Thrice Bitten: A G3 Draculaura Roundup

 I've never been the hugest fan of Draculaura, but it's through no fault of her own. In fact, I respect a lot of what she's been.

Draculaura represents vampires, and initially (before Mattel got spooked and drove their characters far away from copyrighted material) Bela Lugosi's Count Dracula in specific. She remains the daughter of Dracula to this day, but divorcing her from the copyrighted character has gone two ways--in G1, it was retconned with a convoluted backstory of her coming from Roman times and having a Dracula father whose name was ripped off by the more famous Dracula...and in G2 and G3, I'm assuming she's just the daughter of the public-domain originating literary character created by Bram Stoker. (Sidenote: her name would make way more sense for a vampire girl who wasn't Dracula's actual daughter, wouldn't it?) Anyway, as a vampire, she was also a natural fit to provide a very straightforwardly goth character in the core cast. Draculaura thus features bangs, those dumb safety-pin earrings that I can look back on more fondly now, mostly-black hair, dark lips on her signature doll design, and old-fashioned Victorian costume touches that are both vampiric and goth. Her look is also very feminine and pink, which works with her black and white colors to create a fun modern and extremely recognizable and iconic presence. And boy did it make her marketable.

Mattel stock photo of Boo-riginal Creeproduction Draculaura, reproducing her signature doll.

Official G1 character art of signature Draculaura.

She also gained an accent color of yellow during G1 which people were divided on. I was one who enjoyed it. 

In G1 and G2, Draculaura was depicted as implicitly Romanian and a very bubbly, sweet ghoul with a staunch refusal to consume blood or meat, and she could be a little scatterbrained and naïve. Her ditzy, cheerful personality felt a little incongruent with the edge of her signature look and her fierce dolls, and there were a couple of differences in the fiction versions of the character--her lips were lighter, and she was a shorter ghoul, fitting her written personality well, but not matching the toy.

I was never a Draculaura collector, and the only G1 Drac I owned was her Original Favorites downgraded signature rerelease.

Three dolls I used to own-- Original Favorites Draculaura, Fangelica van Bat, and G2 Clawd in Ken clothes.

I guess I've always found the sig look to be her strongest design even though I had gripes with it. I did like several other G1 Draculauras...I just never sought them out. 

Probably because she's pink and girly, Draculaura became the lead protagonist and viewpoint character of the younger-targeted G2 brand reboot. It's honestly shocking that wasn't the case intially since Mattel is known for the pinkest main-character doll of all time in Barbie...but maybe they chose Frankie as the lead in G1 to make it clear MH was not going to compare to Barbie and wasn't reaching for a similar audience. G2 was. In G2, Draculaura was probably the most welcome recipient of the controversial softer facial changes, and she was a notable exception who received a new head sculpt--everyone else seemed to reuse their G1 heads. G2 Draculaura has a sweet smile, and while her makeup is lessened like everyone else's, her expression suits her personality really well and gives her dolls and media appearances more congruity. 

Mattel stock photo of G2 Draculaura's signature doll.

It could be a fun experiment to try swapping her G2 signature doll head (with a bit of repainting for the makeup) onto a reproduction G1 sig to see how that facial expression would work with the sig design. Something tells me I'd still want an untouched G1 sig alongside because I like that look as-is. G2 Draculaura is still of the same height as everyone else. Like Abbey, it took until G3 for her doll height to be aligned with the consistent depictions in the fiction, though Mattel was apparently conscious of the need to depict her doll as shorter during this time--they fudged it in the G2 two-pack "Monstrous Rivals" set with zombie Moanica D'Kay by posing and placing the dolls so it looked like Drac was shorter when she's actually not!

Stock photo of the Monstrous Rivals two-pack. While people resented her for being the G2 zombie instead of Ghoulia, Moanica is actually a good design (and the best original G2 character design) and I want to reobtain and review her sometime.

As you can see, G2 Draculaura's accent color is light blue, and I personally find this to clash more than her yellows in G1 ever did. 

G3 Draculaura is depicted as half-Taiwanese and speaks with an American accent. Her character in G3 is more serious and sharp, and she struggles with hiding a stigmatized practice in witchcraft, a new passion for her character which indirectly indicates witches are not a monster type in the G3 universe.

