Picking Bones, Part 2: The Skelita Collector Dolls

In the previous post about Skelita, we looked at the start and end of her G1 career, and had to grapple with some dark discussions about the way her designs created a distracting and distressing implication. In this post, we'll be looking at her two collector dolls, which include her sole G2 appearance and her first appearance contemporary to G3. The previous post has more context, but know it gets serious. Read it here.

Monster High had exclusive dolls pretty early on, with their presence at San Diego Comic-Con bringing forth multiple unique dolls sold only at the convention, and briefly online at the same time. These dolls were either unique variants of characters in fun themes, or else served as the doll debut for minor characters in their signature designs, and half of those characters would later get a mass release through the "I Love Fashion" doll line. I always thought it was a little unfair how the signature designs of the characters were made exclusive and how so many important characters got no mainline release. 

These dolls were essentially collector dolls because of their exclusivity, but they never quite felt like they were labeled as such. The first Monster High doll to be explicitly labeled for adult collectors was this edition of Draculaura. She belonged to no greater label or line and is best referred to as "adult collector Draculaura". 

Mattel stock photo of collector Draculaura.

Adult collector Draculaura remains unique in the brand for being a significant artistic departure from the main brand. Her faceup is styled and painted more delicately, almost like an antique porcelain doll, she has rooted eyelashes, and her body was larger and out-of-scale with the regular dolls and featured a torso joint. The doll doesn't place herself as compatible with the standard dolls. 

Mattel's next standalone adult collector doll came during G2, where Skelita Calaveras received the treatment in a doll release on Amazon dressed up for Dia de Muertos. She cost less than collector Draculaura (Drac was $50 and I think Skelita was about $25), and was designed to be fancier but in-style with the standard dolls. Her body is unchanged from her previous dolls and her faceup works among the other dolls. 

Mattel's last collector doll without a specific title was also during G2, with Abbey Bominable as the star. I've heard this look is inspired by Electrified, a G2 movie she was not featured in, but only the hair texture seems similar to those designs.

Mattel stock photo of collector Abbey.

The only other G2-style collector doll was Ghostbusters Frankie Stein, an SDCC exclusive.

Mattel stock photo of Ghostbusters Frankie.

I was always unsure whether I liked collector Skelita or found her insubstantial and too removed from the typical look of the character. Eventually, the appeal was strong enough for me to buy in. I got a new-in-box copy, far removed from my regular standard due to that being the least practical way to buy secondhand, but in this case, I thought it was warranted. I wanted to see what the collector release format was like in 2016, during the weird times, and it was only fair to have the full experience of both collector dolls for a truly even comparison.

Here's collector Skelita's box. I love the marigold window arch, and the blue and yellow colors are very fun and pretty. 

The moon is visible on the top flap, as well as a bold logo.

The sides feature colorful artwork of the Hexican streets and dancing skeletons.

This then segues into the back of the box, featuring a portrait of Skelita as placed on an ofrenda remembrance altar. Ofrendas are used as places to put images of the honored deceased, and serve as elaborate tributes and visual tableaux. Food and drink will be left on the ofrenda as well to call forth the spirits the ofrenda is dedicated to.

The flavor text below Skelita's portrait introduces the story behind this doll--it's Skelita's first Dia de Muertos unaccompanied by her grandmother, and while she's excited for the festival, she's nervous that things will be different and she won't be welcome by herself. 

While Dia de Muertos is not an edgy holiday, it still strikes me how much softer and brighter this packaging looks. It feels like it has some of the same controversially kid-friendly direction as the rest of G2. 

I was mildly surprised to see the top flap of the box opened with folded corners wedged in, rather than being a fully detached rectangle. I haven't seen that on a box from this brand in any other case.

The backdrop slides out as expected.

Like a lot of late-G1 boxes, the diary is tucked in the back of the backdrop and is removed from the back. The doll has no certificate of authenticity.

Skelita's diary is nice. It explores the mythology of how skeletons cross over into the human world (though Skelita clarifies she was never dead or human) and it gives a sense of her history with the holiday. She has two non-relative human friends from the yearly festivities, Carlos and Gloria, who, it turns out, have built their own ofrenda to invite her with, composed of all of the items she's accidentally left behind from previous celebrations. Skelita is touched to learn she's valued at the festivities beyond her familial bonds, and has a great time even though her grandmother had to miss out this once. 

Skelita has a profile in the diary, which is mostly similar to her G1 profile, but has some G2 changes. 

