Mechanical Marvels, Part 3: Robecca Returns!

I hadn't expected my first post in this series to get a sequel, let alone a third installment! Here, we're bringing back attention to Robecca Steam, because after years of inactivity in the brand (she was last seen in 2016), Robecca's finally come back both ways--with a Creeproduction of her signature G1 doll and with her signature G3 debut! Both of these dolls have felt fairly overdue--it's been a couple years of asking "when's Robecca coming back?"

Robecca lost to Rochelle in a Fang Vote contest for which character would get a collector doll (an injustice in my book), but she's back in both generations now. I got the original G1 signature Robecca doll for myself as a Christmas gift in 2023, since she was and is one of my favorite G1 designs which I'd never owned previously. I still think G1 Robecca is stunning, but I was curious: How did G3's debut stack up, and would a Creeproduction doll be an upgrade or a disappointment?

Since I have the original sig Robecca, I thought it would be worth comparing to the Creepro doll, an opportunity of comparison I haven't yet had! I've never had the definite original of a doll who got Creeproduced, so this comparison opportunity just became possible now that an original signature doll I do own has been remade!

I have great fondness for my signature Robecca. She was a Christmas gift to self at the end of 2023, and was a great bit of distraction and relief once I found myself spending the holiday alone and miserable with COVID-19 days before the 25th, and causing me to miss the whole celebration thereafter. I spent some awful empty days until I was feeling at least operational again, and opened Robecca to work with her. I love this doll design to bits, but I can't lie and say the opportunity to have a new copy through the Creeproduction wasn't attractive. The old doll was in good condition and hasn't deteriorated in my care, but her hair is fairly dry, and felt rooted in a shapeless manner, while her purse is missing the little pendulum dangle on the bottom. If the Creepro doll proved to be a quality upgrade, I'd take it. I wasn't so confident on the hair prospects after the stark disappointment with the hair of Fang Club Scarah, though.

G3 Robecca was a pleasant surprise. While her body sculpt seemed to have less thorough sculpting, it also seemed to be more logical sculpting, and more than I expected. Her body looked like tidier plating rather than a patchwork of rivets, and she had some more thoughtful details depicting plausible clockwork mechanisms in ways the original doll didn't. While G1 Robecca was the watershed for all-over body detail, her detail was uniform and mostly just texture rather than depicting much mechanical plausibility. I was excited to see G3 taking more from Elle Eedee in terms of providing a believable speculative sculpt where more of the workings can be envisioned. I didn't have high hopes for every piece of Robecca's body being detailed, given G3's very resistant track record, but she still looked nice.

Here's her box. 

Robecca is depicted with the v3 signature dolls.

V3 sig Frankie looked more interesting in stock photos, and I still think I'd like them more with the pink elements replaced. I just want a doll where they're only yellow, black, and blue. Draculaura is the best of the bunch, and maybe I can try Cleo with a catch-up run through MH dolls. I think I want Self-Scare Venus first, though. That ghoul refuses to have a bad doll.

Here's the back of the box and profile snippet.

Here's the doll unboxed.

The biggest relief for me was G3's color palette. I was glad to see none of the purple that became G1's ill-suited tertiary color. Robecca sticks to copper and blue, and adds lighter tones of white and powder blue and gold which serve the opulent Victorian notes well. G1 sig Robecca is edgier with her darker color palette, but all of those G1 colors survive in G3. I think G3 Robecca has a pronounced Art Nouveau aspect to her look as well, with several filigree flourishes that didn't really define the G1 character. 

Robecca's hair is a mix of canny and ill-advised. I definitely appreciate that she has a center part, which suits her Victorian theme perfectly. That was very fashionable in the period. I'm not so sure about the way the part has been combed out and sewn down, and I don't know if the half-up style does her any favors. The way the hair has been styled, the roots of the top ponytail are poking out from under the center-parted side locks, and the hair sewn into its position doesn't flatter the doll at all. 

The top ponytail does have a fun golden gear hair ornament. I don't think it justifies the hair shape, though.

