There's the Wolf: Monster High G3 Clawd Wolf by Mattel

I'm a little unconfident about the long-term for G3 Monster High, which is a shame because it's just now getting really strong.

I think G3 has done a good job reinventing the brand and making itself distinct, and especially post-wave 1, the designs have really improved. I've been disappointed--Ghoulia and Deuce just weren't done right for me and didn't offer any way I could see to improve them, so I chucked them into the custom-fodder bin where they may or may not find new unlife as something else. Creepover Twyla has horrible polypropylene hair, and despite now being an explicitly neurodivergent character, strikes me as less distinctive, unusual and characterful in the ways I loved in G1. I struggle with whether or not to get signature Lagoona, because I think I can improve her hair and face, but her outfit offers no means to make it on-model to the illustration/animated yellow-gradient hoodie that looks miles better than what the doll has. Still, there are improvements now. Monster Ball Lagoona, Skulltimate Secrets Series 2 Frankie...there are dolls with polish and beauty comparable to G1's best, and it feels good to see the brand's visual design growing stronger. 

But it can't be just me who feels a distinct lack of hype here. I don't feel like the brand is anywhere near as hot as it should be to make it past 2024 right now. It's understandable that it's not at the G1 peak, because how could it ever be, but I dunno. The product output seems slow (just two new signature dolls this summer?) and I worry that there just isn't going to be enough profit to see this going places. Add that G3 still lacks some of G1's strengths, like doll stands and diaries, and has some new issues like horrendous plasticky poly hair (that's why Twyla was so frustrating), and I just don't know. I hope it hits its stride with the sales and production so we can get back some more characters. Iris and Skelita have been designed for G3 and it'd be criminal to see MH pass by without releasing dolls as weird as them again!

Anyway, while I have my doubts, I might as well enjoy what's here for now. And I wanted to look into Clawd Wolf from G3. G3 Clawdeen has a frankly bizarre backstory of losing her mom and brother to some portal and being separated from them for years, so Clawd here is more of a reunited sibling, and he's no longer the big-man-on-campus older bro. It's an odd dynamic change but it's whatever. 

Here's Clawd's box. Nothing has really gotten more exciting. 

The character art post-wave 1 has changed hands and improved, however. While I think the characters are a bit over-highlighted and trying to imitate Rainbow High art a little, the personality and visual consistency is much stronger and I think it's a worthy successor to G1's distinctive 2D art style. Clawd, though...is making an expression that baffles me. It's way too pouty and sassy and also makes him look like he's stifling a fart. 

The back of the box reuses the wave 1 background art, so you can see the more inconsistent and off-model older 2D art style in the ghouls sitting on the back steps.

Here's everything out of the box.

Clawd's design in the animation and doll form is considerably more youthful and made out to be less bulky and traditionally manly--traits also seen with G3 Deuce. While YA media is often criticized for depicting teens as too mature or adult, particularly with casting visibly adult actors as teens in live-action works, I don't think the more mature G1 manster designs were necessarily unrealistic before. Many teen boys physically develop early, and can pass for as much as 28 (for better or worse) while still in high school. Still, I imagine it's against the interests of the milder G3 to make its characters look overly adult. However, Clawd has one marker of maturity that G1 didn't--a goatee…in the animation only.

G3 Clawd's animated model, which the doll
ought to have better matched.

It's really not that historically common to see teen boys in media depicted wearing facial hair even if they're the age to grow it, and usually, if they do, it's to stereotype them as awkwardly pubescent, or as mindless brutes or bullies. I think it makes sense for a werewolf to have a beard, and I don't think it makes Clawd look like a grown-ass man in this design, but maybe someone at Mattel found it a bridge too far and decided his dolls couldn't have that feature. It's likely a consequence of media emphasizing that teenagers are still young and the majority of teen years are in the underage zone, which I think is a reasonable thing to portray, though I think it's definitely not done very consistently, since so much media has been reasonably criticized for adultifying teen characters, even MH itself.


Well, we're gonna give Clawd the beard. I like the idea. But let's look a little at what we have now.

Clawd's hair is a curly afro ball on top of his head with shaved sides. The shaving is represented by sculpting and paint that would have certainly been flocking in G1.

The Wolf family has always been MH's primary depiction of Black people (notably, the two named werewolf characters in the franchise who weren't in the Wolf family were grey-furred and implicitly White-coded), but very few of their dolls had distinctively Black hair textures. Clawdeen never did, Howleen had it only on her signature doll, Clawdia didn't, and Clawd previously only had it on his lone G2 doll. The G3 Wolf kids are now Afro-Latin in heritage from the blend of their parents, so it's understandable that Clawdeen could naturally have wavy hair, but I think Clawd having very curly hair is a nice way to include representation of Black hair. On his doll, though, it's a little excessive. 

The hair has so much volume that it all but completely obscures his wolf ears, it unflatteringly resembles the ridiculous "Gen Z bird's nest" haircut that nobody will look back upon fondly in the future, and part of me finds it a tad too uniform for a wolf character. I feel like there should be a little asymmetry and shagginess for the theme, in an appealing attractive way. Anyway, the animated Clawd's hair is less exaggerated and more shaped, so a trim is in order. 

