Love Bites: Monster High Howliday Love Draculaura and Clawd Wolf by Mattel Creations

Love it, hate it, or don't care, it is indeed Valentine month! While the holiday doesn't give me much personal substance, I enjoy the aesthetic quite a bit, particularly a more vintage, subversive or dark take on the iconography. So let's get in-theme with the first of a couple of posts I have planned! I don't know if this particular doll set has been super buzzy or well-received, but I was struck the second I saw it.

As part of the new Howliday range of Monster High collector releases, Mattel has established a pattern of "Love" editions for Valentine's Day, depicting a classic MH couple. 2023 started with the obvious choice of Cleo and Deuce, the premiere couple in the brand, though their dolls felt a little childish in design, particularly with Cleo's dress having cartoony graphics on it. I like the Deuce in that set and wouldn't mind snatching his clothes for my own Deuce, but there's nothing I want in the Cleo doll. 

Mattel stock photo of the Howliday Cleo and Deuce set.

Fittingly, the number two prominent couple, Draculaura and Clawd Wolf, would be released the next year--even more appropriate, since Drac's birthday is Valentine's Day, tying into her heart symbol motif! I think everybody is already certain that Gil and Lagoona will be the third Love Edition release, after which I'm not sure what Mattel will do. G1 Frankie was in a love triangle with Jackson Jekyll and Holt Hyde, but she wouldn't get a throuple pack. Frankie later got teased with Neighthan Rot, and while that would be an astonishing move, resurrecting a one-off doll like that, Neighthan didn't have enough presence for that to make sense. So a Frankie set wouldn't work. G1 Clawdeen was never paired up with anybody, leading to fans collectively headcanoning her as a lesbian burned by the G1 franchise not allowing queer rep (Clawdeen wasn't envisioned as lesbian, but Garrett Sander voiced support for the idea after it arose). Regardless, Clawdeen wouldn't suit a Valentine set, having zero partners. I guess the next release after Lagoona and Gil would be Ghoulia and Slo Mo, which I'd likely be interested in. After that would probably be Rochelle and Garrott, or Abbey and Heath? What I'd really love is if they dared to re-release Manny and Iris as a Howliday Love set. Manny deserves a second doll, and both need to be refreshed on the market in some way. For my sake, if no one else's!

The other three established G1 couples who have both had dolls are Scarah and Billy, Finnegan and Gigi, and Spectra and Porter, though Porter and Finnegan have only had one doll each and I don't know if Mattel would re-release them because of that. These three pairings have also never been released in a two-pack as a couple before, while Cleo/Deuce (twice), Clawd/Drac (twice) Lagoona/Gil (once) and Ghoulia/Slo Mo (once) have been prior to the Howliday line. 

Realistically, the Howliday line probably won't run long enough to get past four Valentine couples at maximum, but one can dream.

From that list, you can see G1 MH was very heteronormative and even though Clawdeen wasn't a lesbian-intended character who was blocked by a no-queerness rule, it was the truth that queerness was blocked from being depicted. Howliday Love sets of G3 characters to include a queer romance like Frankie and Cleo would be a great way to celebrate a more diverse version of Valentine love. Or just Pride dolls of the G1 cast who never got to be textually queer despite authorial intent.

What if they brought MH Cupid back through this line, though??? I'd flip.

Draculaura and Clawd as a character relationship was always a little weird. While they reference the common trope of werewolf/vampire rivalry, and possibly the fact that folklorically, the two monsters started off as interchangeable or conflated, the execution had concerns. Clawd could easily be read as too old for Draculaura in the animated material given the way each was depicted, and wolves and sweet girls are typically archetypes that are paired to depict a predatory dynamic. Conversely, Draculaura could be read as way too old for Clawd, given her long life and slow aging and having known him since he was a pup without being physically younger herself. Optics aside, I just never really found the two to have much chemistry. Maybe I haven't seen material which makes them more compelling or tight together. Regardless, I did like these dolls. Clawd is a being a bit of a boy and dressing strangely, but Draculaura? With red???? Stunning.

Here's the box. The characters are framed in a rose-bloom window and are not posed to interact with their accessories.

I appreciate both characters' Skullettes under the rose window!

While there's a window on the top of the box, there isn't a removable outer sleeve here like with Jack and Sally, and the top is just an opening flap. 

Here's the side.

The back has a photo portrait and pretty lengthy multilingual copy outlining the story of these two going on a birthday/Valentine date for Draculaura, which is very sweet. 

