This is such a weird doll.
In Monster High's 13 Wishes special, Howleen Wolf becomes the Finder of genie Gigj Grant, and is entitled to thirteen wishes from her. However, Gigi's evil twin and literal shadow Whisp begins manipulating Howleen into making wishes with worse and worse consequences as Whisp's power grows with each wish and the impending eclipse. The doll line is about as expected. There's Howleen's new design which downgraded her hair for the rest of G1 to follow, dolls of debuting characters Gigi and Twyla (but infuriatingly, Whisp somehow wasn't important enough to mass-release and was relegated to SDCC) and a line of "Haunt the Casbah" dolls in genie-esque attire depicting returning mainstay characters on their journey into the magic lantern. 13 Wishes can probably be criticized for Orientalist imagery with the genie-fantasy stuff, and Gigi and Whisp may be problematic portrayals (I do love that the genies' monster anatomy twist is having scorpion carapaces, though), but one of the other things that stands out to me as questionable about the special is how it used Lagoona.
Lagoona Blue was unfortunately saddled with one of the most depressing plot threads of G1, where she, a saltwater monster, was dating freshwater Gil Webber, but his parents had fish-monster-racist ideals that caused them to want him and Lagoona to stop dating. This never saw any resolution, and while having the offscreen Webbers come around to Lagoona wouldn't necessarily be the most realistic or useful messaging, and I can respect that they didn't get redeemed, the fact remained that Gil and Lagoona, despite remaining in love, always had this ugly shadow over their relationship in a downbeat way. Later, starting with Great Scarrier Reef, it would be indicated that Lagoona's dad is Māori from his character design, and that she is part-Polynesian, which adds some better weight to her discrimination. I read her design as a White Aussie before, and it's possible that was her intention at the start of G1, but Polynesians can have blonde hair colors too (indeed, Mr. Blue does!), and by the end of G1, it was made clear Lagoona has Polynesian heritage, which continued to G2 by virtue of her family's character designs being unchanged. I got that wrong before and updated previous posts to add that in where relevant. Anyway, the cross-racial sea monster love conflict brings us to her subplot in 13 Wishes.
In the special, Gil actually seems to be defeated by his parents and feels resigned to leaving Lagoona alone because the Webbers don't want him interacting with her at all. This is wrong of him, but still understandable as a pressured kid with bigoted parents. Howleen wishes on behalf of Lagoona that the Webbers liked Lagoona, and the wish is very depressingly answered by transforming Lagoona into a freshwater monster. This essentially confirms the elder Webbers will never like Lagoona for any other reason, which is pretty dark but consistent with the rest of G1's handling of the story. (Oddly, the special apes The Birth of Venus by showing transformed Lagoona emerging on top of a giant seashell...despite her no longer being a sea monster.)
Lagoona is elated to find the Webbers (offscreen) approving of her, and she becomes obsessed with living up to the "perfection" of her relationship with Gil, and with lionizing fresh water in such extremes that she becomes racist to saltwater monsters. The way she talks about fresh water and its freshness sounds a lot like fascist "purity" idolatry in some way, and she is clearly losing her grip on things in her obsession. It's a very obvious "be yourself, because the things that could happen if you're not..." message, but it's done clumsily. Lagoona doesn't get to ride out an arc and choose not to be freshwater anymore; the spell is just undone by the climax when Whisp is defeated. While I can see some bold parallels to bigoted ideology in the way Lagoona's behavior changes, it's also pretty extreme and exaggerated in a way that might not be productive.
The Lagoona story could have been stronger if Gil never indicated he was going to capitulate to his parents, and never wanted to, but Lagoona still felt unsatisfied and wished specifically to become freshwater for his and their sake, only to find Gil never wanted that from her and then get corrupted by her newfound privilege and favor. Howleen wishing vaguely for Lagoona's parents to like her, only to create a monster, is less character-driven. Lagoona didn't feel bad enough to want to throw away her identity and was fully surprised by the outcome, so it's less like she wanted a bad thing in a low moment, and more like her friend just stepped in and gave her a curse without meaning to. We could also see that Lagoona's family become heartbroken that she discarded her identity for the sake of bigots. Gil asks what her family would think when she goes on and on about how his family loves her now, but she just dismisses the thought by rejecting them as saltwater monsters. Why wasn't there more emphasis on the people she loves being unhappy with her, sad she changed, and then building her up enough for her to reject the wish? The wish could still be undone only by Whisp's defeat. It would be really compelling drama for Lagoona to regret the changes but not be able to stop it once Whisp has grown too powerful and sapped Howleen too much, leaving her afraid she forever threw away her identity.
