Embalmed for the Gods: Monster High G3 Refresh Cleo de Nile by Mattel

There were things I liked about signature G3 Cleo, but if you asked me which of the now-two basic dolls of hers feels like Monster High, there's just no contest. 

For better context, read my review of signature G3 Cleo (and a restyle of her Skulltimate Secrets Series 1 doll) here, and my review of her Skulltimate Series 2 Fearidescent doll (which came first on the blog) here.

I think, through dolls like G3 refresh Draculaura, G3 signature Venus McFlytrap, and Monster Fest Frankie Stein, the visual evolution of G3 has been clear. The second reboot started with fainter and more colorful palettes and subtler faceups with more lashes and less eyeshadow. Things generally looked softer. There was also an apparent feminine/kid-friendly-approachable standard pushed on the brand that drained some edge. Clawdeen's hair went from primarily brown and purple to magenta and pale lilac. Toralei Stripe's signature doll has long hair despite her canon G3 design having a bob like she always has. Ghoulia Yelps swapped her iconic red tones for pink. And Cleo de Nile wasn't afforded her signature outfit in doll form, because Ra forbid the ghoul wears trousers like she's supposed to. But all of these letdowns seem to have subsided. Starting with the refresh Drac and Clawdeen, the faceups suddenly felt much more familiar with their chunky lashes and thick color-blocked eyeshadow returning to the G1 look. Brown and darker purple have crept into Clawdeen's hairstyles and, while it's not an edgy thing being brought back, Draculaura got back her classic pigtails on a few dolls after deliberately avoiding them at the start of G3. Venus has a pretty edgy punk outfit with a tattered T-shirt and jeans, and her color palette adheres to the character's G1 standard, only even more vivid and confrontational than before. (I. Love. That. Doll.) Toralei's since gotten back to her typical shorter hair length in dolls like Neon Frights and Fearbook. And now our favorite mummy princess is trotting out a signature refresh design that looked very promising.

The second group of the refresh set has not entirely wowed me. Lagoona's sheer pant legs are hideous to me, though I've gotten fonder toward her hairstyle and outfit silhouette overall. Frankie's refresh let me down by going very pink, and while it does work on them, I didn't like seeing that pink was added after their prototype phase because I thought Mattel was easing off on that trend. Again, I'm holding out for the opportunity to clothes-swap the Welcome Committee doll and the refresh. But Cleo? She may not be the objectively most stunning or unique Monster High doll design, but she struck me as very solid, a major aesthetic improvement over the original G3 sig, and she had one incredible accessory.

Here's the doll unboxed.

Cleo's hair is a bit strangely rooted in order to make its style. She has long hair with the top half of it tied up in a ponytail, but this pony doesn't stand up much and isn't easy to see from the front. You could mistake her hair for fully loose. In front of the tied section, the hair is then center-parted where her (quite gelled) bangs are rooted, and the bangs fan pretty wide and start unusually high on her head for the effect. When I washed her hair out, I then needed to boil the bangs down to ensure they stayed in place because they were floating without that. There are dolls with bangs that feel a little more naturally-rooted, and Cleo's do look a bit awkward after the gel comes out and they can spread wider.

I combed out her hair later and washed without boiling so the tinsel didn't revolt, and added a second hair tie to her ponytail to try to make it stand out more.

Cleo's hair is in thick stripes of lighter and darker blue in the bangs, and also features a pale golden color that reminds me of the no-tinsel gold hair effect her G2 dolls were sometimes rooted with. I think this fiber color is entirely sufficient for gold pharaoh coloring and it works better than tinsel, so I wouldn't mind all of her gold hair being done this way. Of course, she does have tinsel, rooted in stripes on the side of her head which are tied into the half-ponytail. This might be the first doll I can think of where tinsel rooting was done in distinct sections rather than an even dispersal through the head of hair. All of Cleo's lighter blue hair is in her bangs, with the pony and loose fiber hair all being the darker tone. I like this hair coloring, but I wouldn't have said no to a brown base color like her Skulltimate Secrets Series 4 doll.

