Every Rose Has Its Fangs: Monster High G3 Skulltimate Secrets Garden Mysteries Draculaura by Mattel

Getting one recent Venus got me to get the other recent Venus from the Garden Mysteries line, and getting that recent Garden Mysteries doll got me to get this one too!

When shopping with the leftovers of July's budget, I was faced with the opportunities to get G3 Nefera, the other Garden Mysteries dolls, or even Scary Sweet Birthday Frankie. I'd been waiting for Nefera for a while and cancelled my online order because she hit shelves in the time between the order and her projected delivery date (I'd rather just pick her out in-person now that that's an option). I also liked Frankie and GM Twyla, but my mind was kind of made up the second I was there and I couldn't ignore the feeling that I needed to get Draculaura. 

I've already explained why. Her color palette is an atypical experiment that is just stunningly gorgeous and made her a true standout among all of the Draculauras in the brand's history. I've also warmed to Draculaura herself over time, being quite endeared to vampires as it is and finding myself enjoying her dolls more and more. I like GM Twyla too, and she's on my shortlist, but she was never coming first between the two.

Let's blast through the box pictures.

Draculaura's toaster has a pale pink front, a more saturated pink back, and red doors. Ooh, I just can't get enough of Draculaura and red! 

On Venus's post, I had some discussion in the comments about the awkward toaster boxes. I reaffirmed my assertion that they only make much sense as diegetic pieces if you frame them as some kind of laboratory device for Frankie to emerge from.

The only Frankie with a toaster is their Hauntlywood Mysteries edition, which is understandably seen as a weak design what with their mixed gold and silver metals and their pale pink feeling off, but I actually think with the right clothing, possibly a lip repaint or swap onto a body with their normal silver leg color, they might look really nice. And if I repainted their toaster in metal tones to frame it as lab equipment, I could create a tableau tribute to classic horror cinema, framing Frankie as a classic movie monster in their lab machine covered in stars and film reels! I'm still not willing to get them at full price (Hauntlywood Clawdeen on the other hand...) so I'll be waiting for that to be on its way out before trying that idea. 

Another comment suggested the toasters could be used as jail cells for fashion crimes! They do have a prison-like quality...

But if this is dolly fashion jail, we have to free my ghoul. She does not qualify!

As expected, the paper packets inside the locker doors are patterned the same as the sheer shirt piece Draculaura has in her fashion ensemble.

This makes me realize the aesthetic imbalance of this series. There are two warm-toned dolls with pink lockers and pink packages and red key lenses, and one cool-toned doll with a blue locker, blue packages, and a blue lens. We know there was originally going to be a Lagoona in this series, and that makes a lot of sense. Looking at what we have, it does feel a bit like something was left out. Garden Mysteries Lagoona would likely have balanced the color palettes and complete the series by being a turquoise and purple cool-toned doll (perhaps similar, palette-wise, to her Fearidescent release. I'm sure she could have had some water lily theming or some such. Her G1 freshwater transformation (foreshadowing...) did.

Here's all of the contents of the packets laid out. 

The assortments aren't divided exactly the same way as Venus's packets. The second outfit pieces with the sheer top, satin overlay top, velour skirt, and sandals are in one packet the same way, but the other ones shuffle parts around so it's not the same assortment distribution in both sets. There's no concise non-confusing way to compare and contrast how things were distributed differently, but suffice it to say that besides the clothes packet, none of the other three packets' analogous pieces are parted out in the packets the exact same way.

Here's the lever assembled. Only the backboard is a character-specific mold, with the insert and base being the same sculpt for the other two GM dolls. The flower insert is the most suited to Draculaura of the three dolls, as she has two-fanged lips as an anatomical feature and a fashion symbol, and also features rose motifs in this design.

Here's the lever in. Ready to free her?

...oh. Well, at least it's cinnamon raisin!

Joking aside, here she is out of the box. She had two head tags pinning her to her plastic tray, while Venus had only one, but no other restraints beyond some elastics.

