Two in a Million: Monster High Peri and Pearl Serpentine by Mattel

 Monster High has pushed the envelope for a while with several dolls that go further-out than the rest to really try something unusual and unprecedented within the doll space. 

Wydowna Spider had six arms and four extra bug eyes. Iris Clops and the three-eyed Create-a-Monster had odd-numbered eye totals. Skelita Calaveras was all bones. What I found to be Mattel's last, biggest bold move in G1 was in its last major doll line with the release of Peri and Pearl Serpentine. They're conjoined twin sisters who make up the first mainstream fashion doll to be released with two attached heads. For me, that's compelling and they were part of my original collection. For others, it's a turn-off. But I always admired the daring behind Peri and Pearl, and I also found the ghouls to be fairly dimensional and respectful representations of a real rare human experience. They needed to come back and join my crew again. 

Mattel artwork of the Serpentines.

Peri is the ghoul on our left with the blue-dominant hair, while Pearl is on our right with the mostly-white hair. Think of Peri's hair as periwinkle (not really purplish, but go with it) and Pearl's as pearl-white. 

Great Scarrier Reef and the end of G1

Peri and Pearl are two of the new characters from Monster High G1's final movie special and last major doll line, Great Scarrier Reef. The other new characters were Posea Reef, the seaweed-below-the-waist fishy/echinoderm daughter of Poseidon, and Kala Mer'ri, the mean-girl squid daughter of the Kraken. The Great Scarrier Reef is core character Lagoona Blue's original home, so the movie sees her sent back to her old environment where, whoa!- the audience discovers fewer of the characters have Aussie accents than would be expected because it's just Lagoona's family and Posea who sound like they're from there! 

No, actually, the plot is about Lagoona, put on a mission by Posea, facing her ex-friend Kala and the stage fright which has kept her out of dance. Peri and Pearl serve as Kala's morally divided girl posse--Peri having significant discomfort with the cruelty she's been dragged into. 

All of the GSR dolls offer a different take on merfolk. The new characters have Posea being half-aquatic plant, Kala being half-squid with four arms and four main tentacles, and Peri and Pearl being half-snake. The main cast receives fish-tailed transformations related to their monster type-- Frankie Stein becomes an electric eel, Draculaura becomes a vampire squid, tigerlike werecat Toralei becomes a lionfish, and Clawdeen Wolf becomes a wolffish! Not sure if Lagoona was going on a specific theme. None of the GSR dolls include stands, since each is designed to stand on their tail, and each doll has glow-in-the-dark features to mimic bioluminescent fish.

Right to left-- Clawdeen, Kala, Posea, Frankie, Draculaura, Lagoona, Toralei, Peri, and Pearl.
Expect Kala on this blog sometime.

The Great Scarrier Reef dolls exist within a very thick creative tension that's completely obvious with the benefit of hindsight. While it wasn't known to anybody at the time what the ominously announced reboot of the brand would entail, it's super easy now to read the GSR dolls as torn between being the last bastion of G1 freaky fabulousness and being the harbinger of G2's safer, kiddier, less-luxurious branding and tone. On the one hand, some of the most unusual, innovative, and detailed sculpts and body concepts MH had ever seen were included in this doll line. Kala and Posea and Peri and Pearl are weird within any precedent for fashion dolls! But the warning signs are just so clear now. GSR had much simpler, less adorned, and less edgy (thus: far less "collectory" or displayable) bubble packaging for its boxes, which would become the norm for G2 and G3. By exploiting the reef setting, GSR has very very bright colors and probably has the most kiddie and toylike palette of any G1 doll line. The dolls are mermaid toys, thus entering a market demographic dominated by preadolescent girls, and necessarily have few clothing pieces, meaning they hardly feel like fashion dolls in aim. There might also be a little bit of something to the fact that this concept allowed Mattel to excise doll stands altogether...but I admit that's probably reaching too far for criticism because a new body sculpt for every character in the line is far from economical, and feels more like a concerted "last hurrah" move than a "goodbye luxury" one.

