...so Mattel made a fool out of me. Remember how last year, I did a two-half project about two-half gimmick horror dolls which split apart at the waist, comparing the body designs of brand-new Monster High manananggal Corazón Marikit and classic Living Dead Dolls' unfortunate magician's assistant Viv? Yeah, well, turns out I should have waited a year, I guess, because it turned out Mattel was adapting the bisecting concept to the exact same murdered magician's assistant concept as Viv. It's a real Doofenshmirtz's Nickels situation here. There aren't many dolls in this type, but weird that it happened twice. Poor Viv never got her timing right--first an incomplete solo review in 2024, then a review of her full two-pack set ahead of her ideal MH counterpart! And now I don't know what this post is. I can't very well add a third half to the two I wrote. It's unmathematical. Is this a third in a series or a separate review that happens to be a follow-up to a duology? Yes.
Warnings for very bloody imagery as pertains to the LDD half of this discussion, and discussion related to, and imagery alluding to, suicide as pertains to Miss Argentina.
The Waiting Room Set
The oeuvre of Tim Burton has, perhaps unsurprisingly, emerged as the creative body with the most associated licensing collabs in Monster High. There are dolls based upon Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (I call shenanigans a bit since the dolls themselves look based on the first film while the trimmings and branding are from the sequel), and Wednesday. Wednesday is a whole licensed doll line of its own, while this review's topic now makes for the second set (officially) based upon the original Beetlejuice film, and the third based upon the duology as a whole. That's a lot (six Beetlejuice dolls!), but I admit to now wanting a Delia doll in memory of Catherine O'Hara. She was the best part of that mess of a sequel, and a brilliant comic talent all around. At this rate, a Skullector Delia might be inevitable, though! I'd expect her possession dinner dress from the first film, though it's not her most outlandish and charming costume.
I never got the previous Beetlejuice sets. The first set released before my reactivated doll hobby, and while v1 Betelgeuse is admittedly one of the best gender-swapped dolls in the Skullector line, I still have an aversion to Skullector dolls which erase male characters in the adaptation--and Betelgeuse is one of those characters whose personality has a lot to do with being a man (the worst kind of man, but still). Gender matters sometimes in storytelling. Like, I don't think it's fully likely, but, say, if Mattel ever decided to do a Silent Hill 2 Skullector set of the Red Pyramid and a Bubble-Head Nurse, I worry the Red Pyramid would be made a female character too and thus fully misunderstand the purpose of one of the only masculine psychological monsters in the game's story. Back on topic, the second Skullector Beetlejuice release, the wedding set of Betelgeuse and Lydia which doubled for both films' scenes, was totally skippable in my book.
So what's this new release?
This set of Beetlejuice dolls is an unlikely two-pack representing relatively insignificant characters from the source work. It's the first Skullector set unquestionably based upon bit parts, with these being two colorful souls seen in the afterlife's waiting room. In the film, the dead largely adopt a cartoonishly ghoulish style as their designs display the ways they died in semi-real cartoon exaggeration, and the visuals of the dead in the waiting room have become iconic, though these characters are, again, very small roles and don't even interact with each other. Because both characters were women originally, though, this set is one of the more screen-accurate design interpretations, with fewer "off-book" touches. Enthusiasm seemed low for this set. It seemed like Beetlejuice fatigue was really hitting, and the dolls themselves, at least in factory condition, didn't strike me as the best they could be. This wasn't Us-tier as Skullectors go, and I initially thought it hovered more around the range of the Hocus Pocus set artistically...so I felt confident I'd get my gimmick doll with no hassle. I did. Not a stressful launch. Skullector clearly swerves wildly on design quality. Sometimes you get a Xenomorph; sometimes you get the Sanderson Sisters. You get an Us, and then get smacked across the face with the atrocity of the Coraline design. I wondered if I would be conflicted about that doll due to liking it and loving the movie while condemning the active licensing lining a predator IP holder's pockets with royalties. Nope. No dilemma; she's just a bad license choice and a terrible execution. No interest in that doll whatsoever.
The two characters here are Miss Argentina, a beauty-pageant queen in life (winning her sash title in 1939, according to external material and a brief shot in the film) who now works as receptionist at the afterlife waiting room, and the nameless magician's assistant who sits in two pieces as she waits for her case to be processed. Miss Argentina strikes me as the more iconic of the two, and I could have seen her being an odd but justifiable solo doll, but maybe it's actually the magician's assistant we have to thank for this set being designed, as the bisected body gimmick was already done before. However, I learned ahead of time that the assistant does not actually use the same molds used for Corazón, which both justifies this review even more because it's a new body...but also puzzles me. I'd wondered if the two-pack had been predicated upon the magician's assistant being an easy reuse of Corazón parts, but I guess not. She's just kind of an oddball choice! I won't complain. More morbid bisecting dolls aren't a bad thing, and having such a precise character parallel between my two favorite doll brands is really fun. I didn't see the assistant's body molds and what made her different until getting the doll, which was exciting.
The front of the box has close-up portraits of the doll. It's a four-sided cardboard sleeve over the internal box, leaving a glimpse into the interior on top.
The sides of the sleeve have a duo portrait and the film logo.