The front locks are all the blue shades, while the top ponytail also has blue streaks. The back is black. 

Like too many (possibly all?) Monster High dolls I've encountered recently, the hair has fried ends right out the gate. What is the factory doing???

Robecca's face is markedly less fierce, as G3 is seemingly so wont to do. I am impressed by the retention of detail, however, and the softer looks suits the design at large. 

Robecca still has the robot details on the head that G1 did, with rivets on the forehead, above the brow, and visible seam plating all around her face explaining how her head was assembled from hammered metal sheets. The G3 seams have subtle differences, but I'm so glad to see them all here. The G3 seams include some skeletal jawbone echoes.

Here's the G1 plates in comparison, which remained a standout level of head/face detail molding throughout G1.

Robecca's face keeps her cogwheel irises and I like her blue and yellow eye makeup.

Her lips are closer to a nude shade, which reminds me of G1's Gore-geous Accessories doll. The eyes look more natural, but also less sharp, and have sparkle-shaped reflections. G1's eyes can look a bit distorted at times, but she's got killer attitude. G1 Robecca is one of my favorite G1 faces. G3 Robecca's face design is less standout beyond the robot detail.

G3 Robecca is basically the same shimmer copper color, but I find some of her body looks less warm and lustrous than G1's pieces do. It feels backward to me that the G3 mummies are a more radiant glowy shimmer brown tones than the copper robot. 

Nefera looks more like walking copper than Robecca.

Apparently, Rebecca Shipman (doll designer and Robecca's namesake) made the confirmation that G3 Robecca is canonically an Indian character, putting an old question to bed. G1 Robecca has elements which can be interpreted as Indian coding thanks to her British nationality, brown coloring, facial features, and rather Desi-looking cyborg dad, but it was never made text. Apparently, now Robecca being Indian is text and people were basically right about G1 all along! That's awesome. G1 Robecca being Indian-coded made for one of the lightest-handed and least potentially offensive cultural representations within G1, which often got ham-fisted and pretty stereotypical with other cultures, but I would naturally be open to seeing Robecca's Indian roots explored more textually as well in the spirit of non-objectifying celebration of her heritage. 

Robecca's G3 earrings are powder blue, and I think this is the wrong color. Copper red to match her boots and contrast her hair would be a better move. In her right ear, she has a stud of small cogs, and the left-ear piece is more of a cuff shape, but has only one earring pin in the standard placement. 

On her neck, Robecca has a golden chain necklace, and I discovered this was not at all designed to work with this costume. 

The neck of the clothing is so thick while the prongs of the necklace are so short that it doesn't easily clip around the frill on the top and wants to ride up in a way where it gets in the way of that high neck frill or squeeze forward off the neck. Poorly thought-out.

Robecca's outfit is daintier than G1, but feels like a fair design for the Victorian theme, while retaining several aspects of G1, like a pleather section and black with blue and gold patterning. 

The outfit is actually a separate top and shorts with a cage belt, not a romper--which I appreciate. 

The top section is made to look like a tank over a sheer blouse, but is all one piece with decorative ribbon straps. The tank section is powder blue filigree in the middle, dark blue harlequin with gold outline on the sides, and the blouse section has puffed sleeves and a tight neck with a frill above it. 

This is an outfit that can make the doll look a bit shrugged and hunched by swallowing her neck. 

The shorts are glossy relatively thick pleather which may one day age horribly--not sure. For now, they look fine, and I appreciate the black and the patterning which mirror G1 Robecca's top. 

The cage belt here is powder blue and has a wider, rounder silhouette that limits the range of her downward arm poses. Like G1's skirt belt, it parts in the front and closes with one pin in the front. 

On her right wrist, Robecca has a gold wristwatch which is a closed loop that can't come off without taking out the hand, though it was wrapped in an elastic band that wasn't strapping Robecca's hand to the packaging brace. Odd. 

Robecca's boots here suit the daintier look of G3, with panels of patterned "fabric" on the sides rather than rocket fins, though the platforms are still comprised of booster cones. 