G3 Draculaura as seen in the cartoon.

G3 Drac's unique look is dominated by her hair blend now being split half-and-half and seeming to pointedly avoid the pigtails that defined her core looks previously. While Draculaura wasn't ever my favorite, her sig doll did look really nice and I was interested in her new body type. She's finally short, and she's also pretty curvy!

Part 1- a G3 debut

I've had the signature doll for most of the year now and liked her, but never had enough to say about her for her own post. As part of an overview and comparison, though, she gets her time in the spotlight!

Here's all the signature doll included.

Draculaura's doll is topped by a thick pink headband with a black bat on it. This piece fits well.

The headband can be worn in either direction. Mattel officially has it in packaging and stock photos with the bat facing forward and sitting above the pink side of her hair, but either way works. I thought it made sense for the bat to sit so it looked like it was flying forward above her.

The piece is also objectively the biggest inaccuracy with the doll, since her cartoon character's equivalent of this ensemble is topped by a wide-brimmed Lydia Deetz-esque goth circular hat. As such, a market for 3D-printed hats sprung up on Etsy to create this piece. I've bought two from LilliaRibbonDoll on Etsy (listing here)-- the first for my custom alien character, Marcia, because I needed a modernist hat to paint white for her undercover-spy look, and the second to try out on Howliday Skelita, to little success. But now I have one for Drac to enjoy!

The top of the hat is untextured, save for the artifacts of 3D printing, and feels very flat and geometrically circular.

The underside has a web pattern matching the cartoon.

The hat looks really nice on her. 

The hollow of the hat is designed to fit on her head with a backward tilt, but it can be put on her head more flat, too--it's just not as secure and I don't prefer the look.

Mattel not doing this themselves is baffling to me.

Draculaura's hair is pretty visually impressive, with pointy vampire goth bangs (I always associate these with another Dracula's daughter, Mavis Dracula from Hotel Transylvania) and entirely half-and-half hair, with pink on her right and black on her left. Half-and-half hair has been an offbeat attractive style signature ever since the character Cruella de Vil was first authored by Dodie Smith, and has remained relevant and recognizable in alternative circles. Draculaura's bangs were gelled, but combed and washed out without losing their shape or tidiness. They're honestly some of the best doll bangs I've ever seen. Apparently, this was variable, though, with another manufacturing site producing rounder-banged Dracs, which just isn't right.

The split hair effect is always fun to look at on any subject.

The hair fiber is a clingy saran which combs beautifully and boils well, but I honestly find it extremely frustrating. The hair is subject to mussing and falling out of place at the slightest contact or motion, so it feels like you have to comb it tidy again every two seconds because the cling of the fiber allows the style and shape to disrupt far too easily and thoroughly. I know saran is objectively a higher-quality fiber, but this type of saran is so easy to disturb it's not super nice to work with.

The bangs and the color-blocking are so clean, though, that the general impression is that her hair looks great at a glance, even when untidy.

And while she has bangs, her hairline underneath is in a vampire widow's peak! I think this is a consistent feature for her dolls, and it's great that it's there even when hidden.

Draculaura's face (at least on this manufacturing variant) is fairly small-eyed for MH, and she has a soft, sweet face shape with a visible smile in her lips. It's less bright and perky than the G2 head sculpt and faceup, but I appreciate her expression maintaining the smile element. Her makeup is light and her heart facial marking is now smaller and solid black, which I find to look much classier than the larger colored outlined marking in G1. Her eyes have now shifted pinker, though they still have purple highlights, and heart-shaped eye reflections have been added. Not all G1 Dracs had a strip of white connecting between the fangs to make the teeth look more bared, but no G3 Dracs have it, and neither did any G2s.

Here's what G3 Drac would look like with that style of fang painting.

Draculaura's skintone is still pink in accordance with the previous incarnations (and all MH mainline vampires after Drac!), but seems slightly more peach-toned than G1 Draculaura's, making her feel just a bit more human-colored. 

Draculaura's pointy ears stick out more, like all G3 dolls', and are more triangular and batlike than before, where the tips were pointed but the rest was rounded. These ears remind me of G1 Batsy Claro's, but lack the ridges inside the ear and are a little more curved.

The ears can poke out of her long hair in a way I find really endearing. 