"Lagoona went crazy so it's bad but theoretically it would be fine if she didn't lose her mind" isn't exactly the message the special conveys, and that's an ungenerous reading, but more could have been done to show it was never for any second a good choice or a workable change. Making Lagoona's transformation intentional and her wish, and making her loved ones immediately unhappy she went there, would be the best way to convey this was a mistake. It would be a strong narrative of betraying yourself for the wrong people's approval, but it was fully written more under the concept of a "be careful what you wish for..." scenario with a cruel twist of fate rather than a more emotionally realistic choice-and-consequences dramatic story working with the metaphoric implications more. I think those implications warrant a smarter narrative. Ultimately, what bothers me is that this subplot happens to Lagoona without ever giving her agency in it. Howleen makes the wish for her without her even asking for a wish to be made at all, and the spell is broken without her ever asking for it. How is this subplot not being treated as her story?
And ultimately, regardless of the execution of this plotline...why did they make this a doll? If we're presenting a deliberately negative character scenario depicting the antithesis of the brand's "be yourself" message, why make it a character design to market as a doll? This isn't a fun campy "evil makeover" like the 13 Wishes special's Shadow Ghouls, who weren't made into dolls. This is essentially the depiction of a character who got race-swapped and then became a mentally unwell racist because someone thought she should appeal to the wrong people, and while this scenario is bonkers, the story rightly condemns it.
And the awkward thing is...she's a fun character design. It's also bad that this is my first G1 Lagoona bought for herself and bought for review. (My previous only G1 Lagoona was in my old collection--her Dance Class doll, who's admittedly not a must-have doll even if you love Lagoona...and I only got her because I had to. She was in the five-pack I bought for her boyfriend.)
I've never been a G1 Lagoona collector. She's had several dolls that almost grabbed me. I've grown to really appreciate her signature look, and getting a Creeproduction copy has been on my mind before. I like how School's Out almost looks like she's in a wetsuit if you squint. Her Dawn of the Dance dark lips are great (while I respect the awesome fin-hawk hair, I don't love gel-required hairstyles). Her Skull Shores look has a retro beachy style that really suits a monster very loosely derived from Creature from the Black Lagoon. Her Frights, Camera, Action! hair blend with the bold teal appeals to me; I only wish her necklace stayed black from the stock photos. Great Scarrier Reef is not standard for her at all, but swapped onto a normal Lagoona body, could drive some fun style ideas. Reel Drama is very pretty with the greyscale and pale turquoise mix, but it's also nonstandard. Lagoona's overall portfolio never impressed me, and some of it had to do with her coloring. Her desaturated greyish skin and her pale blonde hair with chlorine streaks always felt oddly dreary and dull to me (though her Hydration Station doll leans into mutedness in a successful way), or else she had one of the softer looks in the cast, while I generally prefer a bit of toughness. It's weird that she's so muted for a sea creature...and that her freshwater doll looks so very tropical! She also had little to do with classic horror, often leaning more toward classic girly "mermaid" appeal rather than anything resembling the Creature from the Black Lagoon, which she's not even geographically related to as a sea monster from Australia. Gil is a river monster and is more geographically and visually related to the Gill-man icon than Lagoona ever was. Lagoona's athletic theme was another knock against her as far as appealing to my tastes. I want to like G1 Lagoona, but she never clicked with me.
Late G1 started adding coral pink streaks to her hair instead of chlorinated green, which was...interesting. I'm not sure where it came from, and I don't think I really prefer it.
G3 Lagoona's dolls are more colorful and tropical-looking with her pink skin and turquoise and lavender hair accents, but those don't inherently work for me and each doll of hers has to be judged case-by-case for me. I like Monster Ball's face and hair and even her factory look, though I restyled her into a G1 throwback. I think her upcoming Buried Secrets Masquerade faceup and hair are promising if I pop her onto a better body and costume.
I got the 13 Wishes doll pieced together from the loose doll with complete outfit and original hairstyle, and another order for her purse and exclusive Neptuna edition, which also got visual changes for this freshwater makeover. Since I got the base doll first, let's look at her.