GM Draculaura's hair is her focal novelty in my mind. It's the thing about this doll! She's back to a split-dye look like the G3 character started with as her signature. G3 Drac's actually had more G1-style blends of black and pink than split-dyes but I'm glad to see the split hair come back since it was a fun distinction for the G3 character. Her upcoming second refresh doll has a double-split, with the front locks divided in color opposite to the rest of her hair, creating quadrants! What's so special with GM's hair is that the split is in two different colors from her norm.

The contrast is in color far more than it is in value this time, with the half on her left being a muted fuchsia with no purple tone (I think this is G1 Gigi's dominant hair color exactly) and the half on her right being a dark plum reddish-purple tone (possibly the same as Maul Monsteristas G1 Spectra or some Elissabats?) GM Draculaura is pink enough to be distinct from Elissabat, but this purple hair and the red tones are hallmarks of Elissabat's repertoire! The hair is center-parted, naturally, and the front parting of the head is combed out and tied behind her head above her ears to keep it tucked back.

The tied-down front part and loose hair combo is a very glamorous look that always gives me midcentury chic tones, like a 1960s socialite or supermodel. (Elissabat has also done 60s-retro with her Londoom doll. I loved that design, but found the hair fiber to be awful in-hand, and I'd switch the boots to shoes that matched her.) This is the hairstyle I'd give to an aged-up version of Living Dead Dolls Sadie, though I don't think her Fashion Victim is rooted with long enough hair to tie this way. Hauntlywood Frankie rocking this hairstyling is also a big reason I looked at them twice and reassessed their potential after first dismissing the doll! Draculaura had a couple of loose hairs on the tied magenta side which weren't pulled tight, so I just pulled them out and the look was perfect.

What's not perfect is her hair quality. I was so excited because she was saran, but both halves of the hair came out of the box with lots of fried disorderly strands. The plum side had it worse.

Perhaps this is what comes of getting this doll so late? Maybe new she'd have had perfect hair, but it alarms me that this happened to her so badly and so quickly. What's the cause for this kind of problem? 20-year old Living Dead Dolls are bound to have it and that makes a grim kind of sense to me, but a doll less than a year old, still on retail shelves when I got her? I pulled a lot of fried strands out of her hair manually and gave her hair some treatments to hopefully mitigate the issue. 

I was surprised to take Draculaura out of the box and see her face because she's so sassy!

There's something about her eye makeup and lip paint that gives her such a sharp little smirk that I just love here. She looks confident and mischievous. 

Drac's eyebrows are thick and black, and her eye makeup features bold vivid pink makeup on the top and bottom trailing into shaped designs featuring rose blooms at the corners and falling petals and leaf forms. The design is asymmetrical. 

Above the pink, she has bands of solid dark grey and very faint translucent shading above that, and her lips are a muted red that's not burgundy and super vintage-dark, but isn't a bright cherry tone either.

I love the fancy floral Garden Mysteries makeup designs.

Here's GM Drac next to signature, the G3 Draculaura I currently have out on display. I actually think the signature doll was one of the best G3 early entries, but there's such a difference!

Signature looks much gentler and sweeter. Garden Mysteries has bite!

Here's a color-contrast comparison with the two in greyscale. It's much harder to tell GM Drac's hair is "split-dyed" without color.

Draculaura's earrings are translucent white with a slight frosty effect, and depict fancy danglers with bat wings and cameos of herself in them, similar to her G3 signature cameo necklace.

I gave the sig necklace to my restyled New Scaremester Twyla way back when.

The earrings don't have anything floral about them, unlike Venus's. They don't match anything else on Draculaura, either, but I don't find that an issue. It is a problem that I'm pretty sure I got two copies of the left-side earring, though. 

I'd expect Mattel molded a right-side and left-side version of these pieces, but my Drac got only one, twice. When they're both laid facing one direction, the posts point the same way.

