Sleepy Tea: Monster High G3 Skulltimate Secrets Garden Mysteries Twyla by Mattel

 Time for our last garden glam ghoul in Skulltimate Secrets Series 5!

Twyla was last on my list after Venus and Draculaura because she didn't seem quite as standout, and I didn't love her designed hairstyle, even though I saw what they were going for.

I tend not to like Twyla's hair done in especially youthful shapes like pigtails, since her G1 character made such an impression on me by being so level-headed and mature in her demeanor, and that's permeated my expectations for the G3 dolls. However, I did understand that Garden Mysteries Twyla had some very promising accessories, and far and away one of the best purses I've seen from the brand. I also liked seeing her in this tea-party setting because Twyla was actually the first G3 doll seen drinking tea, in her first edition! Her cooler, moodier palette also had promise, though I was unsure about her fashion combos with pieces that seemed too bright and saturated for the tone.

I haven't checked in on Twyla since Neon Frights in 2023. She's had a pretty good run as a recurring G3 staple, though, getting her third doll with Fearbook, her fourth with Garden Mysteries here, and her fifth with the upcoming budget Buried Secrets Haunted Dance series. I actually like that one and see potential, if she can get a fully-articulated body and a ball costume befitting her awesome mask. I never got Fearbook because I saw something a little too cutesy about her hairstyle. I know that's incredibly easily fixed with the removal of her back hair ties, but then her hair colors and faceup felt a little uninspiring to me. I also respect her tabletop RPG theme and like her accessories, but I'm not in that scene myself, so it held no draw for me.

Still a "maybe", but not quite a "gimme".

Alright, perfunctory photos of Garden Mysteries Twyla's box:

Twyla's toaster is dark purple with her G3 blue for the doors and a desaturated blue for the key hubs. To match Twyla's palette, her nonsense color lens on the key is blue and works to isolate the red in the images on the instruction sheet, rather than vice-versa. The only problem is that the "hidden" images are painfully, piercingly obvious when it's red covered by blue, rendering the lens pitful. To be clear, the gimmick is a waste on the other dolls too, but the red lenses against red pattern hiding blue imagery are a more effective trick.

You could honestly argue the lens reduces the contrast and slightly obscures the image!

I dispensed with the order of operations this time and yanked Twyla's tray out of the chute without opening the locker doors or removing the key/instructions pieces.

Twyla had just two head tags securing her, like Draculaura (why did Venus only have one?) Here she is out of the tray, wearing the same designated pieces as the rest of GM, and like Drac, her faked socks are slid far further up her legs than they're meant to be.

Twyla's hair is immediately disappointing. Its shape simply isn't the elegant side-part across the face shown in the stock photos, nor is that shape possible with the hair only having two ponytail ties and no gel or special styling. It's also fried like Draculaura's was. Ugh. I'm guessing it's polypropylene, but whatever it is doesn't feel great or offer much promise.

The inverted color balance from Twyla's usual and the side part make this hair look pretty similar to G1 Coffin Bean, just with the hair in ponytails and the mint switched to electric blue. This is the same color as Neon Frights Twyla's blue hair, not the greener tone of Creepover and Fearbook Twyla (which is still a different shade from G1's mint).

Coffin Bean before I restyled her--she's meant to have a side part with a swoop tied down across her face.

I was able to pull the ponytails a little to get it a little better.

Eh?

Later on, I found the best way to achieve the stock-photo parting was to pull the front into a separate lock and tie it to the opposite side of the hair, tucked into the ponytail on her left. Unfortunately, her hair texture is pretty bad and the part wouldn't go tight enough for it to be something I wanted.

I tried letting it down to see if that was an improvement, and I guess so, but it might also not be interesting enough. I kept on with Twyla's hair let down for the first look-over, but I was already thinking of a new idea for her in restyling.

I do like Twyla's face. She's got side-glancing eyes to her left (though her left eye is looking less leftward than her right!) and the simplest makeup of the series, with big purple swoops, leaf forms and lepidopterans (I'm assuming moths rather than butterflies?) under her eyes. I love her metallic dark periwinkle lipstick.

This Twyla's eyes don't glow in the dark.

Twyla's dress and corset are on out of the box, as expected. Her corset is her bright blue tone and is unique to her, with a quilted spider on the front and a softer rounded spiderweb frame than Draculaura's.

I didn't have any trouble closing this corset on Twyla. Of the three GM dolls, only Venus's corset pin struggled to push through the hole.

Twyla's black dress is a sleeveless cut with a tight round neckline, and is printed with purple and magenta flowers that look like they're bioluminescent, as well as featuring Skullettes and closed flowers that look like they have faces. The use of Skullettes feels like a break in style since Venus and Drac's black dresses didn't have them. Did they just run out of imagery to use on Twyla's? As with the others, the dress opens all the way down the back.

