Festive Love: The Monster High Skullector "Nightmare Before Christmas" Set by Mattel Creations

Well, Mattel has completely broken the Skullector formula in 2023, hasn't it?

As I last summarized it earlier this year in my post reviewing the Bride of Frankenstein Skullector set, the Skullector licensed collector doll line from Mattel had followed a strict pattern: every year had three dolls total, with one as a solo release from one property and the others as a two-pack from a different property, every year had one of those two releases feel less deviant from the source material than the other, and the releases could be categorized by theme--2020 was Stephen King movie adaptations, 2021 was horror comedies, and 2022 was classic Universal Monsters. 

2023 seemed like it was starting off on-formula with a loose umbrella of horror comedies, with an Elvira doll and the Chucky/Tiffany set (a duo I predicted in the earlier post!)...but then, in summer, Mattel announced and released the pure-horror Annabelle from The Conjuring...and then added fifth and sixth dolls with the announcement of the paired family-film icons Jack Skellington and Sally just before Halloween (which I also predicted in that post months ago)! So there's just no rules anymore. But hey, there's more releases!

I wasn't immediately sure I wanted the Jack and Sally set. I enjoy The Nightmare Before Christmas as much as anybody, but I've never been a "Nightmare Before Christmas kid" buying a lot of merch for the film or identifying myself that heavily with it. While it enjoys the unique distinction of being an animated operetta (very little of the film is spent outside of its songs) and it introduced the world to the incredible stop-motion animation directing talents of Henry Selick, who made my favorite film Coraline, Nightmare is a fairly simplistic and sometimes clumsy story and I find it cute and imaginative more than a core important film to me. However, the film's atmosphere is superb and it's quintessential Tim Burton aesthetics--his later stop-motion films which he directed ironically don't get at the roughness and quirky charm of his illustrations nearly as well. The simple narrative of Nightmare also makes it feel timeless and relatable. A clever lonely girl falls for a sweet, extra-theatrical passionate idiot and must try to save him from his midlife crisis--what's not to love? I like to make Nightmare a transitional film between the holidays, watching it on Halloween night. That's when the film story starts, it's the most Halloweeny film I've seen, and it carries forward into Christmas with its plot. It's the ideal Halloween-night movie. 

I was interested by these dolls first because I had expected them before their announcement. I was also intrigued with how Mattel would adapt the Tim Burton illustration/animation aesthetic. The teaser image of just their feet also grabbed me because it looked like Jack had a new skinny skeleton body, and new Monster High bodies are always a bit of an event for me. Jack's would also be the most radically sculpted new body from MH since G2. G3 hasn't yet delivered all-over texture and entirely bespoke body sculpts. 

The final reveal photos made me pause because Jack's face and that orange striped vest weren't really doing it for me, and I was also hoping a little for a take on Jack that was more like a standard humanoid MH doll than directly on-model to the film design...but I ultimately felt like these guys would be worth investigating, moreso than passing them up. 

This set has quite a few similarities to the Bride of Frankenstein Skullector set I acquired and reviewed. They're a romantic couple duo, the set includes a male source character who has remained male in doll form, and that male character has a unique doll body. Most Skullector dolls based on male characters have become women in the doll adaptation, including Chucky in her couple pack with Tiffany...though that one totally works because the Child's Play series, helmed by the gay Don Mancini, has frequent queer themes and Chucky himself has placed his soul in a woman's body in the newer entries. I thought the Monster remaining a dude was appropriate because he and the Bride are too iconic that way, but I don't know, Jack being a ghoul here could have been interesting. I think the decision was made that he was also too iconic as he was (so what the heck is up with that vest I'm sorry-) and maybe Disney, who really doesn't leap at the chance to represent queer people, wouldn't have been amenable to Jack being a female doll. 

The greatest interest to me in the set was the fact that, through Jack, we finally get a male Monster High skeleton body! Skelita Calaveras was one of the most striking Monster High dolls (for both good and bad reasons) on account of having a fully skeletal body design. I'd like to talk more about her and her mixed execution soon, but awkward aspects aside, her skeleton body was absolutely a must-have novelty in a collection for how unusual it was. Skelita was an idea I thought was too good to use on just one character, though, and I've always had this pipe dream of a male MH skeleton to join her. Jack isn't quite that because he's blatantly outside the standard aesthetic, but he does show us what the body of one might look like. Maaaaybe Jack's body could find use for a G3 character down the pipeline, but we still have yet to see a G3-debuting character in the doll line, and the body is way more extreme than anything G3 has put out so far. I'm sure it's just a one-off, so this is our chance to look at it!