A new section has been added called "How I Boo", which serves as a statement of personal philosophy or outlook. It's an okay way to explore character, but part of it feels a little inauthentic and promotional for a person to say about themselves. "How Do You Boo?" was framed as a big G2 tagline, though. "Freaky Flaw" has been rephrased as "Monster Quirk", which is probably an attempt to promote more positive self-talk, but I don't know how helpful it is. I think it can be healthy, honest, and constructive reflection to address parts of yourself as flaws. "Biggest Pet Peeve" and "Least Favorite School Subject" are missing, though, further suggesting a push toward positivity that can be obnoxious at best and obstructive at worst. Conflict is interesting and negativity is natural. Everyone has things they like and hate and I don't think it's bad to show characters with gripes, dislikes, and beliefs about what's wrong.

(In case you wanted to know, G1 Skelita's pet peeve is headstones being poorly tended to in ignorance of personal history, and her least favorite school subject is music because she can't carry a tune.)

The pet section is also missing, but that's fine because it was kept in the profiles well after pets were being produced for new characters. The approach they took was to fill out that prompt with justifications for why the doll doesn't come with a pet, and that played out for far too long. (G1 Skelita's answer to the prompt was that she considered the migrating seasonal monarch butterflies, which are also important symbols to the holiday, to be her pets in spirit.)

None of the mainline G2 dolls had diaries, and only a few novelty dolls had stands of any kind, meaning Skelita's very lucky. Collector dolls have some perks in the post-G1 world!

Skelita's stand is three new pieces in a fancier waist-grip style.

The base is a new sculpt with a scalloped edge and Dia de Muertos-meets-MH engravings. It's the same general size as normal.

The pole is shaped like a spine covered in Skullette marigolds. The back side of the piece is hollow and gappy to save plastic, but the details face forward.

Skelita's waist grip is a new piece that clips onto an inconspicuous bar near the top of the pole. It cannot slide up and down as a result, and I was very disappointed to see the shape is the same as a standard doll's. It's not sculpted like the clip designed specifically for her body sculpt that was used on her Art Class doll.

Here's Skelita deboxed.

I was very quickly frustrated with the stand. Not only does the pole seem to lean forward and push Skelita to the edge of the base, but her shoes are too tall or the clip mount is too low, so she puts a lot of tension between the pole and base and several times, the base popped off and she fell over. After this photo session, she got a standard pole in the custom base and it works way better. This pretty stand doesn't mean anything if it doesn't fit together right with the doll. 

The focal point of this doll is probably her elaborate marigold headdress. 

The piece is tall and colorful, with yellow, green, and magenta, and features nice sculpting of Skullette marigolds with a few signature Monster High spooky drip designs. I think the paint feels slightly underdone, though. The Skullettes deserved to at least be picked out with another color. 

The headdress, sans plastic brace and tie tags, fits prettty well on her head. Here's what the piece looks like removed.

Skelita's hair is another mix of black and teal, with teal streaks at the front. It's center-parted and tied into low ponytails adorned with clip-on pieces with more marigolds.

The flower pieces were held on loosely with elastics, but clip around the ponytail ties pretty well on their own when the clips are held open a little.

There were a lot of things Mattel did in G2 that G1 fans took as insults, but probably the most valid change to be offended by as an OG fan was that the collector dolls of the era shifted to the softer, sweeter G2 facial aesthetic. That comes across as a huge slap in the face to the audience, since buyers for collector dolls, even if they're not super pricey, are the most likely to be older fans who want the G1 style.

Collector Skelita's face does seem to have these changes. Her eyes are very wide and her eye lines and lashes feel less heavy. Her skeletal lip paint is really subtle now and isn't lined around the outside, and the lines beyond the lips also form a more peppy smiling shape than before. Her makeup also uses a purple-grey mask to backdrop all-white details, significantly softening the calavera look to the point where her nasal cavity paint is white and no longer feels like a hollow nose in any way. Her eye color has changed from red-brown to a yellowish taupe. The design pattern of the makeup is mostly similar to G1's formula, but collector Skelita has forehead designs and none of the swirled marks of the G1 dolls.

Here's a comparison of the two G1 dolls I have with her G2 doll.

I'm really not bothered by this, though. Even though it feels like a slightly younger Skelita, it's not not Skelita to me, and a collector doll has every justification to go out of the box with the makeup. I think collector Skelita's face looks very pretty and the masked shading with the white and softer brows achieves the mission of feeling more elaborate and delicate and high-tier. Sure, she's softened for G2, but she also does work to look a little less toylike. I'd probably be more disappointed if G2 Skelita wasn't a sole collector release. As a mainline doll, I might be less kind toward changes like this because she wouldn't be able to hide behind the theory of being a one-off. 

I did want to see what Skelita's hair would look like taken down. 