Also, don't take my observation that mermaid dolls are for little girls as anything but an observation of trends. I know I challenge that because I was a young boy who thought mermaids were magical. But still young. These dolls are the most obvious evidence that the brand's shift younger in target had already been underway before G2 would make it clear as the mission statement, and they were signs of what would be coming around the corner.

Peri and Pearl, and what they depict

Peri and Pearl are based on the Lernaean Hydra of Greek myth, a water-dwelling serpent creature with multiple heads which regenerated in multiples when severed, creating a more dangeorus threat with each decapitation. The Hydra is most famous as being the target of the Second Labor of Hercules/Heracles, where the hero realized cauterizing the head stumps with a torch would prevent regeneration and allow the beast to be slain. The Serpentines thus refer to their collective of parents as the "heads of the family" or "parental heads". The Hydra being a collective of sapient consciousnesses makes the whole monster mechanic of head-severing and regeneration in multiple much more existentially terrifying (how does any of it-) so we'll not go there because Monster High doesn't either. In this universe, the monsters all lived. The twins may also be visually inspired by the well-known but rare phenomenon of snakes being born with two heads in a "Y" shape. (This might also have some bearing on the formation of the Hydra legend itself!)

The two are also a deliberate social depiction of conjoined twins, a very rare real phenomenon where identical twin siblings' bodies are born physically fused-essentially the same kind of thing that can happen to snakes, but with people. While for humans, it's extremely rare, the implication with Peri and Pearl is that hydras are conjoined by birthright. But that's just fantasy worldbuilding and it's still clear that they're meant to reflect the human version of the phenomenon. Conjoined twins are also known by the term "Siamese twins", based on the famous Thai brothers Chang and Eng Bunker, who became famous through sideshows and made the phenomenon more well-known. Since (a) "Siam" is no longer the name for Thailand like it was in the Bunkers' day, (b) conjoined twins can be any nationality, and (c) "conjoined" is overall the more accurate term, it's more proper to use "conjoined" today.

Twins can be conjoined in several ways, sometimes having complete independent bodies attached at a singular point, or having two torsos split off from one pair of legs, or, even more rarely, two heads and people attached to a single body that they control jointly (dicephalic parapagus twins). Abigail and Brittany Hensel are conjoined twins in this fashion who have been well-documented for their unique condition. Some conjoined twins can be surgically separated if they have complete enough body structures with minimal connection, while other twins, usually with heavily shared body structures and organs, must remain conjoined if both or either are to live. While surviving dicephalic twins are very very rare in reality, they tend to be a common visual oddity in offbeat media. Bette and Dot Tattler in American Horror Story: Freak Show are dicephalic twins played by Sarah Paulson in a dual role created by visual effects, and lots of cartoons use two-headed monsters with each head having a distinct personality, which could be considered to be conjoined twin depictions. Think Zak and Wheezie from Dragon Tales, or Terry and Terri from Monsters University. Some cases arguably are not representations of conjoined twins and are just going for a cartoony "multi-headed person" idea, something Monster High itself might have done in the webisodes, with a background student or students with no mouths and one body who is/are just used for a visual gag about being told to be quiet, and go unestablished as to whether it's two characters or one being depicted because of the background nature of the character(s).

Are they two? Is he one? If you have to ask, you probably
can't count it.

Of course, that's where discomfort comes in. Conjoined twins in media are overwhelmingly associated with the surreal, fantastical, spooky, and bizarre, simply because they're such a rare occurrence and present unusual bodies, and have an experience most people can't begin to relate to. And there's no ignoring the fact that Peri and Pearl inescapably manifest as something of a novelty or oddity toy even within MH's brand. I value them highly for their clear intent to represent something real and rare, but it should be acknowledged that their representation also participates in making them unusual and there are lapses I'll point out as we look deeper. 