These two have always been framed as a "forbidden" relationship due to the vamp/wolf rivalry, but I don't think this ever manifested in the story. That might be for the best, because Drac and Clawd might have ended up (unintentionally?) conveying a subtext of more real racial dynamics underneath the monster divide. MH did deliberately explore interracial romantic struggles with Gil and Lagoona's tortured romance under Gil's racist parents (they're freshwater monsters who hate saltwater monsters), but I think that sad situation would land even sourer on a pair with more realistic/identifiable racial coding, and it might not have been appropriate for the brand's storytelling or approach.

Here's the backdrop out, showing the dolls better.

While Howliday Love Cleo and Deuce stuck mostly to the characters' standard color palettes, Drac and Clawd instead adopt a divergent Valentine pink, red, and spooky black palette, which I think is a way better approach. It immediately conveys the holiday theme even without accessories, and it allows these characters to explore new colors! Now, I'm very interested to see how Lagoona and Gil would look for this. Pastel purple and white are definitely on the table as other Valentine colors, so they wouldn't have to rock the exact same colors as this pack.

Here's the back of the backdrop, where the stand base/clip packets and certificate of authenticity are stored, as usual. As with my previous Howliday doll, Skelita, there is no designer signature on the certificate.

Let's start with Clawd.

Clawd's wearing a hairstyle he's had on three previous dolls--his G1 signature, his G1 Scarnival doll, and his sole G2 release. The hair is flocked on the sides to look shaved, and the middle is rooted with very short, dense Black curls in a mohawk strip--'cause it ain't a true Monster High boy without a mohawk! All in-hand photos I ever saw of Clawds with this hair had it the same as packaged--very matted and flat with zero volume, but I discovered with my G2 Clawd that the hair is actually able to be teased out with a comb to gain some dimension as a proper 'fro-hawk, and I think that looks better.

G1 sig Clawd's hair, matted.

Hair teased out, paint added to cheek.

However, Love Clawd actually has softer, shorter-cut hair with less curl. It's not really matted down and hardly changes at all when running a comb through it. Huh. It feels like a midpoint between his Black curls on previous editions with hair like this, and the straight hair on his other dolls. 

Previous Clawds styled this way have had criminally high unshaped hairlines that made him look quite unfortunate, but Howliday's finally seems to get it right and not insult him. 

Maybe it's because this is the first Clawd with this hair who isn't designed to be wearing his peaked cap or a graveball helmet, which would cover his hairline, but I mean, man, look at this:

This hairline is tragic.

In the cartoon, Clawd felt slightly less Black-coded because he had an ostensibly straight hair texture cut into a kind of flat-top wedge and he had much more prominent mutton-chop facial hair. Perhaps they thought those were too mature for a teen doll, and animated Clawd did look like a grown man, but by giving his dolls a forty-seven-year-old hairline, they just ended up aging him a different way.

Clawd as seen in the cartoon.

Werewolves have often been used as a caricature of masculinity and testosterone, and I'd say it's fine and fairly honest to depict teenagers maturing at different rates, so I'm okay with cartoon Clawd looking hairy and grown, but that design did feel a little weird next to tiny girlish Draculaura. The dolls don't really carry this disparity. As for the horrible hairline, I have seen high-school classmates already unlucky enough to have receding hair, but that wasn't meant to be what Clawd had going on. I like to view him more as the kid in every generation of students who looked fully mature at age 14, not as the kid who became middle-aged at age 17. They can be the same guy, but that's not the story I want for Clawd.

G1 Clawds with this hair had flocking on the cheeks to approximate the mutton chops, but this doll has shorter sideburns.

I do want to try making this doll's hair more like the cartoon character, since I was always frustrated by the disconnect and find cartoon Clawd to convey the werewolf look in a great way. I found very limited success painting the mutton chops onto the G1 head, and gluing some G3 Clawd curls onto the front of the hair didn't help much, either. We'll figure something out. 

Clawd had an earring in the same place as G1 sig, and it's the same style, but it might be a bit larger. 

Clawd's outfit is distinctly tacky, suggesting dance clubs between the seventies and nineties with its vibrant colors, patterns, mesh tank top, and bell-bottom pants. It is an aesthetic that exists.

The jacket is a thin sheer fabric (not translucent) with puffed sleeves and a swirly maybe tiger-esque print over ombre pink and red. The jacket has a shaped collar and it closes right at the bottom edge with a plastic snap. 

The tank top is white mesh, which feels the most outrageous out of this whole outfit to me. You don't wear something like this to a formal occasion. You're either trying to show yourself off or you're in a headspace of total unashamed abandon.

Around his right wrist, Clawd has a clip-on gold watch. 

