She Devoured Again: Monster High G3 Fearbook Venus McFlytrap

Welcome back to the reigning champion!

When I reviewed G3 signature Venus in January last year, I came away with such an overwhelmingly positive impression that I've honestly, and perhaps unfairly, mythologized that doll as the peak of G3. My opinion stands that she's my favorite signature debut release of G3 so far, though. I thought her shift to a Black character was really gorgeously done and I preferred her visual design to classic G1 Venus in multiple aspects. 

I wasn't quite as enthusiastic about G3 Venus's second doll, in the Garden Mysteries line.

Garden Mysteries Venus does a bit of fan-service by very obviously recreating the G1 character's hair silhouette closely with a straight-hair side-shave, but it's honestly not a draw for me. I liked her signature hair texture better, and the Garden Mysteries doll's mix of loose hair fiber and very fine braids on top just screams "do you want this hair to be combable, or don't you?" in a way where neither hair texture, the braids nor the loose, is able to shine.

I was immediately on board with Fearbook Venus, though, and the afro was absolutely a factor.

Fearbook is a Target-exclusive line whose first wave has been out for a while. The Fearbook line's theme is school clubs that might be highlighted in a yearbook, and its first wave consisted of Draculaura (film club), Toralei (music club) and Twyla (tabletop games club). I liked Toralei's design, Drac has an adorable 3D Skullette prop to act with a la Hamlet, and Twyla was cute and had great accessories, but didn't feel compelled to get them. Draculaura in film club might possibly be an allusion to her G1 counterpart becoming entangled with movie star Elissabat and vampire royal politics in Frights, Camera Action, but maybe not. Wave 2 consists just of Abbey and Venus, who I always associate as something of an unofficial duo somehow. Abbey remakes her G1 Art Class doll pretty directly, down to being armed with a chainsaw and goggles for ice sculpture in the same vein.

G1 Art Class Abbey. You can't see in this picture, but her ice sculpture had a carved portrait of Heath on it.

G3 Fearbook Abbey, carving her pet mammoth out of ice.

G1 Art Class was a multi-doll line showcasing the variety of disciplines art includes, with Skelita doing ceramics, Draculaura doing painting, Abbey doing ice sculpture, and Robecca doing welding. Abbey in G3 is representing all of art (loosely) in her doll, also having the supplies for drawing and painting. I really appreciate that G3 Abbey has ear protection from her chainsaw (G1 didn't) and I love her blue take on a henna tattoo to tie into her Nepali background, but I don't like her pale pink lipstick at all and I don't need another Abbey at the moment. G3 still hasn't dropped her best possible doll for me.

I was very excited for Venus, but my expectations tempered when I saw in-hand photos of her with relaxed, honestly limp-looking hair. Uh-oh. I was bracing myself for another Cupid Asteria.

Here's the box. The Fearbook packaging has an effect of notebook pages flipping open to reveal the doll. I like the color gradient in Venus's shades behind her as the backdrop--much better than the generic color gradient on earlier G3 boxes. If there's no imagery, at least match the colors to the doll!

The left side of the box features graphics of signature Venus's phone and hair spritzer, and art of Venus herself under the information that she's the leader of the "Unearthed Club"--the brand's spooky twist on "Earth Club", because zombies and such.

The back of the box features a spread of the fearbook with a small full-body portrait of Venus, and also advertises wave 1 Draculaura and Abbey joining Venus in wave 2. A sig Venus boot is also drawn here. 

The small blurb about this doll is an interview question asking why Venus joined her club (with that wording, I'm guessing she became leader at a certain point rather than founding the club, then?).

I'm not surprised only one portrait was drawn for this doll, but it's a little strange seeing it depicted three separate times in this packaging. 

The box's window is the familiar system of tabs that slot into the cardboard backing. Scary Sweet Birthday's boxes are blister bubbles that tear off the cardboard, so I wonder if dolls after these summer releases will follow Fearbook wave 2 or SSB in style.

In the box, Venus's hair is packaged with a hairnet, which might be the first time this has been done for a Monster High doll. It's pulling back and containing her curls for the packaging and blends in so the box display looks good. I found the best way to remove this to be cutting on the edge to loosen the net and just pulling to get it off the rest of the way.

A plastic tag right on top of her head had to be cut, as well as the usual three at the back holding her to the plastic form in the packaging. The three head tags in back flattened her hair down a lot, but cutting the heads off let her curls spring free!

