Revenge of the Yass Gremlins, Part 1: L.O.L. On Film

Okay, I wasn't done with L.O.L..

...or was it not done with me?

For all my negativity about L.O.L., there were still appeals that drew me in for another investigation. I've pretty much gotten out all of my gripes and sass toward the brand already, so this set of posts should be more open and invested because these are L.O.L. products I was more fully interested in.  

Read my first, saltier pass at the L.O.L. mega-franchise through my two O.M.G. posts here and here. 

The first thing I wanted to try, as mentioned during my previous posts, was investigating an L.O.L. Surprise Tweens doll because I thought I might find that specific doll concept's take on the L.O.L. face and proportions to be the most agreeable to me, and that it would serve as a good base to try pushing the L.O.L. look into the realm of classic cartoons and capitalize on the highly cartooned face design. I'm a sucker for the vintage cartoon aesthetic and I thought having a doll of a character in that look would be great. I'd already seen good results with the Poppen Atelier makeover of an O.M.G. doll into Betty Boop, and I'll admit that was basically what I wanted to replicate in my own way. 

The L.O.L. Surprise Tweens depict the "tweenage" siblings of other L.O.L. characters, and the Tweens all seem to be adaptations of prior L.O.L. dolls that haven't already been adapted in the O.M.G. line--this means there isn't yet a family of characters with dolls in the L.O.L., O.M.G., and Tweens line each. As it stands, some L.O.L. dolls have O.M.G. counterparts and some have Tweens counterparts, but I don't think we've seen one yet with both. The Tweens started out named in the same fashion as all other L.O.L. characters, with the first series of Tweens all being named with nicknames or titles with trendy slang. After the first series, all later Tweens ended up with more realistic proper names, with a formula of a realistic first name and a second name which might be a literal surname, or might just be a nickname or title--like edgy Jenny Rox, retro Hana Groove, or sailor schoolgirl Aya Cherry. 

Since the L.O.L. faces in general come closest in my mind to Betty Boop in terms of resembling classic cartoons, I thought it might be best to seek a Tweens doll with curly hair that could mimic her.

Cover of The Definitive Betty Boop comic collection, showing Betty in a black dress.

I also wanted a doll with hair that looked naturally colored, and darker hair would be ideal to throw a visual nod to the high-contrast looks of black-and-white cartoon characters. I knew I wasn't going to be able to go greyscale because the dolls aren't, so whatever colors I could take advantage of to nod to that aesthetic, I would. Ultimately, I selected Hoops Cutie from Series 1, older sister to L.O.L. Hoops M.V.P. Hoops Cutie has black tightly-curled hair with pink microbraids I thought could be easily cut out and covered up. Hoops' makeup also didn't seem like it was at odds with a classic cartoon character, and minimizing repainting or wiping was a bonus. I could have gone with Gracie Skates. She has entirely black-and-white split curly hair which could work unaltered, but her makeup would need repainting and her split-dyed hair felt just a bit too modern. 

The copy of Hoops I got is wearing all of fellow Series 1 Tween Cherry B.B.'s clothing.

Hoops' hair is big and curly, and makes her head look even larger, but it's tied up in the middle with a large twisted bun wrapped in pink microbraids. The four braids wrapping the bun have small gold vinyl decorations around them.

A pair of these braids also hangs loose to frame her face.  

While even an L.O.L. Tweens doll head is larger than Mattel's typical fare, this is still an impressive hairstyle to execute at this scale.

The Tweens doll faces are similar to the O.M.G. faces, but strike me as a tad more appealing because the cheeks aren't as sculpted, and thus don't create the accidental jowls the O.M.G. faces can take on in certain lighting. 

The O.M.G. face can catch the light quite unflatteringly.

The Tweens also have slightly parted lips with a classic MGA strip of teeth showing through, which does a great job at making the mouth look more graceful than the closed circular duck-lips of O.M.G. dolls. The O.M.G. Fierce dolls also have this relaxed-mouth feature. 

Hoops' skin color seems to be about the same as Court Cutie's. 

The Tweens body is similar to O.M.G., but sculpted as less mature, and notably smaller and shorter.

Points for weird consistency, I guess--the Tweens also have subtle nipple sculpting.

I'm pleased and impressed that this body got all the same points of articulation. I'm always hungry for smaller dolls to go there and have proper jointing...it's just that the O.M.G. standard the Tweens imitate is not fully proper jointing in my eyes. There are some nuances, too. The stupid uneven cut of the elbow sockets has a larger impact on the Tweens than it does on the O.M.G.s, with the Tweens showing a bigger difference between the bend when the elbow is in the deepest dip of the cut vs. the rest of the rotation. The Tweens have internal click knees just like the O.M.G.s. 

On the one hand, this is impressive because the joint has been replicated so small. On the other hand, both doll types should have been given proper rotating hinge knees because this joint is next to useless. Knees are the only place where fellow small doll Barbie Extra Minis outdoes the Tweens in terms of articulation. Otherwise, the Tween body's side-to-side head tilt, articulated wrists, and ability to sit upright on their own are all big points over the Minis.

The Tween hands come out and slide in pretty easily. They don't feel too fragile.