Twyla's socks aren't footie pieces, like Drac's weren't, but they're even shorter.

They can tuck into her shoes if you shove her big toes into the netting and make the socks catch on her feet, but they don't stay pulled up tight on her shins. Drac's socks were able to pull up high enough on her legs to lie snug after catching the net on her toes. These just should have been footie socks and sewn better.

I do like the shoes. They're fairly familiar to Twyla's footwear, with book heels continuing G3 Twy's dusty-library motif, and platforms with a plastery wall texture. The tops of the toes look quilted and the soles have filigree and keyholes. 

I always love the furniture and house motifs as theming, since Twyla's a boogeyman, a monster who makes you afraid of your familiar surroundings. This kind of architectural haunted-house costume theming would suit a ghost pretty well, but Spectra and her monster type just commanded spooky chains, leaving the atmosphere of a creepy house to Twyla--entirely to her benefit. It's always been one of my favorite Monster High design concepts.

It turns out Twyla's leg shadows use the same screening as Fearbook Twyla, down to including the tabletop gaming die on her foot. That was a cute thematic touch on gaming-club Fearbook Twyla, but it's unwelcomely lazy being copied onto her next edition where it's not relevant and was clearly only transferred over because they didn't care. 

I really like the idea of Twyla's body shadows containing imagery themed to the doll release, but when that imagery is clearly themed to the last doll and just wasn't removed, it's disappointing to see. It'd be like Monster Fest Frankie's special disco-ball prosthetic sculpt continuing to a hypothetical Garden Mysteries edition of them. It just wouldn't work.

I then opened the locker doors. Here's the mystery packet design, themed on Twyla's shirt piece. The pattern is the same, as is the color of the pattern.

Here's the contents of the packets laid out.

The lever for the toaster isn't necessary, but here's what it looks like. The sculpt of the backing piece features woodgrain, a flower with a button sewn in, reaching hands, and wispy tendrils and bell flowers.

Here's her alternate costume parts--the sheer shirt, satin overlay top, velour skirt, and strappy shoes.

I already have hangups on account of how saturated the skirt and top are. Twyla's velour skirt is all blue with a bow in the middle of the waist and vertical seams but no notches in the edge, and her satin top is violet with lace trim and two ribbon straps. Her shirt is cropped high and is purple with violet foil print and is sewn with baggy gathered long sleeves.

The shirt and skirt work fine, I guess. Draculaura was the only doll in the trio I felt couldn't get away with wearing the shirt on its own. Twyla and Venus scrape by despite the sheer material.

The satin top and skirt work fine, too. I just don't like how vibrant this all is. The appeal of this Twyla should have focused more on muted cool purples.

The shoes are really nice. While the other GM dolls' equivalent pieces were taller and depicted sandals, Twyla's are shorter and depict a boot shape. The sides have a spiderweb-cutout shape while the heels are spiders on web arcs. The soles have a woodgrain texture.

Because the toes are covered in these boots, this is the only colorful shoe in GM where the footless socks could be worn reasonably well, but Twyla's are so short that the boots would enclose them fully.

Here's the shirt, skirt, boots, and satin top all together.

At this point, I remembered Twyla has earrings. Hers are two symmetrical molds, unlike Draculaura's using one mold on both sides, and depict translucent light blue flowers.

And here's the corset on--the "everything but the socks, first shoes, and dress" combo.

Here's variations of the shirt layered under the black dress. This is the only base I think really works for her.

Then it all falls apart once the satin top goes over the dress. I'm convinced the satin tops were not designed for layering over the dresses, only the shirts, but Mattel still advertised the combos because they were possible and inflated the total of permutations.

Twyla's tea accessories see her bringing a gingerbread haunted house to the party, which is perhaps a bit Christmasy, but cookie houses suit a tea party and Halloween takes on the tradition have been marketed a lot. Twyla's teacup is purple with a web and swirl sculpt, and the form emerging from her cup has a dangling rabbit.

The gingerbread house comes on a silver serving tray, but is removable, with two pegs on the tray holding the house on. The house has some nice paint with frosted ghosts, a front door, and a Skullette top window, but the front is the only painted side.

The tray has detail on the underside, too.

I think the house coming off the tray makes more sense than Drac's cupcakes coming off her dessert stand, because at least an icing-glued house works as a single piece removed from the server, while the cupcakes are all molded as one element joined together and thus it's fairly pointless to remove them for the tray. If there were individual cupcakes that could come off the tray, then Draculaura's tongs might be useful and the cupcakes could be distributed around a tea table for her friends. 