Draculaura's earrings are symmetrical but opposite colors from each other and the side of the hair they're next to, creating a fun extra contrast from the hairstyle split.

Draculaura's costume is interesting. It consists of a bustier over a ruffled pink sheer coat/dress piece and a pair of shorts. 

This strikes a good balance between G1 edge and G3 school-appropriateness. The sheer coat and the bustier feel very edgy G1-retro, but the cut of the pieces and colors feel more modest and cheery than confrontational and mature.  The white tailoring seams of the bustier are evocative of the G1 top, but it's shoulderless and has no buttons, making it less like a vampire waistcoat than the G1 piece.

Before buying the doll, I hadn't even realized the bustier was a separate over-layer, but it fastens at the back and has two shoulder straps.

The black bat ribbon is part of the coat layer of the costume, so it must be untucked to get it in front of the bustier when dressing her up. Because Draculaura's color is in the same range as the coat and the front of the coat is more textured and thick, the piece without the bustier doesn't look dreadfully immodest, but it's still not designed to be worn alone.

I was surprised the coat didn't undo all the way down the back. That might have made it a bit easier to use.

The bustier is not able to work as a top on its own without the coat--the fit is far too loose. You can pull it up and make it look alright...

...but it's seriously floating around her chest.

As such, you can't effectively reverse the layering of her costume to have the bustier under the coat, either. These two pieces are not optional from each other, and are thus not the optional costume pieces of this doll. We'll get to that soon enough.

Draculaura's shorts are black with a pattern of white hearts with fangs. They're cute and do the job.

The other surprise I got when buying Draculaura was discovering her ring! I hadn't realized this was in the doll until unboxing her. It's a cute pink gemstone and goes around her index finger well, though it prevents whichever hand it's on from holding a few accessories.

It's probably going to be very easy for owners and kids to lose.

Draculaura has thigh-high net socks with ruffles and simple pink heels that match her chunky headband and earrings in aesthetic. The simplicity of these flatters the graphic starkness of her hair split without costing her the ornate fashion aspects of her vampire elements altogether. Mixing in flatter pieces to balance the hair allows the ruffles to come in elsewhere and have their space to shine.

Draculaura's optional fabric piece is a shoulder cape which I never put on her because it's kind of a lot and I can't work with clothing pieces fastened by bows on strings. I don't have the dexterity or the patience. 

The edges of the cape also curled inward at the gap and boiling water did not flatten them.

Draculaura also has a pair of black sunglasses with bat-winged heart lenses. They're a fun design but I don't choose to keep them on her.

Draculaura's body is short and quite curvy, with larger breasts and wide hips. The shape of her arms might be a bit different, too.

Headless Ghoulia body (the most "neutral" body frame of G3) on the right.

Rainbow High bottoms fit well on Drac's hips, which is very useful to know for restyling purposes. RH tops are too big for her, and even Junior High tops from the line are a bit loose.

Draculaura is about the same height as G3 Twyla (who isn't curvier than Ghoulia). Here's a full height scale of the G3 femmes so far--Drac/Twyla, Ghoulia representing the majority height, Frankie, and Abbey.

I love the G3 body diversity, which is set to continue developing with Catty Noir having what might be the biggest figure of any Mattel doll thus far. The G3 approach is better than just not making the dolls spooky-skinny, because height variation and curve variation within heights is also being accounted for to totally put issues with the G1 body style to bed. 

Now let's see this kind of diversity for the boys, eh, Mattel?

Draculaura's backpack is shaped like a quilted heart with bat wings. This makes her look bat-winged when it's on, in theory. I don't like to use the signature backpacks. It's able to flex open at the top to hold a few things.

One of her accessories is a super high-strength sunscreen bottle to keep her vampire skin from immolating in the sun. This bottle is exactly reproduced from her Gloom Beach G1 doll, yellow color and all. It's a simple gag, but Drac's sunscreen needs are a charming detail.

Mattel stock photo of Gloom Beach Draculaura.

Draculaura's phone is pink with bat-wing, fangy lip, and heart details.

Draculaura's snack is a cute monster soft pretzel in a wrapper. The two are separate pieces that fit together well, and the wrapper has a finger loop.

I'd like to sink my fangs into that!

