Monster High Skulltimate Secrets Series 5 "Garden Mysteries" Complete

Hey, this is my first ever fully-collected Monster High doll line! And, thus, my first "series complete" post from this brand! Granted, only three dolls makes it an easier sweep, but it's a milestone!

The Garden Mysteries line has obvious appeals. The ghouls are dressed fancy with beautiful colors and have a charming garden tea-party theme. Each has the potential to look fantastic. Of the three, I think Draculaura is the standout as designed. Her hair colors look great to me, and I love the play with red in her palette that really flatters her and sets her apart. Venus looks beautiful too, even if she's fairly familiar to the character's cross-generational repertoire. I think her fancier theming and emphasis on pink still make her special, and her braids, while texturally not easy to care for when overlaid on loose fiber, are striking and add a lot to her look. Twyla is the weakest of the series to me, because she looks good only a certain way for me, and I didn't love her factory hairstyle, nor the stock-photo rendition of it. But once I set her up as desired, she holds her own and does it strong. She may not be versatile or a factory slam-dunk, but she has all the power to vie for the top spot as I've worked her over.

Here's the ghouls fixed up how I like them best. Twyla is the only real restyle of the bunch because I totally changed her hair shape.

This series is composed of one tall ghoul and two short ghouls, but none share a body build between them. I'd welcome Draculaura's proportions appearing on somebody else (maybe they will), while Venus shares a build with Frankie, monster details excepted, and Twyla shares her build with Cupid.

Garden Mysteries is beautiful, but I wasn't impressed a ton by the manufacturing. 

The velour skirts feel relatively decadent, but the skirts have no internal straps to keep them pulled down to the right height, and having the skirts and black dresses both velcro the full length down the back felt unnecessary and slightly clunky. Venus's corset was hard to close because the peg bent rather than popping through the holes. The dolls' ear piercings looked messy. Both Draculaura and Twyla emerged from their abominable toasters with fried hair. Venus also had one snarled damaged fried hair twist that got into the braider machine when it wasn't supposed to, and came out a wreck as well, needing to be cut out. The fried Drac and Twyla could have been a result of a bad batch (both were bought off the same store's shelf) or from the dolls being months out of date by now (horrifying if that's something to worry about now), but I got handed a bad deal with the hair, and I worry about my odds of successfully replacing Drac or her head with a copy whose hair is fine, because how can I be sure the replacement I'm buying really is so nice? At least when I'm handed a bad faceup, I can easily identify something online is better from the in-hand photos. (I did that with G3 Nefera upon finding a copy secondhand whose faceup looked much more correct and subtly clicked to me and closer to the stock photos than the objectively fine one I picked off the shelf. That review will be up soonish--definitely before the end of August, but whenever Nef 2 comes in will determine whether I can do the review before or after my trip.)

There were also deliberate choices I wasn't impressed by. The footless socks are just cheap and frustrating and make displaying the dolls a lot harder. G3 needs to put socks on the dolls' feet a lot more often, and not just on their shins. Draculaura's earrings being one mold instead of fully mirrored pieces was also disappointing. Twyla reusing her Fearbook shadow screening was also a really lazy move, because Fearbook had a specialized shadow imagery design that isn't relevant to the GM doll. I'd also appreciate her having the glowing eye paint. Twyla is always better with the eye glow.

There were design issues I had as well. Despite the fanfare about mix-and-match and layering, there were limitations. The satin overlay tops just don't look right over the black dresses, restricting their applications to being worn alone or over the shirts, and only Draculaura's satin top really harmonized with the rest of her pieces. The shirts being sheer pieces is elegant, but does restrict them to be worn under something else. Twyla wears hers alone okay, but only Venus really pulls off the sheer top without further cover--or maybe it's just that one of Venus's strongest looks involves the shirt uncovered, so I excuse it for her. The other dolls don't build ensembles as well with their shirts under nothing. I found the Venus and Drac dolls to basically have two main outfit combinations that really worked, while the rest was weaker, and Twyla's fashions were the most ill-suited, with her cooler, subtler shirt and dress flattering her, but her more saturated skirt and satin top being too loud for the design. The accessories were also a little disjointed. Venus has a honey dipper but no pot to swirl it from. Drac's cupcakes are pretty but are molded as one lump, rendering her tongs non-interactive with the cakes. Twyla's gingerbread house and breakaway cookie piece are excellent, but then she includes tongs that don't make sense with her pieces and feel redundant with Drac's. The purses of all three dolls look great, though, and the corsets are attractive and versatile parts. 

I put the dolls' toasters and seats together around a different table to stage a full tea party. The toaster chutes are serving as vases for the flowers of their individual photoshoots, with a couple others framing the scenery. I tried to trade accessories as they share the party, with Venus going for the cookie from the gingerbread house and Drac pouring tea. Because Twyla can't grab off a cupcake, she's just holding her own cup.

Garden Mysteries is a lovely series design but not without its conceptual flaws, and certainly not without its manufacturing disappointments. There's a lot of changes I would have made...including pushing Lagoona Blue through. I hate that retailer specs culled a doll who would have almost certainly been incredible. It's hard to imagine any Garden Mysteries dolls being bad, and a Lagoona could have been gorgeous and completed the series to an extent by balancing the cool side of the color palettes. If she existed, I'd probably have ended up with her too. If Mattel ever decided to double up on Skulltimate Secrets concepts, a second wave of garden dolls with Lagoona could be fun. (Who else? Well, Frankie has nothing to do with nature, but I'd love to see them try--give them a wooden prosthetic, maybe! More logically, Skelita and Jinafire could suit a floral theme really well, with Jin being a Gloom and Bloom alum and Skelita being a strong candidate for an alumni G&B add-on collector doll! Spectra would be nice to see...honestly, just because Spectra would be nice to see! She needs a new doll! Realistically, though, Mattel won't sell a Skulltimate line without at least two of the core five being in the trio, so...Clawdeen, Lagoona, and Jin or Skelita maybe? It's not gonna happen, but it could be fun!)

There's no favorite from the series, really. The most impressive standout visual design for me is Draculaura, who fully embodies the specialty theming of the line by standing apart from all of her other dolls. Venus looks great on her own, and Twyla called for a new hairdo, but they're all incredibly pretty. 

I also had a blast setting individual floral garden party scenes matched to each doll and playing with fantastical color edits for Drac and Twyla.

Anytime I feel I fully understand a doll's aesthetic and draw it out with photo staging, it's a wonderful thing for me. This is a whole doll line of such cases. This tea-party series where I staged an elaborate themed series of portraits matching up between each doll also makes this project a loose (and much friendlier) sequel to my Living Dead Dolls tea-party epic last year! I...can't promise another such series for 2026, since I'd, you know, need another themed series of tea-party dolls to discuss, but I stand on my brand and I know I will continue to find tea-related dolls to discuss here even if they're not part of a collection.

The Skulltimate Secrets line has its problems and its flops, but it's been such a welcome source of creative visual designs and themes with fashion flexibility baked in. I could see myself working with all three Hauntlywood Mysteries dolls, though I wouldn't put down full price for anybody but Clawdeen. I'm very excited to see doll stock photos of the Series 7 Oasis line because Jinafire looks very promising from the artwork, and I'm curious how the boxes are done now that they're no longer toasters.

For now, I'm not sure if the garden partying ends for a little or if it continues with Lenore Loomington and/or Amanita's Scream and Sugar doll. I worry I've exhausted my energy and vision for the theme with these three, but how could I not when they give so much to work with?