It kind of works and kind of doesn't. I think this does remove her from feeling like Skelita. This is another character altogether--maybe a friend or cousin. It's cool how wide the teal streaks are, such that it makes her whole head of hair look teal from the front.

"KATRINA" is not stamped into the back of her head like it was on her G1 dolls. There's something stamped there, but it includes numbers and from what little I could make out within her hair, it didn't spell "KATRINA", suggesting that maybe the manufacturing code on her head has changed and no longer functions as a diegetic reference to carving a name in a calavera, or to the character of La Catrina.

Skelita's dress is a one-piece assembly. 

The bodice is modestly cut and features a multicolored flower pattern over black, and has magenta trim and a turquoise lace ruffle framing the edges in a traditional Mexican style.

The skirt is a glossy piece in black with a more elaborate flower pattern ringing it horizontally.

The showstopper factor of this dress is the lace trim at the bottom. It's attached to a sheer layer underneath the black skirt, and the lace features custom calavera designs.

This is the kind of high-quality detail that's easy to overlook and discredit. From afar, this doll might not feel super collector-tier but this lace does feel special.

Skelita's dress hangs below her knees. Most G2 clothing cuts were made more modest due to the younger target audience of that era. G1 MH trended above the knee, and sometimes in ways that felt a little too short. However, I think the cut of the dress is appropriate for a traditional holiday celebration doll. This Skelita is really meant to work as a Dia de Muertos decoration for the holiday in the real world, so having her feel more classic serves that purpose. 

Collector Skelita came with the disposable body plate in her clothes, and that does help her stay in her stand, but I'm happy to say she doesn't need it for looks. Her outfit looks perfectly fine on her without it. 

Skelita's shoes stand her taller than my other Skelita dolls due to their tall platforms. They're pink with multiple straps and have marigold and heart-shaped designs on the front.

While G2 featured a new, less skinny body design for the majority of its dolls, the returning characters who had more radical body detail (Gil and Skelita) saved some time and money and just reused their G1 bodies. As such, Skelita's body sculpts are all the same as her G1 doll, though her upper legs seem to be made of a slightly firmer plastic. They don't feel bendy like her G1 dolls' upper legs did, and that's nice after my old Scarnival edition had a warped leg. The only flaw I saw was that her wrist had a bit of excess plastic from the molding process.

I tied Skelita's hair back up and set to take some portraits of her. 

I had to do some in candlelight. These came out nicely...

...but editing the last one in post to change the tint produced my favorite picture of her. I'm not normally that excited by colored mood lighting, but the pink and green tones of this are absolutely gorgeous.

Collector Skelita is definitely different in a lot of ways facially, and visibly made more youthful and friendly in accordance with the G2 mission, but those work just fine on her and she's a really pretty expression of the holiday. Her fancy stand pole and clip are poorly functional, but her body sculpt is slightly sturdier. I think she's a really sweet and appealing doll. 

And that brings us to her newest doll...which is ostensibly quite similar to the previous one. It's another flower-topped Amazon-exclusive Dia de Muertos collector edition (now under the new Howliday label)...but I think it's gorgeous. This was the first Skelita of the project that I actually obtained and photographed, since I already wanted her and needed a Skelita quick for my Jack Skellington review to do body comparisons, and having her blossomed into me getting the other three dolls and writing this much bigger dissection of Skelita's history. People have not seemed very impressed with this doll, but I don't entirely see why.

Howliday Skelita sells for about $45, which is higher than collector Skelita's initial price and puts her price closer to collector Draculaura's original cost of $50. This might be one of the big reasons this doll is being criticized because that seems ridiculous.

Howliday Skelita's box came wrapped in tissue inside the cardboard Mattel package.

The box itself is a colorful wide window display with pink/purple/orange graphics of an ofrenda and papel picado banners. Skelita is posed standing on the steps of the ofrenda with her arms out. I feel like this box wastes a little space. It's very pretty, but the doll has no separate accessories to justify and fill the large width of the packaging. 

The design on the sides is more banners, alternating between butterflies and Skullettes.

The back of the box has a photo of the doll and bilingual text. Properly, the Spanish text is placed first.

Skelita's packaging is very similar to the Skullector dolls. The doll stand base is in the back of the backdrop under a cardboard popout, and the certificate of authenticity is placed on the back in a plastic packet. Skelita's stand pole is upright on her left side on the backdrop, though--not slid under the cardboard popout under her feet.

The backdrop removed.

Nobody signed their name to the certificate of authenticity this time, though the text here is appropriately bilingual too.

When I took Skelita off her backdrop, I noticed a little continuity Easter egg--the urn she sculpted as her Art Class doll's accessory is depicted on the ofrenda, and her Scaris signature necklace is right next to it!

