ROFL, XD, GOOD 4RLZ?: Investigating L.O.L. O.M.G. Dolls by MGA Entertainment, Part 2

TT&T has already decided L.O.L. O.M.G. is so. not. it, bestie. Flopped the vibe check, hunny. Gag-o-rama! The vibes were totes off, queen! 

But we're, like, so totally not done yet!

...okay, so writing in rancidly forced and butchered trendy lingo is very fun. But I'm being ironic and I'm not trying to sell you something.

So we've already looked at some of MGA's O.M.G. W.T.F. dolls...okay, no, stop, that's way too mean! I'm sorry! I stand by that joke as a joke, not as a sentiment. 

 
Anyway, I needed to keep looking into this brand just a bit more, motivated more by remaining curiosity and clothes harvesting for other characters. 

To look at an O.M.G. Guys doll, of which there have only been four to this date, I decided to go with Prince Bee, brother to fellow O.M.G. older sibling Royal Bee, and babies Queen and King Bee. Prince Bee has a pretty nice design, has intriguing hair, and has outfit pieces I'd like to try on Monster High G3 Clawd. 

The Bee sisters are all based on Beyoncé, so I'm wondering if the boys in the family might be partially influenced by Jay-Z? The O.M.G. kids are siblings so that's a little strange, but that might be what's going on here theme-wise. I'm largely unfamiliar with Jay-Z and his career, and minimally with Bey's, as well, so I'm not speaking confidently there. The Bee guys might not be directly based on a person. 

The Bee family continues the awkward names as a side-effect of the O.M.G. characters being separate characters and older siblings to the babies they're inspired by, since that leaves the younger Bees as King and Queen. I know they're not actual royalty, but it still flies in the face of the typical expectation for a succession...though some royals are passed over for inheritance in favor of younger family due to complex family webs and customs ordaining it so.

I do respect the Guys dolls for being more interesting and less straightforwardly masc than boy dolls often are. Rocker Boi has long hair and an alternative vibe, Cool Lev feels visually queer-coded, with a Keith Haring graffiti style and colors that might invoke the trans flag, and Tough Dude, the most conventional, still has a pink streak in his hair and a retro James Dean look that makes him more than a dull guy doll. 

MGA also overall achieves a strong level of sculpt and design-scheme parity between the guys and gals in its doll lines, which I have to admire. In all MGA brands, the guy face and body sculpts don't feel nearly as distant from the girls' as they could, and the guys have been given a bit more freedom to wear imaginative and more feminine fashion. While there's still the play-doll market issue of boys having a reduced presence, when MGA designs boy dolls, it really doesn't feel like there's a Mars-and-Venus contrast going on. That's an extremely positive thing they're doing, and it's just so frustrating that their themes are so shallow and their art styles and costume choices are so concerning regarding youth/maturity clashes. 

Prince Bee's packaging is pretty similar to Court Cutie's. 

He's visible in a window and the box is side-slashed in a diagonal in a similar way. The O.M.G. Guys branding uses the most comically manly display possible to assert the gender of these dolls--industrial-stenciled in black and white. Even though these dudes aren't usually pigeonholed that badly into male stereotypes, this is one of the ways they are.

King Bee appears on the side of the box.

And here's the back. Irritating copy again.

It is interesting how particularly weird this feels for a male line of dolls, though. It's true that a person of any gender can speak this way, but most dudes who would use this kind of phrasing are queer and have queer- or female-dominant friend groups. I guess the latter is unavoidably the case for Prince Bee since men are so very rare in the L.O.L. world, and on the queer-coded Cool Lev, this mode of speech probably wouldn't strike me...but Prince Bee's visual tone doesn't seem aligned with this mode of speech to me. I'm happy to see gender-role defiance in media, but at the same time, there needs to be some balance because many people do follow traditional roles. Some dudes really do just act and talk like typical dudes and bros, and it feels like MGA might have forgotten to represent that side of things in their overwhelming use of this type of language. I guess that's another aspect of fakeness I find in this lingo--not only is it being used with 0% emotional sincerity, but its universal application prevents any kind of authentic variety in expression between different characters. I'd be just as annoyed reading moody goth Moonlight BB talking all fierce queen sister work. Which I just know she does.

Prince Bee's backdrop is much like Court Cutie's, but with the addition of a cardboard panel covering his surprise packages. 

Prince Bee appears to be a music lover and a sneakerhead, as well as a basketball player. See what I mean? These are not interests that cross over with the kind of language L.O.L. writes with. He's clearly too much of a dude for that!