Draculaura's drink is a large gulp cup of cherry-flavored substance. I've allotted this accessory to my Create-a-Monster Blob, Oozie. 

There's got to be a cheeky joke going on here--"No, of course that red stuff isn't blood, it's Cherry Drink!"

I think it could be argued that sugary artifically-flavored sodas and slushies are about as morally and aesthetically disgusting as a drink of blood, though.

Draculaura's pet is still her bat Count Fabulous, who has the same cutesified Littlest-Pet-Shop syndome as the rest of G3's pets. The joke with G1 Fabulous was that he looked super grumpy in contrast to his dolled-up outfit. You can interpret it like Draculaura went overboard with babying him and dressing him up without realizing he didn't like it!

Stock photo closeup of G1 Count Fabulous. Isn't he so much more charming?

I have one last G3 Draculaura accessory-- a cup of vampire boba tea from the Coffin Bean two-pack which didn't include her. 

The lid separates and the open handle slides over the top of the hand. Drac's hand sculpt isn't great for this, though, so it tends to fall off.

She held it okay here, and then it fell off.

I think a good accessory for her is Creepover Twyla's "Intro to Talismans" textbook, to reflect her studies in witchcraft.

Here's Draculaura with her Clawd. Drac/Clawd were a couple in G1, and it looks like their G3 counterparts might be heading that way, too.

I had a lot of fun photographing this doll, paying homage to classic Dracula and using in-camera and post-edit filtering to make rosier tints.

This is a classic greyscale portrait to look like the old days, with some pink shading put over in post.

I also figured out how to create a sliver of light across her eyes to imitate the iconic camera shot of Bela Lugosi.

Then I experimented with red paper as a filter. Partially covering my light, it created a warmer, rosier mood lighting to the scene.

Fully covering the light, it turned quite red, so I edited this in post to make it pink-toned.

I had a pink paper, but the tint it creates is less intense. The red with color editing is needed for this fully-filtered look. 

I tried another portrait and drew over it in post to make her eyes brighter in eerie contrast.

Then I put her in a pose with my painted Dracubecca umbrella and the sunglasses. This looks like a fashion ad:

And with the rosy lighting:

Very fun.

I really like G3 sig Draculaura. While her hair is super easy to ruffle and mess up and the hat is a stupid omission, her visual design is a strong, respectable reimagining of the character's aesthetic and personality. With the fanmade hat, it's even better, and I was impressed by the presence and quality of the doll. Those bangs are great--if you have the right variant.

Part 2- Chilly iridescent crystal

Then I got her Skulltimate Secrets Series 2 Fearidescent doll for myself as a treat because she looked interesting and wintry and I wanted to get in the seasonal spirit. I didn't do any unboxing photos because this wasn't initially meant to be a review doll, but here's her locker.

The bottom glitter door was last in the sequence again, and the unlocking sequence was different from both Frankie and Cleo from the same series.

The inner locker door illustration has a cute shelf stuffed with sunscreens! That made me chuckle.

Here's the entire stock of the doll after I'd played with her-- the way I liked her best used up most of the pieces, so very little was left loose. Part of this is because the Fearidescent dolls are all designed so their tank tops or tees in their second outfits can layer over the shirt of their first outfit, so they can wear 1.5 outfits at a time.

The Fearidescent line overall has a slightly icy, crystalline theme, what with the fuzzy wraps and frozen desserts, but it's Draculaura whose design feels most explicitly wintry because she has earmuffs, a cold-weather-exclusive costume piece. These traits are part of why sig G3 Abbey feels so so similar to the Fearidescents because she's icy and fluffy by default!

Fearidescent Draculaura heavily features a paler pink than her standard, befitting the chilly vibes of the doll line and the experimental nature of many Skulltimate Secrets color palettes. I hadn't fully appreciated it before, but Skulltimate Secrets really is the G3 successor to the I Love Fashion doll line because they're fashion-play dolls with more than one outfit and they have the chance to go places beyond the typical basic look in terms of fashion and coloring. We need a doll line like this, not only to help beef up the clothing pool, but so the characters can get more imaginative and unique. 

The paler pink starts with Drac's hair. 