I wonder if perhaps the othered cultural frame placed on conjoined twins is simultaneously the biggest limitation and advantage for their representation at the current state? The way birth statistics, media, and society are set up, I feel like conjoined twin representation attempted casually in grounded, mundane media would inevitably feel conspicuous and get people asking why, no matter how the work tries to portray them. There'd probably be pressure to explain them in the setting and audiences could find it bizarre --they wouldn't have the space to exist unremarked upon either within the work or in the real world through audience perception. If Barbie Fashionistas #945 and #946 were conjoined twins, there would be articles written in confusion, if not outrage. (People couldn't even let the Barbie Fashionista depicting Down syndrome just exist.) In that sense, horror and fantasy can be leveraged to provide a more approachable space for conjoined twin characters, where their very presence won't create questions, and from there, a more respectful representation can come forth. Bette and Dot in AHS are set within a freak show, but are written as leads of the show and are pretty dimensional characters with distinct inner lives and realistic conflict about their shared body and different outlooks and desires. Peri and Pearl, monster teens based on Greek myth, nonetheless feel like pretty grounded conjoined twins...and they don't require an ounce of justification here.

 

Conjoined twins are and will remain a very small population, so some would argue they don't need a movement or a media push for better representation, but it is still unfair that strangers and media consistently put a frame on them as weird or freakish. I think weird spaces can serve as a way for more dimensional and real representation to get its foot in the door and that can be praised, but it probably shouldn't stop there and be stuck as the only space where conjoined twins can get represented with depth. 

So what do the Serpentines get right? 

The first thing that impressed me about Peri and Pearl's portrayal was how the animation depicts their bodily control in accordance with the real-life example observed with the dicephalic Hensel twins. It's clear each sister controls the arm on her side of the body alone, and in one scene when Pearl is asleep and Peri is awake, Pearl's arm is slack along with her head and Peri still only has use of her arm and cannot take control of Pearl's.

Screenshot from Great Scarrier Reef, showing Pearl slack and asleep while Peri is awake.

The special indicates either sister can take control of their snake tail for locomotion while the other isn't acting, since, in this scene, Peri has gone to visit Lagoona in confidence, exploiting Pearl's slumber to do so, but for a monster with one centered "limb" below the waist, letting either take over that works out and it suits the plot purposes of Peri defecting from her sister and Kala. The Hensel twins have a two-legged body and each sister controls the leg on her side, just like with their arms, but with a speculative body plan like Peri and Pearl's, I think they found a plausible concept for the tail control.

I also don't find their existence to feel like a freak show. They're respectably different from each other without leaning hard into a cartoonish novelty contrast where they're dramatic polar opposites. They feel like realistically alike and distinct sisters. They get into antics other characters would and the aspects related to their conjoined state, even if sometimes silly, don't strike me as implausible or done to make a joke of them--like Pearl in her sleep mask while Peri runs off somewhere else. That could be taken as a visual gag, but it also feels fairly real to me as a reflection of their unique circumstances and how they would adapt and operate. I also didn't find the characters to feel like they were there to be a teaching moment about conjoined twins. There's never any dialogue where the movie pauses to explain them and why they're valid. We get it just from them watching them act and exist, and it's no big deal. Heck, they're not even given an introduction scene--Lagoona just mentions who they are in a scene after they show up alongside Kala, and that may be sloppy writing, but it might also have spared them an introduction that leaned into a gimmicky feel. As depicted, they really did just feel like two people with a shared body to me, gracefully included in the cast with some accurate, attentive touches. I think precedent also benefits them. The franchise has already gotten us to accept strange features like multiple pairs of arms (twice as of this doll line), horse bodies, and strange eye assortments, so Peri and Pearl don't feel quite as unusual. Again, unfair that this is the frame they're normal under, but they do some good work.

I feel like the basic concept of a two-headed doll was on the MH team's idea list for a long time, but I'm glad that when they finally made it happen, they also took the effort to examine what a doll with two heads would actually reflect in real life and portrayed the experience of conjoined twins with grace.

Review time!

I didn't get these ghouls boxed, but this was what the GSR boxes looked like.

Official stock photo.

Not so impressive.