Here's the doll unboxed with all of her pieces. I was immediately relieved to see that her hair had promise and that it wasn't lank and long out of the box. The factory didn't botch her.

Fearbook Venus compared to signature has a darker color palette, with her dark green hair accents, dark lips, and black long shirt all making her colors look richer and more mature. She's not as punk-styled as signature Venus, and while I thought sig Venus was pretty tough, her colors look more toylike than Fearbook! The hairstyles and faces also make these dolls look vastly different to me. I love both, but it's such a shift in vibes. Fearbook Venus is ostensibly quite casual, but her look has an air of refinement and gravity to it.

Venus actually has a different head mold this time! Her previous two dolls mimicked G1's side-shave hair signature by translating it into a side-braided style with molded-on cornrows to the right of the rooted portion of her hair. 

This Venus has a full head of hair rooting, and thus has a different mold so the right side of her scalp could be rooted. This isn't the first G3 character to do this kind of thing--Frankie has two head molds. There's their usual "full-rooting" mold, and a mold for when they have a side-shave cut, with sculpted buzzed hair on their left side.  

Neon Frights Frankie, one of their editions with the alternate side-shave mold.

Scary Sweet Birthday Frankie is one of their side-shave dolls, and I still need to get them! Funny that both Frankie and Venus have alternate head molds depending on their hairstyle, and also share a tall body build that other G3 dolls so far don't have. Venus and Frankie have different leg molds, but their proportions are the same.

Venus's hairstyle is a center-parted afro rooted in her typical watermelon pink and lime green, but adds in a third tone of a darker, less yellow green like we saw on the character during G2. There was no styling product shaping the hair.

I might be convincing myself there's a difference, but it almost feels like the pink in this Venus's hair is darker than signature's, by just a little bit. 

Signature's pink braids laid over Fearbook's pink curls.

The Fearbook hair is a little messy and doesn't feel fully puffed or shaped, but it's not a disaster betrayal like I'd feared. After some trimming and pulling and fluffing later, I was able to get the hair into this shape, which I'm very happy with.

The doll lived or died on the execution of her hair, and I'm so relieved it was done well.

I think natural Black hairstyles suit Venus very well as a fashion plant monster, as braids can be compared to vines and plant fibers and big curly styles like this can be compared to flower blooms. G1 Venus's long straight hair always felt more human than plant, while G3 Venus's textured hairstyles feel like both. They're really lovely depictions of awesome hairstyles that deserve more doll representation, and they also resonate well with her fantasy concept in a way G1 Venus's hair didn't. 

Afro hair was first done on a Monster High doll in G1 with Honey Swamp's debut in the Frights, Camera, Action! line. 

All three of Honey's dolls used the same hair texture, with dense, very springy curls in a tighter texture than this Venus has. Honey's hair was all coils, while Fearbook Venus's hair feels more like very tight waves. It's closest to the Skullector Bride of Frankenstein in terms of other Monster High dolls. The Bride is not a Black character by any means, but her hairdo is very frizzy and vertical.

I know that doll collectors discovered when trying to straighten Honey's hair (a goal which was criticized, I think understandably) that it wouldn't straighten all the way. I feel like maybe Venus or the Bride's hair might be possible to fully straighten, though I have zero desire to do so. I wanted these dolls for the curly hair they have!

I always appreciated Honey's hair depiction and how steadfast she was in it after the vast majority of the Wolf family dolls had loose hair textures. Maybe if Honey had more dolls, she'd end up with a majority having straighter hair, but she has a perfect record of tight curls in her small run. I previously owned her Gore-geous Accessories budget release, who was really nice, and her Freak du Chic doll, who was a bit of a wasteful gimmick doll that didn't succeed in its puppet theme. I know I used to rank Honey's vine-covered gator body sculpt as my favorite monster detail design in G1, and I might still agree with that! I could see myself getting GA Honey back again to build out as a more full design, or getting FCA Honey because she's beautiful in her own right. I worry that G3 Venus, as a vine-sculpted ghoul with Black hair texture that now includes afro curls, might have usurped Honey's niche and rendered her ineligible for return, and I'd hate for that to be the case. I say, the more the merrier, and I wouldn't want Venus's adoption of tight curls and vine sculpting to shut out Honey from coming back. 