The sculpt is double-sided, thank goodness, so one earring can be flipped, but the posts don't meet when they're mirrored.

A proper pair of Monster High earrings has posts that point different directions when the pieces are turned to face the same way:

Earrings from G3 signature Cleo.

And the ends of the posts reach to a single point when the pieces are mirrored like they will be in a doll's ears.

I'm very glad Drac's earrings are "reversible" in this way so it's not a big issue, but I don't like that this happened. I was sure it was an error, but it might be the case that only one earring mold was produced because the sculpt works close enough as its own mirror? If so, it doesn't fully pass and feels lazy or like there was a mistake. 

Draculaura comes out of the toaster wearing her black printed dress and her corset.

The corset is unique to Draculaura, with all three GM dolls having their own mold and visual design for their corsets. Drac's matches the pink side of her hair, and is pointy with a spiderweb design and features painted black chains and heart clasps on the front. Also like Venus's, it has two settings, one looser and one tighter, to close it with, but I found this corset easy to close while Venus's was hard to work. The pin pops through the holes on this one without much frustration.

The dress has a rounded bust line and two black ribbon shoulder straps. The pattern shows bats flying through flowers with the same aesthetic as the other GM dresses' prints, and features orange and true blue tones among the pattern that nonetheless don't disrupt her palette. All of the equivalent costume parts in this series are built the same way despite their different cuts, so this dress velcros the whole way open.

Draculaura's socks aren't footies. Why.

I know a sock can tighten a shoe and make it trickier to dress the doll, but it's not nearly frustrating enough to chop the feet off all legwear that's depicting something that would be covering the feet! This is ridiculous. The dotted netting is the same for all three GM dolls. 

The socks can be shoved down her ankles, but the boots are so tight it's not really possible to wrap them around the socks and hide the cutoff.

I eventually figured out how to get the socks tucked into her shoes--pull the netting down and catch it on her big toes to keep the material pulled on her foot, then put the shoe on and pull the tops of the socks up her shins. I feel like you're not really supposed to do this, and it's not intuitive, but it fixes her display.

The boots/shoes are short magenta lace-ups with bat wings on the outer sides of the ankles and spiderweb texture, and they have Gothic arches for high heels. 

The soles have more Draculaura cameos on them.

These shoes look pretty similar to cartoon-Draculaura's signature shoes, which were nothing like the design on her signature doll.

These shoes have not been exactly reproduced on any G3 Drac dolls, and the height and heels are different on the cartoon shoes, but the wings and the fronts are close to these GM boots.

Draculaura's sheer top is tinted purple with pink foil print matching her paper packets, and it has looser sleeves than Venus's piece, a tight round neckline, and a red ribbon bow asymmetrically placed on her left at the collar. While Venus gets away with wearing her sheer top with no cover laid over it, something about the coloring with Draculaura does make the top feel like insufficient coverage on her.  Her velour skirt is red with two black ribbon bows stacked on the left hip, above a single notch. It has the same issues of being bulky and hard to keep in place since nothing stops it from riding up her hips.

The skirt velcros the whole way down, as expected.

Drac also has her satin overlay piece, which is a strapless bustier-style piece matching her purpler tones. It has a sweetheart neckline, simulated vertical ribbing, and a lace trim down the front. 

This was actually the outfit combo in the stock photos that had me obsessed with this Draculaura. It was just the right emphasis of red and her unique colors in harmony.

This look isn't harmed by putting the corset over it, and it even helps a little. The sew of the bustier doesn't hug the actual bust very cleanly, so the corset smooths over the visual and adds a little bit more to polish the outfit.

Draculaura's strappy sandals are pale pink with heart-cutout straps and bow accents. The platforms are heel-less and web-textured. I didn't try these with the socks because they don't cover her feet.

The way the heel hugs the foot with a spiderweb reminds me a lot of this Operetta shoe mold:

The sandals have Draculaura monograms on the soles.