To make Hoops over, I first undid the hairstyle. I just cut down all of her braids close to her head, knowing I could dab some paint on to cover up the pink roots, and trimmed down the loose hair in the middle to create a Betty Boop-like center part of sorts where the hair volume was split to either side. I then looked for clothing pieces. I decided the Cherry B.B. top she was wearing could be very retro and clean when dyed black, and I also grabbed Rainbow High Junior High Violet's pleated skirt. It fit Hoops pretty well and lined up with the top, and with both pieces in black, it'd make a perfect retro sundress with a wide silhouette. I also grabbed the shoes she came in and wiped their paint off as much as I could, leaving them black with some remaining light paint picking out the details. 

Dyeing the costume was pretty easy. The dimensional buttons came off the top in the heat, but the glue spots left over were perfectly legible as buttons. The dye did affect the trim and straps of the top, and the glue spots for the buttons showed some of the original colors under them, so I went down and painted those details with white paint. The skirt needed two dips in the dye, because the first round didn't dye it enough and the colors didn't match between the two pieces. After the second round, it was perfect.

To repaint her face, I covered up her irises with white, leaving only the black pupils. That helped make her eyes look less dilated and matched the cartoon look. I then added the wedge-shaped eye reflections to create the vintage "pie-eyed" look that's so iconic of vintage cartoons. I also decided to paint her lips black, but I left the white tooth gap because I liked it. While I could have reasonably gone for a more completely "full-color" look for the doll because she's never going to be greyscale, I thought the aesthetic landed better if her fashion colors matched that vintage film contrast. I left her eye makeup untouched. Her eyeshadow is pale lavender that's close enough to grey, and not distracting enough to change. 

I then constructed my own earrings for her, using jewelry links and wire to create golden dangle hoop earrings. 

I thought it was only appropriate to reinterpret the "Hoops" part of the original doll's name as an accessory rather than a basketball term. "Hoops" sounds close enough to "Boop", too, that it just made sense. This character is named Lettie Hoops. Why not make the reference clear?

Here's the first look at Lettie assembled. 

After this, I realized I needed to properly outline the eyes to make her look more illustrated and cartoony, so I went in to complete the eye outline. Here's how that looks. 

And lastly, I gave her hair a trim because I wanted to reduce its volume. Making the hair look more proportionate to the head would sell the overall doll proportions better under the classic-cartoon concept, and it let me shape the hair a bit more. I cut the hair short on the bottom so none of it is visible lower than her ears behind her head, and trimmed it so the curls come into a point on each side, giving the shape more caricature and feeling like a worthier takeoff on Betty's hair. It's a different shape, but it feels more in-tone with that character. 

I really like the final result! She's very charming, and I think the eye repaints make a huge difference because the doll instantly evokes that old-cartoon appeal. The outfit worked out beautifully, and that top was a sheer stroke of luck coming with the doll because I would have had nothing proper for her to wear otherwise, let alone so perfectly. I'm still chagrined by how little her leg joints can do, but she's a very cute and nostalgic presence. I think she's ideal at her current size, too. I feel like O.M.G. size for the same aesthetic concept would be less darling to me. Granted, the O.M.G. body proportions are closer to Betty Boop, but I couldn't think of an O.M.G. base doll that would suit the concept better than Tweens Hoops, and the Tweens face has meaningful nuances that make me prefer it for the idea over an O.M.G. doll. I also like that the Tweens body doesn't carry as much "mature/youthful" dissonance as the O.M.G. dolls, and yes, even Betty Boop herself. Lettie feels more innocently stylized in the more retro equivalent to modern chibi.

I naturally had to photograph her in black-and-white. 

I then grabbed a very old painting by child me depicting a cityscape to try to mimic a cartoon still with a painted background. There aren't any landscape paintings in my house that would suffice.

And I had to do some entirely graphic art to fully, properly depict her as a cartoon. I traced a photo of her head in an illustration program, and put her on a cartoon title-card piece I had already made for something else, simply swapping Lettie in for the character and changing the text to suit her. I did a little blurring and highlighting with gradient shapes to try to bring out a more lush painted quality like old title cards could be.

The original piece I constructed had already included the Looney Tunes-esque ring background and the simulated film flaws to make this feel like a projected oldie, so I was glad to take advantage of having the work already done. 

I still wasn't totally happy with this, so I then spent a few little eons editing the piece with even more blurring and gradient spots, as well as lowering the contrast in places so the piece looked even less flat. I also added a hand in because I thought a shaded hand would help make the lush visual style feel more dimensional and communicate the look better. I also got rid of the filter layers over the piece intended to mimic film projection, since I thought they detracted from the new visuals, and changed the text a bit. 

This made an astronomical difference!

I'm very impressed with myself for making this happen because shading and lighting are the farthest from my strengths when making 2D art. Taking live photos is all good because I control the lighting by hand, but illustrating light and shading? Get outta here. But there are rare days when I want to do it and succeed!

Even though the second doll in the post gave me loads to discuss, I still might have had this post ready much sooner if the art pictures didn't take so much time!

I also did a slightly more modern (as in, more 1950s-60s-style) flat color graphic of Lettie, depicting her framed by an earring. 

I didn't choose Hoops for this project for any subversive purpose, but I did have to acknowledge the fact that she ends up representing a fantasy of a more positive history than our own--one where a Black person could have been a classic cartoon star without being depicted as a stereotyped hateful caricature. I've been diving into more classic Looney Tunes recently, and it's been fun, but it's also been full of reminders of historically normalized bigotry that made Lettie's subversive quality impossible to ignore while working on this doll.