MGA did a much better watch in a much cheaper doll with Prince Bee.

Clawd's belt is an unusual piece that hangs only to his left side. The piece attaches with two hooks that slide over the waistband of his trousers, landing around his hip, but this is a very insecure attachment. If the hooks were longer tabs that slid further down into the pants, this might work better. As it is, I can't see myself using this piece.

Clawd's pants are my favorite part of the doll. They're spectacular red-and-black bell-bottoms printed with a modernist moon motif, and they're made of a soft, flexible micro-corduroy!

They're a lot, like so much, but in a way I love. I think I just miss true red in fashion dolls.

The only other time I've encountered corduroy in a Monster High piece, it was Operetta's black fashion-pack skirt. That piece felt quite stiff and gave her upper legs no range of motion, as well as forcing them to cross over each other. These pants don't have any such issues.

Clawd has nice detailed black formal shoes with very long toes.

Clawd is on his original G1 body shape. His shoulders looked a bit discolored or scuffed from something in manufacturing.

Clawd's accessory is a spooky drippy rose bouquet that can be stored in a pink coffin box with a removable lid. Neither accessory has a handle, nor are they remotely well shaped for the dolls to hold anyway, so it was difficult to display them. I'm baffled because the Cleo/Deuce set had a rose with a handle that could have easily been reissued here. I did find success with Draculaura holding the roses as long as she holds them upright between both hands over the middle of her chest, and did manage to squeeze and turn the roses just right to take a later photo with them in Clawd's hand.

The main attraction here was Draculaura, who, like Clawd, debuts prominent red for the character. Drac's never done red before (purple-themed vampire and lookalike Elissabat has) and it looked great with her pink and black regular colors. 

Draculaura uses a prop display piece introduced with Love Cleo and Deuce for the balloon in that set--it's a small clip arm that slides onto the stand above the doll clip to hold her parasol up to her side, and her arm can then be posed to interact with the parasol. 

Like Clawd's accesssories, the parasol has no handles, but I concluded that it outright can't be posed with the doll without this stand arm. It's just too heavy and her hands aren't sculpted to grip it. That's frustrating because it's a great visual...

...and a holdable parasol had been done with Dracubecca's.

Canopy repainted black as I have it.

I do appreciate that the arm is pretty inconspicuous when in use. Drac's hair covers a lot of it.

On top of her head, Draculaura has a black headband with a heart-bat decoration. 

I think the shaping is a little awkward since it sticks up so much and brushes against her parasol when that's on her stand. The piece is also pretty flimsy and I wish it gripped her head tighter. It still completes her, but it's a little weak.

Draculaura's hair is wavy and side-parted to her right, and is rooted in thick stripes of pale pink and black on top. It's gelled into a small swoop to highlight the contrasting colors and keep the hair out of her face. This might have been the best way for Robecca's signature hairstyle to have been manufactured, rather than the indecisive shape she got, with hair that had no dimension to the side sweep, and didn't cross her face either. 

The hair looks like it might get pretty fluffy, so I'll wash and comb it out wet. 

Drac's face is pretty stunning and crisp.

She has red eye makeup all around her eyes that trails off in super subtle pink wings that go up to her temples.

Her lips have a true blended ombre effect that looks like a black cherry's skin to me, and her heart facial marking has a moon/C shape over it to nod to Clawd! Her fang paint isn't perfect, but it's fine. This Draculaura had the older style of paint with a white strip between the two teeth. 

Draculaura's earrings are coffins with heart cutout holes, and surprisingly aren't the same sculpt as those found on refresh G3 Drac, which are the same basic concept and had to have been designed around the same time.

Draculaura's dress is fancy, and all one piece. It has a red bodice with a ruffle neck and matching pink puffed sleeves and a ruffled skirt with a floral print. The black bow on her chest is attached to a strip that crosses the inside of her bodice, creating an interesting floating effect.

The belt is a vinyl piece that actually works a little like a real belt, with tabs that slot horizontally into two holes with bumps to keep it closed. I'd have expected a vertical pin/hole connection like most other belts in the brand.

To depict prim gloves, Draculaura has normal hands cast in black, and separate wrist cuffs to create a lacy conical flare.

While taking a few portraits you'll see further down, I missed that one of her cuffs had slid up her arm and left a distracting gap, so I had to draw black over her arm in the photos in post to make them look more polished. 

Below, she has full-length footie mesh tights, and red heels.