It's poly and long and straight and center-parted. Her bangs are soft and unpointed, and there are thin black streaks throughout the hair. I'd worried Fearidescent Drac would look like the black was only in her bangs, and I find bangs in a different color than the body of the hair to be pretty unattractive, but fortunately, this isn't the effect of the doll in-person.

No doll I feel sure was given polypropylene hair has had gel. Creepover Twyla might be poly with gel, but I don't feel fully certain there. I wonder why gel seems so absent with this fiber. Maybe Mattel found the fiber to shape better at the factory and not require any? Fearidescent Frankie's bangs would like to have a word if that's the case. 

Draculaura's face is wider-eyed than sig's and has heavier makeup despite its icy pink colors. Her heart marking has changed to solid pink and her lips and eyeshadow are glittery pink per the Fearidescent design scheme.

Because I didn't do the review photo session process for this doll, I'll overview her pieces in text, with photos of what I did take pictures of, and then just show them off in combinations.

Out of the box, Drac is wearing a black-and-magenta patterned cropped shirt with puff-shouldered net sleeves, and an iridescent pale pink skirt. The skirt undoes all the way down the back and has a strap to keep it in position and maintain a belly gap, but I cut it to let it line up with the top in another configuration. Her boots are ornate pink/white gradient pieces.

Her second outfit is a tank and skirt paired with glittery jelly shoes. The tank is magenta with a vinyl fabric lace heart on the front. It's printed with white corset laces and is held to the top by a line of white stitching. This feels very classic-Draculaura.

The skirt is a stretchy piece printed with a pink gradient spiderweb. It's elasticated and has no strap inside. 

The shoes are glittery magenta with black platforms and heart cutouts through the soles.

Draculaura's fur wrap is white with pink hearts on top and lined with black that's patterned with pink bats and flowers.

Draculaura has a clip-on vinyl neck collar made to look like white lace. It's a nice piece.

Her earrings are black pendants with winged baubles at the ends.

Draculaura's purse is a clear coffin that looks like it's imitating acrylic or glass. It's very pretty.

Her accessories are an iced dessert and makeup like the other dolls in the line. 

Draculaura's icy treat is not an ice pop, but rather, an ice cream cone with black swirled cream and bat wings. I wonder what flavor this would be. It could theoretically be anything, since the black is probably just food coloring.

Her makeup first includes a product I'm not sure I understand--it looks like it has a solid lipstick at the end, but it's shaped like a squeeze tube for a gel product. Maybe this is a thing I just haven't been exposed to as a dude. I'll admit that blind spot. 

Next, she has a Skullette-shaped compact. This was tricky to open with my fingers alone, so I used a tool to wedge it open.

I know G1 Draculaura had no reflection, so I don't know how useful the compact mirror would be, but maybe G3 Drac can see herself? I don't know what the status is on that.

Both makeup pieces fit inside the purse. This has been the case for every Fearidescent doll I've gotten and I'm delighted. I don't know why the next series, Neon Frights, has purses that can hardly hold an eyelash.

Here's playing around with a few looks. 

This is the default combo plus the collar and earrings. 

And here's the second outfit layered over the first top. I like this look, but I feel like she needs a translucent clear icicle crown on top, shaped like Fearidescent Frankie's crown.

I feel like the doll is in tension between pale pink tones, black, and saturated pink, but this works pretty well. 

The shirt is longer than the pink tank, which is a little annoying because it creates a line of the shirt below the pink piece. 

Here's just the second outfit pieces with the earrings for a punchy basic look.

Here's the tank with the iridescent skirt and the boots.

And a look with the unlayered first shirt and the second skirt and shoes.

I really liked this busy look throwing things together to a campy, metropolitan effect. This might look even better with the Skulltimate Series 1 Drac's beret.

I also found success with Rainbow High Junior High Violet's shirt on her. This creates a bit of a casual, sunny school-uniform or business-casual look that really works on her, even though the shirt is slightly oversized.

But the way I liked her best was with her fur wrap, collar, both tops, earmuffs, and boots. This Draculaura feels bundled-up and frosty for the winter. Drac works the pieces I didn't love on the other Fearidescent dolls, so she might be the most flattered by Series 2's design specifics while Frankie was the best model for Series 3's. 

