Shiver Me Timbers: Monster High "Haunted" Vandala Doubloons by Mattel

Pirate season is just something I have to live with now. There's no fighting it. Through no intent of my own, I fell into a tradition of blogging about pirate dolls in the summer, despite having no standout affinity for the pirate genre of adventure stories. At this point, why not just go with it? Meet Vandala.

Vandala Doubloons was one of the new "guest star" characters debuted in the movie Haunted. Haunted was the brand's biggest focus on Spectra Vondergeist, being her only leading special. I'm pretty sure Spectra was never indicated to have transferred from a prior high school until Haunted, but Haunted takes us to her old school in the ghost realm, Haunted High, and Spectra and her friends old and new take down the tyrannical Principal Revenant. Her old school friends debuting in Haunted were Kiyomi Haunterly, the Japanese noppera-bo (faceless ghost yōkai), River Styxx, the pastel-goth Grim Reaper, and Porter Geiss, the graffiti-spraying poltergeist. I've had Kiyomi and Porter in the past and could see myself getting both a second time, I still want River, and I've never had Vandala before because I was never interested or satisfied by her factory design. 

Haunted was the second Monster High special where the "guest star" characters were total one-offs who never appeared in the dolls again outside their debut, a pattern started by Freaky Fusion...though Kiyomi did get a Mega Bloks figure. Boo York, Boo York afterward technically avoided the "one doll per guest star" curse by giving Elle, Luna, and Mouscedes a three-pack with casual editions, but they still remained trapped in their movie's doll line, and Great Scarrier Reef's characters were full one-offs. It's possible G1 ran out of time before characters from the later specials had the chance to get more editions, but it seemed clear enough that Mattel stopped being interested in doing more with their special-introduced cast. It's possible Mouscedes could get a G3 doll, though, because she's part of the G3 cast for...some baffling reason. She barely made sense for G1, why-? I've also heard rumors of a potential G3 River doll, which would be fantastic. If they keep her bone-in-limb gimmick intact, I'm fairly confident I'd end up preferring G3 River, whatever she does,  to G1. I just hope they wouldn't merely design her limbs to end in G3 Skelita's bare bone sculpts. They need to be encased in translucent skin!

Part of the reason I never wanted Vandala is the fact that "pirate" alone isn't a grabber for me. But also, Vandala seemed oddly soft and safe for such a spirited character. Her doll has none of the attitude of the movie character, and her costume feels more "elegant lady" than "fierce cap'n". Her clothes also have a big ugly plastic harness defining things in a way I don't like. But pirate season sets sail again, and the doll felt like she had definite potential. I also respected her unique depiction of a wooden leg prosthetic and its use of a detaching joint peg.

I've previously discussed a Haunted doll on the blog way back in this post here, re: Getting Ghostly Twyla.

I was able to find a complete copy of Vandala--at least, as far as everything that mattered to me. She didn't come with her diary or brush, but I don't need those.

When reviewing Twyla, I wasn't able to discuss the Haunted doll stands so well, on account of not getting one with my copy of her, but my Vandala came with the stand! The Haunted doll stands are a unique design just for the Haunted line and depict twisting translucent turquoise chains anchored to a slightly domed base. 

The stand clips are wider and designed to hook around the upper torso, under the arms, in a looser manner, and the pole has notches giving the clip multiple positions to rest on to change how high the doll is held. Here's how the clip holds the doll on the torso.

Porter, as the line's boy doll, has a wider clip to suit his torso sculpt.

Chains are a big motif of Haunted, given their ghostly associations, with each doll featuring chain accessories and chains chasing down and restraining ghosts at the behest of Principal Revenant in the film. These doll stands evoke that while also letting the ghosts look like they're floating above the ground. 

Vandala looked pretty okay right as she arrived, though her hair might call for some tidying or volumizing with a tighter wave. She also displayed some yellowing. 

The first piece of Vandala is her dramatic floppy translucent ghost hat, which is made of vinyl sculpted to shape. The top is domed and the brim is turned up and decorated with a huge blue plastic pin depicting a plume and a tattered ghost ship above a fishing net.

Details on the pin. Look at the grinning starfish!

The ghost ship recalls the mythical Flying Dutchman. It would have been fun if Vandala was a Dutch character to evoke that legend even further, but I don't think that was conveyed if the designers had considered the idea. 

The ornament actually pins the brim of the hat backward to the dome with a peg that pops through the brim and the dome together.

The hat's color is a peachy tone that might be depicting a pinkish hat gone translucent, but the same color is used for the wooden leg which would have been brown. The edge of the hat has some texturing, and the color and shape and overall plastic texture remind me of a jellyfish, though I don't know if that's at all intentional.