The packaging of the Serpentines is also the source of what I would consider to be the bigger failings in their representation. First, I remember being annoyed that the GSR "doll stands on her tail!" note on the packaging (I know it was there, maybe it was on the back?) was not changed to the plural on Peri and Pearl's box. Maybe syntax was confusing to figure out, though "Dolls stand on their tail" would work fine. "Tail works as a stand!" could have been used for an entirely syntactically-neutral phrase suitable for all of the doll boxes in the line. I feel like the packaging designers simply weren't thinking about it and neglected to notice that Peri and Pearl should have had accurate phrasing for that blurb, or that it should have been phrased inclusively if it was to be the same on each box. And if they had released a GSR Gil doll (like they should have because he got a whole new manta-merman character design and wasn't merchandised), then he'd need a different label too!

Kala and Posea were labeled as "Down Under Ghouls", while Peri and Pearl were labeled under their own release title as "Hissters". The rest of the dolls, the transformed main characters, were "Glowsome Ghoulfish". (And so the labels bar Gil a second way, then...he could have been "Manta Manster!")

The other big iffy representation thing I see in the packaging is that the Serpentines have only one diary. This is shared between them and written in alternating perspectives and typefaces to show the sisters taking turns (not always strictly back-and-forth) in one journal. 

I think two diaries would showcase their individuality better to the audience and be more logically structured, as well as offering a more layered narrative experience where we see two perspectives on the same events and have to piece them together. It's possible the ghouls could decide to share a diary due to lack of privacy (one of them would otherwise need to distract herself and/or cover her eyes while her sister wrote), but I'd personally expect each to keep her own journal, and journaling simultaneously could make sense for them to maintain privacy because each would be focused on her own writing. This is probably a budget thing in the end, though, where Mattel didn't think writing and printing two diaries for what is still one doll release was reasonable. Since they have one body and take up less physical space than two full-bodied separate dolls, Mattel probably wanted to push them into a solo release format rather than treating them as a two-pack set because that lowers production costs. Not to mention, Peri and Pearl did require two heads to be produced, screened, and rooted within budget on a doll body that already required entirely new sculpts, so a second diary might have been out of the question production-wise even if the team might have wanted to have one.

The diary is a slice-of-life segment depicting a tiff between the sisters, and the story is isolated from context, such that the plot of the movie has no bearing upon it. While it's clear the diary takes place before the movie, the movie's upcoming events aren't a big factor. Peri ate a fish Pearl was allergic to, causing them to fight and divide their room down the middle, experiencing the ironies of having to compromise in a situation where they're trying to make their own spaces for themselves as best they can and eventually reconciling and taking elements of their redecoration into a new design. However, I just don't think it makes physiological sense for a conjoined twin to lack an allergy her sister has, even if they have separate stomachs. Maybe I'm wrong. I do appreciate that the diary attempts some Aussie slang to make them feel like they're from that region. The movie does not give them any Australian flavor. 

Here's their profile. 

With them being a depiction of conjoined twins, I think the dumb pun about them "butting heads" could be seen as a little tasteless and objectifying, but I was intrigued by the single note (apart from their names) that isn't written fully by Pearl in consensus for the both of them--Peri comes in separately to write under "Biggest Pet Peeve" that she's less bothered by people seeing them as one monster than Pearl is. Perhaps it's tied to her otherwise meeker and more submissive personality, where she doesn't have the will or interest to stand up for her individuality and would rather just let it go. That can be pretty realistic for atypical people who feel pressured to explain themselves frequently to others. And some people are just non-confrontational, so it makes sense to me if Peri chooses not to make an issue an issue and picks her battles. Peri is also depicted as slightly breezy and ditzy, what with not understanding why Pearl was so angry with her for activating her allergy, so it might be that Peri really doesn't care and dismisses the issue because she doesn't think it's a serious offense. Maybe she goes with the flow while Pearl prefers to swim against the current!

There is one continuity inaccuracy-- their school is listed as Monster High even though the events of the diary took place prior to their evident transfer there. They were Great Scarrier Reef High students at the time they'd have written this. The other new GSR students have the same error in their diaries.

At last, here's the sisters as they arrived to me.

And after some hair care.

