Superstition Superstar: Monster High G3 Signature Catty Noir by Mattel

Catty Noir was fairly low on the list of G1 characters I expected to come back. 

Introduced as a standalone exclusive doll dropped on a Friday the 13th, Catty made her media debut squeezed into the end of the special 13 Wishes, where she wasn't a plot-important character and thus was not released under that doll line. 

Catty's first G1 doll.

New G3 releases have suddenly started coming into Target, so I've now seen Skulltimate Secrets Series 4, refresh Frankie and Lagoona (but Cleo looked sold-out and wasn't there) and sig Catty and Spectra on the shelves--finally. I might pick up Spectra, but I'm iffy on her and she doesn't bring anything new to the brand, so she wasn't a priority. G3 sig Catty, who I'd been waiting for for a while, was grabbed on sight. I was very interested in her debut of a new body type for Monster High.

Catty's concept is that she's a black werecat monster with a theme of bad-luck superstition. In addition to being a black cat, Catty's lucky number is 13 and she wears a lot of broken-mirror iconography. Staples of bad luck are good luck for her. She wasn't the first in the doll sphere with this motif. Living Dead Dolls featured Jinx in its sixth series, a girl dressed as a black cat with a 13 on her shirt:

Jinx mixes in leopard print and is firmly a Halloween cat.

....and the thirteenth series had a superstition motif for each doll, including a girl who died after being scratched by a black cat, Simone:

The cat has claws that hook into the dress!

...and a scary-looking character, Evangeline, who was cursed and physically shattered herself after breaking a mirror, with metallic mirror coloring showing through the gaps in her doll face.

I also invoked similar ideas with a custom Left Out Doll, Little Stitious, on whom I combined the evil eye, the number 13, the black cat motif, and the broken mirror.

The evil eye was also a LDD Series 13 motif, featured on the doll Iris.

I'm definitely planning on getting LDD Jinx sooner than later (certainly before October) and Simone and Evangeline both interest me too. It'd be fun to have all of those bad luck dolls in conversation with their overlapping motifs. Little Stitious and Catty and Jinx would be the midpoints blending the ideas of Simone and Evangeline. 

The other important facet to Catty Noir is that she is a famous young pop idol, and the celebrity singer theme and pink coloration of the doll felt fairly typical for girl-appeal characters in doll lines. I feel like she accidentally ended up feeling like a caricature of Ariana Grande at the time, since Grande is a pop singer, was known for playing a redhead named Cat in Nickelodeon sitcoms at the time, and later became iconic for a long high ponytail...but because Ariana wasn't yet a superstar at the time Catty dropped and her signature hair wasn't yet the high pony, there appears to be no link. Catty wasn't my thing, but the calculated appeal appeared to have worked, as Catty got a healthy number of dolls and enjoyed narrative significance in the Boo York, Boo York special where she met her love interest, royal Egyptian heir and hip-hop artist Seth "Pharaoh" Ptolemy. Pharaoh glaringly lacked a doll release, and was the first boy character design to be blatantly spurned as such in the brand. Great Scarrier Reef manta-transformation Gil Webber and G2's Raythe would follow as significant unique boy designs with no dolls.

Catty did not appear in G2, which might be the actual most surprising thing about her, given that Mattel had evidently banked pretty successfully on her during G1 and brought her back for G3. While I wouldn't have put her on the shortlist of G3 revivals, she's one of those characters who feels like she would have been there in all three generations because of her classic girly appeal. It's more surprising that Venus holds that perfect-attendance honor and Catty doesn't. Was she too spooky-looking for G2? Mattel couldn't have been that timid, could they?

I've never been very interested in Catty Noir, and it is an unfair reality that the G3 doll debuting a body sculpt with a different body type was her primary point of interest for me. I'm interested in each G3 doll as it drops, but I don't have a drive to collect every signature doll on principle, and Catty's design wasn't ever my vibe. I thought her superstition concept was very cool, but her pink color palette killed the potential for me. A spooky black cat should be paired with yellow and/or purple or orange, something darker or more Halloweeny. Pink feels a little too Barbiecore for a character whose concept doesn't really suit that to me. 

Here's Catty's box. Still the same dull signature backdrop gradient, but the back design remains improved since the first refresh dolls (Draculaura and Clawdeen) gave us a new look.

