G3 Rescue: Deuce Gorgon

I have some issues with a few G3 dolls that have visually disappointed me, so I figured it might be worth playing around with them and trying to give them a fresh start. G3 isn't over so these really can't be considered RESTYLE ICONS (I know there's every possibility a future release of a character I'm not vibing with may end up nailing it for me), but there are still dolls I want to work with to try to figure out something. The first G3 doll I was actually hooked by was, surprisingly, Deuce. He was also the first to disappoint me in-person.

His radical differences, with green skin, a longer face, and a Halloween color palette, all struck me as welcome and more appealing than the generic dudebro he was in the G1/G2 material. However, in person, Deuce's doll disappointed me with his weak knee and ankle joints and his personality felt a little too cartoonish, as well as his snakes feeling like a suboptimal style. I eventually ran back to the older Deuce I was familiar with and worked with that doll until I felt satisfied. However, I was interested in aspects of G3 Deuce's Coffin Bean release in a two-pack with Frankie and thought, given my huge pool of Deuce stuff I had from working with his G1 version, I could get something better out of Deuce with a second try. I ordered a solo copy of his Coffin Bean doll for this exploration.

Go here to read my restyle adventure with G1 Deuce, which has more context on the character!

This is not a proper review of G3 signature Deuce, but the Coffin Bean doll has the same faceup and can be redressed for me to be able to discuss the signature edition seamlessly, as far as his costume goes. Here's the Coffin Bean doll flawlessly playing the signature doll. 

This doll compares extremely well next to his cartoon incarnation. The only meaningful differences are that the doll is sculpted with relaxed snake hair, his glasses are more opaque, and his tank top is more detailed while his shoes are a little less so.

You can just barely see the snake on his legs here, so the pants are the same.

Deuce's snake hair is probably the source of most of the reasons I struggled with this doll. I get it, it makes sense not to have them all standing up because that increases the doll's height too much for packaging and maybe that would make it too fragile, but the shape gives Deuce a very different tone than the cartoon image.

G3 Deuce is still meant to be seen as having a bro-hawk, but this arrangement makes his hair look more like an alternative half-shaved style and makes him seem more moody and less jockish. That's an interesting angle, but I don't think it's what they meant to convey. 

Like, I don't know. Couldn't they just package a Deuce doll with his legs bent forward in a leaned sitting or slouching pose and fit his snakes in that way, or turn him sideways a bit and bend his legs? If they can rig giant heavy Gooliope into a crouching crammed box pose, I'm sure they could fit a Deuce with upright snakes into the standard box height somehow!

The other issue is the way the snakes are molded. They're so tight to his head that you can see they shift his shades off-center on his face. I had to grab the snakes and pull them away from the head and break them away from the glue a little to give his glasses enough room to sit right. This shades-unfriendly fit is the same for all G3 Deuces as far as I can tell. 

G1 Deuce had gradient scales in medium green and lime, and his snakes were darker at the head.

G2 Deuce's scale cap had no gradient, but his snakes were still dark at the tips. G3 has no snake or scale paint. G1 and G2 Deuce had dolls with oddly longer side-combed snakes for formal occasions, but their length and size don't feel like an alternative hair curtain. 

Two G1 Deuces and G2 Deuce.

Like the G1/G2 dolls, the scale cap and snakes are two pieces glued onto Deuce's head, but the snakes are cutout and the scale cap has a structural shape to fit them together more closely. You cannot take the snakes out and get an even cap to work with. 

Pieces from my first G3 Deuce.

Two new sculpts would be required to change the shape of G3 Deuce's snakes to represent a more upright pose. I had also tried cutting the snakes apart and bending them into a new shape with heat and cold, but the vinyl did not set into a new shape and the molding of the snakes and cap severely aesthetically limited how far I would have been able to bend them upward, anyway.

G3 Deuce's colors are obviously a big departure. G1/G2 Deuce was the only gorgon character with a humanoid skintone, and one of very few characters at all to have one. His more serpentine cousin Viperine had colors based on an albino snake...

Mattel stock photo of signature Viperine.

...and the Create-a-Monster Gorgon, also more snaky, had green skin and snakes.

Mattel photo of the CAM Gorgon with some CAM Mummy parts.