The hat is a very fun dramatic piece, but it's not so much "pirate captain" as it is "upper-class vacationer". I see maybe some swashbucklet in the sense of a Musketeer's hat maybe, but its color makes it look more like a rich lady's hat. I still like it.

Vandala's hair is two colors--teal with white streaks, though the white has predictably gone yellow. The hair is long and waved into loose ringlets at the bottom. The hair is side-parted to Vandala's right, and the front is cut into asymmetric bangs and a short side lock to frame her face in front of the long hair. The way the short side lock is combed and set exposes some of the doll's scalp.

This hairstyle is not quite accurate to her cartoon design or box art, where she has rounded bangs in a line straight across the forehead with a little bit of fluff in their shape.

I expected slightly drier, messier hair given this doll's reputation, but it looks like there's potential for this to tidy up and look glossier with some treatment. I might also wave it tighter to raise the hair and bounce the silhouette out a little more.

The teal color is not the same as the (arguably overused) blue-teal blend featured on Avea, Peri and Pearl, Garrott duRoque and Ghouls' Getaway Jane. It's definitively greener, and I really like the color.

Vandala's face is one of the flattest and least attitude-y of the dolls prior to G2.

Go ghoul, give us nothing.

Her skin is translucent sea-foam in color, and her nose is really hard to see in a straight-on angle, but it also doesn't help that her colors are so faint and her faceup is so tame. Her eyes are pink with purple pupils to look faded and ghostly, which is fine, but her lashes don't give her eyes much sass and her grey brows are relaxed. Her lips are also very pale pink with no particular oomph to them, leaving Vandala looking unfocused and vacant. Perhaps a bit wall-eyed, too? She's a boisterous pirate girl in the special, so why is the doll so bland?

This is supposed to be an animated, lively character!

I'm going to have to tweak this faceup. At the least, changing her eyebrows to give her more of a smirk. Maybe darkening her pupils just a tad, too? I want this ghoul to look present. I understand that the Haunted dolls are ghosts trying to look ethereal and faded like translucent specters, but this feels dull to me--ghostly at the cost of personality. 

I'm glad at least that the debuting Haunted guest-star characters didn't have the colored "mask" effect over the eyes that Monster High insisted was a ghost thing for some reason, having used it on the Create-a-Monster Ghost, Spectra as Power Ghouls character Polterghoul, and all of the Haunted ghost transformations of the mainstay characters. 

What exactly about this eye shading style is ghostly?

This eye masking effect wouldn't have improved Vandala, nor would it have suited River, Kiyomi, or Porter.

Both of Vandala's eyes are intact and she wears no eyepatch, which is fine and avoids cliché, but might be a contributing factor to her giving more "grand lady" than "pirate captain". It also could have been nice to see a Monster High student with an eye loss disability because that can happen for many non-pirating reasons and such depiction could have been a sweet way to let any kids dealing with that feel acknowledged. G1 Monster High often did their representation through genre or folklore ties in ways that felt more allegorical than fully present and neutral, and adding half-blindness to Vandala would join her leg prosthetic in that category by depicting disability through a genre trope, but I wouldn't have been upset with it. I remain on this notion that fashion dolls are too afraid of not being facially classically beautiful, and this beauty standard leaves out ways to to productively depict certain kinds of injuries or deformities.

Vandala's earrings are symmetrical dark grey tentacles curled inward which also evoke the shape of fish hooks. 

The doll's cephalopod imagery is much appreciated. 

The other big sticking point for me was this big old piece over her torso, combining a chain belt with the lapels of a pirate greatcoat that she's not actually wearing. It's all solid pink, which does nothing to make it any more graceful.

Up top, the piece is sculpted like intimidating epaulettes and lapels with chains crossing over, but this doesn't make much sense to me because it's worn over a dress and...Mattel couldn't have given this doll an actual jacket and let the belt portion be the entirety of the accessory?

The waist of the piece features a buckle, with tentacles forming the "belt" and a section trailing from the buckle holding the actual sculpted chain element. The chains are sculpted in a floaty manner and have themed charms on them--a Skullette and crossbones, an anchor, and a key. All of the Haunted dolls have similar chain pieces with thematic charm links mixed in.

Here's the piece removed. The shoulders just rest over the doll shoulders, and the belt section is the only closure, shaped like tentacles with a pin/hole connection.

An orange crab was hooked onto the belt in the absolute most charming touch ever.

This was actually the seller's touch, though. It didn't come with Vandala, but it is a Monster High piece--it came with Posea Reef as one of the glowing critters in her seaweed lower body wrap!