I know they're saying "mus-ick" for a horror pun, but it misses the opportunity for a cat pun with "mews-ic" instead.

Here's everything unboxed. 

Catty is one of those dolls whose aesthetic has been essentially untouched between G1 and G3, but the details have changed and her personality presents very differently. The doll looked alright, and I wasn't mourning much of the original Catty due to not being a big fan, but the biggest problem I was seeing with this doll was that she was cursed with the fact that every restyle I've ever seen of the doll has struck me as better than her factory styling. I wanted to see how I felt about that with her in person.

Catty's hair is the vibrant pink it's always been, and she has a high ponytail, but it's not as upward-facing or prominent as the G1 silhouette, possibly due to her bigger ears interfering with the rooting and angle of her hair tie. Catty's hair also features several microbraided strands at the front and sides, which we've also seen just recently with Skulltimate Secrets Series 4 Clawdeen. 

Her hair elastic is pale pink, and not all of the hair is under every wrap of it.

These braids are the same saran as the rest of the hair and are significantly thinner and flatter than the ones on G3 signature Venus McFlytrap. They're only on the outer edge of her rooting, with none of the braids buried under the loose hair.

It looks like Venus's next doll will have this same style of semi-braided hair with the thin braids, and since the other two characters with this kind of hair so far are Black, it seems like Catty is now as well. While G1 Catty was never evidently Black-coded, it looks like this hair is communicating that G3 Catty is. She also has baby hairs painted at her hairline to support this. I'm glad to see more MH characters coded as Black after the more narrow proportion of Black cast in G1, but I'm honestly surprised they went there with Catty, because that's a slightly risky move. More on that very shortly.

The hair doesn't look good to me on this doll. It's rooted for a ponytail but I don't think the pulled-back hairline flatters Catty, and the wideness of the G3 cat ears makes the hair pulled around them look awkward. She's going for a high pony, but her sculpt doesn't want to permit that because the G3 ears are so so big. I also dislike the mixing of hair textures on a doll head, because the visual and diversity is great, but as a small hair-play toy, the braids and loose fiber can't comb smoothly together and trying to tidy Catty's loose hair can result in snagging and partially unraveling the braids--which happened to a degree with this doll. Sig Venus's chunky no-comb braids were awesome and easy to manage, and loose saran hair is fiddly but easy. It's difficult to tidy doll hair with braids mixed in, though, and it's not something that would be so difficult on a larger scale.

Catty has an earring on her left, which looks like a metal studded heart.

Catty is using a lot of heart imagery this time around, and I don't know how to feel about that. Hearts have always been Draculaura's thing and the two characters have the same basic pink and black colors, so it doesn't feel very original or warranted for Catty to have the same symbol. 

G1 Catty had pink paint inside her ears, but G3 does not. G3 does add the fur detail on the lower ear interior that the other G3 werebeasts have.

G1 Catty was one of the few characters not to have a unique face sculpt. Catty used the same head as Toralei Stripe who debuted before her, and this had the drawback of including the ear-notch scar on the left which suited an alley-cat bully like Toralei but felt a bit out of place for a generically shiny and positive pop star like Catty. 

G3 Catty has a unique head and face that's not particularly derivative of her old look at all. 

Rather than fierce pouty lips and edgy eye makeup, this Catty looks more cheerful and bright-eyed, and her face is rounder to suit her new body type. Part of her facial differences might be influenced by an issue with some of the G1 Catty dolls, who paired the cat-black body color and big lips with pink lipstick in a way that ran into blackface territory by accident. I don't think it ever caused a huge stir and the character was never Black-coded or mocked, but it still felt like a rookie character design mistake. Not only is G3 Catty less stark black, but her lips are more subtle in silhouette and color, with an ombre effect. Due to the issue with the G1 design, it is slightly surprising Mattel made her Black this time around. She doesn't have the same connotations, though, so it probably works just fine. I don't actually love the effect of her lips and I think they'd look better if it was just the dark berry color behind the circle in the middle, and the different copies in the store struggled to paint the lips tidily.

Catty has star makeup under her eyes and cat pupils in her fantastical pink irises. G1 Catty had pink paint for her cat nose, while G3 has a dark brownish color.