I like her fantasy timeline better.

Now we're going to stick quite tidily to a retro silver-screen theme, because I got a Target gift card and guess who was still online on their site? 

The O.M.G. portion of the broader L.O.L. Movie Magic line is headlined by four individual characters, all referencing a classic film genre and featuring two looks in a "double feature" motif that transform them from one archetype to another. With this aspect of transformation, they also broadly feature a novelty aspect of versatile clothing with costume pieces that can be worn in multiple ways. The two-theme aspect of the dolls ties into the fact that the Movie Magic dolls are adaptations of two separate L.O.L. predecessors, with one of their fashion looks referencing one L.O.L., and the other look referencing another. 

The characters in the line are interesting. First is Ms. Direct, an action star with a "villain" look inspired by spy films, and a "hero" look inspired by superhero movies. Given the overall look of the villain costume, including the glasses, emphasis on black hair, and newsprint top, I'd say the look could also be validly read as a high-fashion spin on the "mild-mannered reporter" Clark Kent role which would be the superhero's alter ego. MGA's official intent is that the costume represents an action-movie villain archetype, and she fits the campier flavors of James Bond in that regard, but I think she works as a Clark Kent type too. 

MGA stock photos of Ms. Direct.

Ms. Direct's hair appears to be shaved on both sides so it can flip to both directions for opposite asymmetrical side-shave looks with different dominant colors. Her cape is reversible, and her golden superhero mask is a piece that snaps onto the front of the clear glasses from her villain look. 

Next is Starlette, a leading lady partially based on Judy Garland, which is most clearly indicated by having one L.O.L. predecessor sibling based directly on Oz's Dorothy Gale. Starlette has a pop-art comic aesthetic and switches from a demure black-and-white theme to a vivid colorful film-screening look. This colorized theming might be a very loose reference to The Wizard of Oz's groundbreaking transition from sepia to Technicolor, or just broadly reference the evolution of film technology from black-and-white to color. 

MGA stock photos of Starlette.

Starlette's headband and purse are the same piece in each look, and simply get flipped so the other side faces front to change the color and print showing, with the pieces being painted differently on each side. The photos suggest her more colorful hair is apparently intended to be tucked out of view for her black-and-white look. Don't know how well that works out in reality. I'm suspicious that hair effect wouldn't work easily with the doll in-hand. Ms. Direct's transforming hair is easy, but Starlette's?

Then there's Gamma Babe, a sci-fi character who switches from a "space babe android" look to a space-alien look.

It doesn't seem like Gamma Babe has any novelty clothing transformation/dual-purpose fashion features, and her two looks seen here appear to be composed all of mutually-exclusive costume parts. Gamma Babe would be my first pick if I had to get another Movie Magic solo doll. Her looks nail down the sci-fi camp tone with perfection (those silver robot-antenna earrings and those alien-eye glasses are incredible), and it suits the O.M.G. doll art style really nicely. 

Last is our star--Spirit Queen, a classic-horror character who goes from vampire to witch. There were no classic witch movies in foundational horror, but I love witches so that gets a pass from me. Witches are a big part of film history if you take The Wizard of Oz into account...but that's Starlette's territory. Spirit Queen's witch costume also has a cheerleader theme, adding a second meaning to the supernatural-toned name--she's also there for team/school spirit! 

I had been curious about Spirit Queen for a while, but Fame Queen was a faster acquisition among O.M.G.s that piqued my interest, so she was the one I had chosen for my first posts. At the end of it all, I might have been better going for Spirit Queen all along, since Fame Queen doesn't really work for me. 

Here's Spirit Queen's box. The Movie Magic dolls come in opaque boxes with no sliding panels,  and the front depicts just one look of the doll. Spirit Queen's spotlights her vampire getup. As with other opaque L.O.L. O.M.G. boxes, there's a callout that has to specify this product is a fashion doll. This is the largest O.M.G. box I've encountered, but it seems pretty close to Rainbow High fare, if maybe a bit larger.

The thin sides of the box feature a filmstrip design with a stereoscopic red/blue print motif alluding to early 3D film, and overlaps photos of the dolls and graphics or text phrases related to the industry.

The other thin side features Spirit Queen's name emblazoned in retro horror-movie-poster text. The large film diagonal here is blue to the other side's red.

The back of the box features images of both Spirit Queen guises and advertises the two forms of the other three solo Movie Magic dolls. All of their faces are uncovered, though, which seriously undersells the key appeal of Gamma Babe's purple costume--her alien shades!

Spirit Queen is the older sister of L.O.L. Countess, from whom she gets her vampire theme, and L.O.L. Witchay Babay (bleurghh), giving her her witch theme. 

As directed by the packaging, I opened a perforated flap on the side which folded out a panel with an instruction sheet taped to it. Turns out, fittingly, the box has a production in store!

The intention is to find the right flaps to create a pop-up movie theater display with the box, which also features a place to slide film through? as a visual gimmick, and there's also a compartment holding 3D glasses. 

I basically completely botched this and wrecked the box. I couldn't find the right flap to create the theater pop-up, evidently, but I was confused by trying to follow the orientation of the box in the diagrams as well as befuddled by tape sealing some areas and not being sure if I was supposed to cut it to unfold here or there, or whether the tape was closing parts that weren't meant to be opened in this process. Anyway, I basically unboxed the whole thing in a mess, and without getting the desired experience. 