I owned Posea previously, and might do again someday. I did not like that the little critters in her seaweed were elastic-banded on with no proper stable attachments. One of the best things about them, though, was that they glowed in the color of their plastics rather than the typical green tone. I don't know why the rest of the Great Scarrier Reef dolls' glowing parts couldn't do the same.

Revenant demonstrating typical glow plastic against the crab's.

I think maybe Posea's blue fish skeletons glowed normal phosphorescent green, but the orange pieces glowed orange and the pink ones glowed pink! The green seaweed waist overwrap on Posea which the critters are strapped to is not a glowing element.

I think the Posea crab is a really canny and adorable addition to Vandala, particularly since its claws grab her chains so well. It's hers now!

Under the chunky piece, Vandala's dress is more flowy and has a tattered, humble quality. The body is white with print of waves and pink bubbles and Kraken tentacles, while the hem is cut asymmetrically and underlaid with another asymmetric layer. The waist is trimmed with an attached knot of fabric styled as a long striped grey scarf, which came tagged down to the skirt, but I cut the tags. The under layer of the skirt and the sleeves are a sheer black fabric with metallic pink patterning of net shapes and Skullettes and don't fully enclose the arms. Similar sheer loose sleeves were used for Kiyomi, though I think they make more sense on Vandala's outfit. Kiyomi's costume referenced a Japanese sailor school uniform with her collar element, so flowy sleeves clashed with that aspect. 

The cut of the dress and the "scarf" waist tie do a good job at making the costume more rough and less refined, so while there's a gracefulness to it, it helps her pirate vibe. 

Monster High's occasional use of Kraken-attack imagery was good fun...until they decided to introduce the daughter of the Kraken as a character who had a sympathetic struggle against depictions of her and her father as evil destroyers. If we're to take Kala's story seriously, then previous and later dolls with attacking-squid imagery feel unintentionally hateful in-universe, and these costumes come across as perpetuation of stereotype within the MH world.

On Vandala's right wrist, she has a large grey cuff depicting bracelets and a ruffle.

While Vandala does have a wooden leg, both of her hands are intact and she does not have a hook. It would have been fun to see, and would have made her more piratey, but could have also run the risk of being hokey or tasteless. I'm not sure if Vandala was always a ghost or if she is the spirit of someone who lived, so the logic of her limb difference is unclear. If she was a living human with this limb difference, then having it as a ghost makes some sense, but how would a ghost who was always a ghost suffer bodily loss like that?

Regardless of the story, which isn't information we're entitled to, here are the legs.

Vandala was the first prosthetic user in the Monster High toyline, though Hexiciah Steam with his steampunk-robotic left forearm and hand preceded her in the fiction as a character debuting in the Frights, Camera, Action! special. Hexiciah got his doll some time after Vandala as a SDCC exclusive. On her right, she has a take on the wooden leg typical for pirates in fiction, though hers is quite elegantly sculpted with a realistic form rather than a peg shape, and is covered in ornate detail and has a humanoid ship's figurehead on the back.

 The leg is more translucent than the rest of her, matching the color of her hat, and is sculpted to basically include a shoe built in. When Vandala takes her shoe off on her left, the prosthetic leg is longer. Like standard G3 Frankie dolls, the prosthetic comprises the whole jointed lower leg piece but nothing more, and works with the normal hinge articulation. Vandala's prosthetic is on the opposite side of G3 Frankie's.

Here's the two MH prosthetics compared, using a Frankie with their standard G3 leg sculpt. They have other editions, like Monster Fest and Hauntlywood Mysteries, with variant leg sculpts themed to the release, though the cogs section down seems to be the same on every version of the G3 prosthetic leg. Frankie's leg often has doodles on it which have some variance, too. This edition has a unique doodle pattern.

Barbie leg prosthetics are more realistic cups over the thigh piece, and Buried Secrets editions of G3 Frankie have detachable prosthetics in lieu of knee articulation. G3 Frankie's leg prosthetic is barefoot so they wear two shoes like other dolls, while Vandala's prosthetic is functionally a shoed foot and makes her the only Monster High doll to wear a single shoe.

Here's a picture of the G3 Frankie and Barbie prosthetics (several Fashionista Barbies and a couple of Kens use the same leg visual and mechanic, but on the opposite leg and without a knee joint) and the Barbie leg removed.

Standard non-Buried Secrets G3 Frankies are the only leg-prosthetic Mattel dolls whose legs do not detach, because Vandala's wooden leg uses a Create-a-Monster joint peg that lets it pop out of the thigh. The peg itself is molded to match her skintone, while I think it probably should have matched the prosthetic. It had to be a separate peg mold from the left side anyway, so why not change the color?