This red copper color is not balanced out into the doll's costume without using her goggles.

The G1 version is more heavy-duty and has rocket fins.

Robecca's body is a wonderful surprise. Just like G1, she's the first doll in her generation to debut all-over unique sculpting!!!

Okay, I guess G3 Skelita is first to release in other regions, but the US has yet to even hear of her release date, so over here, Robecca is first! Every piece is unique to her, and it's a mile beyond G1's sculpt.

G1 Robecca is a watershed we should all be very grateful for, but her texturing is also pretty uniform, being largely just a patchwork of riveted plates with minimal details that suggest the mechanics of how Robecca actually moves and functions.

She looks more like a sculpture than a robot because it's hard to imagine there being anything beyond or within the scraps we see riveted into a human form. G3 Robecca takes quite a few pages from G1 Robecca's G1 successor Elle Eedee and turns out a more plausibly functional steampunk robot design.

G3 Robecca is the theme of G1 Robecca with the detail of Elle.

The torso of the G3 doll features a tidy heart-shaped rivet plate in the center, echoing the scrappier heart plate sculpted into the G1 doll. We also see some of that Art Nouveau filigree in the collarbone plating of her body, which is fun detail.

Under the G3 bust joint is a flexible area, perhaps depicting some cord stringing or some such, illustrating how the bust would be articulated on the doll as a robot! 

There's also that aspect I saw in Elle of the robotics approaching eerie anatomical detail, as the face seams are sculpted to evoke the skeletal structure of a human while the neck plating is outlined to evoke the throat's internal structures. Here's Elle's sculpt showing the same ideas.

Robecca's belly is flat, and unlike G1,  does not depict a navel. Makes sense; she was never birthed, so why would she have that feature? G3 Robecca is the first MH bot sculpt to conspicuously omit a navel detail. I think that's cool. Elle's belly doesn't have a full navel, but is still plated in the area to suggest a belly button in the style of a typical G1 torso.

Robecca's limbs feature several rounded rivet plates and some areas that look like vents. She keeps some fake molded screws explaining how her limbs are attached, but the details are a bit closer to Elle, with screws on her hips like Elle. Both G1 Robecca and Elle had fake screws on the front of their shoulders, while G3 Robecca has them on the sides, like her hips.

The hands were one of the only places where G1 Robecca was sculpted with detail other than a riveted plate texture, and were thus the best effort of the G1 doll to depict plausible mechanics...but G3 does it ten times better. 

G1's hand sculpt with suggested tendons and finger segments.

Her hands feature clearer tendon pulleys for the fingers on the back side, and hollows with flex areas in the palms and fingers underneath! 

These hands are even better than Elle's, which have clear similarities to G3 Robecca's. 

G3 Robecca may have my favorite monster hand sculpt from the brand at large.

Flex areas like Elle's are also seen on Robecca's non-articulated ankles.

G3 Robecca has a nice kneecap detail with small molded plates.

Also like Elle, Robecca has her manufacturing stamp moved to a separate sculpted robot plate on her right hip piece! Turning the stamp into a diegetic, integrated maker's mark for Elle was one of my favorite MH details ever, so I'm all for it being repeated here.

The one loss G3 Robecca's detail has is the spinning leg gears. She just has vent plates on the back of her calves. I loved those gears. Oh, well.

G3 Robecca's sculpting is awesome...and kind of makes me mad because it's far too late. Mattel wasted so much time refusing to have this level of detail in G3, to the detriment of prior doll designs. Venus's vine sculpting is limited to her legs, which are usually covered. Jinafire transitions from scaly lower leg molds to standard upper legs with very unconvincing paint on the kneecaps, but Robecca has textured kneecaps showing off how Jin could have been more elegantly designed. Honestly, even G3 Frankie ought to have an upper-leg sculpt mod to transition their prosthetic into their skin because real prosthetics don't just start literally at the knee. Barbie understands that. 