The biggest design differences with the 13 Wishes doll come from her coloring and hairstyle. The saturation of her hair and skin has been massively boosted (again, oddly so for freshwater, and moreso than the 3D animated design of freshwater Lagoona, where her skintone is not different from standard) and her hair is worn with straight bangs across the forehead, which Lagoona has actually never done ever before or since, and that counts all three generations of the brand! I'm not sure why Lagoona's never otherwise been a full-bangs ghoul, but having something consistent like that which can be broken is handy for a design that's meant to be out-of-character. I do hate to admit...I can rock with this primary-yellow and rich blue look. Colors like this might have made Lagoona more my style. Or at least bluer skin than the dolls got.
While "freshwater" is vague and can refer to different environments, it seems that this Lagoona's freshwater niche is very firmly focused on her being a pond monster rather than her coming from a river or lake. That's very charming to me, if a little unexpected and still a little unintuitive to associate with her coloring.
Lagoona's hair is styled in a high ponytail divided into two sections forming a twist, with the end folded and banded on itself to form a loop. It's all primary sunny yellow rather than a humanoid blonde, with the exception of a slight touch of mint in the bangs that appears nowhere else in the rooting. The mint color is the same as the fiber used for G1 Twylas' hair (with Twyla debuting in the same doll line, in fact), and is a different tone from the bluish streaks in regular Lagoona's hair.
I'm impressed with the hair for being so tightly twisted without turning and gapping, but this style is slightly inaccurate. In the cartoon, the twist actually has loose ends split in two, making the end of the pony look like a fish tail.
I'd like to see if the hair could be restyled to that effect. It's asking for a retie anyway because some loose hairs have made it messy. Mattel have previously given Lagoona a fish-fin hairstyle with the Dawn of the Dance doll's gelled dorsal-fin mohawk, and would mimic that idea for Off-White fish monster Electra Melody, using Lagoona's head mold, later.
Lagoona's wearing a barrette of a pink water lily in her hair on her right, and this is the first note of pond-specific imagery in her design. The piece is cast in pink with a dab of yellow paint in the center, and is a proper hair clip with a bar and pinhole connection keeping it held around a lock of hair. This style of hair clip strikes me as more common in G3 dolls, actually, with me not being so familiar with barrettes like this showing up in G1. I must always praise a hat or hair accessory that stays on without packaging elastics, though.
The barrette placement prevents her from casually wearing her goggles on her forehead, though.
Over her face, Lagoona has a wide pair of goggles. They're translucent and tightly contoured to her face, with trim around the edge sculpted and painted to look like pondwater plants, dragonflies, and flowers.
They're held on with a band of black fiber elastic, but this piece is no longer taut thanks to age, and the piece is actually staying on only by how well it fits her face sculpt.
It's not the most chic fashion piece, but it's fun. Gil is depicted as non-amphibious and occasionally, Mattel would put him in swim masks instead of the water-tank helmet, even though with no water around his neck gills, he would still suffocate. Freshwater Lagoona isn't depicted as needing water to breathe while on land, so this goggle piece isn't going for the same illogical "she's wearing a swim mask so she can breathe" idea they tried to pull with Gil. It's just a fashion statement, and is never relevant to the 13 Wishes special.
Freshwater Lagoona's build has no divergent molding and is all the same as regular G1 Lagoona sculpts, save for her skintone being much bluer and a bit darker in value.
Lagoona's face has wide eyes and big lips to give her a humanoid fish face, and her look has always been a bit calmer and more gentle. I don't think her eye color has changed for this design, as it's still green. Her eyes are surrounded by a monotone purple eyeshadow, and her eyebrows are also purple. This is a major pet peeve for me with standard Lagoonas, who insisted on having purple eyebrows that clashed badly with the rest of her designs (I was so happy to see G2 Lagoona change to eyebrows that matched her bluish hair streaks!) but the color works well with this version's palette. Lagoona has symmetrical non-realistic dotted freckles under her eyes, as is normal for her, and this edition has turquoise lips which subtly stand out from her freshwater skintone. This face doesn't convey the manic energy of freshwater Lagoona in the cartoon, since MH G1 avoided lively doll face expressions, but it's still pretty.
Lagoona's ears look like small webbed pectoral fins, as if her head is a fish in itself, and this doll has matching symmetrical earrings of dangling translucent pink dragonflies.
I'm sure this ear sculpt was amazing to early adopters of Monster High, but it's kind of simple with hindsight, knowing just how fancy and wild the brand's marine ear designs would get.