Now.

I know this issue is probably no surprise to anybody, but it's my first time being affected by it and I wanna vent. 

I attempted to buy the dolls from Mattel Creations at launch, seconds after the timer counted down, but once I left the wait queue and entered the checkout, the dolls were already sold out and I couldn't make a purchase. It seems like it must be essentially random if you get to actually reach checkout, then, because with so many people jumping in at the first moment, what actually decides who gets to buy and who doesn't? Fractions of femtoseconds of variance in click speed on the buy link? Supply ought to be increased for these dolls, honestly. If first-second buyers willingly throwing their wallets at Mattel can still be unable to get the product, if people who believe in the dolls enough to shell out like that and make Mattel richer aren't able to, then what's even the point? There's a point where scarcity becomes self-defeating!

Scalpers it is, then. Like before. I guess the inflated cost is the tradeoff for security in being able to actually make a transaction! Mattel are kind of losing out here if secondhand sellers can make a profit over the original price, all because the company can't make the release work out fairly. Ugh...

Well...I bought an eBay listing from a confirmed buyer, so...I got 'em.

Man, I don't want this post to be a downer, but there's no way to spin that in a cheery way, and I do have issues with the dolls, so let's hope real hard for pleasant surprises.

Here's the box. It was wrapped in tissue inside the Mattel shipping box. This is an outer sleeve over the window box.

After the Beetlejuice duo, this Skullector set marks the second time Tim Burton's work has been represented in the Skullector line, though Nightmare is Selick's film just as much as it is  Burton's. Burton is now the second spooky creator to have multiple Skullector releases associated with his work, after Stephen King with the three 2020 dolls based on adaptations of his books. Burton is also the only creator now to have two Skullector duo sets based on their work.

[...and that might be jumping to three with the rumored Wednesday Addams/Enid Sinclair two-pack from Wednesday, though whether that's going to be labeled and packaged like the rest of the Skullector line is still unclear. Wednesday is also getting a solo doll from the Rave'n dance and a separate fashion pack, so Tim Burton will have *seven* licensed MH collector dolls associated with him, plus a supplemental product. There's apparently a separate Addams Family Skullector set on the way, which will probably be based on the original TV series or the Barry Sonnenfeld duology.]

The other broken trend in the 2023 Skullector dolls is the packaging. Before, all Skullectors had cardboard panels covering the display window in the same format, with portraits of the dolls outside. However, after the expected standard two Skullector 2023 releases, the subsequent "extra" Skullectors are doing something different--Annabelle has a box mimicking the doll's sanctified and locked display case in the Warren museum, and Jack and Sally here have an upfront window display reminiscent of late-G1 boxes, under this cardboard sleeve.

You can see the top of the box's window while the sleeve is on, since it only wraps around the four sides.

The back of the sleeve features the typical flavor text, here discussing Jack and Sally and the film. This text is not written in first-person from one of the characters' POV like it was in the Bride of Frankenstein set, and the dialogue feels surprisingly classy for MH copy, without the goofy conversational tone the Bride blurb had. It even makes the typical spooky slang-talk feel less ridiculous! This feels more appropriate to me. A collector doll's box shouldn't sound like it's talking to eight-year-olds.

The basket of goodies Sally drops off for Jack is pictured on the bottom.

Removing the sleeve was fairly tricky because the box underneath isn't the sturdiest and I didn't want to accidentally break something or open a flap too soon, but I scooched it off eventually. 

The window of the box is very reflective, so it was hard to keep myself out of the photo as much as I wanted, but this is what's underneath!

The outside of the box features hatched artwork to evoke Tim Burton's less structured sketchy illustrative style, while the scenery inside the box as a backdrop is rendered softer. Frankie Stein's Skullette appears on a tombstone, perhaps as an allusion to Sally being a stitched creation of a mad scientist? Loosely, I guess she would be considered a Frankenmonster (or a Finkelmonster?) but her official monster type is given as "rag doll", not "reanimated corpse". Jack's ghost dog Zero appears on the side next to him, and gosh I wish he was actually a figurine in the set itself.