Here's a tray of extras that fell out of somewhere. It contains Spirit Queen's witch hat headband and her stand pole, brush, and stand clips. One clip is narrow and one is wide.

I'm surprised they put the hat here--they couldn't fit it somewhere better?

The base of the doll stand has a third clip secured underneath it, and I also found the instruction sheet that has info on all of the tricky transforming clothing in the doll line--this is where I learned about the other dolls' subtler features.

The third clip is a second narrow one, leaving Spirit Queen with one wide clip. I actually would have never thought to check under the base if not for reading the instruction sheet, which mentions an inventory of three clips. Since I'd only seen the two from the tray, I checked the base! Spirit Queen's base only stores one clip, so one of her three clips will inevitably be floating around somewhere.

The 3D glasses are child-sized, and are the retro white paper kind with red and blue lenses. Each Movie Magic doll's 3D glasses match the shape of the doll's own unique sunglasses, which is a wonderful touch.

The glasses are unsurprisingly too small for me, but not by all that much. I wasn't yet sure what their function here was.

I also found the film thing the unboxing sheet discussed--these are two pieces imitating film squares that press together just like jigsaw puzzle pieces.

Each Movie Magic doll has their own film squares, so these can be connected in longer chains and in different orders. 

The theater pop-up display has a "Cine-Matic" assembly that you can stick the slides through to reveal the images printed on them more clearly. Photos of the Countess and Witchay Babay dolls are depicted in the images, but there's also a cheerleader doll, Thrilla, who connects to Spirit Queen's cheer theme, but isn't a family member of hers. This was a second release of Thrilla--her debut look and name were a reference to Michael Jackson's famous horror music video for Thriller. Both her cheer and horror tones make her a good choice to appear in the film slides, but it might have made more sense if Thrilla was canonized as another sibling of Spirit Queen.

Countess hangs batlike from the ceiling.

Witchay Babay and Thrilla hang out.

So here's how this effect works. Inside the "Cine-Matic" popup is a separate freestanding strip of cardboard with a white square filling the window in the front. The film slides are on hinges, and you have to slide them in so they sandwich the internal cardboard. That lets the translucent panel of the slides pass over the white part of the cardboard insert, which backdrops the translucent panels and makes the colors clear. 

White paper has to pass under the translucent film panel.

The slides successfully sandwiched around the inner panel of the viewer pop-up.

It's possible to slide the pieces in incorrectly so they're either fully in front of or fully behind the panel in the viewer, and then, you don't get the fun visual effect. 

Anything white passed under the translucent panels will suffice, though. Like the 3D glasses!

This effect probably could have been simplified by only having the top panels without the hinge and sliding those through over a white panel, but that might not have been as sturdy, and there is admittedly a touch more mystery in the way it works here because there's more to figure out.

I tried looking at the slides with the 3D glasses, but I wasn't getting a notable stereoscopic effect from it. Maybe they're intended to look 3D, but I'm guessing they're not what the glasses are for. 

This is a fun idea. It motivates a "collect-them-all" mentality in a shrewd marketing ploy, and it provides a fun extra toy for the kids with a cool optical gimmick, as well as making the packaging more of a fun show than an immediate throwaway, all with cardboard. I had no idea this whole thing was part of these dolls...though I kind of wish I hadn't gotten confused and that I'd gotten the whole unboxing correct so I could have the whole pop-up setup.

While the unboxing sheet tells you to run the film before pulling out the doll box, I'm certain there's no mechanical necessity to do so. I think, under proper procedure, you would be able to take out the doll box regardless of whether you "watched the film" because there didn't seem to be any tricky paper engineering connecting the film viewer popout to any hidden latches, flaps, or tabs. MGA just wanted you to experience the film part first as a prelude. 

Here's the doll box that was tucked away inside. It's opaque, compact, and decorated like a VHS tape.

The back has a very convincing print of the cassette reels, and a warning sticker saying it'll melt in the sun. While this might be authentic to real cassette care (hi, I'm young), I have to guess it might also be on there as an allusion to the whole trope of vampires being unable to enter sunlight!

This box features more red/blue printing. 

This box opens on a flap that tucks into the spine, and the doll backdrop and plastic tray both lift out. Opening the box revealed a genuine big surprise--MGA lied on the big box cover because Spirit Queen clearly has three outfits! She's wearing a white basic costume that factors into neither of her primary "official" looks and I had absolutely no awareness of these pieces being part of this doll. Now I wonder what the other Movie Magic dolls come dressed in by default. Do any of them have basic pieces that flat-out aren't used in their main looks? It's such a treat to get more doll clothing than you expected to!

Here's what Spirit Queen's backdrop looks like. This wasn't attached to the plastic tray in any way. Going with Spirit Queen's apparent role as a sound designer as seen on the VHS label, the backdrop depicts a spooky recording studio. (Horror sound design has to be like, the most fun ever.)

Previously, I had kept a old box from an eBay delivery which was about this size to store bits and pieces to keep on hand for doll work by my desk (like elastics and dolls in process). I'm replacing that with this box now, since it's about the same size and closes securely in the same way while looking much nicer than the beat-up box with a shipping label. I'm happy to have this!

Here's the first stage unboxed--the doll and her boom mic.