Around her neck, Lagoona has a translucent green necklace of a little turtle, and it's cute, but it's terribly loose and fits her so poorly that the necklace will fall off the doll very easily, even by tilting her forward. The gap in back is too wide and it has so little tension.
I wish this piece was better fit. I feel like doll necklaces are becoming my new pet peeve, honestly. Why are they never made to sit tidy and secure?
Lagoona's dress uses her typical turquoise and magenta colors, and mixes a printed magenta fabric with an angular scale motif with a glittery turquoise sheer fabric. The piece is one-sleeved, with the turquoise attaching to the bodice to form the sleeve on the right side, trimmed at the edge with black sheer material and finished at the cuff with black. The sleeve covers the upper arm. The bodice is sewn with a sweetheart shape and some thread clumsily pinching it into a rounder contour, while the skirt has a zigzag hem cut and is overlaid with two panels of scalloped tulle crossing over each other.
Lagoona can't wear full sleeves in her outfits on account of her arm fins, and also can't wear full-length pants because of the fins on her legs, though the leg fins are removable if you wanted to put her in long pants, so long as you don't lose the fins.
The other thing that's deterred me from Lagoonas is the chipping paint issue. To make the doll's forearm fins and hand webs translucent, the forearms and hands are cast in translucent plastic and then painted over with her skintone to block out most of the plastic. Any paint on MH limbs seemed fragile and easily damaged by abrasion, but on vinyl parts like these, it's worse. Lagoona's relatively unscathed, but has one forearm abrasion.
I prefer G2's sacrifice of the translucent parts on Lagoona's forearms and Gil's hands--there, Lagoona's arms and hands, and Gil's hands, are cast in the body color with the hand webs not being a separate color, which I don't mind at all. Gil's arm fins in G1 and G2 are separate plastic parts affixed into the arms, so they remained translucent, but Lagoona's arm fins were just painted over with an opaque blue in G2 and match the rest of her skintone in G3.
It's a crime that G3 Lagoona doesn't have webbed hands.
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| G3 has let down two monsters by not giving them unique monster-detail hands--Lagoona and Venus. Jinafire got them; what's the excuse? |
On freshwater Lagoona's right wrist, she has a turtle bracelet which matches her necklace, but it's a fitted closed loop that won't fall off, unlike the necklace.
Lagoona's leg fins are slightly flexible, but I think some editions might have had them cast in firmer plastic. These pieces pop out of her legs with two pin connections, and the two pins are different and opposite on each fin to guarantee each fin fits into the legs only one way, and on the correct side. Gil's removable leg fins had a similar foolproof pin system.
Along with Rochelle's wings, Lagoona's leg fins are some of the most frequently lost doll parts in the brand, making them a serious asset and selling point to any Lagoona on the aftermarket. This Lagoona's fins pop out a little easier than maybe I'd like, and her right-leg fin doesn't seem to push in as flush as it should. I can't guarantee these were the original fins this copy came with, but there's no way to tell for sure if they're not, unless I got a boxed freshwater Lagoona and her fins were cast firmer or something.
Freshwater Lagoona's shoes are translucent teal wedge platforms with pond-plant trim on the platforms and toe straps which matches her goggles.
I retied her hair after washing into its twists, but left the end loose and banded it into a split for the "fish fin" effect.
The twist isn't as tight upon restyling, but it still works.
Neptuna arrived after, and you'll understand why it was essential to get those pieces.
Possibly my favorite design aspect of signature Lagoona was that they made her purse a fishbowl container for her pet fish Neptuna, and 13 Wishes reproduces those parts with some color changes.
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| Stock photo of Creeproduction Lagoona. |
The bowl here is clear, rather than translucent blue, and Neptuna is purple rather than pink. The handle for the bowl is turquoise instead of gold.
The bowl opens on a two-part hinge and has a clasp tucked seamlessly into the side where a bump on the one side is meant to click into a hole in a loop on the other, but the bump doesn't at all catch between the two pieces on my copy, which is a disappointment.
Something about the molding made this little bump too short to actually fit into the hole on the other half of the ball. I fixed it by putting a droplet of superglue over the bump and letting it cure, and after that, it made the globe click closed securely like it was supposed to!
The fishbowl also has a built-in "shelf" made as inconspicuous as possible so Neptuna looks more like she's swimming inside rather than plopped on the floor. The bowl is open at the top.
While fishbowls aren't the right care for fish, it's a really cute cartoon gag for transporting Lagoona's pet around and I'm glad to have a version of these pieces.