There's a well-hidden perforated door on the front to open in this panel later on. I don't think this adds anything, and the more open layout in Court Cutie's box made plucking out the surprises easier.

Here's Prince Bee out.

Prince Bee's hair intrigued me, because it takes the form of a vertical flat-top worn by Black men, and it's a style I've never seen on a doll before. The top of the hair is rooted in a tightly-waved fiber and it stands straight up. There's a slight wiry feeling to it, but this might be a little bit of product, since moving the hair let it part and feel a little softer without damaging the shape of the style. 

The fiber is a mix of brown with metallic gold highlights, and a full stripe of gold features above his left eye. Some artwork of Prince Bee shows a wedge cut out of his hair in this spot, but his doll's hair is entirely even, and the artwork in the doll packaging reflects this, as does the character's 3D animated appearance in the House of Surprises series. 

Alternate MGA artwork of Prince Bee with more shaped hair.

The sides and back of Prince Bee's head are flocked to look like they've been shaved down, and that section is light brown. Three stripes have been "fully shaved" out of the both sides. 

The O.M.G. Guys face is similar to the girls', but as with Shadow High, I find the boys' lack of makeup to make them look genuinely younger than the girls. 

While the O.M.G. ladies are somewhat-unsettlingly baby-faced women, I'm not quite as sure I can see Prince Bee as a man because his face is kind of stuck with just the baby parts of the design without the adult signifiers of makeup that the girls can benefit from. I also feel like his lips strike me as too pouty and childish.

Prince Bee's outfit is a pretty fancy layered number in black, yellow, and gold tones. Fitting his family's position as the coolest kids around and social kingpins (connotations inherited from the unimpeachable titandom of Beyoncé), he has a bit of a "big man on campus" theme to his outfit, which is dominated by a golden varsity jacket. 

Like much MGA clothing, text on it severely limits its usefulness to just being worn by him, as it's marked with a B and a "LOL OMG" banner, and has a graffiti-style "OMG" on the back.

Under the jacket, he has a sparkly vest with an outdoorsy buckle closing it, over a dress shirt with a printed torso. 

I was shocked to see the miniature buckle was functional just like the real thing, since I hadn't realized MGA could do that. It makes me annoyed, then, that they've faked buckles like this on other clothing pieces, like the Ash Silverstone jacket I have on my G3 Deuce Gorgon.

The back of the vest has a fake zipper on it. 

Here's the layers of this outfit separated. I'm impressed. I also like the art-deco-esque shirt print, and the shirt buttons being dimensional studs is very appreciated.

Prince Bee's pants have fake drawstrings at the waist which I don't think look nice, and he has yellow boots.  

The O.M.G. Guys body is surprisingly less muscular than one would expect for the doll industry, and I can appreciate that, since boy dolls are usually jacked and rarely are there exceptions. 

G1 Monster High was one of the others, but that boy body sculpt is a bit bizarre and I definitely prefer the way O.M.G. executed a non-muscular shape. I'd love to see a boy body type like this in G3, but I don't expect it because there's a long-running double standard preventing doll companies from investing as much design resources into boy dolls because they're lower in demand. And we're not likely to see wimpy Jackson Jekyll ever again, so a body like this really wouldn't be necessary for MH. 

The boys have nipples like the girls. MGA, I do not get you.

His hand sculpt is pretty disproportionately detailed like the girls', too. 

Prince Bee's knees have internal clicks to one position, and like most boy dolls, he has rotating ankle joints to let him wear flat manly shoes as well as slide out of pants. 

Again, I wish the knees were standard because this is a boy body sculpt with potential that just gets deadened by the knees.

The Guys dolls are taller than the girls, and their bodies are narrower around the hips.

Okay, let's open the surprise compartment in the box! 

I grabbed Prince Bee's stupid papers first. He's got a poster of himself that features locker paraphernalia on the other side...

He's gone to a concert for Fame Queen's band!

...and a fashion magazine with an abysmal cover design talking about star signs. 

Because of course MGA is pandering the astrology crowd, why should I have expected otherwise? (Look, follow astrology or whatever, but I'm just asking that you please do not let it form social stereotypes and create divisions in the way you interact with people because I worry it's become a socially acceptable vehicle to indulge in arbitrary judgment and discrimination and I don't get it at all.)

Prince Bee is a Gemini, which makes a bit of sense because it's implied he and Royal Bee are twins.

The first two surprise packages were tagged together, so I ended up grabbing both at once.

One package held Prince Bee's stud earrings and his gold chain necklace, both done in vac-metalized plastic. 