The only real frustration I found was with the earmuffs, which aren't super tight and can fall forward off her face really easily. I wish they were tighter and had to be bent open more when putting them on so they really gripped her head.

Part 3- A refreshing drink of blood

When we learned G3 was introducing "refresh" second-edition signature dolls with new designs, I was excited. Not only because this practice was occurring, but also because the refresh dolls had hints of G1 about them--and none moreso than Draculaura, whose hairstyle, makeup, and outfit all closely evoked her iconic G1 signature doll...while also providing a take on the hat that was missing from G3 sig! She was an absolute must-have. 

G1 did something similar one time with the School's Out doll line providing what were essentially second signature designs for Frankie, Clawdeen, Draculaura, Lagoona, and Cleo. It'd be nice to get refresh dolls of Toralei, Ghoulia, and Deuce, the store-exclusive signatures, or later refresh dolls of other characters, and I'd enjoy seeing refresh dolls being a continuing practice so there'd always be a signature copy of the characters running on the shelf. Of the known refresh dolls, the other one I know I need is Frankie, but I could probably get suckered into Cleo too because she won't stop being phenomenal. Refresh Lagoona looks horrible and Clawdeen might be a good base to restyle (brown hair!), but I don't like her outfit.

Here's refresh Draculaura on the table.

The graphic design on the back of the boxes has improved. The doll profile is now in a large box, even though it's multilingual and has few entries, and the large character artwork in the post-wave 1 style is better and looks better at this scale.

Here's a transitional box back seen in an earlier review of mine for comparison. Clawd's portrait uses the current art style rather than the less polished wave 1 art, but the background art and layout is the same as the wave 1 dolls. 

Nowhere is the G3 evolution of increasing its G1 similarities more apparent than in refresh Draculaura's look, who's a total design and tonal shift to look like her famous G1 design. Day Out Frankie (review/restyle post here!) was a close costume parallel to their G1 counterpart, but I think refresh Draculaura is the closest a single G3 doll has come to the look of their G1 counterpart.

Everything deboxed.

The first piece to address is firmly G3, though--the hat. This piece is soft vinyl and shaped more like a fedora or floppy sun hat with how it comes lower on her head and has more bend in its shaping. It's also textured on both top and bottom and has a smaller brim and larger cone.

Mattel hat on the left, unofficial hat on the right.

The hat doesn't feel like a Lydia Deetz piece in the way the unofficial one does, and I don't find it to improve the G3 sig doll the way the fanmade hat does.

The opposite swap is fine, but I have no intention of keeping refresh Drac in a hat.

Simply put, the fan hat is a better representation of Draculaura's piece than the Mattel hat. Refresh Draculaura is not wearing the hat we wanted. I'm still glad a hat has been given to her, but this could be a better representation of the cartoon piece.

As it is, this new hat has no owner for it right now, but it's still a great piece and could be super useful. It probably would have been great to have around when restyling Operetta so I didn't have to repaint a piece, but her hat has musical motifs that benefit her, plus a larger presence, so I'm not swapping that out for this.

Refresh Drac's hair starts out more like her G3 sig, because it's still half-and-half in the same arrangement, but this is finally G3 Drac's first doll with pigtails, the style most famous on the character. Her pigtails are low and pretty long, just like the G1 sig character's. I'm disappointed in the color blocking in back, which is not perfect. There's a lot of subtle color crossover in the way the hair was tied and I didn't have the patience or skill to fix it. The hair is still saran, but I feel like ponytails are a little easier to deal with for that and the fiber doesn't seem as sleek and clingy and frustrating. The bangs are gelled and unpointed, and after combing, I'll need to boil them down because they're a little wide and puffed.

This Draculaura's faceup is so much more G1 in sensibility. 

Her mascara is super heavy and her pink eyeshadow is more opaque. Her lips are also a direct reference to her signature doll by being a very dark red color. You know dark dramatic lips are always welcome at TT&T, and the reference makes the look even better. Her heart eye mark is black just like G3 sig. I'm happy to see more heavy makeup in the G3 dolls, because that's bringing in the G1 look more than any of the other stylistic changes we've seen during G3's growth. 

G3 has its own aesthetic value, but I am entirely here for the newer dolls interpolating G1 faceup traits.

There's a small brownish stain on her face next to the heart marking, but this came off later with nail polish remover.