Twyla's hands can slide into the bone handles of the tray fairly well.

I think the gingerbread house is a fun idea. It could be a table centerpiece pre-prepared, or it could be something the ghouls made during the party as an activity and a treat in one. 

The house has a visible peg on the back, which intrigued me.

Twyla's small tea accessory is just a separate gingerbread cookie, depicting a wispy bunny ghost.

The finger loop on the cookie has a second function--it attaches to that peg on the back of the house to let it be a part of the cookie sculpture that can "break off" when someone wants to grab a piece to eat!

That's super clever and incredibly charming to me. I love this little bit of interactivity. It also makes good storage for the cookie piece! I criticized Draculaura's tongs and cupcakes for not being functionally interactive, but this cookie here is very elegant and has two functions--attach to the house or be held by a doll!

I...also got another pair of tongs.

At first, I thought this was an error, since Draculaura had this piece, it wouldn't make sense to give them to Twyla too, and the stock photos of this doll didn't feature the tongs, but they're inventoried on the back of the instruction sheet, so this isn't some factory error. 

They're meant to be here.

I don't know why Twyla has this piece. They don't interact with anything in her stock, and I can't honestly believe any tea party would be so hoity-toity as to use tongs for prying cookies off a gingerbread house. These pieces didn't have any physical displayable interactivity with Draculaura's cucpakes either, so it's baffling. These could have maybe been tongs for a sugar bowl if Twyla had one to speak of. Twyla's accessories were so close to perfect, but then we get useles repetitive tongs.

They can go on the gingerbread house too, but that's not intended.

Twyla's purse is a smash; one of the all-timers for Monster High as a whole. While keeping the ornate designer look of the series, Twyla's purse depicts a haunted house.

It's such a fun concept, and again, perhaps a less creative franchise would have given this to a ghost doll. Mattel even sculpted it clearly for Twyla with the bunny door, invalidating its use for another G3 Spectra edition if we ever get one (seriously, what happened to her?) This and the bed-shaped G1 Haunted shoes are two of my favorite Twyla boogeymonster ideas ever. If we're to nitpick, the purse breaks from the patterned-print visual style of the other two, but really, are you going to complain about a haunted house purse?

The purse is really detailed inside as well, and can hold her tongs or the separate cookie.

Twyla's hair down looked fine, I suppose, while her stock photo hairstyle was basically unachievable with this hair quality, even if I was sure I did really want that look for her. I was coming around to the "cute" appeal of the intended hair look, but thought I could achieve the tone in a totally different way--by giving her a wavy short curled hairstyle, vintage-like. That would hopefully make her hair problems less obtrusive and give her a unique hair look that flattered her design. I rolled up her whole head in pipe cleaners and boiled away. To then keep the top of her head flattened down, I invoked hat-hair by popping a G3 Ghoulia beanie onto the head and boiling down on top of the beanie to hopefully keep the top of the hair pressed down while the curls stayed loose below.

I felt fully vindicated. This hairstyle makes all the difference!

I think the swirly shape resonates with her shadow wisps, and the silhouette is just right for the refined glam of this series, while also hitting a "cute" note without feeling kiddie. I'm very pleased.

Here's some garden pictures in daylight. I took these photos last and added them on the day after initial publication.

My vision for staging Twyla's garden scenery was based on two key concepts: I shoot at night, and I put her on a recline, having her tea on a bed-themed piece of furniture! Twyla is the type to have a midnight tea party and her visuals invite a magical soft-lit nighttime photoshoot, and I thought creating a reclining piece themed on a bed would be the perfect touch for her. 

To make the piece, I put together two wood bocks from the craft store, then added a wooden round-ended gift tag piece as a headboard and some wooden posts from a doll bed. The legs are my trusty wooden spools, and the piece got painted black and varnished.

I went to the craft store directly after buying Twyla, so I was able to hold up the craft store's wood pieces to the center of the toaster so I could get the sizing right for the doll. G1 Twyla unfortunately released after the huge Dead Tired G1 sleepy line and all of its associated bed playsets. 

To make a mattress, I took some foam and wrapped it in a purple paisley fabric I bought. It's taller than I wanted it to be, leaving the headboard too short, but this isn't meant to be a literal indoor sleep bed, anyway. It's a fancy piece of garden furniture styled after a bed. I tried making a bed skirt to put under the mattress, but I found the look was worse with it on and leaving just the mattress and frame made it look more like a garden piece of iron and a cushion. I pushed a craft flower into the hole in the headboard, with the center being a Q-tip head poking out the back of the board.