The stud earrings were difficult to put in because the shape is a bit pokey, and I imagine they'll be even harder to pull out. 

Here's how the pieces look on him. 

The next package was sparsely filled with Prince Bee's luxury wristwatch--a phrase which is kind of a redundancy these days. Since phones render the timepiece functionality of watches obsolete, they've endured largely as survival gear or status symbols--Prince Bee is using his for the latter function. The detail on the watch face is intricate and tiny. I'm impressed.

The watch has a clip-on shape, but I chose to pull his hand out and slide it over the wrist to put it on, since I didn't want to stress and snap the plastic. That's a worry with vac-metal chromed pieces like this.

Prince Bee's next package contained his sunglasses. I don't love the effect these have with his face sculpt.

Prince Bee's last surprise is his garment bag, which contains a sleeveless dark grey hoodie with a golden pocket and deep side cutouts that show the entire side of the torso.

Here's the hoodie on him. I don't think the chain necklace really works over this piece. 

The hood is large enough to go up, but I didn't want to try pulling it onto his head because his hair would get messed up. The entire back of the hood is an open loop, but the drawstrings in the hood are functional!

Prince Bee's stand is black with two boy clips, and only stores one underneath. His brush is gold.

Despite the Guys torso striking me as pretty narrow, most of the pieces fit G3 Monster High boys quite well...which is great, because this wardrobe looks phenomenal on Clawd (review here!) as a way of making his look a bit more tasteful and mature. That was my ulterior purpose with this doll--I saw that hoodie and immediately I mentally placed my wolf-boy into it and thought I needed to get it for him. Even though I'd restyled his hair and painted him to have more personality, I was falling back out of love with Clawd and his dorky outfit was to blame. 

Clawd looks okay with just the hoodie replacing his tops, but his shoes and pants don't go with it. 

Surprisingly, the hood doesn't feel ridiculously oversized when it's pulled up on his head...but his ears push it out a bit and the back of the hood looks way too open. 

Then I tried Clawd in more of the Prince Bee wardrobe. He looks really formal and snazzy in the dress shirt and pants, like this could have been a Monster Ball ensemble for him. Or a Boo York, Boo York look! The gold colors perfectly match his eyes for a restrained color palette that flatters him beautifully.

The buckle vest looks good on him, too, or the G1 sig Clawd vest to give him that werewolf edge.

The only real caveats are that the O.M.Guys varsity jacket is too narrow to sit right on the G3 boy shoulders, and the clothing limbs are a bit short on the G3 boy limbs. 

Even if the text didn't ruin it, this doesn't fit right.

G3 boys' feet are also too large for OMG Guys shoes, so Clawd is wearing Beach Ken's. I tried sig Clawd's golden boots on, but they feel too big on the G3 boy ankles.

 
And the hoodie and pants looked good together on him. Since I wanted the hood to fit better, I took him down to the workshop.

I cut earholes into the hood, and then took a doll top I was never going to use and harvested its velcro to glue strips inside the hood so I'd be able to close up the back a little. 

Then, I folded, pinched, and glued the area above to tighten that excess down.

The hood ended up much tighter and with no gaps showing through the front, and while the velcro is undone, it can easily be pulled on and off over the ears. To keep the undone hood lying flat against Clawd's back, the velcro strips have to be turned outward, but it's not difficult to arrange at all.

I also used some paint to add in Clawd's jagged claw-slash design motif to the hoodie pocket and pant legs, cut off the pants' drawstrings, and gave him Prince Bee's watch. You can also see that Clawd got G1 sig Invisi Billy's pouch bandolier as a bag. (See that doll's post here!) Somehow, he was the character it worked for.

The result is great.

Clawd already needed some hair and face modifications to look less vacant and juvenile, but I think this outfit goes the next level and really makes him feel more personable and teenaged. He looks great both hooded and with the hood down, and I'm even happy to bring his Rockseena in now!

Clawd and Draculaura make an even better couple now that both are restyled by O.M.G.

And here's my restyled G3 mansters. 

I think every one of them has a better outfit than they were designed with. It's probably gonna be Gil next on my chopping block, though his doll hasn't actually been rumored or announced yet as of writing.

I'm so glad to have revitalized Clawd this way, especially since his sister is going to be a topic at hand pretty soon. He won't have to be embarrassed when he comes in to meet her!

I just love his personality. It's part of why I never wrote anything about my attempts with a G1 Clawd. That doll, even on the G2 body, was just so unemotive and glamorous that he didn't give any wolfy energy to make him dynamic and fun.