All of MH's original twin characters have heavy differences despite all being identical siblings, since they want the dolls to be distinct and not feel redundant. Only The Shining's Grady girls in the licensed Skullector line are more directly identical, per their appearance in the film...and it's not clear if they're actually twins in the film adaptation because their book equivalents were separate ages. Like the werecat twins Purrsephone and Meowlody, Peri and Pearl are depicted as mirror images with swapped hair-color balances. Each head of hair is long, wavy, and side-parted toward the outer edges of their body. Peri's hair is mostly blue-teal with a white streak on top, and Pearl's hair is mostly white with blue-teal underneath. The blue-teal blend was debuted on Avea Trotter and also saw use on Garrott du Roque and Ghouls' Getaway Jane Boolittle. It's very pretty but was probably overused.

Peri next to my modified Avea.

I think it suits the twins really well, though. There's something to the volume of both heads of hair creating a fun contrast with their lower body, as it makes the two people on top feel very wide above such a skinny tail and makes their balancing act look more impressive. 

The fiber is a nice quality and it's great for dolls with dramatic volume. I also observed it on Amanita Nightshade and Freak du Chic Toralei.

Peri and Pearl were also released as a large styling head(s) toy by Just Play, who made other oversize MH customization toys, like the bell-jar styling heads and the 28-inch customizable Beast Freaky Friend dolls.

The Peri and Pearl styling toy by Just Play.

The Serpentine sisters have nigh-identical head sculpts, but their makeup marks their personalities very differently. 

Peri's dark lips and richer tones give her a maturer, more poised look that feels like vintage glamor, while Pearl's makeup is very bright and pale and makes her feel washed-out and more airy. I feel like this is a bit contradictory to their personalities, since Peri is the more quiet, flighty, and submissive twin while Pearl is more assertive and even mean. All the same, I can definitely read Peri as the sweeter one even with their colors arranged this way. I do feel like Pearl's colors don't tie well into anything else on the doll very well, not even so much with the sisters' top.

I've heard these characters are credited to Rebecca Shipman, and I totally see it in Peri's face. She has the same kind of vibe I've observed in Robecca Steam, Gooliope Jellington, and the Skullector Bride of Frankenstein.

Maybe I'm massively overthinking, but as a character artist myself, I feel like I'm recognizing distinct aspects of style in the characters Shipman has been credited with or signed her name to.

Peri and Pearl both have a snaky plated ridge texture on the bridges of their noses. Like all of the debuting GSR characters, they have dark blue pupils, presumably to make their eyes look glassier and more piscine. I feel like they might have been given snake pupils if they were released at an earlier time in G1, but it'd still make sense to me if that was never considered because having round pupils helps distance them from gorgon associations, especially from depictions of Medusa that give her a snake's lower body.

The Serpentine head sculpts are identical because conjoined twins are always identical, but there is a slight difference in mold because they're mirror images of each other, just like their hair rooting. Each ghoul has extremely subtle scale patches on one temple and one cheek, but they're on opposite places between the two. 

Peri's scales are on her right cheek and left temple...

Look super hard!

This was the clearest picture I got of their head scaling.

...while Pearl's are on her left cheek and right temple. 

I imagine this was as simple as making a mold from a mold to have two reverse copies with which to cast a single sculpt in two different directions, but it's neat that the heads are actually different. That feels like an above-and-beyond touch that wasn't required, and it serves to further the theme of their differences and similarities as sisters.

Peri and Pearl wear an earring each on the ears that don't face the other sister's head. Those ears aren't pierced because there would be no space for earrings there. The earrings introduce the main theme of their outfit--rather than depicting a repeated symbolic picture as iconography, the thematic aspect of their outfit is lavish jewelry with strands connecting across itself to suggest the idea of being conjoined. These earrings are loops with chains crossing over them and are symmetrical. Peri's is a tasteful gold, while Pearl's is pink, a color I think should have had no place on their doll no matter how well Peri wears it on her lips. 

The sculpt of their ears reminds me of a fin, a web, or a shell. MH has a preponderance of aquatic characters, and it's truly remarkable how many interesting water-monster ear shapes they were able to devise.