Draculaura's on that same flawed collector G1 body with the nonremovable forearms, and as expected, one of her arms is sticky, with her left elbow pin not easily rotating or staying put at all rotations. I might have to see if Mattel has some kind of customer feedback pipeline to at least throw my complaint more toward where they might see it, because this is a consistent problem with this body.  The Bride of Frankenstein and Sally both had similar issues. I want this to stop happening, and it's especially baffling since the Creeproduction G1 body is just fine and has removable forearms. Why is that not what they're using for every G1-style doll???

Draculaura's other accessory is her purse, which is translucent pink and open at the top. To put it properly on her arm, you have to take a hand and cuff out because the handles of the purse can't fit over the cuffs.

I think the designers completely nailed the look of this doll. Draculaura with red was already a great idea, but the particular execution and balance of red, black, and pink here is excellent. This doll has all the saturation and contrast I love, while not looking too poppy or modern for the intended aesthetic of this ensemble. I'd love more red Dracs (unlikely), but they could hardly be done any better than this.

The last extra to discuss is these little printed cardboard Valentines the couple have for each other. They're cute, but they feel insubstantial and cheap. I'm mildly insulted by the expectation that these be used as accessories, or at any possible sentiment that these help to justify the price tag. On the other hand, they are an economical and more responsible way to produce accessories, and should hold up pretty well. I'm just not impressed myself.

The names are written in the typefaces used for these characters' handwriting in their G1 diaries, though!

Now for workshopping!

I wasn't quite sure how to customize Clawd's facial hair well. Paint didn't blend with the texture of his flocking on the older attempts, but I decided to paint his mutton chops on anyway just to sketch it out and see how it shaped his face. I realized the facial hair of the cartoon would never work while he had a shave-and-mohawk look, so I decided to cut the hair off the older Clawd head and glue it onto the Love head to fill out the head of hair and create physical mutton chops. I took wads of the cut hair and used fabric glue to cover the flocking and cheeks. I did lots of tweaking to saturate the hair with glue so it wouldn't shed or fall apart, and I also glued a clump to his forehead to create the pointed hairline of the cartoon character. This took tons of fussing with glues and paint to touch up places where glue showed through, but I got a really seamless head of hair that looked like it was never shaved and created the hairstyle Clawd's dolls never had. 

You can see I also painted the left corner of his mouth very subtly longer to give him more of an animated smirk. I associate Clawd with a warm confidence and friendly toughness, like the noble friend-group leader of the mansters, and his frustratingly neutral expression was part of why I gave up on the older doll. This was an elegant and very effective way to inject personality into his face, though I think the Howliday rendition was a bit better regardless. I need to keep that small repaint touch in mind for other dolls who feel too dour!

I had ordered G2 Clawd's body during my flopped experiments with G1 Clawd a while back, but I'm going to give it to Howliday now that I've got a Clawd head I like way more. The muscular, slightly taller G2 body flatters Clawd just as much as it did Deuce, if not more. Both were tough jocks, but Clawd was the manliest manster in the student body. To balance the visual of the facial hair and fit into the werewolf caricature, I tried something out and glued some hair onto his chest, too. I think it suits the shamelessly tacky retro disco vibe of his default outfit and the established MH canon that werewolves are more hirsute ...though I don't know if any ghouls save Viperine would go for the lamentably seventies vibe of it all when paired with the stock outfit. I did paint the nails into black claws on the G2 hands beforehand, though the nails needed a bit of touch-up after getting rubbed away by handling. The fit of the costume on the G2 body was a concern. Most G1 pants don't pull up high enough or properly fit on the G2 boy sculpt because the waist section defined by the underwear sculpt on the G1 torso is disproportionately low and short on the torso, but Howliday Clawd's pants work just fine on the G2 body. The top is a little short.

I also tried Skulltimate Secrets Clawdeen's bucket hat on Clawd, and paired with shades and his stock outfit, I think he shifts from seventies disco to nineties hip-hop!

I also tried the Prince Bee shirt to try a more formal look, but it's too much patterning. The shirt is also really tight around the arms and shoulders with the G2 body.

The shirt worked well to rebuild his G1 sig look, though. G3 Heath is wearing the original shirt, and the sleeves were too tight on the G2 body, so I had cut them off.

He has to wear G2 Deuce's trousers or long Shadow High pants to tie this together--my only options for him at the moment. It's still cool to see the signature setup with my hair makeover.

I don't know if this is going to be my basic look for this Clawd when it's not Valentine season. I might work with him more in the future to give him a different basic outfit. 