The sides of the box continue the hatched art, while the back of the inner box has another portrait of the dolls.

The backdrop slides out of the box like normal, though the interlocking tab flap was located on the bottom of the box this time, and I found I needed to undo the top and bottom to slide out the backdrop. Here it is.

Jack and Sally's stand poles are packaged individually next to the corresponding character, because, it turns out, they're different!

The back of the backdrop features the same placement for the certificate of authenticity and the stand base/clip packets, with the certificate just on the back and the bases in a hollow under the popout that projects into the backdrop.

The certificate again bears the signature of Rebecca Shipman.

The stand bases and clips are identical, but I soon realized the poles are different--Jack's is thicker at the base and taller by quite a bit because his waist would come right to the top of a standard pole. Both clips and stand poles also feel a little different in texture and a bit sturdier than I expected. Maybe it's a new design.

The two stand poles.

I wonder if this taller pole is truly fully new, though, because I'm guessing the Manny Taur/Hexiciah Steam body sculpt was also too tall for the typical stand and they'd have needed something taller just like this. Maybe Jack's piece is what Manny and Hexiciah used?

I chose to debox Jack separately and do his session before I got Sally out. The process was fairly standard, and I'm delighted that Mattel wasn't illogical enough to put tie tags in Jack's head. His head is just cradled into the plastic support and so he had nothing to tear out and leave holes in his head with. I really wouldn't put it past doll manufacturers to make that kind of infuriating decision, so I do have to celebrate common sense in places where it's been known to lack.

This is the character as seen in the film.

Screenshot from the "Town Meeting" scene.

Here's Jack out of the box! I was so excited about that body sculpt, but I needed to look him over all done-up first.

It was immediately obvious that Jack had some kind of disposable plastic shell over his torso to fill out his clothes in the box, similar to how Skelitas have been packaged in the past. This shell prevented him from being used with his stand. We'll see what the piece looks like soon. 

Jack's head is pretty on-model to the character. 

It's not quite spherical, since it's flatter on the bottom, but the head includes Jack's wide black sockets, skeletal nasal cavity, and his unique wide mouth. In the film, his face is not consistent with real bones, as Jack has eyelids that change shape and blink, a mouth that moves like lips and sometimes has full blocky teeth in addition to the toothy line details, and even a face flexible enough to stretch into a ghoulish grimace with his fingers. The expression they've chosen for this Jack doll has his lips slightly open in a pretty applicable way. Is it wonderment? Is he speaking? It works for a lot. I'm most partial to the classic closed-mouthed wide skelly-smile myself, but this face works well.

Jack's empty eyes have airbrushed shading extending past the sockets, which gives him an artsier look and it does look good, but sometimes I find it makes his eyes look a little too large. When coupled with his head being larger per the MH style, Jack can, in some lights, feel overly off-model. Because the design of the head is so faithful to the heavily stylized stop-motion puppet, rather than trying to use a humanoid sculpt painted like a Jack cosplay, the aspects of the MH style influence can come across as more obvious discrepancies.

Two of the "skull mouth lines" on Jack form an X shape, visible on his right. I wasn't totally sure if this was an accurate detail to his onscreen appearance at any point in the film, but a sketch of Jack by Tim Burton features this visual in a similar way that I can't see as a coincidence. The art style of Tim Burton and the film has a degree of fluidity to it, so Jack's mouth is by no means consistently depicted with its lines crossing over, but it has precedent!

Photo of an original drawing by Tim Burton (apologies for the low quality.)

Jack's head is quite obviously a bespoke new sculpt. The head is stamped 2022, meaning these guys have been in development for a while! Jack's head appears to be made of two vinyl pieces, with the bottom being a separate disc attached to the rest. I'm not sure what specs would have made this head unfavorable to cast as a single piece. 

Jack naturally wears his iconic bat bowtie, which is well sculpted here to capture the imperfect spooky edge of the film and Burton's original illustrations. The tie just clips onto his neck and isn't too loose so it doesn't go spinning around everywhere. The tie probably could have done with some white (or even orange) paint strokes to define some of its texture and match the film.