CAM legs can be swapped into Vandala if you want a barefoot more modern/realistic prosthetic, and CAM dolls can wear her wooden leg.

I remember people talking about the potential for fashion packs where Vandala could get different prosthetic options in addition to more clothes, which would have been a fun idea, but it was also fairly idealistic to think Mattel would expend that much effort on a character who was definitely intended as a one-off by this phase of G1. Fashion packs were pretty much done at this point of G1, too.

Vandala's left knee uses a standard affixed G1 joint peg which is not removable CAM-style. Only her prosthetic leg is removable, not her flesh one.

The shoe Vandala is wearing is quite pretty, being translucent teal with a treasure chest on the heel spilling golden treasure. It's just a shame she only gets to wear the one!

I do understand why they made the peg leg shoe height since pirate wooden legs weren't often realistic prostheses equipped to wear shoes. If you want to restyle Vandala, though, you have to keep her in her designated shoe or find another one that matches the height of her wooden leg. 

Vandala's purse is a solid turquoise anchor with an eyepatched Skullette, a chain handle, and dangling seaweed. It's composed of two halves and there's a gap on the side, but it's not an opening piece or functional for storage.

Giant monster Gooliope Jellington got her second (and final) doll in the weirdest of places-- the Shriekwrecked line, which I believe was intended for G1 and had a good amount of work for that finished, but it then got adjusted for a G2 release. While the Shriekwrecked Gooliope doll doesn't make much sense, nor does her new hair coloring, I do like how her inclusion in a specialty line that's nothing like her makes her truly feel like she's treated as any other cast member, and the choice to reuse Vandala's purse sculpt for her, cast in gold, was a clever one that suited Gooliope's giant theme, as if she was repurposing a real anchor that would be purse-sized for her.

It could have been really fun to have Gooliope's gelatinous composition make her colors fluctuate so her palette could completely change from doll to doll, like, say, seawater Gooliope turned blue or translucent. I just...can't make sense of this one. I think maybe she needs a lot more blue to logic this color palette out somehow. Perhaps the right dress with vintage whimsical themes and blue coloring could sort her hair out and make her work. I'm so fascinated by this doll and I'd love to see how she could maybe click together with a restyle. Maybe a full blue-toned sailor dress to keep her sea theme and play off her hair, disregarding how a nautical giant blob monster is a very odd concept, or just more play on her being a giant the way her first concept emphasized better. Let her wear sails and ropes and rigging as her costume!

Vandala's body has an issue where her shoulder hinge joints can't rise parallel to her collarbone. They keep getting pushed back down a little bit. Then at one point, the pin holding her neck anchor on broke cleanly out and I had to do an unplanned neck surgery to replace the pin. Maybe the milky hard plastic type of the Haunted dolls bodies had some issues.

Vandala had a pet in the Haunted movie, an adorable cuttlefish named Aye, and I'm so disappointed the doll didn't give us the little guy. I know Haunted was well past the point where pets were included in the doll line and so most of the characters had written excuses for why they had no pets...but this was a case where a character had a canon, designed pet and we didn't get it.

I then thought about how to fix her design. 

I ultimately decided on painting most of her vinyl accessory grey, leaving pink for accents like the chains and epaulette fringe. The tentacles being included in the grey matched the earrings on a visual level. Painting the rest grey suited the jacket look of the piece and should help ground her visual design a little toward the ratty and tough like I think she deserves to be. 

Using sealants before and after painting didn't do anything to make the paint more durable, and most of the paint on the back of the belt where the clasp is flaked off from manipulating the vinyl when closing it. So I have to treat this repaint as fragile.

To edit Vandala's faceup, I wiped off her right eyebrow and had a hell of a time bundling and covering her hair so I could spray MSC onto her face while she kept her rooted hair. Once done, I took out my watercolor pencils. I darkened her pupils to a more visible purple and changed her makeup a bit to define it. I get that pastels were the game of the Haunted line, but they just do not suit a bold pirate. The doll overall needed oomph. I changed the blue eyeshadow to a darker shade and went over the pink with orange. I thought the foreign Posea crab piece really suited Vandala and her colors, and I was even thinking of adding an orange bandanna tie. I went over her lips to give her a smirk and fill in the color with the pencil tone I was using, but kept the color as close as I could with the pencils I had. Perhaps in an earlier period, I would have more aggressively edited this design and converted her to something fully grey and teal, but I challenged myself to have a lighter touch and remain within the color framework we got, just punching it up a little more. I redrew her right eyebrow in a swoop and blended it to the left by going over the left with the same pencil, but I had also carved a few linear scars into her face, including one cutting her right brow, to make her look more rugged. She's still beautiful and fun with them, and it's a big part of the brand to embrace such features. Part of the brow that wasn't meant to be scarred had gotten a cut indent in the vinyl, though, disrupting the paint to a degree I just had to live with, and through the process of sealing and tweaking, some sanding abrasions got caught in the layers and are visible in certain circumstances. I'm fine with where it ended up, though. It's a night-and-day difference that makes her feel animated!

