An Electric Concert Atmosphere: Monster High Monster Fest Frankie Stein by Mattel

 This is kind of a shorter topic this time. I just really liked the doll!

G3's latest themed line is Monster Fest, and it's kind of G3's answer to the G1 Music Festival line...but only really in concept. Music Festival was mostly a budget slim-box line and the line had a majority of secondary characters--Clawd, Venus, and Abbey outnumbered Draculaura and Clawdeen. (Everybody in that line had fangs!) Monster Fest is a typical G3 retread of the core characters (I want Mattel to ease off on the main five a little) and it's a deluxe line. Monster Fest also has a clearer visual aesthetic, with everybody sporting their best boho-chic music-fest costumes. Only Abbey had that style in the Music Festival line. Monster Fest also aligns well with the Hissfits werecat music three-pack and the release of G3 Catty Noir, as she'd be a pop act performing in the festival...though she hasn't gotten her official, stable mass-market release yet. I'd also say the Skulltimate Secrets Series 4 dolls could work with the theme, as the dolls are dressed like stage performers. The only doll in that series who isn't also in Monster Fest, however, is Abbey (who I reviewed in that linked post). 

I love music as much as anybody else, but I'm very minimally entrenched in music culture. I don't like concerts as an environment and favor studio recordings. I don't buy or collect music releases. I've never done Coachella and never intend to. This doesn't make me enlightened or superior in any way, of course. It's just not my scene and that's me. So the Monster Fest line, while interesting, didn't grab me for its concept.

But you-know-who was fabulous. I continue to be extremely weak to G3 Frankie Stein. 

Frankie's 2024 output has shifted a little in appeal for me. I really wanted their refresh doll when I saw the prototype photos, but the final product chucked in a lot of pink that I didn't like nearly as much. I do really like their upcoming Welcome Committee doll, but I can't fathom why it wasn't out in time for Pride because it feels like their most explicitly queer doll design, in a really lovely way. I think it could be interesting to try swapping the outfits of refresh and Welcome Frankie to see how that would work, because the Welcome doll would imitate the color palette of the prototype refresh and refresh could look very Y2K punk in the Welcome Committee outfit. The Frankie/Lagoona/Cleo refresh wave still isn't on shelves where I live. 

I was immediately interested in Monster Fest Frankie. Like Neon Frights, my prior favorite G3 Frankie, they embrace neon yellow to complete a poppy trifecta with their blue and pink colors, and their overall palette looked immaculate. They also debuted a new sculpt variant for their prosthetic leg--which is the first variant sculpt for their leg so far. Previous variations have just been translucent-cast recolors of the sculpt they've had from G3's start. So let's just chill and look at this very hyper doll!

The Monster Fest boxes have a new shape with girders and speakers molded in the front window, and a tombstone or vaguely coffin-esque silhouette. I think these boxes could stand to be narrower than they are, but I appreciate the more atmospheric background art. The sides have some music-themed spooky drawings, and the back shows off the collection.

Monster Fest Cleo has a great jacket, but the rest of her doesn't stand apart too much to me.

I was surprised when unboxing the doll, because the only thin plastic tags used were the ones pinning their head to the backdrop, and those had the bigger rounded exterior ends, not the thin T shapes. The arms and legs were secured with the flat soft plastic strip bands that can unhook and elastic bands in turn. Morticia and Wednesday still had plenty of thin plastic tags, so I can't say Mattel is trying to cut down and shift into different doll restraints, but this was interesting. T-shaped tags were still used to pin their headband to their head.

Here's the whole package unboxed.

Monster Fest is, I believe, only the second deluxe G3 line not to feature the pets, following from Monster Ball. (Skulltimate Secrets is not being counted here because that's a different format.)

Frankie's hair was a mess, but it was also saran, which can be a good and bad thing--better texture, but hard to keep tidy. I decided to look them over fully before treating the hair, though.

The Monster Fest dolls start with their bohemian music-festival aesthetic through fancy tiara headbands, which all feature a forehead-crossing circlet section that evokes hippie attire. I assume this is all a legacy of the original heyday of Woodstock. The main deluxe dolls combine the circlet with an arced headband, but Draculaura in the food truck playset just has a circular tiara. Frankie's tiara is neon yellow with a flower design formed of hex bolts and lightning, and features a silver forehead circlet that looks like stitches, with safety pins at the side.

The dolls have been getting more elaborately printed accessory and clothing plastic pieces of late, and while it's that gritty screening method, it looks pretty impressive. You never saw this level of detail on accessories in G1.

Here's the side of the headband.

The piece is symmetrical.

The circlet helps the piece fit more snugly on Frankie after the tags are cut, so it's a nicely functional piece. You do have to fiddle with it a bit to make sure the headband isn't forming a gap over the head.

Frankie's hair sets them apart from most predecessors. While she (G1, G2) and they (G3) have had this haircut, long with straight-cut bangs, on previous occasions, Frankies with this cut usually have more white featured in the blend. The only other Frankie with hair like this and a dominance of black was the G1-style collector Stitched in Style doll released fairly recently. I never looked twice at that doll, though, because her bangs were so distracting. The colors of the bangs stood out too much from the rest of the hair's coloring and the rooting shape of the bangs was very abrupt and unnatural-looking. 