I got nervous about Honey's classic-South politeness and vintage fashion and external descriptions as a "Southern belle" and worried that her concept was tapping into some really inappropriate territory, but I've been repeatedly talked down when questioning this theme, and I've heard the message clearly that she's not coming across as anywhere near the original version of the belle archetype (which would be pretty inexcusable, especially for a Black character). I still find the dainty Southern-manners theme and vintage outfits to be slightly stuffy in connotation and I rankle at the active practice of etiquette or "propriety" whenever it seems like an obstruction or distraction from an issue, but that too is an unwarranted judgment not supported by the actual portrayal. Honey's theming seems pretty harmless, the character seems to just be polite and composed, and I put away my unfair paranoid judgment. I was making an issue from her when it wasn't warranted. No excuse for Living Dead Dolls Goria, though, who is an antebellum belle and almost certainly participated in enslavement before she resurrected. Sure she's undead and it was a real social archetype, but does that make her doll acceptable?

Fearbook Venus's faceup doesn't jump out as radically different from signature, but there are changes. Her lips are a two-toned dark purple now, which is really fun. I love a dark lip, and the painted flytrap teeth pop out a lot against this color. Her irises have been made more yellow than brown, which I don't necessarily like. Brown eyes were a good choice for her as a plant ghoul, so I don't see a reason to make them more golden. Her eye makeup keeps on with the yellow I want to see developed further for Venus, now replacing her lower lashes and outlining her upper lashes, and simple neon pink outlines her upper lids. Pink baby hairs are painted around her hairline as ever, in a different pattern from signature and from Garden Mysteries. All three G3 Venuses have different baby hair arrangements.

Here's the two faces compared.

Even though Fearbook's colors are generally darker, her eye expression seems brighter with this faceup. The thickness of signature's eyeshadow makes her look heavier-lidded and more wary in comparison.

Venus's ears are not pierced here, and I noticed now that there are no molded guide marks on her head sculpt.

G1's practice was to sculpt little piercing indents on the earlobes of dolls expected to have multiple releases with earrings, with those marks getting punched out in the factory for dolls who wore earrings. I guess G3 doesn't do that.

I can understand why Venus doesn't have earrings here, since the risk of getting her hair snagged or pulled too loose would be high if earrings were paired with this style. Signature Honey Swamp had only pearl studs as earrings with her own hair, even with it pulled back out of her face! This doll having earrings that dangled while her hair is meant to cover her ears...that could get hooked on her hair or defeat the purpose of earrings by hiding them too much from view.

Venus is wearing the exact same choker necklace on both dolls.

Perhaps I'm within my rights to complain that this is repetitive and unimaginative, but I can honestly appreciate the groundedness of it. Real people have a fairly stable repertoire of clothing pieces and accessories, so why wouldn't doll characters bring out the same pieces in multiple different looks? We all have a favorite thing in our dresser. Venus wearing the same necklace on multiple days just makes sense.

Venus's costume is a long-sleeve crop top under a pair of printed overalls. It's acceptable everyday wear, but the overalls are also highly suited to Venus and this particular Venus because of their connotations as gardener's attire. It's surprising no Venus doll has done this before.

The overalls are fully printed with a pattern of vibrant thorny flowers with pink and orange blooms (orange! That's a new one for Venus, and a great idea!). The larger flowers have eyeballs in the center, which is always a fun visual and has become very common in spooky decor in the last ten years. The backdrop of the print isn't fully black the way the shirt is. I think the separate shade works, though.

The material is canvasy/denimy and the overall straps do not cross in the back. The seat velcros open like most doll pants.

The straps are knotted and sewn down to the front panel and don't have simulated buttons or buckles, though it's possible the knots are standing in for whatever mechanism would let the straps undo. 

There are no pockets on the overalls, simulated or real or even outlined by stitching. Pockets would be great on this outfit, either on the chest or hips, for Venus's garden tools. The bottoms of the pant legs are turned up and sewn in place.

Venus's top is a solid black synthetic fabric and has a turtleneck cut and defined thick cuffs. It's cropped very high so it only covers the upper half of the torso which includes the bust joint, but it is snug and fully covered so there isn't any danger of wardrobe malfunction. The piece velcros down the back like normal.

On Venus's left wrist, she's wearing a very spiky bracelet cast from soft plastic, matching the silver color of her choker and her signature belt.

I think Venus is debuting this bracelet here, but I could easily see it on Toralei, too.

Venus's shoes are black boots with pink soles and platforms made of teeth, and flytrap graphics are printed on the outer sides of the boots.

The soles have hidden flytraps on them.