In G1, Catty was a stark flat black color that was very dramatic and felt emblematic of the 2000s/2010s edgy cartoon girly aesthetic of the time, but it also contributed to the awkwardness with her lipstick colors. G3 Catty is a new shimmery black body color with iridescent pink/purple hues as light moves around it. It doesn't feel as dramatic and it feels less evocative of black cat fur, but it's pretty and suits a 2020s glamor ghoul pop star.

Catty also has cheek tufts of fur like the other G3 werebeasts.

Around her neck, Catty is wearing a silver necklace with the first of many 13s and the second of many hearts. This clips around the back pretty easily, but the necklace spins out of alignment easily too.

Catty's optional fabric clothing piece is a big fan-shouldered pink shrug made of a slightly translucent plasticky material. It feels a little party-store tablecloth and it does not go with her hairstyle.

The style of the piece is a lot like the gold shrug that came with Skulltimate Series 1 Cleo.

Catty's shrug is tight at the back, but the front panels can hover around a little.

The piece does something I've never seen before--rather than sliding down off her arms (I'm guessing the plastic fabric is just not flexible enough), the piece has two velcro closures on the underside of the arm loops, allowing you to open the sleeves and lift the jacket up and off.

My impression was that the shrug was hideous on Catty, but I soon realized it was never the problem.

Catty's wearing a translucent pink belt over a one-piece dress made from two fabrics.

The belt has a shattered heart and 13 painted silver, simulated hanging chains, and closes in the back with one pin. When I took it off the dress, I heard a peeling-off sound, like when a hot leg sticks to leather...which didn't bode well for the aging of the dress in the future.

The dress underneath has a sweetheart neckline and clear elastic shoulder straps. the top layer is an asymmetrical cut of printed fabric with a holographic silver base that reflects a rainbow geometric pattern in the light, and has a black glass-shatter print over top. Under that is a symmetrical pink pencil skirt, attached to the rest.

Her boots are knee-high pink pieces with more hearts and 13s and cracked texturing, even on the soles.

Catty can't stand well in these boots because the heels are flimsy and I couldn't get her center of gravity quite right. They are flexible and easy to put on and take off, though.

Catty's body sculpt has fully unique contours thus far, with her pieces being curvier and thicker than previous Monster High G3 sculpts, or, I believe, any fashion doll's previously. I think she's breaking some ground.

The curvy Barbie sculpt is proportionally slimmer than this body, and I don't know of any other fashion dolls in this body type. It's been the trend of late for MGA to have pear-shaped dolls, but Catty's body has a balanced upper and lower half, with each being comparably curvy to create a fully plus-size shape. It's really cool to see something like this. 

Her waist has some slight outward contours before flowing back down into the hips. 

The sculpting and engineering of the body is perfectly executed so Catty moves just like any of the other ghouls, and it doesn't feel like her shape is a limitation to her posing, which I had to imagine was a very technical design process. It would have been terrible if it felt like Catty's shape made her less mobile and desirable as a doll to play with. It doesn't. As ever, Mattel are the champions of doll body sculpting and articulation.

Catty has the typical late-G1-onward furred-monster hair detail on her ankles and wrists. I'd fully expect a potential doll of G3 Iris Clops, based on her animated model, to have Catty's body type exactly, so Iris would have to get basically the same body, but with the standard hand shape, and without the hole for the tail or fur detailing.

Catty also has a unique werecat tail, with hers being a fluffier longhair cat shape. All other werecats, including G3 Toralei and the G3 twins, have had thinner tails without texture. I know the G1 tails were removable, but I've never handled a G2 werecat or another G3 werecat to know if theirs do. (I would expect so for G2, if only for the cost effectiveness of reusing the G1 tail sculpt to pop into the new G2 body.) G3 Catty's tail does not appear to pop out. I tried. Like other MH tails, it's got one swivel joint at the base socket in the body and cannot bend or pose further. 

Catty's forearms are still removable like any other G3 doll's. I can't trust Mattel to maintain that, so I need to check with every new G3 body sculpt!

Here's Catty compared to some other G3 dolls and the G1 basic sculpt. I didn't use a tall skinny G3 doll like Frankie or Venus or a doll like Cleo with slightly wider hips for this lineup--I just pulled out the most divergent contours. And I finally have a reason to use my G3 body model OC, Bramble!