Monster Fest's hair looks much more natural. Their bangs feel very G1 with their blend of black and white and blue, while the rest of their hair has a few white streaks but is mostly black.

I like those occasions when a Frankie has more white or more black hair. This will need work, though. I also noticed that their scalp isn't painted black fully under the hair rooting, leaving some thinner patches by the side of their bangs too obvious because you can see their natural blue vinyl color underneath.

The bangs are gelled.

Frankie's face has a lot going on. 

Unique to this doll, their right eyebrow has a lightning bolt cut out of it, and their eyes have neon yellow shadow on the inner side, while bold lightning bolts are painted under the eyes--neon blue on their right, neon pink on the left. Their lips are a lovely dark gunmetal silver color, and their left eyebrow features two painted rings--one neon blue and one neon pink.

And just to show how G1 has crept back in with the evolution of G3, look at the early-G3 faceup of my (restyled) Day Out Frankie next to Monster Fest. The thick bold G1 lashes and chunky makeup looks are back now, and I love it.

I also noticed dabs of pink for tear ducts on the Monster Fest doll. Monster Fest has some pink blush like sig/Day Out.

Monster Fest Frankie's earrings are some of my favorites the character has ever had--they're wearing a plug cord and a power strip!

The earrings have a wraparound cuff shape styled like stitches, too. The colors are directly swapped opposite from the lightning makeup accents.

The cuff sections don't have separate pins that plug in. 

These earrings rule, but Frankie's hairstyle is unfortunately perfect for tangling in them. An updo or high ponytail would let these shine without snarling in the hair, but I overall think Frankie's look is just right.

Around their neck, Frankie is wearing another detail-printed accessory--a necklace with classic alphabet beads spelling their name!

I love the way the name looks like it was made from craft-store beads, and the print is impressive and sells the concept just right. This piece would be so lame if the letters were conveyed with molding rather than print. It's also a fun new way to explore G3 Frankie's affinity for text accents. 

The piece just clips on at the back.

Under the necklace, Frankie is wearing a black mesh tee with a silver band around their chest.

This feels very old-school MH. I was also very surprised to see the silver band is its own layer!

The silver top works on its own, too. It's not overly loose. 

Unfortunately, you can see the black top has created a stain on Frankie's shoulder. I'm disturbed to hear reports of other G3 dolls having clothes stains, like Spectra, when I don't recall this ever being a problem with MH before. It's a fact of life for classic Living Dead Dolls, but MH? No way.

Around their waist, Frankie has a belt that connects to a thigh pouch. It's all one neon yellow vinyl piece which is very difficult to photograph, and has two fasteners--one at the back of the waist and one at the back of the thigh.

It would have been very cool if the pouch was open and could hold something, like a phone, but the coffin shape of the phones wouldn't be easy to make a pouch for, and the thumb loops would add another complication--plus Frankie wouldn't be able to hold a phone with their gloves.

Speaking of--Frankie has symmetrical black vinyl fingerless gloves over their hands.

These are not molded onto the hands--they're a separate piece, but rather than having a full slit on the palm so they can wrap around the hand like the Skulltimate Secrets Series 4 dolls, the gloves have half-slits on the sides.

I found it very difficult to slide a glove off Frankie's right hand. The fit is tight and you're absolutely going to have to pull the hand out of the wrist first so you can use the peg as a grip. I don't think these gloves are necessarily designed for easy removal and replacement. Honestly, just mold another hand at this rate.

Frankie's pants are asymmetrical, with the left leg hanging above the knee and showing off their prosthetic. This isn't a trait unique to this doll, but I always like when their outfits throw emphasis to the metal leg. The left leg is made to look rolled up a bit, while the right leg has a pinched cuff that's tighter than the rest of the leg. 

Obviously, the right leg could not be full-length and actually rolled up that high with so little roll present, so it's just a stylistic choice. The pants are pink, blue, black-and-white, and neon yellow plaid with a lightning design and grayscale stripes that remind me of film strips, though I doubt that's intentional. The pants also have silver ribbon fringe hanging from the sides, which goes lower on the longer leg. The fringe is another reason the left pant leg couldn't be genuinely rolled up--any fringe from below the rolled portion would be sticking out of the roll at a crazy angle.

Monster Fest Frankie debuts a new sculpt for their prosthetic leg, which is a first. Previously, their leg variants have just been recasts of the same sculpt in new translucent colors. Here, their leg is cast with a square panel texture to look like the mirror tiles of a disco ball, and they're wearing symmetrical short boots with the same texture so their leg blends into the left boot. It's a cool inversion from previous outfits where Frankie had asymmetrical short left boots that showed off the leg. Here, a short boot is being used to make the leg look like a longer boot, and thus the right boot looks shorter (but it's not)!