I kept looking for a better top for the Valentine suit, though, since the mesh top doesn't fit great on the G2 torso, and this outfit doesn't feel like Clawd is really taking this romantic date too seriously. Draculaura's dressed to the vintage nines and sweaty dance club is what Clawd goes with? There's a general trend of MH boys underdressing alongside their immaculate formal ghouls, and while that does reflect a realistic dynamic, I think these boys should step up. The tacky look is fun, but not appropriate for the set. For a new top, I eventually landed on a Mego Count Orlok Nosferatu figure I'd fallen out of love with.

He has a plain black top/pants piece with an ascot frill on the neck. I just cut the legs off the piece and opened it down the back to turn it into a long shirt. Orlok was quite stained, so I made sure to soak the piece in water for a good while to hopefully leach out any more excess dye before committing to giving it to Clawd. He wouldn't be irreversibly damaged if stained, but undoing it is a hassle. 

The pants section of the piece is a visibly different black fabric, and the seam is distracting when it's loose. The jacket also doesn't look good closed at the bottom here. By undoing the pants at the back and very carefully poking the Orlok piece with a tool, I was able to completely tuck it in, whereupon the line of the "pants" portion of the piece formed the visual of a perfect cummerbund! The jacket still stays open, but this is Clawd styled more appropriately for the occasion. It also feels like he's dressing up more on Draculaura's behalf for her birthday by adopting a touch of old formalwear. Now each doll clearly pays tribute to the other with their styling.

Clawd's facial hair is wolfish, but it also suits older clothing really well given the period of vogue when this hair would have been around. I feel like some aspects of Clawd's outfits have been vintage (possibly even specifically 1940s in style) to throw back to the release date of The Wolf Man, but he can rock even older fashions, too.

Draculaura required little attention. I just washed out her hair and combed it wet to sort it out. I tried tying her hair swoop into a bouffant to keep it shaped without gel...

...but I found the result awkward, and realized she needed no gel or ties whatsoever--just the right combing.

Elissabat really was the wrong vampire to receive red accents!

The hair texture turned out alright.

Here's a G3 Draculaura with this G1 edition. It's a huge difference.

And a beard and more muted outfit can't keep G3 Clawd from looking like this one's younger brother!

I had to take some couple portraits.

Here's the couple sitting together and enjoying their time.

Love is in the air--so watch out!

Cupid just had to dip back to her old life to check up and make sure the match was still strong.

For someone who doesn't go out for Draculaura too often, I continued to find lots of fun ideas for photos playing on her monster type. I really love classic vampires, pretty much equally to classic Frankenmonsters, so I think I'll always get something out of a Draculaura even if her character as a whole hasn't captured my heart as much. 

Clawd offers a rose to the rafters...

And Drac puts Clawd in a bit of an awkward position.

"Look at us, Clawd! Don't we look beautiful?"
"Uhhh..."

(It was not easy to cut the two pictures together to create the effect this time! Cutting the Clawd-alone reflection and dragging it over to the photo with both dolls didn't work because Draculaura cast a shadow on the mirror frame that wasn't there in the photo without her, so I eventually chose to cut the dolls out and put them over the photo with only Clawd in the mirror. That left less retouching to do, which was just where Draculaura's feet ended up.)

And a kiss the vampire way. 

Of course, I still found some werewolf fun in them too. Drac sat on a park bench, waiting...

"Oh where, oh where could he be?"

"Guess who?"

To make the yellow moon for these photos, I stuffed tissues under the cap of the LED desk lamp to mute it and it added some good texture and color as a bonus! I did edit the compositions in post (easy with the all-black backgrounds) to get the arrangement of the frame and moon right in each. The second photo had to be taken at that angle once I saw Drac's headband cast a perfect shadow outlining Clawd's eyes that way!

I'm very pleased with this set. This was immediately one of my favorite Draculauras upon looking at her design for the first time, and having her in-person hasn't diminished that impression. I just want Mattel to realize they made a faulty G1 body remake with their non-Creeproduction modern G1 dolls, and I wish her headband had come with a more rigid band. Clawd also let me find a great rendition of the G1 character after failing to execute a good upgrade beforehand. My new approach to giving him accurate wolfman hair did wonders, as did the minor lip repaint, and on the G2 body with a more formal top, he looks just as good as Drac. His factory design is a little iffy since his costume is ridiculous and that waist chain doesn't work well, but he's got the most age-flattering hairline of any Clawd with that hairstyle, and his corduroy pants feel more deluxe than most Mattel clothing, and the other clothing pieces in this set. I've finally squared away the long-pending G1 Clawd project. 

I may not be super passionate about this couple the way they appeared in the cartoon, but these dolls make a charming pair with some effort. Sometimes, romance requires that!