Because Draculaura is short, her waist clip goes in the lowest slots on her box, but neither pair of shoes is tall enough to let her feet touch the ground while she's clipped in.

The sandals swap in surprisingly well, with the pink color popping against the tone of the shirt over Drac's skin nicely. It makes the doll more shades-of-red-only, but I do think I prefer the socks and boots in play with these costume parts.

Here's a simpler outfit with the sandals, bustier, and skirt only. I really like this combination.

Here's the shirt layered under the dress. I think the straps might give it a slight "overalls" quality without anything else over the torso.

I'd like the bustier to be useful over the dress, but it doesn't quite go thanks to the top lines of the layers conflicting. A sweetheart line over a rounded line over a shirt doesn't fit right.

I didn't find the satin overlay to work over the dress on Venus, either, even though Mattel suggests the combinations to you. I wonder if the satin tops are really only to be worn over nothing or over the shirt alone, but not over the dresses. Maybe Twyla's satin top will work over her dress, but I'm not sure yet. Still, despite the odd fit and the piece not working with all of Drac's looks, the satin piece is more flattering and usable on Draculaura and doesn't feel like a challenge to work in the way Venus's equivalent top did. That one felt at odds with her combos more often than not.

Draculaura does come together with the corset, dress, shirt, socks, and boots all combined. It's not as red as my favorite look for her, but I can't deny it's a strong ensemble.

Draculaura's tea pieces are her cup and a serving stand of cupcakes.

Draculaura's cup is two unique molds, with a black bat-themed cup on a spiderweb saucer and a pink...emergence with heart forms. While the part coming out of Venus's cup was plant-shaped, the sculpting here is more fluid and liquid, suggesting it is just tea splashing here. Maybe it's all cartoon aroma swirling from the cup, or the ghouls are just gesticulating wildly with their teacups in hand. (Reminds me of Arrested Development when Lucille keeps splashing her martini while doing air quotes!) Drac's treat stand matches her cup with a bat handle/pillar underneath, but the doll's hands are not exactly designed to hold onto it. It can work, but it's not very stable. The cupcakes are sculpted with web texture on the cake and rose-themed frosting, and are all one piece that comes off the stand. The stand has three pegs which fit into one of two triangular rotations of the holes in the cupcakes.

I'm not sure what the purpose of having the piece be removable is. The dessert stand doesn't look great bare, and the cupcakes aren't useful props as a connected lump. 

Drac also has some silver serving tongs to handle the cupcakes with...shame she can't pick one up. Even just one cupcake molded individually that could fit in the tongs would be fantastic.

So Venus has a honey dipper but no jar, while Drac has tongs she can't use. Honestly, Twyla's equivalent piece makes the most sense--it's just a gingerbread cookie to go with the gingerbread house she brings! Nothing non-functional or illogical about that!

Draculaura's purse matches the rest of Garden Mysteries with the patterning, but the shape is distinct, being circular with bat wings on top and a beaded handle between them. A heart padlock is sculpted on the front.

The sides of the bag are ridged and the back has some gathered fabric texture, perhaps forming a pocket.

The purse opens on a folded plastic hinge.

The tongs can fit inside, but putting them in the wrong way will cause them to pop the purse open! I like that the purses are functional, even though a honey dipper, dessert tongs, and a cookie aren't things you'd just throw in your handbag.

While putting the purse on her hand, I discovered a bluish stain on the back. Ugh.

I took Draculaura for hair treatment. Afterward, it's...better. I removed most of the worst fried strands, but the hair still doesn't feel like saran at its best, with some disobedient fibers that don't obey gravity or stay combed tidy very well. The pink side hangs in stiffer curves than I expect from saran, so is that half of her head polypropylene? I know Mattel has made this color in saran before thanks to Gigi, so I can't see why she'd have two fiber types. It's just not perfect hair regardless, and I wish it was more tidy and obedient. She is still gorgeous, though.