The boom mic is a really fun accessory since I doubt many dolls have ever come with them. The handle is wavy and the microphone head has a spiderweb texture and turns like the real thing. There's a handle for the doll to use on the pole. This could easily be a Monster High piece. There wasn't a Hauntlywood character in Frights, Camera Action! who worked on the sound crew, but if there had been, they'd probably have a piece just like this. That movie also missed a great opportunity to have a stunt-performer character!

I was already thinking of this mic in terms of a supernatural accessory, like a magic staff or even a studio substitute for a broom on her witch look--turns out, MGA were way ahead of me. We'll get there. 

I do wish the mic pole was long enough to touch the ground while the doll was using the handle. That'd brace the piece and stabilize it and allow for better presentation while it's in "broom" mode. It's easy for the mic to fall off her hand as it is and her other arm and hand aren't that great at bracing it.

Now, finally, the doll. I didn't make things any quicker, but there was already so much prelude!

Spirit Queen's intended hairstyle is a pair of huge white vertical fanned buns that clearly reference the infamous/iconic and oft-parodied heart or bat-like hairstyle worn by the aged titular vampire in the first act of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Gary Oldman's memorable hairdo portraying the aged Dracula.

I had very low hopes for the factory execution of this style based on in-person photos of this doll, but in-person, it's not horrible.

The style isn't nearly as big and elegant as stock photos and the 2D art, but it's symmetrical enough and gets the point across, though there are a couple of hairs that didn't fall in. The hair is all pulled up and split into two tails which are folded and banded into shape. Then, the two tails are banded again at the base to form one ponytail that splits into the two and keeps everything together. The tails of the "buns" are plastered within an inch of their life against the back of the head, and the rest of the updo is rock-solid with gel, too. Spirit Queen has a small chunk of bangs over her forehead, which suggest a vampiric "V" without actually being pointy.

The bangs are also gelled, leaving very little of the hair untouched. The hair is white with berry red on the sides and back. I fundamentally don't get along with gel, so even though this style is very fun, I went into this doll fully intending to take her hair down after looking over all she has going on. I'm a little leery, though, since MGA gel has a nasty zombie effect--often, you can wash the hair and get it combing like butter, and then it'll dry and some of it will be stiff and gelly again. It usually takes a couple of rounds, which is both impressive and extremely annoying.

The Bram Stoker's Dracula hair also featured a thin long braid down the back, but Spirit Queen's hair is purely an updo.

Spirit Queen's face has awesome berry-and-silver spiderweb eyeshadow and berry lips. Her skin is about the same shade as Court Cutie and Hoops Cutie. Her irises are a deep purplish brown tone. 

This basic outfit Spirit Queen starts out wearing is white with a horizontal stripe texture. The top is sleeveless with a turtleneck.

The stripes feel very witchy and yet this outfit feels extremely applicable to lots of characters. 

On her arms, Spirit Queen has her "pom-poms". These are small rings of elastic fabric with black and white ribbons hanging from them, creating the effect of cheer pom-poms around the wrists, but also working as gothic flowy sleeves. These pieces can also be slid up to her shoulders, which is used for the vampire design.

In the instructions, MGA also suggests that the pom-poms can decorate her ankles, or slide down the boom mic pole to cover the head and turn the piece into a broom! A broom mic! That's incredible. I was so glad to see MGA capitalized on that association in a better way than I had even considered. 

Spirit Queen's hands feature an awesome unique sculpt on her right, where she's wearing a silver skeleton glove with simulated bones laying over her fingers.

The bone glove was another genuine surprise--I hadn't picked up on it from images of her. The palm of the hand is also painted silver to complete the fingerless-glove look.

Spirit Queen has thigh-high mesh socks in a black-and-white stripe pattern for a classic witchy feel.

This doll's shoes are one of her surprises, so they're not here yet.

Here's a better look at the witch hat. The brim and cone are minimal and modernist in design, but the cone has a stitching texture on it as well. I don't know if that matches the rest of the look.

Here's the hat on. The longer side of the brim is recommended to face this way to fit with the hair better. The headband isn't very tightly contoured to the doll, but it works okay. This is a surprisingly cute look.

Now the rest. Her first surprise extra is the paper thing. This is an unfolding pamphlet apparently depicting a magazine.

On the other side is a snippet of a faux screenplay, depicting a fragment of plot these Movie Magic characters are apparently involved in. Presumably, the others have more of this and something can be pieced together by collecting them all. I don't get the feeling the final result would be very substantial or rewarding, though.

I realized very belatedly, through both the instruction sheet saying the glasses revealed secret messages and images and the presence of a lot of stereographic printing, that I should hunt down the red/blue prints in the packaging and use the glasses on those because that's where all of the "reveals" would be.

I started with the movie screen of the pop-up theater display. Spirit Queen on the screen is depicted with both main ensembles overlapping. 

The red lens of the glasses makes the red design fade out so the vampire look is more visible.

The blue lens fades out the blue and makes the witch look easier to see.

The thin sides of the big doll box have a clear alternation effect between text/graphics and photographs  in the film squares depending on the lens. 

I didn't previously show it, but another section of the complicated packaging shows headphones and a theremin (a classic for old spooky soundtracks) and features audio waves over the scene. 

Using the red lens reveals a "HEHEHE", the sound effect of a sinister laugh. I associate this laugh onomatopoeia more with cackling witches, but I think this is meant to correspond with the vampire concept.

The zigzag audio waves accidentally make it look like it says "WHEHEHE".