Skelita has a saddle stand, which should work well with her voluminous skirt and doesn't require a Skelita-exclusive clip. The stand base is exactly the same as collector Skelita's.

The stand pole is translucent plastic that's a little cloudier than the saddle stand clips I'm familiar with…but that's encouraging, because that hopefully means it's a different formula that won't be as brittle as crystal-clear translucent plastics can be. I know LEGO has done something similar by going for a new translucent formula that's less crystal clear, but sturdier. I've had multiple saddle stands break before because the plastic was so fragile. I'm optimistic about Skelita's stand.

The big issue with this stand, though, is the fact that this base was not designed for it, and I don't think it should have been reused if they were going to give Skelita a saddle stand. With this system, the base should work so the pole is attached in the center, not the rear of the base. The saddle clip holds Skelita in a position a bit further back than a waist-grip one does, so she tips and topples the stand too easily. When I placed her in an Inner Monster stand, where the pole is right in the center, she couldn't tip the base.

Photo of an Inner Monster saddle stand and base.

If only the new pole fit in the IM base! That'd be a perfect saddle stand! Again, what a waste of an interesting pole design.

Saddle stands are also a little iffy because the feet need to brace well against the floor to prevent the doll from flipping forward or sideways out of the cradle. I later switched this doll to the G2 collector stand because her shoes were a better height for its setup and I didn't want to just set the fancy piece aside.

Here she is unboxed. 

The rest of the packaging on this doll takes the form of tags and a band to keep her headdress on...

...a band around her necklace...

...and a plastic cone wrapped around what would be her waist to serve as a crinoline that shapes her skirt. 

As a result of this cone, this is the first Skelita packaged without the torso form to fill out her clothes. She doesn't need it, either, though!

Skelita's dress can't come off without removing the cone since the bodice can't slide down over it. I cut it off the waist to have it out.

Here she is a little more primped. 

I'm going so say right off the bat that this doll is gorgeous. She's so vibrant and feels so elaborate and rich in detail. This is a strong color palette with lots of bounce and the doll really feels like she's celebrating something! 

But I'm not sure this is a step up in production value from collector Skelita. In some ways, collector Skelita is more complex with her sculpted stand pole and custom lace fabric. I'm gonna have to say this doll doesn't seem fairly priced at all because she's not giving that much more, if she's even giving more at all, than collector Skelita did. She's stunning, but doesn't deserve to be more expensive than the previous doll's original price. Collector Draculaura had observably frustrating choices like a hat held on only by plastic packaging tags, but her standard of craft was clearly significantly more intricate than Howliday Skelita's, and she fits the price she was given much more generously than Howliday does.

The dominant color of this doll is purple, which is unique for Skelita after it played a minor role in some of her looks before. It makes her feel more dramatic and atypical, and like she's part of an evening celebration. Collector Skelita may have felt more like a daytime celebrant of the festivities, but Howliday is the night party all the way.

Skelita starts at the top with a marigold headdress. Each marigold has a sugar Skullette in the middle. The headband fits okay on Skelita without the tags in it, but will fall off pretty easily.

It's some of the small touches that make this doll feel like more than a playline entry. This paint work is impressive, and it should have been this detailed on the previous doll's headdress.

Howliday's headdress is smaller than collector's. Here's what a swap looks like. 

Neither piece feels correct on the opposite wearer. The proportions of the collector headdress work on Howliday, but the green sticks out, whereas the proportions of the Howliday headdress feel far too small for the collector doll because her big eyes make her head look so much larger. 

The headdress is beautiful, but it's admittedly hard not to perceive it as a direct waste of opportunity. Not only is the piece oddly similar in concept to what collector Skelita was wearing, but it feels like it comes at the expense of something we've (I feel, glaringly) yet to see from her--a big fancy brimmed hat! We've already discussed the Dia de Muertos icon La Catrina...

...and I'd love a Skelita that invoked that character's iconography with a showstopper hat. Her second festive collector doll could have been the place to make that happen. She'd capitalize on the icon and create a fully distinct look to separate her from the older doll's formula further...but no. I hope we see a fancy hat from her someday.

I did try out a hat option with a second copy of the G3 Draculaura hat from Etsy. The headband can be pushed to click around the middle. 

It's...okay. The hat feels a little too thin, flat, and modern, and doesn't sit far down on her head. It also bugs me that the Skullettes on the flowers necessarily point the wrong way like this. There aren't any ideal premade hat options I know of that would fit a Monster High doll head and also sufficiently evoke La Catrina.