I do love Venus's outfit, but it's a shame that this ghoul keeps getting dressed in clothes that hide her leg sculpting! Maybe that's my reason to get Garden Mysteries--to build a Venus look that shows off her plant detail!

Venus's first extra piece is sunglasses. These are a direct reuse of her G3 signature shades, just recast in a yellow-orange color that I think really works. 

Signature shades on the left.

These are a bit of a risk for hair snagging, and the challenge hooking them over her ears is a bit more tricky with an afro to tuck to the side, but it's not too bad.

Next, Venus has a club jacket like the rest of the Fearbook dolls. These all have a letterman style with a fleece torso, but the construction and sleeves have some variance. Venus's jacket has a pink fleece torso and green satin sleeves with text down the arms.

Paired with her hairdo, this jacket lends Venus kind of a retro tone, but I don't like its execution overall. I'd consider keeping her in it if the torso was either yellow or this new orange thing they're trying on this doll. As is, I have no use for the jacket and won't put it on her again.

Now to her club accessories. First, Venus has a really nice feature of having spare separately-sculpted hands so she can switch to wearing garden gloves! These are blue (unlike the rest of her, but it's not bad) and their vinyl texture even feels subtly different in a way that works. They're molded with vines on the backs and a seam around the thumb, and feel properly chunkier/thicker like a gloved hand would compared to a bare hand. No explanation for where Venus's claws disappeared to, though.

And here I am wondering why Venus's actual hands couldn't have plants curling on the backs too. G1 had textured hands (poorly-textured and unclear in intent, but textured) and when G2 added a few vine details to her body, they were nothing on Honey's, but they also weren't just on her legs. I love G3 Venus, but surely she could have gotten a special hand sculpt.

She and the Series 6 Hauntlywood Mysteries Skulltimate Secrets dolls both use hand swapping for different displays, with the Hauntlywood dolls having gloved hands and bare hands, with the bare pair also including a special posed hand on each doll. This idea hasn't previously been done in Monster High. Gloved and posed hand sculpts, sure...but if you wanted to switch hands or arms out for different display looks, that was your prerogative, and it was doable, but Mattel never provided multiple options per doll before. A doll with a posed hand or glove sculpt in G1 wasn't changing to a different option unless you had another edition of that doll character with parts that could swap out. It's more of an action-figure/collector-doll feature, but I appreciate it. Why have molded gloves or certain hand poses as the only option when you can offer more per doll? Hauntlywood Clawdeen looks very good, so I do think I'll try getting her. Catty too, maybe, but the signature is good enough for me for now.

Venus's garden gloves do have a tiny limitation in that the sculpt makes the wrist hinge bend ever so slightly less in the downward direction compared to her bare hand set, but it's not a huge discrepancy or a meaningful problem. I briefly tricked myself into thinking there was a bigger restriction, but I wasn't looking at her arms posed parallel when testing both hand types, so the arms at different angles tricked my brain and made me think the wrist bend was more different than it was.

Me tricking myself: "The wrists are at such different angles!" Yeah, but so are the forearms. Look again. In reality, these two wrists bend almost the same, with the glove hands going a little less.

Next, Venus has tools--a digging fork and a trowel. The two pieces have bone-shaped handles and bracket loops to slide around her fingers, which work on both pairs of hands. The pieces also have sculpted and painted vines, and the trowel head is shaped like a coffin.

Venus has a flowerbed planter to work with. This is shaped like a coffin with drip trim and spiderweb texture and is black with an insert piece forming the soil. The insert is colored purple for some reason. I wish they just made it brown. Purple is stylized and spooky, but a celebration of gardening should celebrate real earth and plants. I know these dolls are directly antithetical to nature's beauty and preservation, but we could at least capture some of the real appeal. 

The holes in the top are for two plants to plug in. Venus has a mostly-realistic flytrap with pointed mammal ears (suggesting it's the same type of thing as G3 Chewlian, maybe even an immature form of his species?) and an eyeball flower. Both pieces have discs at the bottom possibly suggesting piled earth when they were planted or earth from the potting container they're being transplanted from, but it doesn't match the soil in the planter and looks a bit ugly. Pure stalks that inserted into the planter would look fine. I do appreciate the faces on the "roots", though.

These pieces pop into the planter, but not super tightly. It's up to you which plant goes in which spot, or at which rotation.

I wish the flowers plugged in more securely and that they didn't have those ugly flat green discs at the base, but this is a cute idea.