Using the blue lens reveals a "MEOWW" sound effect, most likely to be the witch guise's cat.

The VHS label on the doll box offers two alternate titles for the doll--"Sound Designer" revealed by blue is already pretty legible with the naked eye, but the red reveals the harder-to-see title of "Scream Queen"--an actress with strong impact in the horror genre.

The "Also Starring" credit on the box's spine has ambiguous text that nods to two of Spirit Queen's younger siblings.

The two co-stars are named as Countess and Lil Witchay Babay, the latter of whom is the younger younger sister to regular Witchay Babay. Yes, it's confusing and I hate the names dearly. These credits do not accurately correspond to the images shown in Spirit Queen's plastic film slides--the characters visible in those images were Countess and the older Witchay Babay, not the Lil one. Lil Witchay Babay is just in a diaper. Maybe the film slides don't represent the film being discussed in this label? Or maybe it's just not that deep, Dmitry...

I didn't think to check it and get photos of it under the lenses, but looking at this photo with them revealed that the ambiguous text on Spirit Queen's snippet of script from the pamphlet has these two messages--in red, it reads "...they will ACCEPT the AMAZING award [...] THE END"; in blue: "...they will FIND the MISSING award [...] TO BE CONTINUED". 

There's something deeply fascinating to me about a story being viewed alternately as concluded or still open to continuation. That's the tension in a lot of creation and derivative work!

The instructions hinted that there were some things that were revealed when looking through both lenses at once, but I couldn't identify where these were. Nothing I saw seems printed to be genuinely stereoscopic for a 3D effect-all I caught were colors working with the lens filters to replace one image with another. If there was anything stereoscopic, there'd be staggered images that aligned under the lenses with both eyes working together. I also couldn't find any compositions where words were hid in opposite colors and a message split across them could be read in one image when using both lenses.

Fun cinema fact--this filtering to hide images of the same color was the technique used to create one of the most incredible in-camera visual effects in old movies--watch this clip from the otherwise-forgotten 1937 mystery film Sh! The Octopus:

The actress's mind-bending facial morph into an old hag was done with a light filter and colored makeup. Her face was painted hag-style in one color and she was lit with the same color so the hag makeup wasn't at all visible until they took the color filter out, creating that incredible morph effect done entirely in-camera. The gag only works, though, because the film is printed in black-and-white!

Okay, back to the doll. The first surprise package I grabbed was her shoe box. I think this was the moment where I realized O.M.G. puts labels on the shoe boxes with names and pictures of the included shoes! Fame Queen's box had the same detail, but I had missed that.

I think the bar code is deliberately done with wavy lines so it can't scan!

The tissue wrapping the shoes has a design matching the 3D glasses from this set. As advertised, the shoes are spiderweb wedges with berry-red platforms. They'd fit right into Monster High if any of the dolls could fit into them!

Here's the shoes on.

Next was the round box, which contained two tissue bundles.

The first contains Spirit Queen's neckpiece and corset. These pieces work just like Fame Queen's shoulder armor and bodysuit, and the neckpiece is strikingly similar to Fame Queen's, down to having a heart pendant. The sculpt is entirely different, though, and the neckpiece is softer plastic since it's not vac-metalized. 

Fame Queen's neckpiece.

The other package contains Spirit Queen's sunglasses and another real surprise--silver hoop earrings I was not aware she had!

The earrings are static pieces and do not dangle. The sunglasses are glittery on the frames and shaped loosely with a black web/bat wing motif.

Here's the glasses on. They do feel quite "Hollywood celebrity". 

And with the earrings.

I had adopted Fame Queen's round box to store doll jewelry parts, and I'm taking Spirit Queen's to store all of my doll elastic bands for hairstyling. This will keep them far tidier and easier to pick out within the desk-side storage that the VHS box has taken the role of!

The main attractions of the doll unlock with a series of three garment bags providing her primary clothing. 

The first bag is patterned with VHS tapes labeled by genre, and contains her black spiderweb maxi skirt, which features white athletic stripes on the sides. The hanger uselessly includes a plastic torso form, and I'm gonna call it what it is--an idiotic waste of plastic.

Turns out, the mermaid web flare at the bottom of the skirt is not part of this piece--it's actually the cheer skirt from the "witch" look! The instructions revealed the skirt is reversible, and the other side is the web print, which can apparently attach to the bottom of the maxi skirt to complete the dramatic silhouette. I'm mildly disappointed because that skirt could be so useful to have for other dolls, particularly with two patterns. That's a case where the transforming costume kind of deprives me of a useful spare part, because now I know I'm going to have to use the cheer skirt with the complete Spirit Queen I want when I didn't think that was what I'd be doing!

Spirit Queen's next garment bag has a spooky moon pattern and contains her jacket, which mixes athletic motifs with a web design and has a tall collar.

I'm getting such a strong uncanny sense that this jacket is exactly what a G3 Operetta would be wearing in her signature look. It's entirely her fashion sense and this simply feels precisely like what a new version of her would be wearing. There's no telling if Operetta will be in G3 at all so far, but if she is and I like what they did...I might keep this jacket in mind for her.

Last is a garment bag with an audio wave pattern containing Spirit Queen's top and reversible skirt. 

The skirt has a black-and-white strip motif for a witchy cheerleader theme, but flipped to its other side, it has a black web design that pairs with the maxi skirt. The skirt looks like one large web, though, while the maxi skirt has a different pattern.