Refresh Drac looks the most clearly pink-skinned of the three I have. 

Drac's earrings are symmetrical and opposite colors from each other and the hair they're near, just like the sig doll. Here, they're coffins with heart cutouts. 

Draculaura's outfit is similar to her G1 sig costume. She has a plastic collar piece around her neck to give her a prim Victorian accent, and her top has a vinyl plain pink bodice with tailoring seams and long double- puffed net sleeves, being more frilly and fancy than the form-fitting edgy net sleeves of the sig doll. The collar on this doll is not super tight or form-fitting. The Fearidescent collar is more stable.

The costume doesn't look great without the collar, but this does show the confusing tulle scrap. Maybe it's meant to hang down and puff out under the plastic collar to look more like a neck frill?

The top surprised me by being all one piece. I'd have thought the pink bodice would be its own over-layer. That leaves the refresh doll without an optional fabric layer that most core and even Day Out G3 dolls have. 

Drac's skirt is three fabrics--pink vinyl with a white web pattern, an unpatterned vinyl frill, and a white net frill underneath. If you squinted at an image of the two dolls side-by-side, the skirt would create the biggest incongruity between G3 refresh and G1 sig. The G1 skirt was a solid white tutu, while the equivalent color block on the G3 doll is pink. I want to change this skirt out with a white Rainbow High option to get this doll's homage closer.

Draculaura has full footie tights in black mesh, and short pink boots. G1 sig had thigh-length tights that didn't cover her whole leg, and thigh-high boots.

The extras are all unique to this Draculaura. First, she has a pair of very thin pink translucent shades shaped like bat wings. They're stylistically similar to G3 sig Abbey's shades.

I don't intend to use these, but I tried them quickly on the sig doll.

Refresh Draculaura has a more classically-shaped backpack. It's roomier and a little squishier than the sig bag. It still has wings to the sides, now unpainted, and has a dangling bat charm on the front.

Sig on the left, refresh on the right.

G3 Drac's drink has a translucent cup with an inner chamber that's one piece with the lid, and a bat-shaped temperature sleeve on the outside.

She also has a recast of the Fearidescent makeup tube in black.

One of the best accessories is her book, which is a black recast of Neon Frights Twyla's. I'm glad, after my idea to give Twyla's book to sig Drac, that the refresh doll is officially giving Drac some magic study material.

Inside, there's a graphic showing a transformation from sig Drac into...an LOL OMG doll? A chibi version of Draculaura with wavy high pigtails? What does this represent? Is this maybe an allusion to the small upcoming "mystery potion reveal" figurine toys the brand is rumored to release, likely to compete with the Magic Mixies potion toys?

[UPDATE : Months later, looks like I was absolutely correct. This is the mini Draculaura potion figurine, and the silhouette is a match!

Mattel stock photo.

I like the element of teasing a future release!]

My favorite accessory of this doll's is this piece, representing a very cute lunchbox!

The compartments and cutesy foods remind me of packed bento school lunches that go around social media as an example of Japanese craftsmanship and cute aesthetics, but the items aren't fit that precisely and there's nothing specifically Asian about the foods. Regardless of inspiration, this piece is very very cute.

Count Fabulous in this doll release is a different sculpt--I can only guess that Draculaura's used her witchcraft to turn him into a bat/cat hybrid so he'll be a more appropriate familiar for her chosen passion!

Refresh on the left, sig on the right.

On the whole, I might prefer the refresh extras. The book and lunchbox are excellent pieces, the backpack is more useful, and the joke with Count Fabulous's transformation counters the unappealingly cutesy style to make him more favorable to the original. 

Since I had already done an "Old-Skull" restyle with G3 Frankie pushing them as close as possible to their G1 sig look, I wanted to see what I could do with this Draculaura to push her look closer to her own G1 sig look. I thought the Fearidescent tops might actually be closer to her G1 look in some respects, with the thinner sleeves, and even that the Fearidescent collar might fit better with it. All I needed to do was trim a little off the bottom of the patterned top so none of it poked out under the pink tank, and the vinyl corset-heart decoration was easy to unstitch from the tank so it'd be plain and closer to the G1 piece. The best G3 option for the under layer would be Gore-ganizer Draculaura's mesh top, which is a wholly separate piece all in mesh, but I don't need anything else from that doll or her set.