G3 Deuce still has no snake texture on his body, but his colors are now all inhuman. His palette is very similar to the CAM doll, but with slightly yellower skin and bluer snakes. It's a little underwhelming. Although the two characters are not in a shared continuity, it still feels repetitive to me. 

Deuce's shades, a necessary device to keep his petrification powers from harming people, are black with snakes curled over the top and arms. They look nice when aligned. 

Deuce's face looks nothing like his previous incarnations. 

His face is longer and has a distinct smirk fitting G3's slightly more animated look, and his eyes turn up sharply at the corners. His eye color is pretty much the same, and I do enjoy the monochrome effect of his all-green coloration even though yellow or orange eyes to pop more might have suited G3 Deuce's overall aesthetic better. His brows look more textured (I guess even the snakier gorgons get some humanoid hair?) and are in an uneven position to match his smirk.

I think the new face design totally suits the alternative swoosh of his snake sculpt, but it doesn't strike me as much of a "dude" personality. G3 Deuce looks like a trickster-- clever, mischievous, or rebellious, and that's not what he's written to be in the cartoon.

G1 Deuce had a left-ear piercing in the form of a small ring on the edge. G2 Deuce dropped it, and G3 has no piercing either. 

Deuce's bag is a cross-body rectangular pouch in purple that hangs behind his back. There's a green snake detail on it, and the bag has a slit in top that can be flexed open to store things. It's a little bulky and I don't enjoy using doll bags like this that have to be forced open.

The strap has a pin and hole in the front. 

G3 signature Deuce's jacket is the best piece of him. It feels like denim and has a great rich multitoned green print of a snakeskin pattern and a colorful orange snake on the sleeve.

The jacket is sewn well, with cuffs, a collar, two tiny functional breast pockets with flaps, and a nice lower edge. The only drawback is that the white underside of some of the fabric peeks out in a few spots. 

I enjoy the distinctly Halloweenish color palette they tried on Deuce, mixing black, orange, purple, and green. It's an odd pick for a gorgon, but I support efforts to turn them into Halloween iconography because they're great monsters and can really work in the space. 

Deuce's tank top underneath has a detailed print with a snake head baring its jaws and a distressed visual texture to the fabric.

Deuce's pants are a stretch fabric that feels more like leggings, and feature more of the green scale print on lines down the sides, plus a purple snake set on one leg, set opposite from the orange one on his jacket arm. The ankle holes were so tight I had to cut small slits in the ankles to remove the frustration in pulling them on and off his feet. That's never good.

I like the way the pants and jacket work to pull the outfit together. G1 Deuce was not known for tasteful fashion, but G3's got a vibe that feels less dude-tacky than I'm used to. He's actually coordinated here!

G3 Deuce's shoes are sneakers with snake heads integrated into the front. The colors come out of nowhere and aren't on the rest of the doll, but they still work. 

I won't talk about all of the accessories he had, but I will note that Deuce is a rare G3 doll whose phone thumb-bracket suits his hand sculpt so he can look natural holding his phone. 

This is a rarity!

The G3 boy body is thicker of torso and shorter of leg than G1 and G2, with G2 having the tallest body. The G3 feet are smaller than the shared foot sculpt that G1 and G2 had. They fit into G1/G2 shoes fine, but G1 and G2 cannot wear G3's shoes.

My old G3 Deuce stripped to the base, in comparison with the G1 and G2 bodies.

I also have noted weak peg fits at the knees and ankles in G3 boy dolls, and both Deuces have feet that spin super easily, as well as knees that could be sturdier. I hope Mattel corrects these issues because this body right now demands a doll stand, and the two Deuces have felt notably worse than Clawd and Heath. 

G1 and G2 Deuce had a painted green scale design on their left upper arms. 

G2's design lost the gradient and outline effects and was just in solid lime. I don't believe this could be real scales at that size, so I assume they were meant to be tattoos. The G1 paint even looks like a color tattoo. G3's style trends less edgy, and seemingly confirms the design was a tattoo--because G3 Deuce doesn't have it. There's no paint on his body, nor any sculpted scale texture.

Here's Deuce in his Coffin Bean outfit. You may wonder why I ever deigned to get this stock.

Acknowledging that this incoming outfit is ridiculous, we'll start at the top. 