Alright, now the show can really begin! 

First, I just tried out the top and maxi skirt together, creating a basic black costume. The top has crossing straps that form two "X" shapes around the neck and midsection, and also create high-contrast athletic stripes.

Then I tried for the mermaid silhouette, incorporating the short skirt flipped to the web print.

It took me a couple of minutes to work out how the skirts worked together. it was something of a puzzle! Simply encircling the maxi skirt with the small one didn't work because the small skirt wasn't tight enough and didn't properly enclose the maxi hem. Then, rereading the sheet more carefully, I realized the maxi skirt had its own velcro seam to properly attach the skirts together. That seam is a small gap that opens just at the bottom and some fiddling finally got me to figure it out. Here's how it works. I've taken photos, and then diagrammed them in post with colored dots and arrows indicating which velcro pieces match up to each other and how it folds in this process.

You take the small skirt, unfolded so the cheer side is going to be on the inside, and have it ready to wrap around the back of the maxi skirt.

Then you open the small velcro gap at the bottom of the maxi skirt. The maxi skirt's left "hook" velcro strip I marked with orange will not interact at all with the smaller skirt--that really tripped me up and took a while to realize. That leftmost orange velcro piece only exists to close the maxi skirt at the bottom when it's being used solo.

The left "hook" velcro strip of the small skirt attaches to the right "loop" strip at the bottom of the maxi skirt. At this point, the left lower velcro strip on the maxi skirt gets covered up and just hangs out loose and disused under the small skirt, so I've marked it with a faded orange dot here. 

Then, the short skirt velcros over itself to close up. The velcro closure on the spiderweb configuration is pretty small, much shorter than the cheer configuration, and it can pop open sometimes.

I actually had to reattach the skirt after these photos to shift it lower down so it truly touched the floor and covered Spirit Queen's feet. If you attach the skirt at the highest point, her toes can be seen. You can attach the skirt with the "cheer" side showing if you use the left flap of velcro on the maxi skirt--it's just the same process, mirrored to suit the velcro pieces. I realized this much later, so I forgot to try it during this first look-over. I'm sad to have missed that opportunity, because it might have looked good with a few of the looks while she was unaltered.

You could also layer the short skirt over the waist of the maxi skirt with either pattern, creating a different effect altogether!

This skirt process was a trick to figure out, but once you know the right steps, it takes all of two seconds to execute. 

Here's vampire Spirit Queen with the full dress and vampire corset and neckpiece, pom-poms slid up to her shoulders. 

I'd previously concluded that the wider stand clips were extra accommodations to make the stands work for O.M.G. Guys dolls, and while that's still something they can do, it became evident here that Spirit Queen's wider clip was given to her so she could fit on her stand with her corset, which thickens her midsection. The clip in this setup isn't super tight, but you need the wider one to hold her with the corset. This wasn't the case with Fame Queen's clip-on bodysuit because it was thinner and had cutouts right where the thinner clip grabbed her waist.

And with the glasses. I really do get the feeling of her being a movie star!

While these glasses are great, I can't help but think Spirit Queen would also kill with O.M.G. Melrose's silver shades, which have circular pink lenses that flip up! 

Melrose's shades, as seen in her official MGA stock photos.

Those feel like they'd suit a quirky Victorian steampunky vibe for a vampire, and would work to nod to the youthful form of the same Dracula in Bram Stoker's Dracula!

Gary Oldman as Dracula with his youth restored in Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Here's some portraits with her. 

The pom-poms do a decent job at falling into a bat-wing silhouette when around the shoulders!

And for fun, I tried using the 3D glasses filters.

Then I had to play with photos of her shadow. The visual of the creeping vampire's shadow was originated in Nosferatu, and imitated with more flair in Bram Stoker's Dracula, where the Count's shadow was depicted as disconnected from him, Peter Pan-style. The doll might have referenced this too, with the artwork of the shadow of Spirit Queen's arms around the theremin, which would be how the instrument is played--by moving around the rod, closer and further away. 

Maybe Spirit Queen was literally playing the theremin with her shadow!

Here's the doll's shadow.

(Quick review of Bram Stoker's Dracula since I've talked about it so much: the first act is genuinely so good and lives up to the promise in the title, but the characterization falls way off the rails for the rest of the film and tries to get us to sympathize with a romantic Dracula who still represents the monstrous things he is in the book. The movie is visually stunning and quintessential horror, and its effects are all awesomely vintage in execution, but the plot quickly falls way out of line with the book.)

I had to set up photos of Spirit Queen's shadow going after someone. Maudie agreed to be the hapless victim leading lady.

I think the shadow effect is most surreal and successful when the shadow is framed to look like the figure is genuinely coming from behind Maudie to grab her, suggesting it's more dimensional and unnatural.

Here's how the setup worked. To have the shadow look like a figure facing the camera, Spirit Queen had to face away. It's so fascinating how that works.

Don't you love on-set behind-the-scenes showbiz photos?

Now it was time to try out Spirit Queen's witch mode. Rather than immediately putting her in the cheer skirt, I tried out the jacket and hat with the maxi dress setup, and I think this looks extremely good for a witch costume.

I really like this setup. 

And here's just the short skirt, using the web pattern.

Also great.

And finally, the "official" witch cheer look. 

Using the pom-poms on the boom mic creates a fantastic broom that sells the cute cartoon-witch look even better.