The heights of Monster High sculpting are amazing, and having this lavish amount of detail on the table for G3 now is wonderful. It's great to see that all-over-detailed characters from before are not going to be forced into low-detail remakes with minimal new molds. I was scared for Robecca's execution, but she is on the same level as G1. It's just too late. I've been complaining for years about not having this, and starting out the gate with this extent of sculpting being available would have made early G3 stronger. I think MH taking risks and aiming for G1 highs from the start could have paid off. I'm not sure the brand relaunching so timidly and so very slowly scraping back was the correct move. I'm not an analyst expert, though.

The one criticism toward G3 Robecca's design which I've seen is that she's simply too perfect, and that her design isn't as asymmetrical or improvised-looking as it ought to be. G1 Robecca was characterized by being a flawed machine and owning it, and I definitely understand that G3 is discarding those imperfections which were important to the character before. I think there was a happy medium where G3 could have some asymmetrical plates and patches and some surface gadgets on her limbs to give her some mismatch, but I do think that the G3 body we got presents a far more compelling and plausible speculative robot mechanical design than G1 ever did. G3 gives me the texture and robot "anatomy" I wanted from G1. G3 Robecca overall seems to be going for an artistically pristine "height of Victorian engineering" lens to the steampunk genre, perhaps with elements of a classical Victorian automaton styled as a delicate doll, while G1 leaned more into the "punk" side of things where things were literally scrappier and more rough but functional. See also the boots. It's a lot harder to see G3 as a daredevil. I tend to be more sympathetic toward the rougher, more assertive punk side of steampunk than the gorgeous elitist side, but G3 is still a great body sculpt.

I believe Robecca's proportions are a unique combination for G3. She has a medium bust and wide hips and thighs, similar to Cleo, but she's also a taller doll like Frankie or Nefera. 

I didn't expect her to be tall, but I knew something was up when I noticed she stood taller than G1 Robecca, who herself is given extra height from her rocket boots! Sure enough, G3 Robecca is taller than a median G3 sculpt when both are barefoot. The closest body to Robecca's would probably be G3 Nefera's, but Nefera, in addition to very different sculpts aesthetically, also has different proportions built in with her larger bust, so, texture discounted, Robecca and Nefera do not share a proportional build.

The hinge joints in my Robecca's hands were resistant to flexing until I really worked the hinge pegs, almost like they were caught on some plastic that needed to be yanked free before the hand separated from the hinge peg and was able to move on it. The head has better neck articulation than some other MH dolls of late, though. G3 Robecca's knees don't have the weird range of forward bend that G1's did.

G3 can't do this. I still don't understand why this quirk made it into the doll!

Robecca has a pair of steampunk sunglasses, which aren't quite goggles, but do look like maybe they could be used in a workshop--welding lenses, perhaps. They're copper red and basically balance the boots, but the base plastic is translucent black. They have deep ear hooks which keep them on securely but make them annoying to put on and take off.

The left lens had a scuffed flaw that was distracting to me.

Out of curiosity, I tried acetone, which just made the whole thing cloudy, so I painted the lenses black. I think these pieces work well with the hairstyle for a quirky-gadgeteer look, but they're less suited to sitting on Robecca's forehead. I felt the opposite with the G1 goggles, which didn't fit the face well or flatter it, but looked great on top of her hair.

Robecca here is holding her drawing pad and blue quill pen. The pad is printed with a sheet of sketches in blue ink, while the board itself is copper red and textured for Robecca.

This gold piece didn't make sense to me at first, but it's a drawing stand with the peg being an inkwell or pen stand and the hinged piece being an easel.

Robecca's snack is a pack of "Gears". If I could kill any G3 mold, it would be this snack bag. The dolls can't hold the piece well and they're badly overused and boring.

She has a drink bottle that's made to look like an oil can! Stop it.

Robecca's phone matches her drawing pad well and features her personal Skullette in one of the app icons. Naturally, a clock dominates the screen.