On the right side of her head, Cleo has two hair clips. These are not clipped into the hair, but rather, tied on with elastics for packaging. Actually shoving the barrettes into the hair was pretty tricky because the tied section going into the pony is tight and the clips aren't very thin or sharp, but I eventually got it to work. I understand and appreciate the intent of the G3 barrettes to add texture and depth to a doll look, but they are not very easy to use.

The barrettes as packaged.

The barrettes actually clipped in. To fit, they could not enclose the entire pulled-out band of hair.

I was frustrated with snap hair clips like this on signature G3 Frankie. I think I gave up on that doll wearing them because their hair is loose, allowing for the clips, even when snapped shut, to just slide right off the ends. Furthermore with the cartoon-accurate hair restyle I gave them, the clips would officially go in an awkward spot (at the back of the hair-shave zone) where they're not secure. What's nice about Cleo's clips, and the reason I decided to use them, is that her hair is clipped in a tight tied section where the clips can't slide off. Sig G3 Lagoona had a similar problem to Frankie of clips in a spot that wasn't very tight.

Cleo's faceup features the chunkier more opaque color-block makeup of this era of G3. She uses the same great pharaoh-stripe detail on her lower lip that her signature doll and a few others have, now over a dark blue color, which looks great and which I used for my Old-Skull restyle design.

Cleo still has the detailing in her irises, but the refresh doll has much lower contrast between the two gold tones, making her eyes look like a single flat color in comparison to another edition. Slightly disappointing. The deadened blue pupils might also look less light and dead than before. These nuance changes can't be taken as full design shifts until it becomes a pattern, though.

Here's refresh vs. sig:

The refresh doll's lips are drawn notably larger, with more of a vertical Bratz-esque pout. It doesn't look bad, but I don't see the reasoning, either. Maybe it's a move more toward the G1 style of caricature as opposed to how G3 started.

Refresh Cleo's skintone is the redder coloring I also saw on her Fearidescent doll. 

Here's refresh next to my restyled Skulltimate Secrets doll, made over to mimic the G1 signature. Refresh's lip paint is obviously cleaner, but I think I came to the same design on my own, not knowing the refresh doll would have it. Or maybe I did know. I didn't document if I was inspired by leaked photos of the refresh doll or not. I think what it was was that I could see the lip pattern on the leaks, but couldn't tell the color of the refresh doll's lips at the time, and only knew it was dark, so I came to the dark blue color on my own. I think I assumed the refresh doll would have dark brown lips at the time.

Cleo's earrings are some of my favorites for the character ever--she's wearing two matching charms depicting a cartouche symbol and her first name transliterated into four hieroglyphic characters. Cartouches were these vertical oval outline symbols used in hieroglyphic writing used to separate and enclose a royal Egyptian name. The hieroglyphs are accurate, as far as a hieroglyphic text generator website attested when I typed in "CLEO".

I love the authentic historical detail involved in these earrings, and I can totally see cartouches being what a modern ancient Egyptian royal teen would flaunt as a status symbol.

Cleo's outfit is more complex than it looks, and it also immediately feels more modern and glamorous and teen-aged than the signature costume. It feels Monster High.

Cleo's top is a yellow piece mixing multiple fabrics. It's shaped like a tube top around her bust, and this portion is a satiny fabric with a yellow bandage print. I'm so glad it doesn't have blue outlines like the signature doll's jacket!

The sleeves are full-length sheer yellow fabric with a puff around the shoulder, and these sections feature textured bandages in the form of hanging yellow ribbons wrapped around the arms, mummy-style.

Actually, Cleo's top is constructed a lot like refresh Draculaura's--tube top bodice with sheer puffy sleeves attached. 

Refresh Drac in her factory stock.

Cleo's top piece has a trimmer silhouette due to the thinner bodice fabric and narrower sleeves.

The center of the Cleo piece also has clear elastic straps over her shoulders, as well as an internal blue ribbon strap crossed diagonally over Cleo's left shoulder. I think the elastic straps are functionally pointless on a piece that already has sleeves, and had they at least been ribbon, they would have felt more worthwhile. As is, the clear straps appear to add neither visual texture nor practical function.

The blue ribbon around Cleo's neck lines up well with the strap on her top and it creates the illusion that the strap goes over her shoulder before wrapping around her neck, but the neck ribbon is actually a very thin choker and is a separate piece. It closes in the back with a velcro square that's wider than the actual band!