I liked this look with the witch hat, web short skirt, and no jacket.

And this costume works great with the glasses and no witch hat as an alternate "black basic" look with a shorter skirt.

I thought the white skirt from the default outfit subbed in well, too. 

I then tried giving the white costume pieces to signature G3 Cleo after seeing a photo of someone else trying them on a Cleo due to the ability to read them like bandages. I brought in the sig sunglasses and the Fearidescent sandals. I think this look is pretty successful! It feels like white Egyptian linen clothing and mummy wraps in one.

Spirit Queen's set offers tons of permutations, and I didn't explore or photograph many of them. I love how many looks this doll can create!

I then washed and took down Spirit Queen's hair. With it long and down, and wearing the jacket and maxi dress, I think Spirit Queen does an excellent Morticia!

If she had a bouffant, she'd also play an excellent Elvira! 

It almost feels like this is the shape the hair was rooted for, because it creates a very clean white-outside-red-inside color blocking that's quite striking. 

This look does work for a vampire, but probably not quite as well. I think maybe the Melrose glasses would be ideal in this setup. 

Then I took her down to try some repaints. I wanted to lower her lids to make her look more ominous and spooky, so I painted berry lids over her eyes. They covered the painted reflections, but I chose not to add them back in lower after a test. I thought it worked fine without them. I also changed her lips to black to look more gothic, and attempted undereye shading in black, which ultimately amounted, unintentionally, to outlining the whole eye. I tried to save it as best I could. It kind of works with the line contrast of black and white all through her outfit, though. 

I also gave her Fearidescent Draculaura's black bat earrings, which I thought worked better for a generic Morticia horror lady than the silver hoops.

Here's that result. 

I experimented with alternate hairstyles. Pigtails weren't bad, and worked with the hair length variations. A high ponytail wouldn't fall down her back properly because not all of the hair is the same length, but the hair also generally doesn't feel as flexible as I expected. It combed like Rainbow High nylon when wet, but maybe that fiber is higher-quality than this.

This hairstyle definitely works with the cheer theme, though I neglected to try the cheer skirt while the hair was tied this way. 

A low ponytail worked out alright while I took a photo of her flying on her broom!

You can see she's not wearing her socks; I took them off and put them in my doll clothes pool once I resolved that my display look for the doll would have the maxi dress setup. There's no point wasting such useful, desirable socks on a doll whose legs are completely covered!

Of course, the witch look is just fine with the hair down, too.

And I did try the Elvira hairdo out of curiosity. It looks really good!

While Elvira is an icon associated with horror, she's not a horror icon who haunted the silver screen back in the day, so I'm going to keep Spirit Queen's hair down for more of that generic, applicable, vintage gothic elegance. 

I got a really great portrait out of her!

And that made for a great movie poster!

I can't believe just how much that one doll experience gave me...and even still, there are things I didn't explore with her! 

Spirit Queen basically just single-handedly broadened my mind toward O.M.G. I'm a sucker for classic horror, yes, but my standards are high and I think she aces the theme. She feels like a product of 1960s cartoon homages to the classic days of horror, from that period where monsters had firmly become family-friendly icons. Her vampire and witch looks are cartoonish and iconographic and fabulous, and the extremely cartooned O.M.G. doll art style works with this theme and her costumes rather than against them. This doll offered me several genuine and delightful surprises, real surprises, her box offered some entertaining activities, and the old-movie theme felt committed and well-executed in all of its thematic aspects. I especially respect the 3D glasses shape matching the doll's shades, and being replicated in the surprise tissue. That's next-level. Her clothing pieces are full of possibility owing to the transforming multi-purpose elements and the whole-ass third unadvertised clothing set (!), such that I simply couldn't examine every possibility with her outfits! I also found the multi-purpose elements on Spirit Queen to be very clever, and possibly the most versatile of the Movie Magic dolls. Her pom-poms can be used four different ways, and her short skirt can be worn alone, attached to the maxi skirt hem, or layered over the maxi skirt waist...and in two different patterns for all of those configurations! There's just so, so much you can do and play with this doll, and she looks great through all of it. This doll really showcased the height of O.M.G. dolls. Sure, they're weird and a little hard to swallow visually and they operate on nauseatingly shallow trendy slang...but they can offer genuine delight and surprise and pure iconographic splendor. Basically, O.M.G. can be pure fun. And I'm glad to have seen that side of the brand, because it's expanded my perceptions. Will I stop judging MGA for its overdone packaging, slang abuse, and weird baby/adult design conflations? Absolutely never. But I've seen a side of O.M.G. I really enjoyed.

I don't know if I have any serious gripes this time. The unboxing gimmick stymied me and I wrecked that intended experience, but that was an extra. The doll's hair was untenable to me personally, but that's me personally. It was pretty okay for what it was as a factory execution of a beautifully ridiculous shape. Maybe the only thing that ought to have been changed was for MGA to have detailed instructions on how the skirts go together, because I feel like that could really confuse kids if it confused an adult like me! I got there in the end, but it's not the most intuitive figuring it out. 

I had a good time with Spirit Queen, and she'll be great Halloween decor! I might consider Gamma Babe since this was such a fun experience for me!

Here's a runner-up photo from the cover shoot. I just couldn't compose the graphic movie-poster elements right over this one.

In the next post, we'll be looking at two more L.O.L. products that piqued my curiosity. See you there.