This forms another slight proportional gripe I have, though. With Jack's head being so large, and the tie being so exaggerated, I find that, even with his long neck, the tie takes away too much neck from Jack. If the tie were smaller, his head were smaller, or his neck longer, he'd feel a little more accurate. But again, this is also a doll in the Monster High aesthetic. 

This is what Jack looks like without the tie. His neck suddenly looks more properly long; it's surprising how well the tie disguises that!

Jack's outfit is very very similar to his famous film costume, save for the addition of skulls (shockingly not Skullettes) within his pinstripe suit's pattern, the coat being open, printed button dots on the white "shirt" section (I was shocked to realize he never had those in the film!)...and a bold orange striped waistcoat being added over his torso. I immediately chafed at the vest because I thought it looked garish and the pattern, while objectively Tim Burtony, was contrary to the coat and pants' vertical stripes. Even just making the vest color grey or black-and-white might be more proper...but I've come to accept the look. Jack is the type of flighty, grandiose guy to wear something flashy but awkward in an attempt to be festive and extravagant, and I've found the look less grating as I've spent time with the doll. I'd still prefer something else (heck, even just keeping the original costume but changing the body color of his suit to orange could have worked perfectly), but this is fine. I love the creepy stringy tails on the jacket.

Here's what the outfit looks like without the jacket and tie.

The jacket itself has a Skullector tag sewn into its interior.

Jack's shoes are dressy pieces placed on a wedge shaped like the famous spiral hill seen in the movie. The iconic surreal scenery sets the stage for "Jack's Lament" against the giant yellow moon, as well as "Jack and Sally's Song" at the end, where the two characters finally come together as a couple. Because the heels of these shoes are detailed, slits to give them flexibility to come off and on are instead cut into the sides. The shoes are a very soft vinyl.

Not many male MH dolls would have the right energy for shoes that aren't flat, but Jack is both theatrical and fancy enough to make them perfect. It's great to see a male shoe from MH that feels so whimsical and creative!

Alright! Time to see the body!

As I moved to undress him, I discovered that Jack's outfit is just two pieces--the coat and the rest. This is atypical for Monster High but I think it's reasonable since his skinny bony body is one you wouldn't want a formal suit to be floating around in separate pieces. Making the costume mostly one piece keeps everything classy and tidy on a body that can't really be sewn-to-form for. 

Pants and torso covering are one assembly.

Here's the outfit off.

Then I could see the plastic piece stuffing his clothing. It's just a vague rectangle not very precisely shaped to Jack, but it fits over him.

And here's the whole body!

Jack's body is more realistic and detailed than was probably necessary, given that he's an abstraction of a skeleton and his bare bones have never been seen before, but this body still is very obviously for Jack and Jack only. The proportions are especially spindly (so much of him is leg!) and the sculpts feel a bit simplified to make this into a cartoon design. This probably couldn't fly for an original MH character's body, even though it's great. 

Re-watching the film reminded me that Jack follows the cartoon framework of having only four digits per hand, so I wanted to see if the doll followed suit. It does!

In order to make the body analysis complete, I wanted to get a Skelita Calaveras doll to have on hand to compare to Jack so both skeletal MH bodies could be analyzed. Fortunately, after years, a new Skelita is on the market again at a retail price. Sure, she's a collector doll with a higher price, but it's not an absurd aftermarket price borne of years without a new Skelita! Ghoul's in demand, and the hard-to-swallow offerings for G1 Skelitas have been what kept her off the blog for such a long time. I will be discussing 2023's Dia de Muertos Howliday Skelita in more detail in a project about the character by herself, but she's here to cameo today to compare body sculpts with Jack. 

Howliday Skelita as she arrived to me. Look out for more soon!

Here's the two dolls.

Skelita has her own prominent fantastical inaccuracies, such as her flesh-like facial contours and breastlike ribcage curves, but Skelita strikes me as a more grounded and detailed sculpt than Jack. Her ribs have real gaps in them, for one, and her off-white bone color and more realistic hands and head make her feel more anatomically accurate. Her body was clearly designed with the intent to be a semi-real showstopper, while Jack's body is designed to suit a more simplistic cartoon man who isn't a fashion-play doll. The only detail edge Jack has over Skelita is the gaps between his radii and ulnae in his forearms. The Create-a-Monster Skeleton had these gaps too, but Skelita (and by extension, Bonita Femur, who reuses her forearm pieces) has the bones sculpted adjacent with no gap. Jack is skinnier of leg than Skelita. Both dolls have one weird shared feature--the backs of their pelvises are solid (sure, logical for doll engineering purposes) and shaped like butts (uhh...what?).