To carry her things in, Venus has a vinyl depiction of a canvas bag, which is the same sculpt as G3 Heath's, but now cast in translucent pink...which doesn't make any sense for the fabric texture sculpt. I also want Venus's things to not be depicted as plastics and synthetics because she wouldn't want to use them, right? The bag doesn't have to be literal fabric (that'd be nice, though), but having it look like it could be fabric would suit Venus better. Flytraps are painted on the side opposite the sculpted zipper pocket.

The tools fit in the bag easily, and even her gloves can be squeezed in, though it's a little odd to see them disembodied because they're just doll hands.

Venus's last piece can't fit in her bag--she has a watering can which matches the color of her gloves. A Skullette is molded on the front and a spider web accent bridges the spout and body, presumably because the spout was too long and fragile otherwise.

Her bare hands hold the piece better, since her bare fingers are less thick than the ones on the gloved hands and all of the bare digits except the thumb can be squeezed into the handle.

The Fearbook dolls also come with little printed mini Fearbooks, with Venus's being a single-fold spread between the covers. It's shown that Deuce and Heath are part of Unearthed Club with her (so you do remember they exist, Mattel?) We also do see alternate artwork of Venus, so why weren't these other portraits used on the box instead of the same one three times?

We saw evidence on sig Venus's phone that her personalized Skullette was edited for G3 to change the hair texture from a straight mohawk to braids, but I wish any of the graphics on this doll's box or book had featured the G3 Venus Skullette logo in high-res so we could see that change better.

The G1 logo didn't have the hair strokes fully dividing the shape.

I don't like G3 Chewlian, and the Fearbook line doesn't feature the pets, but Chewlian does feel kind of missing from this doll concept, doesn't he? He's a potted plant himself who can get out and walk around like a mammal, and he'd work for this garden-club release.

The last piece is a small printed card celebrating "Unearth Day", indicating this is either a flyer for a celebration or a poster for Venus to decorate with.

That's great and all, but Mattel is doing squat for the planet's prospects and much as I love my dolls, I can't ignore that they're existentially opposed to the sustainable ideal.

I took Venus out to the garden so she could plant and be photographed among real garden scenery and bright sunlight.

Her teeth really pop in this one!

Then I set up her gardening pieces on a table because this doll isn't well-equipped to pose with them on the floor.

The planter looks a lot better with real dirt over it!

And more pictures around the garden, playing with a trellis, flowers, and a vase, trowel, flower pot, and watering can.

Signature Venus was a winter release, so I wasn't able to take pretty garden photos with her when I got her! I'm glad Fearbook released at a better time for plant pictures!

I then took her inside and put her prettier hands on to celebrate her just for her glam. I also tried some different clothes. Here's the signature undershirt on Fearbook.

Doesn't work for me. It's a little too much pattern and not enough contrast, but worth trying.

A better shirt swap is O.M.G. Fierce Neonlicious's top. The bright color and short sleeves make the costume look much lighter and more cheerful--not to say I dislike the original costume in any way.

I also tried my oversize round Barbie Extra Minis shades with this look to try making it more artsy again.

Neonlicious's skirt matching the top, Fierce Lady Diva's pink wrap, and a fake rose slid into her hair gave Venus a more dainty formal look. 

Here's the base Fearbook costume with the custom jacket I made for signature.

I took a few pictures of Venus to center on the silhouette of her hair.

Here she is lit by moody yellow against a yellow backdrop.

And when trying the cover layout, I put fake plant pieces over the yellow and posed her. This wasn't my final, but I liked it enough to keep.

I changed the backdrop to orange and changed the positions of things to find my cover. Shifting to orange and darker lighting worked better to capture the vibe of what I think makes this Venus different from her other editions.

I also tried her against a green vine paper.

Fearbook Venus is beautiful, but of course you know that already. My reactions to her have similarities to signature--her design is cohesive, her colors are great, and I love her well-executed depiction of a natural textured hairstyle. This Venus has her distinguishing factors in the nature of said hairstyle, and her color palette gives her a more refined darker look and does the exciting thing of throwing in orange as a new color for her. I'd love to see further pursuit of warm tones for her because they work so well! I don't love her jacket and the plant accessories could be better, but the doll herself as a fashion doll is wonderful. She's not necessarily better than signature Venus, but she's another hit who lives up to the love I have for her G3 debut. Maybe I will get Garden Mysteries too, but I'm very happy with her third doll!