Last is a customization project. Because I wanted her bodysuit for something upcoming, I got an incomplete copy of O.M.G. Dollie from the Winter Disco line. Here's what she's supposed to look like:

My copy of Dollie had badly stained rubber legs and was only dressed in the wrapped bodysuit, the piece I needed.

I liked Dollie enough to try modifying her into something. I had planned to use her rooted hair, but it was so thoroughly snarled and tangled that it felt like every pass of a comb or brush was pulling out a clump of hair and stretching the fiber itself, so I gave up and cut it down and popped her head off to remove the roots.

I also decided to try giving the doll a new body. Another project had given me a Cerise Hood from Ever After High, and her skintone was close enough to Dollie's that I tried it out. The head swap went without issues, though there was quite a squeeze. Since Cerise didn't have both of her original hands and I did have a G1 Monster High Catty Noir  I wasn't using, I popped Catty's hands into the body to give the body black clawed gloves. 

To replace the doll hair, I used black and white yarns and glued them onto the head. The paint on the scalp was a perfect guide for the color-blocking. I only glued the yarn around the edges, with the strings facing inward, and then tied the hair into pigtails using the black yarn on each, which is coarser and stronger and allowed me to get a good tight tie. I propped up the pigtails with more bands of the black yarn so they had some structure and formed a better silhouette, and then tied some white over the black pigtail's tie so each side contrasted. I also glued down strands for bangs, with the white half cut shorter above the brow. The white yarn easily unravels and when glue is involved, you get tacky and it lifts away and comes apart too easily. It was quite frustrating! Because the white yarn is thinner, there's less hair in the white pigtail, but I didn't have the patience to glue another row in because that yarn was so tricky!

I gave her a striking high-contrast goth faceup with X marks and opposite black-and-white eyes. I kept one eye brown and one half of the eyeshadow blue because I thought that added something. I painted the lips half-and-half to match the hair. 
I then looked for clothing pieces I had. I initially thought she'd be a more dark spooky goth with more of a Halloween sense, but the clothes I found shifted her completely. Here's the final product. I call her...

I adore this result. 

So Goffik is a caricature of ninteties/aughts-era British goth schoolgirls and owes some ironic affection toward the legendary (and almost certainly satirical) horrible fanfiction My Immortal. 

The visual confusion of the color splits in her head is great.

While she was initially going to be a more surreal and spooky Halloweeny goth girl, this all fell into place when I tried the Freaky Fusion Operetta dress on her due to the split colors, and then layered Rainbow High Junior High Violet Willow's shirt over it. That made her feel like a goth school rebel in a way I was really enjoying, and which felt very O.M.G. to me. Her belt is another Cerise piece,  and G2 Gil Webber's necklace worked as a waist chain for her! 

Her bracelets come from signature Catty Noir parts, and her shattered-mirror boots are from the same doll. They're hard plastic that snaps around the legs in two pieces, but, fortunately, they fit Cerise's legs with no trouble.

Her earrings are one of Cerise's teacups and one of Skullector Sally's black cats. 

The scarf was not made to be doll clothing--it was initially fastened around the microphone stand belonging to Shadow High Harley Limestone. Cerise's neck was skinny enough to wear it! The piece has a velcro closure--it's not tied.

My favorite detail is on the back--I added the perfect MGA touch to her hair!

Not only do I love the look I crafted for this character, but the proportions make a world of difference to me. This cartoony blocky head on top of a tall skinny body (Cerise is actually tall within her home brand of EAH) makes for greater appeal to me. The limbs feel spooky and quirky now paired with the head, giving her a sense of pure off-beat caricatured fun. The yarn hair and body shape work well for a goth character, but also remind me a bit of Lalaloopsy Girls, an older MGA fashion-doll line based on their Lalaloopsy franchise which turned the rag doll characters into tall teens.

I prefer the proportions on the right.

And I got a lot of inspiration for photo art with this doll. 

So the only OMG doll I love and want to keep is the one I didn't get for a review and which had to get a fully new body and a heavy customization. That's a little depressing. But the art style is just not appealing to me, so I'm just glad I could find a way to embrace the visual fun and awe that O.M.G. is meant to stand for without the aspects I see as serious drawbacks. I don't expect to be working with this brand any further, though L.O.L. Surprise Tweens are still on my radar because those might have some potential. Maybe I'll be able to be polite about them! 

I'll be back very shortly to post a reflection post about my first year here, and 2024 will start going through my holiday haul. See you then!