Peri and Pearl's skintone is slightly shimmery on their heads, but I've heard it's very close to G1 Ghoulia's. It's a light grey tone with a very slight yellowish hue.

The two ghouls' heads are obviously brushed up against each other, but they still articulate pretty well. Their necks are symmetrically angled, but one ghoul can have her head tilted more upright if the other is tilted a little more sideways. It might be more realistic (at least, going off the reference of the Hensels) for their torso to be wider and their necks to have different angles, but this is a graceful, stylized way to fit them onto the standard torso shape.

Peri and Pearl continue their lavish jewelry with a joined two-necked necklace piece in gold. Since making an outfit with two necklines at this size would be difficult to engineer and make user-friendly for the owner, having a necklace with two collars is a great solution to emphasize the individuality of the two with the design of their costume. 

I like the Skullette key included among the pendants!

Peri and Pearl love gems and trinkets, and I'm sure there's an unspoken suggestion that they might scavenge old shipwrecks or other sailors' overboard paraphernalia Ariel-style to find some of their treasures. This passion lends an entirely different meaning to their names-- Peri could stand in for peridot, a green gemstone, and Pearl refers to oyster pearls. "Serpentine" can also refer to some mineral types like quartz as well as the fact that they're snakes!

Under the necklace, Peri and Pearl have a blue patterned top with yellow trim and triangular flared mesh sleeves. 

The GSR tops trend toward abstract patterns like this, and they remind me of splash-ball toys. It's so rare this late in G1 to see a clothing piece without explicit imagery tied to the monster type. There's nothing snaky about this piece. 

With Avea Trotter, I had commended the fact that the designers had found a way to make her outfit feel substantial, layered, and complex despite her being a doll with only a top half that could be clothed. I feel like GSR does not rise to that level with its dolls in general, since they just have single layers of tops which are supplemented with vinyl accessories. The only GSR doll who has two layers of fabric is Kala...and that, unfortunately, was far from a rewarding experience because her belt was infuriatingly too short and her coat was so sheer that using her belt and assembling her complete outfit was a nightmare. 

Like all merfolk dolls, Peri and Pearl can only wear tops that open all the way down the back because they don't have the typical legged lower body, but their torso is the same shape as a standard MH doll's. Their arms are best pulled out at the elbow to remove and put on the top they have because of the size of their arm fins.
The sisters also wear an elaborate golden belt. It looks nice on them and is easy to use.

These ghouls probably would sink to the bottom of the Mariana Trench with all this jewelry on, though.

Peri and Pearl's tail is blue from the hips down and features two large flared pink fins. These are their glow-in-the-dark piece, but the glow color is the typical green and it's very dim so I didn't photograph it. Not all of the GSR dolls glowed green, because I know Posea's little seaweed critters glowed in the same colors as their plastics, but more of the dolls glowed green than was probably a good idea. I would have been more impressed by pink glow on the Serpentines even if I generally disagree with the color on them.

I'll try to change the fin color somehow. The front of their upper tail has embossed line patterns in mint, which is probably also a color I will want to change. 

Their tail fin has a conjoined piercing of dangling pink beads which goes into two holes. I like this detail a lot in concept, but I wish it was gold. I think it's pink to balance Pearl's earring after the necklace and belt were gold, but all of it being gold would look so much nicer--or make Pearl's jewelry silver!

One of the studs has been stressed from bending.

The pins and holes forming the attachment here are a unique size, so there's nothing really that this piece can be swapped out for or replaced with.

I think this piercing might serve a sneaky little instructive purpose--it shows you which side of the tail fin is the "front" so you'll always know how to bend the tail joints correctly for it to be in the right standing shape.

Here's the body sculpt in full.

Most of their torso has an even scale pattern which matches their tail. Some blue paint on the waist creates a cleaner shape between the two colors of plastic. 

Peri and Pearl have gills on their necks, which is fantastic.

Their arms have fins that match the shape of the ones on their tail, with curls and webbed structure. I'm almost surprised these aren't painted, though, as it leaves them with three different fin colors. Their hands have webs between their fingers. Late G1 worked to improve the sturdiness of the joint pegs, so the arm pegs are quite a bit thicker. Their hands don't feel like they sockets they fit into are deep enough, though, so they feel a little loose and they don't fit flush to the wrist when fully pushed in. I have no memory of this being an issue with my first copy of them.