Howliday Skelita's hair is black with teal streaks underneath, which means her last three of six dolls have had the same two colors. Howliday's hair is center-parted and easily falls forward over her face. The hair has lots of volume, meaning her hair can have tons of drama. 

The texture is fairly pleasant, though it seems slightly dry in the same way as the rest of the Skelitas. Thank god it's not polypropylene, though. I don't want any G1-style dolls touching that. Fortunately, Mattel doesn't seem so bonkers that they'd put the cheap stuff on a collector release.

Howliday Skelita's head doesn't have the word "KATRINA" stamped in it, either.

Skelita's face is amazing, and more G1-styled. She introduces the fourth makeup design the character's dolls have had, and it's quite pretty. While both collector Skelitas feature a grey-purple mask of shading around the eyes for added detail and drama, Howliday Skelita's mask is darker, just around the eyes, and contrasted with illustrative colorful designs in pink, purple, and turquoise, and which go down her cheeks, down her forehead and the bridge of her nose, and on her chin. The screening on her whole face seems clean, precise, and attractive.

There's actually less going on around her eyes than usual, and she doesn't have swirled designs or an airbrushed linework effect. Her nasal cavity shape is unique. Her brows also look more detailed and hair-like. There was only one defect I could see in her paint--a small line in the mask under her left eye.

Skelita's lips return to a pursed painted design with a darker space in the middle of her mouth, but the design of this doll's face has no sassy poutiness to it.

Look at her detail!

Here's the four faces together. Howliday Skelita's face strikes me as the most mature. Her eyes might be the smallest by a tiny margin, and her gaze is focused and doesn't have a dreamy expression.

Skelita's next piece is her necklace, which features a turquoise sugar Skullette with pink beads. 

Skelita has six bracelets, three on each arm. All six are unique--even though a few molds are shared between them, no two are both the same mold and color.

Skelita's dress is multiple types of fabric and feels fun and fancy. Purple magenta-trimmed ruffles sit at her shoulders, she has a gold-and-black bodice with glittery thread and a gold belt section, and a very colorful long bell skirt with a two-tiered hem ruffle and a busy pattern of marigolds, sugar Skullettes, and butterflies. The skirt comes to past her ankles, making it hard to see her feet from any degree of a top-down angle.

Skelita's shoes are made to look like pretty wooden sandals with marigolds on the straps.

I like the monster faces and Skullettes hidden in!

Howliday Skelita's body appears to be unchanged in sculpting, though it retains the small sturdiness upgrades I observed in her G2 doll.

Skelita has no extras or accessories, as mentioned. Those could have helped justify her price and box size. Maybe some candles or a table or chair or ofrenda prop to set a scene with her? A simulated wooden skeleton (calaca) toy? A sugar skull treat? Accessories or playset furniture might not feel collector-esque, but this price point isn't fully filled.

This doll is such a presence. I was so captivated by her.

She got her own candlelit photos, with candles made visible this time. 

I liked this photo a lot for its atmosphere.

But this photo, adding a white spotlight on her face, best shows off the colors this doll is rocking!

Howliday Skelita is dramatic, colorful, detailed, and beautiful. Although she's similar in ways to her previous edition, she definitely stands apart, and I think Howliday Skelitas could become an annual brand staple, with even more exclusive dolls in different takes on Dia de Muertos makeup and costuming. 

However, her doll stand design is poorly thought-out and it doesn't justify recycling the previous base sculpt. Her flower headdress is pretty, but it's thematically very similar to the previous doll and this would have been a great place for a hat. I feel like this doll might have benefited from an accessory or two as well. I also can't ignore that comparing the two collector dolls makes the higher retail price of Howliday Skelita seem notably disproportionate and unfair. There just isn't a case for her costing $20 more than the previous collector doll originally did.

A Monster High character doesn't brave a risky concept, get a detailed and hugely divergent body sculpt, work through grim design pitfalls to maintain a steady franchise presence, or receive two separate holiday collector dolls without a lot of faith, love and passion behind her. Skelita's been through a lot and had real problems, but she's always conveyed a spirit of cultural pride and admiration for her subject matter and has ridden out the worst to keep going. By 2023, I think Skelita has completely left her issues behind her to be a wonderful little piece of celebration. I can see her collector dolls being treasured decorations for her holiday, and to have such detailed and poseable figurines for the purpose is really a treat. I'll probably be back to her here whenever G3 Skelita gets a doll to discuss, but for now, I can feel confident in saying I'm glad this character is still doing her thing. I'm not part of her culture and don't celebrate her holiday, but I can totally grasp the appeal of her design and the authenticity of her detail, and I'm excited for wherever she goes next.