I like how intricate the wrappings feel with this outfit. The finer detail elevates the look a lot for a costume that isn't trying to be super showy.

Cleo's skirt looks like a two-layered piece, but is two separate pieces. The blue sheer wrap on top is an actual tied piece of double-knotted loose fabric, not something that opens down the back. This piece comes off by untying the knot, and cannot slide down Cleo's body without being untied. I don't know if MH has ever done a tied accent in this way previously. Often, tied doll skirts have a stylistic knot you're not meant to actually interact with in the dressing and undressing. This is just the real deal.

This skirt is the optional layer of her outfit, and whether it's present or absent isn't as game-changing as a top layer that's optional, so that can feel a little disappointing. I consider Cleo baseline-complete with this wrap on. It doesn't feel like an extra piece for her.

The skirt underneath is black satiny fabric with metallic gold print, and velcros partially down the back and slides off. The shape is a basic pencil, but the pattern is fabulous, mixing pyramids, jewels, sun disks, waves, scarabs, spiderwebs, Skullettes, and Cleo's very own doll eye design in place of a more authentic Egyptian eye drawing. I love so much that the eyes are done in the doll art style.

Cleo's left leg features a jewelry wrap in the shape of a snake. Serpents were staples of Egyptian mythology and jewelry, but this might also play on the old legend of Cleopatra VI ending her life via snakebite. The cultural significance of snakes to ancient Egypt and the Cleopatra story were almost certainly factors explaining the choice to pair Cleo and Deuce Gorgon as a couple in G1.

Cleo's shoes are sandal heels with thick ornate ankles and canopic jars, used to contain the organs of a person being mummified, on the backs. 

While the jackal head is most recognizable as the visage of the death god Anubis, in the context of canopic jars, it's actually a depiction of Duamutef, one of the Four Sons of Horus. These four gods were honored in funerary practices and completed a set of canopic jars, with each of the four gods and jars being assigned to a different removed human organ. Duamutef was the god whose jars were used for the stomach of the deceased. Hapi, the baboon-headed god, held the lungs; Imseti, with the human head, held the liver; and Qebehsenuef, the falcon-headed god, held the intestines. None of these gods had unique visual depictions in the Egyptian pantheon, so they're best recognized by context as the toppers of the jars! 

You always have to check the soles of shoes in G3 (a design trend I love) and doing so this time reveals Cleo's personal mummy Skullette symbol!

Cleo has shades, of course, which are a translucent light-blue cat-eye design and feature a classic Egyptian scarab and wing design in the center as well as what appears to be trumpet-shaped flowers in the corners. The shades are so clear they look more like eyeglasses, but Cleo rocks them as eyeglasses. As I've already discussed, though, she makes most choices work.

These appear to be a new piece and fit her face well, but they seem too high above the tip of her nose.

Cleo's Starbucks-parody drink cup is really basic, using what appears to be the same base as signature Abbey's, but with a more dull lid. The sticker decal was applied too low, resulting in it protruding below the edge of the cup and preventing it from standing up.

This eye is also the same design as Cleo's eye, but I like the effect more on her skirt pattern.

Cleo's food item is better--she has a golden pyramid-triangle pizza takeout box with a printed slice molded inside! I love the skull mushroom toppings.

Going by the color and texture of the box, this cannot be depicting a cardboard piece. But it's perfectly Cleo to be so rich and extra that you have a single-serving pizza box made of gold!

Cleo also has a pearl golden scroll piece with a snake texture on the side. The unrolled papyrus section is flexible. It doesn't read as papyrus in that color, but the sculpting is nice, and I like the snake around the scroll portion. The scrawlings on the scroll appear to be geometry homework, focusing (what else) on triangles and pyramids!

I bet it's her best subject.

She can hold this fine between two hands.

Cleo also has a powder-blue stylus piece with which to write, topped with a scarab ornament.

This wouldn't make sense as a makeup applicator because Cleo doesn't have other cosmetic pieces. It's got to be a writing tool.

Cleo's best accessory, and what may very well prove to be her best accessory ever, is her own canopic jar, containing her disembodied heart. 