Catty's legs taper into the standard G3 femme foot size, so Catty can borrow shorter shoes from other ghouls. Abbey's feet are a unique size, so she can only wear her own shoes. Catty's claw hands appear to be the same as G3 Clawdeen, Toralei, and Venus's. 

While I expected the curves of Abbey or even Draculaura might be similar, there isn't much in common. MH has clearly built up to peak curviness with Catty after a time where Drac seemed like the curvy doll before it was Abbey instead. Abbey's hips look comparable to Catty's in shape, but Catty's leg pieces are thicker. It might be possible that Catty and Abbey share an upper torso piece, but there may be subtle enough differences disproving the idea. Maybe their forearms are shared? I know for sure none of their other pieces are. I'm hopeful we'll see this body type on at least one other doll character (and again, a candidate for it is already available with G3 Iris) because it's a really nice piece of variety and representation. This kind of sculpt would be unheard of years ago, and MH has well and truly squashed the conceptual issue of uniform ultra-skinny body shapes by now. Looking at G3 Catty's more committed curvy sculpt, it's a bit comical that Kala Mer'ri used to be the plus-size queen of the brand. G1 was so limited. G3 MH is by far the most (femme-)inclusive incarnation of the brand, and it gives so much more weight to the ideals of acceptance and diversity that the brand always labeled itself with. G1 traded more in metaphor, but G3 recognizes that it can be directly representative within the fantasy world and I prefer that. Why have monsters stand for another demographic through fantasy when they can be fantasy characters who are also just that real demographic too?

Now let's see more boy dolls and new boy body types.

Catty's extras start with a pair of translucent blue shades, which are not a recycled sculpt. I'm getting a little sick of G3 sunglasses always being translucent monochrome plastic and I wish there would be more frosted or opaque options with lenses that obscured the eyes. I do like the retro cat-eye silhouette with a heart shape and the crack on her left. I feel like the cracking is being played up more on the G3 doll than her G1 dolls, which always paired it specifically with a mirror visual. These probably should have looked like mirrors, though, with metallic silver opaque lenses.

These shades do not sit very well on Catty's face. The bridge is flat across her nose, and the arms aren't molded evenly, so they can feel a little lopsided.

The blue color stands out here because it's not balanced to anything else on the doll, but this shade was established as Catty's tertiary color in G1, and it looks like that will be true for G3 too. I've never been wild about the blue mixing in with the pink and black and silver and I'd prefer purple or red as her extra color instead. 

Catty's bottle has a strap on top that can hang from her wrist, but no side handles for her to hold it. The cap/strap is a separate piece.

Catty has a broken cat-eared heart hand mirror, with the mirror being sculpted and painted with metallic silver. It can't reflect her.

Fittingly, Catty comes with a microphone, and it features a big bracket for a handle decorated with her name and cat ears.

Fittingly, Catty's phone screen is cracked, and it might be my favorite detail of hers because cracked phones are a common misfortune which evoke her broken-glass theme as well as general bad luck--breaking a screen certainly counts as such!

I once cracked a phone by tossing it onto my bed, whereupon it bounced and landed point-blank on a decorative stud on a piece of furniture next to it. I'm convinced that eventually led to its nigh-complete failure later on. That was the phone from which I retained all of the photos I had after the end of my most recent previous phone! That phone's pictures were backed up, so despite its very dramatic and harrowing death, I kept that one's memory, and not the memory of the one that died quietly from water damage. Oh well.

Catty's backpack has silver chain straps, which are one piece with two pegs that plug into the back and rotate askew very easily. The bag has a cracked heart shape, but the crack looks way too much like a Frankie lightning bolt. It hinges open sideways from the front, and the pegs from the straps protrude way too far into the bag.

Catty's pet cat Amulette is a total G3 original, since the character never got a pet in G1. I believe 13 Wishes was precisely the moment where the last new pets were introduced in the doll line, and thereafter, pets were either seen in media and not in the dolls (like Vandala Doubloons' cuttlefish Aye) or the dolls started getting creative excuses in their profiles as to why they didn't have pets.

There's nothing particularly special or characterful about Amulette to me. She's just a big-headed cutesified grey cat with a star marking, pink fluffy collar, and side-eyes.

Catty's last extra is a paper accessory, being a sheet-music folder made of card. The piece got fairly warped and mangled after being pressed into the accessory tray.