The purse is a pocket watch design like G1, but with a gold base color and G3's elaborate print detail on the face. Instead of a genuine dangle pendulum accent (which my G1 copy lacks), there's a stiff molded solid chain accent with two strands. The G3 purse uses Roman numerals while the G1 purse mixed Roman and Arabic.

The G1 purse.

The purse opens on a side hinge, unlike the G1 piece, which hinged on the bottom.

The G3 purse handle is a bit clunky and doesn't fit around the doll hand easily, being pretty tight around the wrist.

Now that body sculpting is in full force again, can we have the pets bring back the G1 charm, too? Is that too much to ask?

Even though the original Captain Penny was one of the least spooky G1 pets, I still prefer the design massively over G3.

I tried my Robecca with her hair fully loose, but I was coming back to finding something in her stock styling that suited her dainty side better, so I recreated her original style with slightly better organization, also putting a new wave into it with curlers. I then tried painting a copper wash over the cage belt to accent the piece and balance her copper out more, but began doubting the result, seeing the value to the belt being more blue. When I tried to wipe it, the acetone broke a piece of the belt right off.

At this point, I decided to get a second copy of the doll. There was no better time to do so with her being so new, and this would let me replace her goggles and belt cheaper than parting them out on eBay while also giving me a G3 Robecca whose hair I could keep loose since I was still indecisive on which hairstyle flattered her better. 

With Robecca 2, I tried an experiment in dark-washing her body sculpt, but it wasn't a success. 

Where the paint remained, the effect was cool, but not all of her grooves and ridges held the paint, and the wash darkened the surface too despite best efforts to fully clean, so I decided to pop the head off and swap heads out on the first body when I wanted to change between hair modes. I also repainted the new belt, but only by coloring in the circles of the gears and watch faces in copper, leaving the rest pure blue.

The first head off, second head with loose hair tried on.

The new goggles were better.

That worked fine, but popping off Robecca 1's head took her neck peg out--unharmed, thankfully. Like with my G1 Robecca, I replaced her neck pin to improve her head articulation. 

Here's the doll refinished with her first head in reworked intended hair shaping.

I also tried other clothes. Alistair Wonderland's tank and jacket are not remotely sewn for this doll body, and are a bit greener than Robecca's blues, but the piece looks pretty good on her when cinched by a Shadow High bow's elastic band. I also borrowed the Mego top hat I gave to my restyled Mystixx Azra.  

My restyled Azra doll in her "Hyde" mode.

I really wanted to try Azra's school dress on Robecca too, and the striped socks I gave to that doll, but they just didn't fit the body. 

This dress could suit G3 Robecca...just didn't fit.

The skirt of Azra's dress is inelastic satin that simply was not able to pull up Robecca's hips, and the socks were too tight and got snagged and worn by her rivets.

G3 Robecca is clearly a fairly different vibe from G1 Robecca. G1 was bold, scrappy and fierce while G3 is intricate and delicate. That can take some getting used to, but both are good at what they do. Robecca will also always be the ghoul that raised the bar for monster detail regardless of generation, and I have to be grateful to her for giving me my favorite part of the doll brand--the fully bespoke body molds. In G1, she was a groundbreaker. In G3, she finally restored the doll sculpting to the heights they'd been so agonizingly afraid to reach. She's my favorite G3 body sculpt now, both by default and for being really well-done as it is. I think the designers could have ceded some symmetry and tidiness, but I overall prefer the plausibility in this body's design where it looks like there's more moving parts and legible mechanics than G1.

Now for the Creeproduction! 

Creepro Robecca's discussion will be swifter because I've already analyzed this doll aesthetically with the original edition. Here, I'm interested in quality. My biggest issues with G1 Robecca were that her hair was dry and her neck joint didn't move much, and...uh. Hm.

Yeah. Immobile necks and awful hair quality are very prevalent current issues besieging the Mattel production lines. So I think I can already assume Creeprobecca will not be a meaningful quality improvement. Crap.

Well, at least I'll get the purse complete?