The table I built for Draculaura got reused for Twyla's scenery, just without the pieces giving it an umbrella canopy. I gathered some accessories--G3 Dustin and the mug both from Creepover Twyla, and some props to pile into the scene--signature G3 Draculaura's textbook, Gloom and Bloom Amanita's purple floral photo binder, closed, and Neon Frights Twyla's cookie plate and book of shadow puppets. I was looking everywhere for Neon Frights' lantern piece because it would suit this Twyla's photoshoot so perfectly, and couldn't find it anywhere--nor Neon Frights' purse. I thought maybe they were lost or got given away inside a Skulltimate Secrets locker until I had the right idea to reread my 2023 review of Neon Frights Twyla, which told me exactly where those pieces ended up.

I'd put the purse on Creepover's wrist, and had the lantern threaded on her belt! Thank goodness for documentation! It's funny how sometimes checking my display dolls is the answer for where a misplaced piece is. I never think to look on the shelf because that becomes "in order" in my mind even when I've swapped pieces around in a restyle.

I put some blue craft flowers in the same photo spot in the garden and situated Twyla on her bed, going for more of a fairy's bower in tone this time. I got the lantern hung on real plants and held down the stem by pushing it under a fake flower bloom, and in earlier photos, I put lights inside some flowers for a glowy effect, but the light was so warm it messed with the color editing of the pictures, so I took it out for the later photos, where I picked out the flowers with blacklight instead. The blacklight had to keep above Twyla since she didn't react well with it (her head glows pink while the rest of the body does nothing).

Lights in flowers, lantern not added

Flowers highligjted by UV.

Then I took a few pictures of her sat up.

I envy Twyla so much here. I think this scenery is magical, and to curl up with a book and a cup of tea in a blue fairy garden would be wonderful. Unfortunately for me, the real garden was very buggy and I had to pack up after not being able to take it anymore!

I then relocated the bed and dressed it more for actual sleep, setting up a bedroom with the toaster box as Twyla's closet. To have her crawling out under the bed, I turned her torso joint backward so her hips could tilt her body up. G3 hips don't swing backward, and if I didn't want Twyla looking straight at the floor, she needed her waist to turn upward, so her bust swiveled to face the wrong way and her hidden legs prevent the contortion from being seen. I played with different lighting with this pose.

Then I took a token picture of Twyla looking at clothes from her wardrobe--as if she would ever choose them over her current outfit.

And some pictures of reading in bed. Now this I can actually manage for myself. I don't have magic gardens, but I do have a cozy room.

I took some pictures with the lantern.

Then I silhouetted Twyla and Dustin against a wall as shadows cast into the scene. This is a fully practical in-camera shot.

Here's a G3 Twyla comparison, with Fearbook not represented as I don't have her. 

I did some restyling and totally changed GM's hair shape, but there's still a striking difference. Creepover is the most familiar, with a lot of 13 Wishes in her design. Neon Frights is the most modern Twyla has ever looked, with dark lips and less antique theming that she still manages to rock. With her dark hair, fancy clothes, and muted makeup, GM Twyla is the moodiest and most elegant, having a real sense of vintage refinement and magic to her theme, though the original hairstyle made her less compelling to me. I struggle to think Fearbook Twyla could hold her own as a distinctive tone compared to these three, but I'm still willing to give her a chance sometime. 

Garden Mysteries Twyla is pretty flawed. Her hair fiber evidently did not hold up well at all, or else was just never made well, and her hairstyle doesn't live up to the polish of the stock photos, and isn't tied in a way where it ever could have. Even if it was done right, I just disagree with the hairstyle choice for the doll. I also found myself doing by far the least fashion play with GM, because only one outfit combination really played to the strengths of her faceup and set her palette apart from other Twylas in a cohesive way. Her skirt and satin top are too saturated for this doll, and didn't appeal to me, so I basically stayed with the dress, shirt, and corset with socks and dark shoes. 

However...the costume combo that works is beautiful. GM Twyla's got some of my favorite Monster High accessories in a long time. Her haunted house purse is fantastic, and the gingerbread house with the breakaway holdable cookie is terrific. And once I had the idea of how to redeem her hairstyle...she became completely cohesive and enchanting to me, to the point that she didn't need alternate looks at all. I really love my Twyla with this hair restyle, and with it, she puts up a fight against Draculaura and Venus. Had Mattel styled her this way at the factory, I might not have put her last in my schedule! With a little work and just the right clothes combination, she's a lovely doll. 

I'm going to do a brief post and photoshoot very shortly for all three of the Garden Mysteries dolls together, serving as a summation and final-thoughts segment, so that will wait for just a short bit. Until then!