The piece is folded like a book binding that should enclose some pages, but it ends up looking like the cover torn off of something as a result. This probably should have just been a flat crease like a greeting card. Inside, Catty has notations for three songs which were G1 originals in the musical special Boo York, Boo York. 

"Steal the Show" (sung in-context by Toralei, Luna Mothews, and Catty) is a not-so-guilty pleasure of mine that I'm quite familiar with the tune of, so I tried to decipher and play the notes in Catty's book to see if they were familiar, but either I got it wrong, being poor at reading music, or the notes are not accurate to the song. In my defense, it's very difficult to tell with this graphic whether the notes are meant to be on the lines of the staff or between them...and Catty doesn't like the first note and wants to change it, so that might have thrown things off even further.

In-universe, I doubt Catty would be composing songs from another timeline, so this is an Easter egg for doll collectors and longtime fans rather than a serious piece of G3 continuity.

I took Catty down to do something about her hair, and my idea for her ended up being to re-engineer the G1 sig swoop and pony. I boiled her hair and combed it as best I could to try to get the bulk of it into a higher silhouette than the factory style, which, as expected, was difficult given her ears. For the front swoop, I just collected the microbraids at the front of their hairline and pulled them separate and to the side, and tied them together. I then painstakingly pulled the individual braid strands to flatten the artificial part to her forehead. That's not a trick I'd have been able to sanely do with loose hair, so using the thicker braids was a smart choice.

I think the difference is astronomical. 

What do you know? There's nothing wrong with the shrug! Turns out, Catty just desperately needed a part over her forehead. With her hair like this, she looks more youthful, more glam, and way more pop without even getting into the fact that it's more familiar to the older Catty. I think her old hair made her look awkward and swallowed by her jacket. This hair shape has perk and attitude and glitz. Obviously, the rooting counteracts the structure of this hair with the braids being effectively bangs that are tied off rather than a real hair part, but the look is vastly improved. So it's true. Every restyle of this doll really does look better than the factory design.

I did try some other things. I was able to fit her in Shadow High Shanelle's dress, and it paired well with O.M.G. Fierce Lady Diva's fur wrap.

I also tried her in the 13 jersey dress from SH Nicole, and which I had given to Little Stitious. This was a much harder fit, and only worked because the fabric was so stretchy. It also rides too high on Catty's body and looks indecent. It's a shame, because it's so perfect for her in concept.

She's wearing Fearidescent Draculaura's shoes to show her feet fit them.

Ultimately, though, I didn't need to resort to redressing to improve Catty, because the issue was solely in the hair. I think she looks great in her stock after the hair fix. I did keep the bracelet I added from this last outfit, though.

For Catty, I was able to utilize the mirror shards I saved from my gruesome-roundup LDD Bloody Mary photoshoot. I was glad I decided to keep them, and I'll continue to at least until I can use them with LDD Evangeline someday. 

And the cover photo, which I think could serve as one of Catty's album covers.

I decided to build a 13 out of the shards to shoot another album photo. 

I definitely see the appeal to Catty more than I used to. I love a pop diva as much as the next person, and I think the G3 doll probably suits the idea more than G1. Catty being a bright and friendly-looking bubblegum star works really well. Her G1 doll looked a bit more edgy and avant-garde in the wake of artists like Gaga and Nicki, and I got it, but from what we got of her character, it didn't feel especially resonant. But then again, each Catty reflects her time well. The 2010s divas were more arresting and weird, while 2020s pop icons tend to be more focused on relatability and good vibes. Each Catty fits her era well.

I also think the G3 doll is commendable for her body diversity, debuting the most plus-size fashion doll sculpt I've been aware of, and sculpting it with grace and great articulation. I hope to see more characters in her shape range, and I think a G3 Iris could be one of the best in the line if she gets made. I love Catty's bushy tail as well. 

Her factory hairstyle is an insult and I don't think the mix of braids and loose hair is ideal for hair-play, and her body color is pretty but also pretty weird for a fur-covered werebeast. I don't adore her lip paint, either. I'm certain there are better Cattys coming, because the signature design doesn't click for me and I think it's only uphill from here. But I was able to get her to a place I enjoyed, and she has charm and value even as an awkward factory design. I don't know if I'll ever love a Catty Noir enough to grab it purely on the merits of the design, but G3 may surprise me yet. I can't scream praises for this doll fashion-wise, but she's well made and meaningful and fun.