The boots have some fabric texturing, and the heels are neon yellow prongs with lightning "wings" on the sides and brackets that look like laboratory switches as the heels. The prongs have three pegs that plug into the sides and under-heel of the boots.

Here's a comparison between the most common "signature" Frankie prosthetic and the Monster Fest one. Everything from the gear stack below is identical in sculpt.

While it'd be cute to imagine Frankie DIYing one of their legs in the lab by gluing mirror tiles over a spare, the texturing of the basic leg wouldn't allow for a uniform tiling job here, so realistically, this would be a fully-crafted unique leg they had made just for this occasion. Or at least, the shin and thigh portion was bespoke crafted from whole cloth. The ankles and feet being identical suggests a modular quality where maybe the "casing" of the prosthetic is a separate shell that can be swapped.

I really can't imagine what occasion Frankie would ever have to reuse this leg sculpt again, so this reads as quite an extravagance. I'm still not convinced we'll ever see G1-peak-level body detailing within G3, but for Frankie to be afforded a new leg that could very well be a one-off is commendable. This is what I really wanted from their leg variants--separate sculpts. I hope this continues, because this is a better illustration of their collection of modular appendages than just recasting the one mold.

Frankie's first accessory is a pair of translucent neon-pink heart sunglasses with stitches and lightning and screws for texture.

The color matches the G3 sig Venus shades.

Frankie also has a pair of bracelets which were packaged separately...possibly because they're not designed to work well with the gloves and they're there to swap out with those pieces? Both of these bracelets clip on rather than being closed loops. I chose to put them both on Frankie's right arm after taking off that glove. The bracelets are a chain and a ticket curl saying "ADMIT 1".

All of the Monster Fest dolls come with camera pouches, and Frankie's is fairly similar to the one that came with their signature doll, but it's a different sculpt with a short wrist loop. 

Even without the gloves, their hands need to be popped out to put this over their wrists.

Frankie's drink accessory is a metal cup with a clear front panel (represented by a printed design). The cup is shaped like lightning and the straw is very twisted, while the handle is a bracket that should slide over the fingers, but doesn't work great with the gloves.

I'm oddly intrigued by the idea of a drinking vessel with only one clear side. This cup does not open.

Frankie's food is a hot dog in a black bun with a blue condiment, and it's dressed with hex bolts and lightning bolts as toppings! The detail is so tiny and charming.

I'm a fan. This piece couldn't have worked as well with G1/G2 factory painting. I'm slightly surprised to see that Frankie isn't having something pizza-related, though, since previous dolls indicated they have a particular love for it. But people can like multiple things, and I don't want to pigeonhole them.

Frankie's last little handheld is an admission ticket to the festival itself. 

The circular mold marks are distracting.

Some of these pieces can go in their big purse, which is shaped like a heart with a zipper pouch on the front. Large fringe and plugs hang from the bag, and it's open at the top.

In the same way the Monster Ball dolls came with cardboard rectangles representing photos at the dance, the Monster Fest dolls come with cardboard posters from the festival. Frankie's, though, isn't a portrait of musicians, is it? It's just the friend group.

Minus Draculaura (rude).

Frankie's character art has more white in their hair than the doll. 

Cleo's Monster Fest poster is a solo portrait of Frankie, which feels terribly unfair given that Frankie didn't reciprocate with a solo poster of Cleo. The two are into each other, but it feels like Cleo is thinking harder about them together! 

Clawdeen's poster depicts the Hissfits three-pack set of Toralei, Purrsephone, and Meowlody. (I really like Purrsephone's new design, but the rest doesn't matter to me, so I don't know if I'll ever get it.) Lagoona's poster depicts G3 signature Catty. Only Clawdeen and Lagoona's really make sense as band posters, because those are confirmed music acts they'd be seeing. 

Frankie's hair boiled out pretty well. In the process of redressing the doll, I found I liked how they looked with some of their pieces missing for a more casual look.

I don't know why I'm getting a hint of Billie Eilish here.

Then I started taking some portraits. I first started with my paper backdrops.

And I experimented with lighting. I knew pure blue would make their neon yellow pop out.

And here's the two most neon Frankies together.

And some other light colors, against a starry paper backdrop.

Then I decided to fake some scenery with my computer screen using images as a backdrop. I edited a cloud photo to create a poppy neon sky for them:

And I tried to find some outdoor photos for scenery in nature at the festival.

There's not a lot to say except that this is a fun doll and another Frankie design that knocks it out of the park. I love their hair coloration and neon yellow, and despite this being a one-off look for Frankie and a fashion sense and social scene I'm not into, I think this is a really vibrant and appealing design. The new leg sculpt is also appreciated. When both refresh and Welcome Committee Frankie are available simultaneously, I might get those and do a review/clothes swap. Still waiting for Catty to show up. 

I'm pretty sure my next posts are going to be the final doll and conclusion of Living Dead Dolls Series 23. The other LDDs I bought this month are all dolls I won't be able to publish reviews of in July, so we'll see what happens this month besides. Thanks for reading.