Among male dolls in the brand, Jack's physique is the tallest I have, though also the skinniest by far. He's just a bit taller than the Monster. His torso is not outsizedly long, but it's lifted up high by his extra-long legs. Both his shoulders and his hips end up higher up than the other guys' as a result!

Left to right--G1 MH, G2 MH, G3 MH, Skullector Monster, and Skullector Jack.

The G3 body there was originally Deuce and then I tried to turn him into an alien but never got anywhere great with that. He's the best reference I had on hand for the G3 body, though. 

Jack has the smallest feet of any MH dude, but they're hinged just like the rest of the male dolls'. His ribcage looks comparable in width to a G1 torso, so maybe some of those clothes could be tried on him, but really, he's not going to work in anything not sewn for him. Skelita has some wardrobe struggles, but her body fits the frame of her fellow ghouls to make clothes-sharing viable for her. Jack's not meant for that kind of play, so it's not really gonna work so well for him.

The Manny Taur/Hexiciah Steam body sculpt appears to still be the tallest produced by MH in the 11-inch scale. (Obviously, the Frightfully Tall dolls and Treesa are in different scales.) I don't have a Manny or Hexiciah to compare, and I'm really not passionate enough about either to bankrupt myself for one as a visual aid!

Jack's articulation is mostly standard for MH, but I think his long limbs and large hands make him feel very gestural and expressive even as a nude doll. I find a lot of soul in posing him!

But Jack has one feature that makes his doll body genuinely stand out in terms of articulation--a very narrow pelvis and very wide hip clearance. What does this mean? It means his hips bend far and that allows him to affect poses atypical of fashion dolls which are so distinctive of his spindly, expressive character in the most wonderful way. His outward and forward-and-back hip movement is really something to behold. 

So behold!

So much of Jack comes from his body language, with his lanky, flexible body having a spiderlike eeriness while portraying theatrical awe and curiosity, and it was a joy to discover just how well this doll could embody that charm and personality through its articulation. I really got into the spirit of channeling him through the doll. I connect with his physicality!

Jack even comes the closest of any doll I've owned to being able to hug his knees to his chest. Alas, his legs are just so long, and his knees don't bend enough to really sell that look. 

Although he is dead, he can't take off his head to recite Shakespearean quotations! His head has the anchored neck peg of most MH dolls. I think a Create-a-Monster nub joint would have been a great little touch for people to discover, though I don't think most people would ever try taking apart a collector doll's body!

Jack's body isn't perfect. While I'm pleased that the forearm and hand joints pop in and out well, the rotation of the forearms is loose on both sides, such that gravity will try to spin them downward if the elbows are bent and you want his hands up. I was also disappointed that the knees didn't bend just a little bit more than they did. I think it would have been cool if his head could bend upward a little more, too, maybe by having an extra joint in his neck. But these are nitpicks. I'm overjoyed with how much I was able to capture the Jack Skellington energy with just that freedom of hip movement! The doll is able to fully illustrate both Jack's innocence and the creepy aspects that truly earn him the title of scariest haunt in Halloween Town!

Jack's stand doesn't really clip onto him even without the plastic plate on his ribs, but you can stuff his clothing into the clip to keep him in decently. This actually helps a lot with making his physique match the animated character. Jack just doesn't look right with a rectangular torso.

Jack Skellington isn't a perfect doll, but none of my critiques of the doll hold up against the joy I felt playing with his articulation and taking photos of him in the Jackiest poses I could come up with. Justice was done to the original stop-motion puppet through the added range in just one joint, and the result is great. Jack is absolutely better taken out of the package and played with and posed. In the box, he's a square-chested MH doll. Out of the box, he IS the Pumpkin King!

Now for Sally!

Screenshot of Sally from the film.