Here's my two red-themed Draculauras together!

While I loved Howliday Love Draculaura and found her design really successful, my opinions are not universal and I was surprised to poll the question of red for Draculaura and find opinions disliking her design and finding her messy (while said opinions still liked Garden Mysteries). I can maybe see the print on the Howliday dress being too much and too tacky, but I had no issue with the color combo while others did. I don't see enough difference in palettes between the two to find Garden Mysteries good and Howliday Love a flop. I think both red Dracs are lovely and proof the color belongs on her, but red on Draculaura seems to be a matter of case-by-case judgment for others while I see it as a universal good thus far. Go figure. (I can't defend Howliday Love Clawd's outfit, for what it's worth. I had to switch his shirt to something black and more formal to make it work okay.)

The red parasol suits Garden Mysteries really well. I just wish it was designed to be properly held. This pose was hard to keep stable.

Here's a portrait just of GM on red velvet.

Here she is playing with a frosted sheet of black rose-print paper, using lighting behind it or not, or her behind it or not!

Here she is in front of my red rose paper.

Then I put her in her black dress to place her in front of a black paper with floral print. Editing the colors to be all red like her worked well. 

I kept her in this look for her tea-party photos in the garden. I used the same spot as Venus's shoot, but changed the foliage by swapping in some black fake roses and adding small fake rose blooms on the ground, as well as red fake roses. I also made eyeball plants after getting the eyeball ping-pong balls themselves, and I thought those stalks would be fun to throw in. The table is different from Venus's natural log pieces, and is made to look like black iron, constructed from prefab wooden parts and painted and glossed. The umbrella attachment is hot-glued on to keep it stable with the Howliday Love umbrella plugging into the top. This piece held just long enough for the photos, then the umbrella holder popped off cleanly and the table is still usable without it and won't need any retouching, either. Draculaura's seat is a candle cup. I played with different color edits for the scenery, using the real greens, and then changing them to red or black.

I then swapped her into my favorite look for a couple of pictures.

Then I took the shirt and corset out and swapped her footwear for the sandals to work a little more with her chic simple look. I think this combo really draws out the retro glamor of her hairstyle.

I'm really disappointed I got a Draculaura with fried hair, not only for the quality issue, but because it happened to her in box in stores within a short span of time. I might try to seek a new copy of the body or even just the head in hopes of getting intact hair fiber, but it worries me that the problem could befall that copy too pretty easily. It's also pretty much impossible to get a read on whether messy hair in the photos of copies on eBay signifies hair that will tidy or hair that won't. I don't know if the problem is widespread on this doll, or if it's from the fiber or where she was, but it's disheartening. 

Still, this is one of the prettiest, most standout Draculauras ever, like all-time one of the most gorgeous, and she still flourishes under the camera. That cannot be denied. The doll is very very beautiful and I loved working with her. She's definitely not a standard look for Drac, but that's what makes her so special and appealing. GM Venus is beautiful, but save for her emphasis on pink, she doesn't quite get to the feel of a fully different palette for the character in the way Twyla's blue coolness and Drac's reddish pinks do. Maybe if GM Venus had dared to lean hard into yellows, like Electrified Venus and then some, but I don't think Venus fails to fit into the line. She's just a very pretty doll without feeling as much like an experimental departure. Draculaura isn't perfectly made, but she's just about perfectly designed and sometimes the doll is so outsizedly stunning that the problems all go away somehow. This is one of them. 

Twyla coming soonish! I'm going on vacation between the 16th and 20th of this month, but I'm pretty confident I can acquire and review up Twyla before then. All this garden glam has me still thinking about Scream and Sugar Amanita, and perhaps even Lenore Loomington?  I could do both together for a G1 garden party feature, unless I lose enthusiasm for the theme. Lenore's still more expensive than I'm quite willing to pay, though. Maybe I'll wait for a sale on her and stage another garden party later, perhaps even next spring or summer to shake things up. There's a lot to consider!