I do find doll hair as curly as this to be less stressful to work with because it's kind of predisposed to looking good. The tight curls disguise all cuts and there isn't really a risk of a trim making the hair look messy or choppy like cut straight hair can turn out. Curls like these are also very amenable and adjustable in terms of positioning and volume, and a false snip would have to be pretty darn severe to mar the style. With straight hair, it can be one misguided clip and suddenly the whole style is discombobulated and everything needs to be adjusted to try to fix it until you eat away the entire head of hair trying to correct for one error. So far, as an unprofessional doll stylist, I think curls have been much more forgiving. 

With the trim for Clawd, I tried to reduce the volume all around, focusing on uncovering his ears, but left a lock in front longer to pull down a little, and left some longer on top of his head for more variance and shape as well. Here's the first pass. 

Already much much better. 

Fixing the hair already made his face look more alive. I found his default look to make him look vacant and a little childish, but the haircut awakens his face and makes him look more mature and kind. Like his sister, G3 Clawd now has paint on his nose to make him look more canine, and G3 Clawd has a notch in his left eyebrow.

I'm using a pre-haircut photo here, but Clawd, like his sister, also has sculpted tufts of fur on his jaw behind his cheeks to look more doglike.

After this, I took Clawd downstairs to give him his beard. I put on his goatee in the middle as well as bringing brown down the side of his face, covering his fur tufts and adding the two spikes on each side to match his animated look as closely as possible. I also decided to thicken his brows and paint his sharp claws black to match the animated model further. And all of that work was absolutely right to do.

Mattel! You should have done this!!!

The doll designers really should follow the TV show's artists more scrupulously, because they're making the best visual takes on the G3 monsters and the dolls have repeatedly failed to look as good due to conspicuous, blatant departures that make a huge disappointing difference.

Before Clawd's makeover, I was seriously considering a full wardrobe replacement because his outfit looked awful on him out of the box. But with the beard and hairstyle redo, everything clicks together. This is a charming, cohesive character design. 

Now that we can see his ears, I'll point out that his left has two small gold ring piercings, in keeping with a werewolf's avoidance of silver. 

Clawd's varsity jacket has pleather sleeves and a black body, with white-and-pink trim on the edges of the torso and sleeves. The details are all printed, and the piece has no closure. The coloration and eclectic patterns feel very eighties and/or nineties. 

The back of the jacket has no patterning.

The piece feels a little cheap next to G3 Deuce's nicer, more sewn jacket, but it gets the job done. 

Clawd's pants feel like a very thin denim, and are printed with shredded white sections and claw-mark designs in purple and red. The ankles are cut to look jagged and ripped. 

Clawd's sneakers are purple and white and not so spectacular, but they fit his look. 

Under the jacket, Clawd has a black tank top with a moon, a werewolf paw, and claw marks on it. 

The meme was from a generation above me, but I think it'd have been great
if this pattern referenced the "Three Wolf Moon" shirt.

Clawd has a pair of yellow-orange sunglasses molded with drips and fang-like texture. 

In addition to his jacket, Clawd's other optional wardrobe piece is his casketball jersey. It's bright pink, actually made of jersey fabric, and it designates Clawd's team number as 01--fitting for MH's premiere athlete.

I don't know if the apostrophe is needed, though, since '01 usually means 
the year 2001.

I really like this jersey outfit for him, though I think he ought to have come with some sport shorts to pair with it.

Clawd's already carrying a couple of accessories. His black duffel bag has a gold pawprint charm on it, and it can be pried open to hold stuff, but not very far. 

His water bottle is spiky and pink with the MH school crest on it, and the cap can be removed. The bottle is actually hollow, so it could be filled with liquid.

His other accessories are his snacks-- a packet of Jock Jerky, and a Grrrnola protein bar. The former has no grips, but the latter could slide around a finger--if I didn't worry about damaging his new claw paint.

And then there's his phone. The case is shaped like a wolf pelt. I wouldn't be using the phone with him even if I left his nails unpainted, though, since the bracket loops don't really fit the hand sculpts.

Last is Clawd's pet Rockseena, a bulldog-esque gargoyle. It's weird to me that gargoyles can be animals as well as people in the MH world, and while I would have blamed Rockseena on the fact that they hadn't created Rochelle yet, it's not an excuse because Rochelle had a gargoyle gryphon as a pet!

Anyway, I'm never a fan of the cutesy G3 pets.

And even though the makeover fixed everything with Clawd, I still wanted to try out the second wardrobe I'd thought of for him-- the tattered clothes from a Mego wolfman figure I wasn't a huge fan of. I wanted to see what a more wolfed-out look would be for him. 

This wilder outfit shows off the fur sculpting around Clawd's wrists and ankles pretty well. Clawdeen got this feature starting in G2, but the one G2 Clawd doll shared the new body used by the one G2 Deuce, so only his hands were a unique sculpt. G3 Clawd is the first incarnation to have this sculpting.

I already liked the result, but I decided to chop off the left sleeve to wreck the outfit a little more and that worked out well.

I don't usually find myself captivated by werewolves, but I enjoyed posing Clawd in wolfy ways. With the personality granted to him by the makeover, he makes for a fun wolfman!

Here's the final look I have for him. (I tried cutting a real knee hole on his left as one last touch.) The rest of his stuff is going in storage, and I put his jersey on because I like that look enough that I won't want to grab it and swap it out from the tank when I want to change his look. 

I don't know where G3 is heading or if it has more of a future. But I'm glad we hit a strong patch of releases even if it's our only one. Mattel still needs to figure out their doll hair quality and they do their great TV character designs a disservice by departing from them in the dolls in such conspicuous ways, Still, Clawd was easy to fix up and make shine, and I'm happy he turned out to be worth the effort.