I've always really loved Sally's character. She was admirably cunning and clever and the most rationally-grounded and emotionally intelligent character in the cast...I just think she was let down by spoken dialogue that was very redundant and simple. Her monster type is also unique. While she looks like a classic stitched Frankenmonster and was created by the resident mad scientist Dr. Finkelstein, Sally is officially described as a "rag doll" and it's shown that she's not filled with bones and organs, but rather, dead leaves that serve as doll stuffing. As such, Sally has an emphasis on fabric patchwork and stitches and does her own repairs with needle and thread to play into a rag doll sewing theme. It's ambiguous whether her blue skin is meant to be flesh or cloth, but I imagine she couldn't properly be called a rag doll if it weren't fabric, right?

Here's Sally fully deboxed and tidied up.

Sally came with disposable plastic sleeves on her arm, a measure which is usually done in doll packaging to safeguard doll bodies against dark pigment leaching out of clothing fabric and staining their body. 

I'm a little perplexed as to what protection Sally needs from her outfit, though. Was it seriously a concern that her mesh sleeves would stain her, or was there some kind of structural concern for packaging stability that had nothing to do with staining and pigment? 

Anyway, the sleeves are off.

On top, Sally has a fancy black headband with a bow, thistles, and swirling vines.

Sally uses thistles twice in the film to silently play "he loves me, he loves me not", with neither session completing. The first time, Sally is interrupted by a vision of her thistle turning into a Christmas tree that then catches fire, warning her that Jack's obsession will come to ruin, and the second time she's welcomely interrupted by Jack confirming "he loves me", rendering the game moot! 

The headband piece fits nicely, but I find it slightly unnecessary. Sally's iconic look for me has always been her simple hair standing for itself, and I don't think the doll really loses that much by dropping it. Even without it, she works as a chic take on the character. 

Sally's hair appears to be saran, and is a gorgeous rich reddish-orange color. In the film, Sally is never depicted with very saturated colors, probably because she never leaves the deliberately-dreary Halloween Town setting, but her hair is still visibly red. I think the doll probably could have leaned more burgundy in the coloration and that would be perhaps more accurate, but this color is beautiful and doesn't feel like a break from the design to me. The hair length and shape is the same as the film character's, though the head shape changes the look a bit.

Even though Jack's face fully imitates the stop-motion cartoon puppet, Sally's got a much more humanoid head sculpt, leaving the two dolls feeling disparate. 

In the film, it was conceivable that Sally's skull, if she had one, would look a lot like Jack's, but the dolls feel like they wouldn't have similar skulls. Sally's face is unusual, though, since it follows the Tim Burton drawing look of having tiny black pupils in white eyes, which might clash with her more realistic face sculpt, so really, I don't know what the direction is here. Maybe Sally would have been more cohesive if she either had a unique caricatured head sculpt like Jack and the Tim Burton eyes with it, or else she and Jack both had more realistic heads. I feel like the designers weren't so consistent in how they adapted this design style to their dolls. I wonder what the rationale was.

Sally's face paint is very elaborate. The stitching detail lines up with the character, and her face stitches have white highlights to make the stitches look dimensional. Her eyes have shading and subtle gloss to make them look more fancy and realistic, and even her eyelashes match the "V" formations of the film character! I also like how the dark eye makeup makes her eyes look outlined and illustrated to give her the Tim Burton drawing look.

Sally has eyebrows, which is conspicuous to me. The film character has larger eyes and no brows, and I can't help but feel like, even if brows were called for to complete the face in these proportions, the design wasn't perfect. I feel like Sally's eyebrows would look better if they were more upturned, maybe shorter, and thin all the way through. The thick inner edges feel pretty modern and not very Sally to me at all. 

Unlike the Sally in the photographs on the box, the doll I have does not feature prominent blush...though I think this might just be a case of the factory failing the execution because it looks like her cheeks are oh so imperceptibly dusted by the echo of a whisper of pink...and that's all fine by me. Blush, pink or otherwise, simply doesn't mesh with the aesthetic of the character herself or her art style to me, so Sally's makeup not fully coming through in this doll head isn't a problem.

Truly the La Croix theory of blush application and on her, I'm not mad.

I also find that my impression of Sally's face jumps in and out of finding it to feel correct. Sometimes she feels like Sally to me, and then it'll shift to feeling horribly off. I think I might be distracted by the brows too much. She just...looks right, and then she doesn't, and back and forth. It's very weird. I could try wiping off the brows, but not only do I consider that to be disrespectful to artist pieces like the Skullector dolls, but it's a risk I don't feel willing to take. When I switched the Bride of Frankenstein onto another body, that was an additive choice motivated by another art project, whereas wiping paint from Sally would be a subtractive permanent alteration in a way I'd feel uncomfortable with.