Coffin Bean Deuce's glasses are the same sculpt as signature's, but in frosted neon yellow-green.

I saw a lot of promise in these. 

Coffin Bean Deuce wears an awful hoodie. It's got a pale purple and orange gradient under a neon green graphic, and has white simulated strings and net sleeves. It's like a jock trying and failing to understand alternative. It's loud, it's soft. It's too bro to be goth and too goth to be bro.

It's paired with harsh black-and-white leggings pants and neon sneakers!

...Deuce.

Honey.

So, okay. There are good things about this outfit. The snake-Medusa graphic on the hoodie is awesome. I appreciate that the hood goes up.

And the shoes are amazing with their Hermes wings and cobra heads.

The silver straps have "GORGON" molded on them.

But dear sweet boy, what happened to you? All of this together is disjointed and way too much. It's absolutely familiar to Deuce as I've always known him (clashing king!) but I can't get behind this particular ensemble. The hoodie just doesn't work. That purple needed to be darker, and that in addition to the conceptual mess of the gradient, graphic, and net sleeves colliding together renders it pretty much unusable for me. I don't think I can make the hoodie look good. But everything else, I can work with, and the neon green is inspiring! I think G3 Deuce could have an awesome fashion sense if it was all black, white grey, and shades of green. Emphasize grey tones for stone and neon for his eyes and powers. Or darker greens. In the absence of purple and orange pieces to work with, that's where I'm going! But I needed to step in and give this poor boy some help. 

Matters of taste aside, the only physical issue I found with the Coffin Bean outfit is that the shoes are too rigid and were very difficult to pull on and off his feet, even when I tried to cut the heel slits further down the back. Given the looseness of the feet already, the shoes made me pretty nervous, but I didn't break anything.

Now for restyles!

Deuce looked good with the Coffin Bean pants, shoes, and shades paired with Mansters G1 Deuce's tank top.

And I liked it with Shadow High Ash's jacket, which I'd cut the sleeves from. Ash's jacket is baggy on Deuce but the grey color and the style suit him well.

Neither of these looks were optimal, though, because I wanted to keep the tank for my G1 restyled Deuce. 

A Mego figure's grey tank top subbed in well.

I just couldn't wrangle the neon shoes over and over during this session, so 
he's barefoot sometimes.

The Mego green Frankenstein coat and pants worked well with the Mego Invisible Man shirt and tie. The coat obscures the tie being too short on a Monster High torso, and the short limbs of the suit look intentional and stylistic to me, rather than ill-fitted. I finished this look with the loafers from Scaris Deuce.

I had a Rainbow High Junior High Karma jacket in the right neon green color, and I tried out G3 Clawd's glasses to give him an orange option, paired with black Mego pants. This feels very lithe and youthful. Maybe a bit nineties? The jacket doesn't hug the back of the doll, but the cut can work as a stylistically small piece.

I think G2 Deuce's dance shirt (formerly a T-shirt printed to look like a jacket tee over a dress shirt, but now with the front cut out) works nicely as a layer over the Mego dress shirt.

And here's the orange glasses with the disaster hoodie. They can't save it, though. I don't have other suitable orange or purple pieces to really work with those colors, either.

The dress shirt and Karma jacket were interesting with the patterned black-and-white pants.

It's a little K-pop, but that's not a bad thing.

And I really liked the Karma jacket with the black tank, the black-and-white pants, and the neon shoes. This feels very slimming and athletic and fun. It's cool without coming across as tough, and suits his trickster troublemaker vibes. 

But again, the black tank is in demand for my G1 Deuce too. This look is strong, but for now, I ended up back at the grey tank and Ash jacket with the pants and shoes. Here's both restyled Deuces, with G3 taking the Scaris bag because it matches this palette really well.

G3 Deuce hasn't quite been around long enough yet to get a better pool of bespoke pieces to play around with, but maybe he'll have better orange-and-purple success than the Coffin Bean outfit with future endeavors. For now, I think I landed on a really compelling alternate color palette for Deuce and give him some options that suit the doll as produced and lean into the aspects that set him a little apart from the illustrated and animated depiction. While I'd love this guy's body to have stronger joints, I like him a lot more in the pieces I've selected and am happy to welcome him back into my collection. 

Stone. Cold.