MH merfolk graduated toward the level of jointing they reached by GSR. The first merperson doll was the Create-a-Monster Siren add-on pack, which just had a non-rotating fin hinge so it could stand a doll up, but the bulk of the fish tail, which a CAM torso fit into, had no articulation. 

Then Freaky Fusion introduced the first mainline complete merperson with Sirena von Boo, a hybrid mermaid/ghost. She added a waist joint so she could bend forward and come closer to sitting, while her tail was two non-rotating fin halves that hinged into a support for her to stand up, though I know she could be balanced when her fins were together like in this photo:

Finnegan Wake finally introduced a hinged mid-tail "knee" joint, necessitated by his depiction as a wheelchair user who needed to be able to sit properly in his chair. 

This latter system is what the GSR dolls with the thinner tails adopted. Draculaura, Posea, and Kala have no "knee" joints.

I'm not hugely impressed by the yield of this articulation on Peri and Pearl as far as mimicking human poses. The waist and knee really don't bend far enough to replicate an upright seated pose.

The rest of their tail is just two curves with simple rotation joints that allow the tail to flatten or bend a little without compromising the loop shape that's needed to stand them properly. The tip of the tail is one piece and the "C"-shaped curve before it is another.

If the lower tail was more poseable, it'd be a lot harder for owners to find the correct shape to support them again after playing with it too much. You can't "lose" the standing shape of the tail the way it's done here, making it pretty easy to "reset" their pose into standing mode. Paired with the fin piercing as a visual guide, it's easy to get the ghouls back on their tail.

While standing, Peri and Pearl are taller than a standard G1 ghoul, but shorter than a big-sister G1 ghoul or a G1 or G2 boy.

While I personally find Peri and Pearl to look cluttered in the color department and I will be giving that an overhaul, the biggest disappointment I've always had with them is in the weak engineering of their tail. Both their "knee" and the first joint below it were manufactured just a little bit wobbly forward and back, making it unduly difficult to articulate their tail into the stable standing position and keep them upright. Their weight up top would rock the knee and tail bend and make for a lot of fiddling, and they are less solid while standing than they ought to be.

I recall solving the knee problem back in the day by taking an an elastic band from the packaging and wrapping it around and shoving it inside the joint to give it the appropriate friction...through some wizardry I don't recall. Today, because that's tricky and because I know elastics decay, I instead wrapped a piece of sturdy thin yarn inside their joint and poked the ends in and that tightened it perfectly. I then tried to pour some glue into the socket of the tail-bend joint and put it back together to add friction there. 

Of the three GSR doll tails I have experience with, only Posea's was manufactured with genuinely sturdy, solid joints. Her three seaweed tentacles seemed to be made of strong firm vinyl that had perfect friction on the ball joints of her lower body and posing her stably was very easy. Kala's four squid tentacles were hard plastic, giving them no traction on a surface, and my first copy of her had one tentacle eventually split apart enough at the seam to fall off the ball joint. I wish the GSR bodies had been tested a bit more for sturdiness and ease of display.

Makeover

Alright. We have a pretty great idea with a lot of loud kiddie colors. My vision for these two was always to lean into the blue and grey/white color scheme with gold accents, and get rid of the pink and mint to make them feel more dramatic and more like the darker elegant highlights of G1. I had considered repainting their tail a darker grey and making the fins blue, but that would take way too long, be too delicate for me to achieve, and result in a fragile paint job that would be undone by the joints. So I decided instead to keep the tail blue and make the fins all grey to match their top half and the fins on their arm. That would rein in the colors and add a touch of consistency. I also redid their makeup in blue, gold, and silver tones, swapping the color values to ground Pearl's face more and shift Peri lighter without losing her charm. 

Here's the repaint!

The paint on the fins is super delicate because plastic is not a very adhesive surface (it already got a couple of nicks before the end of this review session's photos), and the detail on their front is not as tidy as it was before, but I think this gives their aesthetic so much more maturity and glamor.