I did try a sloppy image edit just to envision what she'd look like browless. I can see why brows were added to make her face feel complete with this sculpt and set of proportions, but this could probably work too. I'm not sure if it improves her resemblance to Sally or just highlights the discrepancy in sculpt between film and doll more.

If she just had less forehead, this would work!

Sally's head sculpt is marked 2022 and those eyes are large, so it's probably made just for her. I don't think it fully succeeds. Even larger eyes and even less of a chin would have made her look more like the stop-motion character and put her better in line with Jack, and could help her capture the energy of the character better. The head has excellent paint work, though, even if I don't love where all of it went to use.

Sally has matching earrings with pendants shaped like the head of the black cat that goes around Halloween Town. Sally briefly holds and pets the cat during "Sally's Song", and the two have been associated often because of the moment. 

Sally has this thorny black necklace around her neck. I recognized it immediately as a piece from Amanita Nightshade in G1...probably because it was a piece I lost from the doll back when I owned her, and never found it again! It works well for Sally, though, though it's not something I think she needs to look chic and complete.

And when I say this is an Amanita piece, I mean exactly. It's not just the same sculpt, but it's cast in black just the same way.

I'll always recognize something from this ghoul!

Here's Sally without the jewelry and headband, just to demonstrate that I think this makes her look more classically "Sally" while still looking proper as a more chic Skullector restyle for her.

You can also see some blue stitching on her chest, and some on her arms and legs. This stitching is noticeably less detailed than that on her face, and I kind of wish it was consistent all the way around, regardless of whether the stitches were simple or detailed. Only Sally's forearms, collarbone and neck, and lower legs have stitches printed on.

Sally's dress is an evening gown based on her classic patchwork. The cut is off-the-shoulder with puffed mesh sleeves, a patchwork sweetheart bodice and mesh-covered pencil skirt trimmed by a mermaid train of spiderweb lace tiers. The waist features a belt in the same fabric as Jack's waistcoat, tying the two dolls together in a cute way.

I like the mix of dimensional stitching and multiple patterns on the bodice, and the Skullette in the skirt is great. While it's a little improbable that all of Sally's outfits would feature fabrics in the variety of patterns and colors as her famous sack dress, the specific look is iconic and is rightfully replicated with this outfit. Not all Sallys in material outside the animated film are depicted with this level of saturation, but it looks good to see her colorful!

The train of the skirt is best appreciated from the side, though it still has good volume and presence while pressed against the pole of her stand.

Sally's shoes are similar in style to Jack's, though hers are heeled by the ingredient bottles that are essential to her rebellious escapes, and feature swirling plants and stitches.

Dr. Finkelstein, her creator, gives her no freedom and seems to use her as a caretaker, so Sally subverts her role and finds independence by drugging his worm's wart soup with deadly nightshade and covering up the odor and/or taste with pungent frog's breath. Once Finkelstein is asleep, she sneaks out. When we witness Sally actually performing one of these escape ruses, Finkelstein has gotten suspicious of her and he demands she taste some soup first. Sally (extremely clever lady) has already prepared a holey spoon for such a scenario, which she uses to "sip" the soup unharmed, getting him knocked out once more!

The detail of the jars on these shoes is great. Like Jack's, the slits are in the sides. Sally's shoes are a firmer plastic than Jack's, and harder to wrangle. I imagine Jack's shoes are only so soft because he's both very skinny and has ankle joints, meaning that breaking his ankle joints was a real concern regarding the use of his shoes. Sally has no ankle joints, like any other MH femme body, so her shoes can be a little firmer without the potential for breaking her in the removal or putting-on.

Sally's threadspool purse is only narrowly a new piece. 

At first I thought it was the same purse as used by G1 Threadarella...

Mattel stock photo of Scarily Ever After Frankie Stein (Threadarella).

...and Ghoul's Beast Pet Frankie in G2...

Mattel stock photo of Ghoul's Beast Pet Frankie.

...but the photos taught me for the first time that the two previous spools are actually different purse shapes sculpted for precisely the same visual concept. I wouldn't have thought there would ever be two sculpts for that! Sally's purse does feel so specifically familiar for a reason, though. It seems to be almost identical in sculpt to the latter purse-it just doesn't have the sculpted bandage "+" on the front like Frankie's purse does. 