Neptuna herself (fusing "Neptune", Roman god of the sea, and "tuna") is a cute piranha with that G1-pet caricature and attitude I love. She's not trying to be chibi and infantilized. I think this is is organic design appeal. She's cast from soft plastic.
Neptuna's pectoral fins sticking down below her do want to get caught between the halves of the fishbowl while closing it up sometimes, but she can't be put in from the top while it's already closed.
This is what G3 tries to pass off as Neptuna, and it's fine for any other girl's doll franchise, but simply isn't Monster High to me.
I didn't realize I'd never discussed or shown G3 Neptuna before despite discussing signature G3 Lagoona, but that was an abbreviated look at that doll, and perhaps my disdain for this pet design was enough I dismissed her altogether. I can at least appreciate that G3 Lagoona herself has piranha teeth, but we don't see them on her dolls! Unfortunately, G3 Neptuna has returned unaltered in aesthetic in Lagoona's refresh dolls. I wish they'd retcon her spookier, especially since Monster Fest Lagoona dared to put the G1 fish in the purse design!
My first produced photos with Lagoona were in my water-tank bin, here framed with her upright through the side of the bin rather than laid flat and photographed through the top of the water. I took the bin outside to fill it up with a hose and had Lagoona strapped down to the floor by one ankle with tape. and some fake plant pieces in the tank too. I wanted to rig Neptuna on a line to swim beside Lagoona, floated by the water, but the fish sank like a stone and I had to remove Neptuna and the tape and line when that turned out to be the case.
I got some good pictures just with the clear water.
I then added pink dye and flour to cloud and color the water. I thought pink water would be a fun stylized touch based on her palette and strangely vibrant design.
While I had to watch the water level and not fill it too high, I was able to use the hose jet to create bubbles.
Here's a black-and-white photo with the tinted water and the visible water line.
I'd have liked the bubbles to be present in the photo with Gil peeking down, embarrassed, but I only have so many hands, so I used the two I have to take the picture and hold Gil, leaving the hose aside.
Here's a few portraits with her.
Again, this is such a weird doll.
13 Wishes Lagoona, on the one hand, is a really pretty, vibrant, intriguing "alternate-concept" design for the character who honestly has traits I'd have liked in her standard design. Her colors are bright and appealing in a way typical Lagoonas' haven't been for me, and I also enjoy the specificity in her theming all pinning her as a pond monster, though it's admittedly no creepier than Lagoona usually is, and at least normal Lagoona sometimes has fish bones. As a "what if?" divergence concept for the character, she's pretty and characterful enough to make her a compelling entry.
On the other hand, she's a pretty narratively horrible choice for a doll release. This is meant to be Lagoona at her lowest, having transformed into a "got mine" bigot who lost her mind. This is the character in the antithesis of the brand's main "be yourself" spirit, and while it's a half-decent cautionary tale in the story, it's illogical to make that a pretty doll for kids to collect because...aren't we not supposed to like this for her? Isn't this supposed to be kind of horrifying for the character? I'm not opposed to characters having dark points, but this is a fairly message-based kid's franchise, so marketing the "Lagoona totally lost herself" horror story as a "wow look new pretty doll" toy feels really tone-deaf. Mattel got another doll in the 13 Wishes line and made more money, but at the expense of confusing the messaging of the story moment she's based upon.
The doll isn't perfect, either. Her mask elastic loosened, though that's the fault of time. Her turtle necklace is inexcusably loose, though, and one of her fins doesn't fit in her leg fully correctly. The hairstyle is mildly inaccurate and skips on a clever design touch from the animation. The copy of Neptuna's bowl I got, which wasn't from the same copy of the release as the doll, was also molded poorly and wouldn't stay closed as I received it. I also think Lagoona's serene face suits this version of her poorly, as she's defined by hyperactivity and mania as the special goes on.
I guess at the end of the day, she's a pretty doll who actually makes me more motivated and open to finding the standard G1 Lagoona for me. I've outlined all of my reasons I never got into the character, but by no means do I want them to be insurmountable. This is my genuine appeal to readers who love G1 Lagoona: Tell me which dolls you really liked of hers and why! I want to have fun with the G1 character and give her a fair shot. Personally, I'd be leaning toward getting a Creepro copy of her because signature is a good look with a layered outfit that offers several display and photo options (and another round of that awesome fishbowl), but any opinions on where to find Lagoona at her best are appreciated. It's not fair to her to only have her at her nadir, no matter how pretty she may be in isolation!
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