots, but the iridescence doesn't work for me. Get those rainbows out of these greyscale Shadow kids!

When I went to try out Heather's second outfit, disaster revealed itself.

As I was trying to remove Heather's hands to put on her narrow-sleeved grey top, I discovered her left hand's peg was stuck in a familiar way. It wouldn't turn, and when I tried to take it out, the hand pulled right off the peg and the peg remained stuck inside the arm. 

ARGH. But hey, her hand is molded with a pretty thumb ring!

Heather was manufactured poorly, and now she was broken. I attempted later to stick a stiff wire piece into the hinge of her hand so she could get a new peg and retain articulation, but nothing I did to glue it in made the hand stay attached to the wire, so I ultimately gave up and just glued the hand onto the wrist, leaving it attached but static. Most of these clothing photos are taken before I tried fixing the hand and then reglued it, but when I had to take more photos of Heather later, her hand fell off again, so the hand remains in continuity for the permutations section of the review. I'd already ordered a replacement Heather anyway, so I officially gave up on this copy. This Heather will make an excellent base for a broken goth doll Halloween decoration, but this was still a huge disappointment to me. 

 

I know this was an unlikely occurrence, but given that this is my second fashion doll from the last year to have a malformed stuck joint peg, I feel like this is probably a more significant issue that manufacturers need to account for. Especially for dolls with sharp nails and thin sleeves which encourage you to remove the hands for redressing. Those hands need to work.

Heather's second outfit consists of a pair of snakeskin pants matching her dress, a grey cropped long-sleeved top with a snakeskin pattern, a black vinyl tank, and strapped high heels with snakeskin patterning. The jacket can be used however you like. Before I tried this whole second outfit, though, I wanted to try out the jacket with the sleeves on and the pants and the dress together.

Unsurprisingly, the pants and dress are a lot together, and it's very tricky to dress Heather in both. I had to put the dress on first and then pull the pants under it because the fabric is thick and the dress is too tight to pull over the pants. 

I like the pants a lot, though. They have small slits on the inner edges of the ankles, and enclosed and functional hip and rear pockets. 

I don't want them for Heather, but I'll definitely keep them around for Deuce Gorgon. I'd like to work with his character design, and the pants fit really well on a G3 Deuce--the crotch is just minutely too high, and I think any full-length top would easily cover that. I want to see how they'd fit a G1 or G2 doll of him, since G3 isn't the version of him I like best.

Here's Heather with the pants, heels, and cropped top.

And with the tank. This piece has a messy lower edge with part of the seam allowance folded forward.

I don't like this outfit too much. While yes, she is grey and this piece flatters her eyes, Heather's still the palest shade after Natasha and she's strongest when she's pale-and-black, so the medium grey feels like it draws some pop out of her look. I realized after I'd trimmed her hair that this look would be better with just the tank and pants, and had to try that, so forgive the hair jumping to a different state in these next photos. As mentioned, the hand is still missing because these photos were after the glue failed me!

But yes, this outfit is better without the grey shirt.

Here's the messy edge in a better view.

And with both methods of jacket donning.

I don't mind the grey shirt as a piece, but I really don't think it has any visual benefit to Heather's look and I can't help but feel a little unhappy toward it since it was the harbinger of this doll's damage.

Here's the corset and top with the jacket as a cape.

Yeah, no.

Heather's heels are pretty, but as difficult to get over her feet as any strapped heels from RH or SH. I actually broke one of the straps on the side pulling the shoe on, so I cut a slit in the back of the other to prevent a second break, and will be doing so for the second Heather's heels. Why MGA couldn't put heel slits in their strapped heels so these shoes would be easily useable and durable is beyond me. They have done it before!

Then I looked at Heather's hair. I first saw what the front locks looked like with the gel brushed out.

The grey in these locks is much more visible without the gel in them, particularly on the black half. I then decided to trim them so they were out of the way of her body (they got annoying while they were gelled because it was so stiff, but were still a bit bothersome soft), and I trimmed her pigtails so they'd hang a little shorter than the "keyring" locks of hair. I figured that'd make the keyring locks more visually distinct in her silhouette. Here's Heather's hair reworked.

 It doesn't mean much to have done this on this broken copy, but it's still good to have tested these ideas out. They worked well enough that I think I'll be repeating them on the second Heather.

So there she is.

Heather was a beautiful fun spooky doll, but her broken hand really cast a negative tone on the rest of the review. In fact, both of these dolls disappointed me enough that I chose to get new copies of them. I'll discuss those, and the rescue reimaginings of the originals, in an epilogue. 

But that won't be the next post. Since I was disappointed quite bitterly by Heather, I refused to end the review on that downer note. Surprise- there's actually a part 3! 

See you there. (And sorry for making this so so lengthy!)