It's been G3 character lore from the beginning that Cleo's heart was disembodied and jarred in her mummification, which I loved for leaning further into the mummy monster concept than Cleo ever had before. It develops in the plot of the cartoon that Cleo's heart governs her emotional capacity, and she eventually sacrifices it in a dangerous mission to retrieve an ancient artifact with her sister Nefera. It all works out in the end when a new heart is crafted for Cleo which restores her emotions. That might be what this piece is, because the refresh dolls appear to be the "Season 2" incarnations of the cast, and the heart in this jar does not have an anatomical design. I don't watch the series, so I didn't catch if Cleo's original heart did. 

This jar is round with a glass design done in clear plastic. The top and bottom are golden. The heart is suspended within a snake-shaped holder wrapped around it, and this is all attached to the lid. The red coloring the heart is printed on.

 The handle on the jar isn't enough to grip, but I was able to pry the lid out. 

The heart suspension is part of the lid. The jar came aligned poorly so the heart was obscured by the seams of the clear plastic, but I was able to rotate it to a better angle. I like the suspended holder concept. It's an elegant way to depict the heart in the middle of the jar without having to encase it in solid plastic or leave it flopping loose inside without any grace.

This imagery isn't as icky as G1 was capable of getting in some of its eerie anatomical designs, but I still respect the heck out of this accessory. We now have a mummy doll covered in sculpted bandages who carries around her heart in a jar as a toy. That's incredible, and such an improvement over the comparative mundanity of G1 Cleo.

From prototype photos, I had the pessimistic view the heart wouldn't be dimensional inside the jar and would be a graphic outside. I know Mattel is very cheap, but I was being hyperbolic there. This is a good piece as it was made!

Like some other refresh bags, Cleo's is more normally backpack-shaped than her signature design and has a separate rotating charm piece on the outside, here done as a blue scarab. The straps of the bag are chain-shaped. Simulated beads hang from the bottom, and the flap is dominated by a winged scarab.

This is one of my favorite G3 backpacks just because of the way it opens--it has a proper flap that can bend up and which closes on a pin. That makes it much easier to use than bags which you have to pinch open at the top. The bag isn't the roomiest inside (it can only hold her pizza and stylus), but it's a lot nicer than other G3 bags.

The straps of the bag are pretty tight and don't pull up her arms too easily, and her puffed sleeves are fiddly to finesse through the straps 

Cleo's pet kicks Tut right out the window and replaces him with her G1 pet, the crowned turquoise cobra Hissette. Cobras appeared in Egyptian iconography, and their distinctive hoods happen to mirror the shape of the nemes headdress (the famous "King Tut" piece) in a way that resonates well with a pharaoh type.

I wrote in my last post about G3 Cleo that I suspect Hissette will fully replace the blue jackal Tut after the evidently unpopular change in pet that Mattel tried in early G3. Much like hair length and colors and skirt cuts, it seemed like a standard for girly friendliness put Hissette on the back burner because she was too scary, but people didn't like Tut and Mattel eventually brought Hissette back. This is not her G3 debut--she debuted in an uncoiled sculpt in the Fa-Boo-Lous Pets line, where she could be "worn" by Cleo.

Poor Cleo was done dirty by this outfit--and it is difficult to do her dirty!

I see the vision of her dressing like Hissette and Tut with her shorts, crown, and earrings, but what is that top???

Notably, Fa-Boo-Lous Pets included Tut alongside Hissette, as if Mattel wanted to avoid retconning him out and attempted to give Cleo both as pets...but still, as far as I know, Tut hasn't appeared in the cartoon at all (suggesting he was indeed just a toyline-tameness mandate) and Hissette taking center stage in this release might signal that Tut is never coming back. G3 has gotten a little bite back, literally, so there's no need for Tut anymore. We'll have to wait and see.

I couldn't find my copy of signature Tut to put him next to to Hissette. Then when I did, after first publishing this review, I couldn't muster the interest to do so!

I don't have G1 Hissette in doll scale, but I do have her larger Secret Creeper Critters toy, so I can compare designs that way.