The scars look so white because I ran through them again after sealing so they'd stand out more, but stopped doing this after my final seal layer which made them more subtle again.

I didn't attempt to replace one of her hands with a prosthesis, though, since I wouldn't know how to begin that and I didn't think she needed to have every stereotypical pirate trait. 

I boiled and curled Vandala's hair so her bangs would be more accurate and her hair would be more billowy, but this fogged up the sealant layers on her face. Fortunately, more sealant application and some minor tweaks to cover up the fogged spots fixed things back to how they were. Here's Vandala reassembled in stages with these changes made. She feels like a whole new doll.

Now her purse looks too monochromatic, but witnessing how fragile a repaint was on her torso decor, and examining the complexity of the anchor mold, discouraged me from wanting to modify it. The purse and the hat decoration can be monochromatic together.

I tried tying an orange ribbon on her as a bandanna scarf, but even imagining the tails cut to a more proper shorter length didn't sell me. It felt like a step too much, and her eyeshadow and crab are enough to balance each other.

Here's Vandala against a gradient in her colors.

And sitting on a treasure chest.

Here's restyled Vandala with restyled Dayna. Neither MH pirate was given the attitude she deserved by Mattel.

Here's Vandala being played with different kinds of lighting, including blacklight and backlighting to illuminate her translucency.

I then repeated the "water-tank" setup I did to give Gil his underwater pictures. 

I put shipwreck-y props and Vandala with fishing line around her waist into a plastic bin, filled it with water, then added dye powder (which wouldn't activate at this temperature) to color and cloud the water. This type didn't get the water as murky as the type I used for Gil, so the edges of the bin weren't hidden (maybe I needed more dye in, but I didn't want to remove all clarity of the scene). The door piece is weighed down by rocks. The chain was intended to just be thematic visual flavor, but it proved essential to pin down Vandala's torso just with its weight, preventing her from floating upwards perpendicular to the scene and breaking the water's surface. With Gil, I tied down his neck and one leg, but I only put the waist tie on Vandala before adding the water, so the heavy chain rescued the setup. I like all of the shots, but I picked the last one here for my cover since that was the one where it was clearest I used actual water to take the photo.

Lastly, I used the Pepper's Ghost effect, reflecting her off a pane of glass in front of a scene of wooden shelves in my closet, framed like the interior of a ship. Because Vandala is so asymmetrical, I had to remember to flip the pictures in post so the photos, depicting her mirror reflection, had the right "true to life, but translucent" effect!

This one's not mirrored, but it looked better this way than flipped.

Then I reflected some of her pieces on top of the treasure chest as if showing them set down at the end of the day.

Vandala Doubloons isn't the most recommendable doll in G1. Her design looks really clunky with her big pink vinyl lapels/belt piece, the doll overall feels faint and dainty for a pirate, her hairstyle doesn't fully match the source material, she doesn't have her awesome pet from the special, and her face is very bland and seriously lacking in attitude. However, her colors have promise with her gorgeous teal and translucent pinkish brown, her sculpts are great with her collar, purse, hat, earrings, and especially her prosthetic, and she's a depiction of disability and prosthetic use that's pretty fair under G1's way of doing representation through encoding and archetypal connections.

I think Vandala needs a lot of help to feel more lively and cohesive and presentable, and not every change is durable. The paint on her harness is not sturdy and chips off, and while acrylic paint on the bare untreated vinyl would be more flexible, it'd also risk peeling or sticking onto surfaces it touched, so there's no winning. The bare piece looks bad and fixes for it are not going to be hardy ones. At the end of it all, Vandala's worth to me is was primarily through the challenge of taking a really weak doll design and finding the least dramatic ways to pull her all together. I had fun finding a way to make Vandala work while adhering pretty close to her look and full palette. She hasn't become an all-timer in the brand for me, and I expect if I had the four Haunted debut characters, she wouldn't bump herself up from the bottom spot in my ranking, but with some face changes and some painting on her chest piece, she took some really pretty photos and kept pirate season alive--or dead, such as it may be!