Here's a test before I trimmed the patterned top layer and boiled her bangs. I think pulling the pigtails to a new position really helps bring out the personality. 

The boots didn't have a sufficient thigh-high G3 match so far, so I didn't look for something in that department. I also kept this base doll. The Gore-ganizer Draculaura has the most accurate hair blend to G1 sig's colors, and has bangs, but her factory style is a high ponytail, so the back of her hair isn't rooted with a center part and it cannot be tied neatly in pigtails. Refresh Draculaura has the faceup already perfect for the role, and I don't mind the split hair. My Old-Skull Frankie restyle uses a base doll with their G3 blue streaks, so the hair is allowed to mix things together. 

For a white skirt, I looked to Rainbow High and got the pearly wrap skirt from Pacific Coast High Margot di Perla, which looked flowy and well-suited to standing in for the G1 tutu. In person, the skirt is a little translucent, and you can tell a little that it's not cut for Drac's use, but it's not unusable. I think the shape is good and the pearls work well with the ruffled collar.

I think this is it--Old-Skull Draculaura!

I also put the refresh top and collar on the Fearidescent doll, and this works. It makes the black a little more present in the assortment, but the puffy sleeves make her look a tad more bundled-up and warm for her cozy chilly look.

While I was waiting on the white skirt to arrive, I also finally figured out a good staging for a pink-themed Christmas photo with the Fearidescent doll. I realized I had a good paper to use as the backdrop and tie the photo all together. I had to throw in a candle holder that looked like a wine glass for a bit of extra vampire theming!

[UPDATE: With the arrival of snow, I could get real snow photos of this doll, with tights added from later acquistion O.M.G. Fame Queen, and co-starring G3 Abbey.

She's perfectly bundled up!]

Here's the two Old-Skull restyles together.

And here's more photo portraits!

Draculaura shows off the really old-looking vampire she found in this old coffin:

Heeey, welcome to my new unboxing video-

Self meets self in a moment of Gothic horror:

I set up Drac to imitate the famous creeping shadow scene from Nosferatu next. Nosferatu was an iconic unauthorized German silent-film adaptation of Dracula which pre-dates the Universal film and depicts its vampire, Count Orlok, with a plague-rat motif. The film also introduces the idea of vampires dying in sunlight.

Screencap from Nosferatu.

And I took another fake silent-movie film still.

Nosferatu has prints with colored gels tinting several scenes, so the color aspect is actually not that inauthentic to the old film!

And lastly, this photo of Clawd discovering Draculaura. Look very carefully and you'll notice the gag I pulled with this picture!

I had to cheat with any photos of her in the coffin box, since she's too tall to fit in it. I cut off the bottom of the coffin in all of them--a full-length picture of the coffin would show Draculaura's legs hanging out over the bottom edge!

So, for someone who didn't consider himself a big Draculaura fan, I sure found a lot of inspiration in her G3 dolls, didn't I? 

Of the dolls I got, I'm naturally most partial to my G1-esque restyled refresh Draculaura because the classics never undie and seeing the G3 dolls closely evoking the old sigs is such a fun and satisfying novelty (that I want to continue doing with the other three of the G3 core 5). But the signature doll still captivated me with her own look and personality. She really successfully feels witchy to me, and looks sweet but also crafty and mischievous in the right way. With the fanmade hat, she's perfect. Fearidescent loses out for me just because the look feels less versatile and iconic, but for the purpose of a cheery winter doll, she's wonderful. I love Draculaura's ear sculpt and body shape, and whether she's classic or new, she's a cutie with some really fun iconic impact. I'm not likely to get that many more Draculauras unless they're really unique or compelling to me, but I'm glad to have experienced the three I did. 

Fangtastic.

[ADDENDUM: An anonymous commenter mentioned that the LOL OMG doll Court Cutie has the most accurate G1-esque skirt Draculaura can wear, since those dolls can share skirts pretty well and Court Cutie has a white pleated piece extremely similar to the G1 sig skirt. I sought it out and can now say this is true, and the Court Cutie skirt has since replaced the Margot one on my Draculaura! Thank you, reader, for the tip!

Now she's complete!]