G3 refresh Hissette obviously has the generically-cutesier face, which I do not like. The original design was so appealing. Both snakes have the same unrealistic "quilted" scale design with the dots in between the diamonds, which is a fun wealthy-imagery caricature, and both have golden crowns. G1 Hissette had a golden gem at the end of her tail and gold necklaces. Fa-Boo-Lous Pets Hissette had one gold necklace, but refresh Hisstte has none. The refresh Hissette is also clearly shorter in length than the Fa-Boo-Lous or G1 designs. I think she should have had one more full bend in her body to match up better. The G1 Hissette is a little more green-toned or pale, while the G3 snake is more blue and vibrant.

Secret Creeper Hissette's note-passing gimmick was that her throat is spring-loaded. You write on a slip, clip it to the scroll, and then put it in her mouth and flick the switch to pull back a lever that spring-pops the scroll out of her mouth. There's no way to achieve precision this way, so I don't think she has any practical function for note-passing (which teachers will have sighed in relief over).

Hissette's jaw unhinged with the scroll inside.

I'm glad to see the snake back in G3 form, even if she's not my favorite rendition of the pet.

I didn't go for an elaborate multi-phase photoshoot with this doll. I just put her on my fancy yellow/gold backdrop and played with her poses and accessories. The heart jar was a great piece for photos, but very frustrating to wrangle due to being big, round, slippery, and not easy for the doll to hold securely.

For the cover photo, I focused a red light on the jar so it looked like her heart was glowing.

Refresh Cleo is a doll who I only really appreciated after thinking over her more. At passing glance, she's just a decent Monster High design, but thinking over her more, she's really intricate and special. Her outfit is layered and textured. Her tiny choker, detailed top, and knotted skirt wrap are all fine details that give her polish, and I love the pattern on her skirt. Her cartouche earrings are awesome, and the canopic jar accessory is just the best ever, cementing how spooky Cleo has been played in G3. The scroll accessory is really cute and the stylus works well with it, while the backpack is a more appealing usable design than many others in the brand. There's a specificity of Egyptian history in this doll as well as some depth and fine detail that really make her special. This feels like Monster High's A-game in terms of both the design conceptual detail and the design physical detail. 

The doll is not perfect. Her hair rooting, particularly with her bangs, feels a bit strange and the bangs can lie too wide when washed out. Her backpack is hard to pull on. The elastic straps in her top look distracting, unattractive, and wasted given that she has sleeves and conspicuous ribbons that are actually there for texture. G1 Hissette is still better than G3. But those feel pretty nitpicky. This is a strong Cleo doll in my book.

Here she is next to the signature doll. Basically no contest is had here. Again, you ask me blind which is the Monster High doll, and there's only one answer.

There's a clear (positive) shift in G3's tone and expression in the time between these two dolls. Signature Cleo feels more like a stylized Egyptian princess than a spooky trendy monster teenager. She has some great Egyptian fashion influence, especially in the boots, but her approach comes at the expense of a confident, fierce teen monster vibe. Signature Cleo also gave the doll a show-inaccurate outfit that was more feminine than her cartoon design, which seems to suggest just how pressured early G3 was to be girly and friendly. Even as far as extras, it's a slam-dunk. Refresh Cleo restores her spookier OG pet, has a more practical backpack, and absolutely destroys with her canopic jar. The signature assortment isn't fighting back.

There are honestly few Cleos who fall below the signature for me in G3. Fa-Boo-Lous Pets is a travesty, but in any other Cleo top, she'd be perfectly fine and I could pursue that idea on a bored day. Monster Ball bores me with the lack of visual variety and color in her black overdress, so I probably like sig more than her too. But that's a slim range. Most G3 Cleos do it better than the signature, and refresh takes an easy victory.

Things are looking pretty good for MH right now. These days, we're getting pants and short hair on femme dolls again, plus higher drama and edge and spooky traits in the designs overall. I think we're moving ever closer to what the brand should be again, though I'll remain wary because you never know when it'll go downhill. Fingers crossed that the generation's peak is still in the future, and I like what's here in the moment. 

I hope refresh dolls continue to be a trend. Let's see them for the side characters too, not just the main five. Refresh Deuce, Ghoulia, Toralei! Refresh dolls of the later signatures like Clawd, Abbey, Venus, Spectra, and Catty at a later date. I like the idea of a core release for the characters always being available as a marketing strategy and it would be a shame if it was a privilege only offered to the five main characters who are already pretty darn over-represented.

Still, can there really be too much Cleo?