Even though this purse is technically new, it's fairly dull to me and still reuses enough to feel uninspired. This was the accessory to put in when working with a movie full of iconography? I'd have loved one of the scary toys and/or a gift box. The vampire teddy bear from the movie would work really nicely reframed as a cute date-night gift! 

This, in doll scale!

I had one other issue with Sally, and it was familiar and maybe worse. And it's the opposite of Jack! With my Sally, not one, but both of her forearm pegs are sticky, such that you have to push them through a full rotation inside the socket and they won't hold a pose at all rotations because they want to turn back to a more relaxed state. What is causing this problem, Mattel? The Creeproduction Frankie doll's forearms rotate perfectly in a smooth circle! I also don't think Sally's forearms are removable, so maybe the Skullectors have a different body with weird forearms that don't pop out or rotate properly? This is an issue. 

While Jack not having a detachable head is fine, I'm almost tempted to call it a wasted opportunity for Sally not to have had a Create-a-Monster body. Her detachable rag doll pieces are a major mechanic of the character in the movie, as she willingly breaks herself apart to navigate several situations as a unique advantage tied to her inherent resourcefulness and cleverness. I always find it a little disappointing when a plastic Sally toy can't come apart as a result, and MH theoretically had everything on hand to make that happen for Sally. Maybe the molds are discontinued/destroyed and that wasn't feasible, but man, that would have bumped her up a lot. Would have eliminated whatever is going on with the forearm pegs too!

Even though I have less praises for Sally than Jack, the two do make a lovely couple. 

The best part of this set is the Jack Skellington doll. While I have gripes with him, his body is expressive and gestural in a really fun way that does justice to the spindly stop-motion puppet with the sculpting and especially the huge range of hip articulation. Between the two dolls, it's Jack whose defining personality shines through the doll best for me. It's almost certain his body will be a one-off sculpt, but dang, I wish it wouldn't be. A more mainline-styled male skeleton doll with this body or something comparable would be incredible. 

[Or at least a solo Skullector reprise of Jack, wearing his Sandy Claws outfit, maaaaaaybe having a nightmare toy accessory and coming with Zero, eh? Hint, hint, Mattel? Heck, for all I know, that could be revealed and released before the end of this year...but that's probably unlikely and isn't rumored. Still putting it in my speculation list!]

My issues with the dolls are several. Both dolls' head sculpts and faceups try to blend Monster High with The Nightmare Before Christmas, and in different ways, but it's awkward for both. Jack is mostly on-model, so the exaggerated eye shape from his airbrushed shading is often distracting to me. Sally, meanwhile, is a different aesthetic from Jack altogether, and doesn't completely feel like Sally to me--the eyebrows still leave me puzzled, and her face for sure could be a little rounder. Sally feels more like "the Monster High version of the character" than Jack, who feels more like "the character, just made into a Monster High doll". I feel like her stitch painting should have been rendered the same way across the whole doll, too. I also thought these dolls had phenomenal potential for handheld accessories that just wasn't capitalized on. The film is so iconographic that loads of interesting objects could have been adapted to accessories...but all we get was a fairly dull modified reissue of a purse sculpt they already had on hand. For a doll franchise with a history of designing character pets, it also felt glaring to me that the famous pet of one of these characters wasn't included. Zero should have been here. Lastly, Sally continues to exhibit what seems to be a consistent issue with the forearm pegs in the Skullector dolls, preventing them from turning in a smooth circle and hindering her posing options. Why the forearms don't seem to be removable is also beyond me. That can be a hindrance and seems directly related to the articulation issue. There isn't an issue with the Creepro body--why not just use that for all G1-styled dolls?

In short, my impressions of these dolls are close to my impression of the original film. Flawed, even messy...but undeniably charming and magical. These dolls really don't feel as worth the aftermarket money to me as the Bride of Frankenstein set did, but I'm still happy to have had the experience with them. I did get the magic of the film in them--especially with Jack. I just hope Mattel corrects the forearm issue and makes the launches way fairer. 

I'm glad to have this couple in my collection...

All my Nightmare paraphernalia.

...but this experience just wasn't as pleasant as it should have been.