The box uses brown copper stripes for the theme color, and has a gear cutout in the top corner. This copy is a bilingual English/Spanish edition, so probably a Mexican edition? I've gotten bilingual English/French Creepro dolls, too, which I assume are Canadian copies.

The top features a quote which I learned was part of her diary.

Captain Penny's jetpack sticks through the back of the cardboard popout he's mounted on, and it's a separate piece as such.

Robecca's diary is bilingual but doesn't appear to be abridged as a result. She discusses living in two times--100 years ago, and in current-day time. In the past, her inventor father (later fleshed out as Hexiciah Steam) built her and she enjoyed a social scene with figures like Dr. and Mrs. Stein (who would build Frankie) and Mrs. Kindergrubber, the Hansel and Gretel-inspired witch. The diary kind of gets on the argument of whether Robecca fits in the brand by showing that she experiences in-universe skepticism about whether she's a proper monster who belongs in their world, with the Steins seen shutting down a bigot bad-mouthing Robecca. Robecca's internal clock is faulty, but it's said to be unfixable. Then her dad goes missing on a catacombs expedition. In the present, Robecca lives with Mrs. Kindergrubber and gets enrolled at MH. 

Here are the two dolls side-by-side--G1 signature original on the left, Creepro on the right. 

My G1 doll has re-waved hair done to match the design intent, as she had pretty shapeless hair as she arrived to me, but her hair is still fairly dry. Not sure if that reflected the factory state or not. The only unique piece of G1 I am missing is the pendulum from her purse, though I also didn't get the diary. I'm sure I could have rectified the purse issue by ordering another copy of the purse at any point in the time since getting sig Robecca, but I just never really thought of it, and now Creepro solves that for me easily.

The goggles on the Creepro doll have a straighter antenna, and demonstrate a slight color shift. These copper-colored pieces on the Creepro doll are slightly redder than on the OG, where they're a bit more orange--and a bit shinier.

The color isn't quite as warm and lustrous as the red of G3 Robecca's boots. I kind of like the duller, darker Creepro color. It suits the doll's palette.

The hair doesn't actually seem to be too bad. It looks like pretty nice saran out of the box, with good shaping.

Creepro Robecca's face looks good. There are some subtle differences. The makeup looks a bit more crisp, while the doll's gaze looks a bit brighter-eyed and more focused forward, while the lips are actually even darker. The cogwheel irises are more brown than orange.

It's a really good faceup. I can't really pick a favorite between these copies, but I could be quite comfortable replacing the old with the new because this face works really well.

With the original Robecca, the earrings made me nervous because the pegs seemed tight or hard to put in. The Creepro earrings work very smoothly.

The pleather jacket on the Creepro is pristine and much shinier. I'd actually mistaken my G1 piece for more of a leather effect than a glossy vinyl since it's dulled with age. I kind of prefer the original, aged, to the new one that's shiny.

The Creepro dress seems to be a tad tidier, and the leather-effect skirt is pristine and has no crease in it. I think sitting my G1 OG down caused that.

While Mattel has much more advanced printing capability than G1 had, Creeproductions don't exceed the detail of the originals, so the wrist gadget has the same simplistic paint.

Honestly, why not make Creepro dolls the "ultimate editions?" Add that paint detail! Captain Penny's prototype had a black belt deco, and the Creepro could have bumped him up to match that rather than just repeating the more basic look of the original.

Creeprobecca finally removes the bird-knees articulation quirk from the original doll. After both Dracubecca and G3 Robecca lacked that aspect, I'm not surprised to see it basically confirmed to have been an error here. The Creepro doll indicates the knee thing was never supposed to have happened, and now it's fixed.

If Mattel were really being diligent about this, though, the Xenomorph wouldn't have had her own, lesser version of the quirk.

The Creepro boots have less color contrast between the dark wash on the side and the boot cast.

Robecca's purse is complete here. The color is a bit brighter than the original.

Creepro Captain Penny is a more "tarnished" hue than the original. Unfortunately, he has a molding/extraction flaw on his right thigh.

