Time for another reflection! The last day of the year always comes quicker than I expect and blindsides me! I swear, the post-Christmas stretch of December used to feel longer...
No year or decade is ever a hard snap to something new based on the calendar date, and my blogging years don't hard-snap either. My start of 2024 was continuing off where I was in 2023, and my start of 2025 was where I ended in 2024. Riding off the momentum of my Living Dead Dolls Christmas celebrations, I had some reviews left over to finish of items I debuted during the calendar series, and I stayed in the brand for a good while, up to a LDD birthday post and several more roundup reviews. However, in June, I started to switch up and go back to Monster High in a big way as I started picking up on G3 dolls I needed catching up on and some collector dolls. I'd already figured it out, but Monster High and Living Dead Dolls are competitive separate doll hobbies, and I can't easily split my focus between them because they're apples and oranges in their ways and participating in one brand gives me very different engagement than the other. I get sucked in and it's hard to juggle, so it turns into more of a balance of immersion periods between one brand or the other.
2023 was firmly a Monster High year, while starting LDD in 2024 immersed me deep into the brand to the point that Monster High fell to the background. Switching back, as I did this spring and summer, was probably inevitable.
Mattel's had a pretty good run of
MH this year. They went another full year with zero G3 boy dolls, which sucks. Skullector hasn't improved universally and we're still getting off-target gender-swap dolls, but the design quality has possibly risen to some degree, with the
Us and
Alien sets being some of the best in the licensed line. As for new characters in the playline, we got G3
Cupid,
Jinafire, and
Nefera, all of whom I enjoyed. Poor Cupid's hair hasn't stayed as curly as I made it.
Welcome Committee Frankie finally made it out of development hell, and their presence during Pride 2025 was very significant and much appreciated. Venus retained a firm grasp on her status as one of the best-designed G3 dolls knocking it out of the park again with her
Fearbook doll. I also did a series reviewing all of the Garden Mysteries series, though these were 2024 dolls reviewed late. On a personal level, I finally got together a better complete copy of my old
Inner Monster Feisty/Love doll. She had been the true impetus of my doll hobby at large, though she was far from my first acquisition, and had such bad plastic yellowing that I needed to replace several parts before I could review her with justice. That doll had been my most overdue blog topic, and yet I completely forgot about that post when assembling the cover photo. If I had a do-over, I'd squeeze her or her pieces in. Sorry, Valentina! I also took some time to do photographic justice to some 2023 review subjects who just didn't get their due because I reviewed them too early. That had been fun. I had plans for a couple other revisits that just didn't get off the ground (yet) and there was a restyle project I wanted to do with Slo Mo which just totally lost steam. Maybe I'll come back to it if my gesrt feels in it again.
In terms of LDD collecting this year, there were many achievements. I completed my
Series 1 Living Dead Dolls and Return LDD parallel collections. While I got her late in '24,
LDD Series 12 Frozen Charlotte is kind of a 2025 doll because I got her review finished and published this year. I had a great time staging a
birthday celebration for myself with a fantastic LDD haul. I adore
LDD Hazel and Hattie, two of my birthday prizes. My biggest LDD grail doll so far was acquired for my birthday--the
variant edition of Toxic Molly. I'd say that commitment has been rewarded; the Tumblr post of art photos I made with Molly to advertise the blog review is one of my best-performing on my whole Tumblr blog, slowly and steadily crawling up in notes. Something about the doll or my photos with her connected to people, even if I don't have a way to know that the Tumblr post brought this main blog many more regular readers. I get some lovely interaction in my Tumblr notes, but also, please feel free to leave comments on these blog posts if you're a lurker or a note-responder. I see the feedback and I love to get it.
Another major project, which I started in '24 but shared first this year, is LDD Minis Sadie's
Living Dead Dollhouse. This custom dollhouse renovation has been a lot of fun, but I've admittedly left it untouched for most of the year. I don't consider it complete yet, but it's something to come back to. The other major LDD post for me was the acquisition of the
three Wonderland Alice dolls. The gimmick of the size-altered exclusive big-and-small set and the potential to have all three renditions of the design together was irresistible for an
Alice devotee like me, and I'm very proud to have the set and to have staged them in such fun photos.
On the curatorial side, completing the structure of a
LDD death certificate collection binder was a very satisfying project that lets me quickly and tidily archive future certificates or paper materials from the dolls as a way to document and order the collection in lieu of the ability, at present, to assemble all of my dolls in a dedicated gallery.
I also completed my
second round of uncomfortable LDD reviews. It's an important series to me which features some of my best, if labored, writing and analysis of dolls that warrant discussion regarding their themes. I'd love to continue with them. I have one doll for the next batch, know what two others would be, and honestly don't know if the fourth I have in mind is possible to get. I'd only want to keep the doll's variant edition, which seems relatively unthinkable, so I might have to select another doll in their stead. Adjacent to the uncomfortable series is the topic of the Fashion Victims, Series 1 in particular. The Fashion Victims discussion has finally gotten off the ground with my purchase of dolls for that review. Expect that soon!