It's amazing how the faces look like they've switched just because of the values of their makeup colors. Pearl now looks more darkly glam, while Peri looks more light and airy.

The power of makeup, everybody.

It was surprisingly easy to change Pearl's pale lavender with gold applied in a non-opaque single coat, and I don't mind the loss of some of the crisp factory paint detail because the color is a big improvement. Now, it's Pearl who has a more "Rebecca Shipman" faceup in my eyes! I tried to make all of their makeup colors the same, but not in a perfectly tidy mirrored pattern where the colors were located in direct opposite places. I wanted what looked best for each while keeping their colors in the same pool. The gold also exactly matches the highlights in their irises now, which is great.

I then needed new pieces for them to wear. Peri can keep her earring, but I wanted to replace Pearl's with a the surprisingly perfect silver-chains earring from Sirena von Boo, ordered loose. 

It's in-theme with the Serpentines and complements Peri's earring in a way that's individual but more attractively paired. 

Then my Dayna Treasura Jones came in with a treasure she'd scavenged from her parts of the sea.

"Found somethin' ye might like."
"For us?"
"You shouldn't have."

"I see gems!"
"Look at that blue!"

"Only the sparkliest for ye jewel ghouls!"

This is the dress from Ever After High's Farrah Goodfairy, daughter of the Pinocchio Blue Fairy. I thought the colors and jewel theme were perfect for my vision for the Serpentines.

Here's the piece on them. I had to cut it open all the way down the back and cut off a bit of skirt so it didn't enclose or get puffed out by the hip fins. 

And here they are fully accessorized!

I didn't choose to repaint their fin piercing and put it back in. I knew that paint would be way too fragile and they don't need it to look complete. 

I'm very happy with how this reimagining turned out. The gold, silver, and blue color palette is classic and it works for a jewel-themed pair of sea monster sisters without feeling too poppy or kiddie. This is what I think an earlier-G1 rendition of these characters would have looked like. The biggest drawback is how fragile the fin paint is but I'll live with it and paint repairs are annoying but shouldn't be too difficult. These are ghouls I'd have to store with proper padding, though. 

I knew I wanted to take an "underwater" photo of them, but I worried that immersing them would cause the pen I used to touch up their face to run, and I also didn't have a vessel large enough to immerse the amount of their body that I wanted to. I improvised by turning a blue storage tub on its side and photographing them behind one of its walls like a window while they were upside-down. That tinted the scene blue and made their hair look like it was floating in a strong enough way to sell the illusion. It also looks like they're swimming in a vertical aquarium in this photo because you can't see the open side of the tub!

This was another good picture, but I didn't think it looked quite watery enough for the cover.

Being an artistically-minded photographer with zero budget has led to a lot of creative solutions that I think have been super successful! 

And here's my G1 Greek monsters-- Avea does double duty as a harpy and centaur, Deuce is a gorgon, and the Serpentines are hydras!

Peri and Pearl as they were sold were a messy color palette and had a poorly-engineered lower body with wobbly joints that fought against the standing-up purpose of the body design. However, they also presented an unusual, striking doll that aimed to give respect to conjoined twins with a representation that felt pretty authentic, entirely non-preachy, and mostly correct. Their biggest deficits in that regard come from the syntax on their packaging and the fact that they were only afforded one diary. I frankly don't have a lot of sympathy for opinions that they made up a doll that was "too weird" because that completely misses the context of what they are and what they mean, and proves why their representation is valuable, but I don't blame anybody who found their general color palette and aesthetic to be too much. Frankly, the only GSR doll whose hard-hitting color palette really worked for me was Kala because it seemed very clear that she was designed to be "too much" in a totally intentional and harmonious manner.  

G1 ended in confusion, with the most lavish sculpting and interesting body sculpts clashing with kiddie rainbow mermaid theming. Fans were unsure how to respond to the most blatant signs of what was changing in the brand...but I think there's a lot to be grateful for in G1's last gasp. We're still waiting to see something quite this cool in the playline again.