This doesn't have a tidy ending. I washed Creeprobecca's hair, then attempted to fix her stiff neck. The peg was destroyed in trying to pull the head off, and that's where I should have known it was doomed. I tried before with M3GAN to replace a peg with wire and a button on top, but that forced me to cut off the bottom of her head to try tightening the button down from the top, and even then, her head is too loose, and not held down tight enough. The same problem arose with Robecca and I eventually ruined her head because the pieces on the wire to anchor the head kept pulling off into her head and couldn't be retrieved. Yeah. The wrecked Robecca in the cover photo is the new one. I should have quit while she was a head and just swapped the Creepro head onto the G1 body with her successful neck surgery. Or I should have stolen the neck peg from the second G3 body! Too late.

As it is, Creeprobecca is a pretty good doll. There are ever so subtle changes, but she seems to be generally good quality, with nice hair and good facial screening. She no longer has the bizarre knee quirk, and her joints are overall better, but the head articulation continues to be inconsistent and disappointing. Ultimately, before I wrecked her, there was no conclusive "better" Robecca copy between the OG and the Creepro doll, which is how it ought to be. I'm sad I ruined her, and I'd maybe still be in the market for a replacement Creepro doll head as an option, but I never needed two copies of G1 Robecca anyhow. It's also more meaningful to stand by the copy I've bonded with.

I resigned myself to put my OG Robecca in some of the Creepro pieces which looked better. She took the Creepro dress, goggles, earrings, boots, Captain Penny, and of course, the purse. She kept her original aged pleather shrug and I don't honestly know which cage belt she ended up with. My Robecca has slightly dry fluffy hair and some loose joints, plus bird knees. But she's my Robecca. She deserves to be the survivor. 

While I had the Creepro doll destroyed, I tested out some copper metallic paint on her. Not only did it seem to adhere very well without an obvious painted look, and felt perfectly smooth (maybe it would be less vulnerable to sticking to other things and peeling!), but I think this paint, perhaps dulled just a tad, could bring a Robecca to the more metallic look of her G1 prototype in the stock photos. I just wonder if color-mixing the paint would reduce its adhesion/durability.

Maybe I'll get a second Creeprobecca when she pops up again for the purpose of repainting her into an "ultimate antiqued" copy with more metallized skin and more painted details on her parts and accessories. If I do that, I can share the results.

I staged my cover photo to echo the one for the first part of this series, where the two Elles flanked G1 Robecca. Here, I have G1 Robecca and disassembled Creepro around G3 in the chair, while more parts from the four copies fill out the "workshop" space in more dimension. I leaned into yellow theming for G3's palette.

Part 1's cover.

The giant clock is a quick, cheap excuse for steampunk imagery I threw together on the reverse side of the wooden spiral plaque I've featured in previous photoshoots. I could use both sides for the LDD in Wonderland Hatter doll!

Here's a few more pictures. Not a ton since the imagery required for the aesthetic is slightly out of reach.

I come out of this a little more tepid than I expected. Wrecking one of each Robecca design probably doesn't help in making me cheery. I think G3 Robecca has wonderful detail and I'm okay with her vibe shift...but I personally just tend to prefer tough over gentle in my Monster High ghouls, so G1 wins my favor easily. If we go even further into Art Nouveau elegance and finery with the G3 doll, leaning into the aristocratic/dolly styling, that could be a lot of fun. I love the traces of more authentic Victoriana in the G3 design so far. But you put the faces side by side and G3 is obliterated.

G3 has my favorite body sculpt in her gen so far, but she doesn't have one of my favorite G3 faces.

I need the Gore-geous Accessories Robecca, don't I?

I'm very open to seeing more G3 designs for Robecca, and I had fun with what her signature offered, but my beloved G1 copy still reigns supreme. I'm upset with myself for ruining the Creepro copy, who was very pretty and appealing in her own right, but I can get another if it still feels important, and if my mess means G1 OG gets to harvest the spoils of the Creepro doll and continue to rule, then I have no objection. 

Mattel, fix your doll necks!!!!!