The love for LDD or my focus on collecting from the brand hasn't left, but it seems to be one or the other prioritized, and deep immersion calls for a resurfacing and a change in rhythm at a certain point. There are definite benefits to collecting Monster High over LDD. The currently-releasing playline material is cheaper, while LDD's only current output is high-end and collector-priced. The dolls from any category of MH (save the Frightfully Tall models, the Beast Freaky Friends, and Treesa) take up less space and are massively easier to store, especially since I have no hangups about keeping packaging for MH. (For space reasons, it would be logical to get rid of my LDD coffins, and I might have to make that call at some point in the future, but for now, I see them as genuinely practical safe packaging for the dolls to be stored in, and with LDDs having more fragile elements than playline dolls, I can't sacrifice that.) MH dolls also tend to just be better quality than LDD and more dynamic models. The larger mainstream availability of MH releases as well as the large customizer audience also makes sourcing replacement parts for any edition far far easier than for any LDD. People have parted out practically every Monster High edition to sell individual pieces from. I get a Monster High Home Ick Frankie Stein (if I wanted her) without her apron, and I'm finding a loose apron copy from eBay in two minutes, and before shipping, it's probably less than $10. I get a Living Dead Dolls Squeak without one of her mittens, and I basically have to get a whole other copy of the doll I can verify is complete and declare the first one a loss. Both G1 Monster High and classic LDD are finished runs and thus are closed pools of dolls I'm working my way through in my goals to get all I want to keep or document and discuss, so every acquisition from either wishlist does represent progress, rather than a step forward into an expanding infinity. It's just not universally easier to get one over the other. Old MH can be no joke on the aftermarket. It sounds like there are a lot of reasons MH is simply better to collect, and...it is. I know my love for LDD is irrational. I'm okay admitting that!
While my year pivoted from LDD to
MH for a time, this didn't fully shift my year, either, as I also dived more broadly into LEGO topics and turned it into a genuine pillar of my repertoire this year, particularly as I built a mammoth deep-dive into its spooky Halloween and adjacent material this October--starting
here. I also explored a few more miscellaneous toys and dolls. I overall ended up with more of a loose and exploratory format, and 2025's blogging ended up a little more like 2023's than 2024's. I deliberately kept it looser in terms of formatting projects this time--while 2024 gave me lots of ideas for other grand plans and projects to execute, I didn't end up doing most of them this year, and chose to go more with the flow and put fewer demands on myself in terms of arranging topics. While the lower demands on myself were probably healthy and a good break, I'm itching to get back into some bigger projects like I did in '24.
In terms of photos, I did step up a bit by getting a free Photoshop alternative with which to execute more ambitious ideas or just to touch up pieces that were mostly right and needed tweaks. Toxic Molly demanded the software for her cover photo, and I quickly found a sense of synergy as I was able to add atmospheric/environmental effects to some scenes as well as transforming the raw photo location when it had some incongruent or distracting scenery. It hasn't always been perfect, but the best edits have been some of my best pieces.
Here are some of my favorite photos from this year's posts.
While it's been fun and valuable to catch up on Monster High and broaden my scope, I'm expecting another pivot back to LDD in 2026, readership be damned. I feel like that brand has been creatively satisfying to me in a way my other toy subjects haven't, and I've had the most fun making my own artistic content with LDD compared to the other brands I feature. Monster High is awesome, but playline MH doll photos usually amount to glamor shots and I often feel spent on photos of the dolls faster. (Not that it's a bad thing to not produce dozens of pictures per doll!) Skullector has a built-in aesthetic and iconic scenes to pursue depicting with each character, so I've had a lot of fun with that, but non-licensed LDD tends to be the most consistently inspiring toy brand to me. The mix of horror and temporal aesthetics provides a strong narrative grounding and there are just so many tones and looks in the eclectic cast that I get to sink my teeth into with many different visual styles. I'd love to get some more of my plans with LDD done--like review projects with Series 31, 30, 34, and 35 (not promising more than two of these in one year, though!), as well as just more LDD Roundups. I love LDD Roundups. I've also made moves to try rerooting for hair rescue of precious LDDs whose hair has badly failed to hold up, like Series 1 Sadie, Series 12 Chloe, Series 8 Faith, and Series 3 Lottie. Fingers crossed I get good results.
While I may dive back into the fetid waters of LDD, I won't forget about Monster High. I know G3 Skelita and Robecca are on their way to shelves imminently and I can't wait to find them, so I expect those to be early-year posts as soon as I can get them. I might get Creeproduction Robecca to compare to my G1 original, too, just because I've not yet had the opportunity to put a Creepro next to the original before...and my poor ghoul has some hair issues and is missing the pendulum on her clock bag, so a Creepro could be an upgrade. My Robecca was wonderful in her moment, but if I get a better copy for cheaper, I'm all in. Creeproduction is also reproducing the School's Out G1 doll line, but I have zero interest in those dolls (beyond, maybe, Lagoona) so I'll pass there. I'll also need to remind myself that I must always be on standby for Mattel Creations' next surprise drop so I'll be ready for a Designer Series or Skullector release I can't miss. (I'm really curious about what 2026's Designer Series doll might be; I love a new G1 character, Corazòn was fun, and I did get Lenore after the fact--the moment she went on sale--to open and review this coming spring when the garden will suit her!) I still can't believe Mattel are actually apparently making the couple pack of Valentine and Spelldon, and that could be a highlight of the year. Mattel making a set of two boys, who are in love, and who are also very high-demand doll characters, must be celebrated. If it's a Pride release as is rumored, I'll make that my June celebration. (Valentine must necessarily have a different design from his SDCC doll, but I hope both boys suit Pride without being in outfits that limit them only to the celebration.) I'm looking forward to the idea of another Pride post to celebrate. I love doing holiday posts to mark the passage of the year and add cheer to the time. 2025 has been a very stressful anxious time to be alive, so any bit of joy and structure I can mine from my hobbies improves my day-to-day.
I'm looking forward to what 2026 will hold for this blog. Thank you for reading!
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