The back shows a turnstile in the afterlife corridors with a "No Exit" sign above it.
This piece of set design is probably a nod to Jean-Paul Sartre's play No Exit, which is a philosophical study with four characters who, after death, experience Hell as a hotel room where they are trapped with each other's personalities.
There's a Skullette hidden with gloss print.
Here's the sleeve lifted off.
The sides of the core box have solo portraits of the dolls staged in the same environment that forms the box insert backdrop.
The copy on the back is written like a sign that would be hung in the waiting room, explaining some etiquette and expectations for being there.
Betelgeuse himself attempts to swap numbers when booted back to the afterlife at the end of the film, only to find his head shrunken by the witch doctor he tried to con. That stereotype hasn't aged the best, nor held up as well in the sequel...which has a surprising amount of awkwardness involving non-white cultures and depictions. Tim Burton is not hugely invested in diversity or broad cultural perspectives, but Beetlejuice Beetlejuice feels like a showcase of how out of touch he can be. I'm kind of surprised by how much work is done in Wednesday to flesh out the angle of the Addams line being Mexican in the show's version of the canon. I would struggle to believe the decently-executed Latinization of the Addams clan was Burton's idea. I suppose you could even cast a sideways eye toward the use of calypso music for contrast and comedy in the films when stuffy white people are made to sing it (including its dialect), though to claim Harry Belafonte music isn't worth celebrating would be a mistake, and I see the use of his songs as one of the major charms of the films. Belafonte was alive for the first film and evidently had no objection, though I wonder a little how he'd feel about the white children's choir singing "Day-O" in the sequel. Not for me to judge, though.
Here's the backdrop pulled out.
The set includes only one doll stand, for Miss Argentina, and instead of a second stand, includes a furniture element to depict the waiting-room couch the magician's assistant sits upon! I wouldn't have minded two stands in addition to the couch, but the couch being provided by Mattel takes some real work off my back in staging photos, and I think this is really fun. The couch is the first furniture or scenery piece included in any Monster High collector doll, but it is actually designated as a functional doll stand too, because it has a waist-grip clip mounted in the backrest for the assistant's detached upper torso! I hadn't expected that, and it's a wonderful feature for more stable posing and display. There isn't a separate clip for the legs.
On the back of the box, it seems Mattel has switched to paper packets for their doll stands, as the base and clip are in a paper piece instead of a plastic one. Good. The less, the better.
The couch is held to the bottom edge of the box with plastic inserts that work as twist-locks. You have to pry up the little tails before they can turn and slot out of the couch and box holes.
Twist-lock parts were also used to hold the doll stands and plinth cases in the Off-White collector Monster High dolls' display boxes, but those were a different shape, and intended to be reusable to place the elements securely back in place. I suppose, theoretically, these pieces are reusable too, but the box is far less of a "keep and repack" kind of piece. The Off-White boxes dearly hoped to be collectible display cases to keep around. I couldn't justify it.
Here's the certificate of authenticity. No designer names.
I noticed in the backdrop art that Ghoulia Yelps' signature diary was placed on the table.
Isi Dawndancer's diary was in the Wednesday Nevermore doll's box insert art (and I can't imagine why that contentious character was even offhandedly brought back up). I'm not sure there's any rhyme or reason as to why these diaries are picked, or whose gets to be hidden in the art. I checked, and neither doll uses the Ghoulia face mold. There are some similarities to Ghoulia's mold in the magician's assistant, but it's not the same sculpt and if it had been a modification of the sculpt, the differences are slight enough that it would have made no sense to modify it. I also know for sure that Netflix Wednesday didn't modify the Isi mold for her own face, so these diaries don't seem to be hugely relevant.
Also in the art is a framed picture of a cityscape which looks to be G1's Boo York City!
For a moment, I was thinking What is this out-of-place abstract city? Is this AI art, oh no... and then I remembered Boo York existed and looked just like that. That's a fun reference.
Here's the dolls unboxed.
The couch is fully hollow in the back, which I won't complain about because it's meant to be against a wall anyhow, and the doll came clipped into the grip while also strapped to a plastic cradle.
I was nervous dealing with the elastics and tags around the dolls' ankles because they're wearing nets!
Okay, first doll! While the left-to-right puts the magician's assistant first, Miss Argentina is the bigger name and the less mysterious doll, so we'll put her before.
The doll design is pretty close to the film, even down to the cape which I had thought was a Skullector addition--nope. It was in the movie, too--just less bedazzled. The costume changes are largely in exaggeration and pattern and jewelry/shoe design.
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| Miss Argentina in the film, as played by the late Patrice Martinez. |
Miss Argentina introduces a grim comic theme in the film where we see the afterlife bureaucracy is formed of suicide deaths, with the joke being that death by suicide lands you a horrible clerical job in the beyond. The film has an undercurrent of an anti-suicide message where all the dead with that experience show regret and Lydia Deetz briefly enters and needs to be saved from a depressive state where she wants to cross to the afterlife. I'm not sure about the efficacy of the modern "it gets better" sentiment, but it has to be more useful than the "you'll be punished in an afterlife we can't prove and which you might not believe in" method of suicide deterrence. In that way, the film echoes the criminal/sinful moralizing of suicide, just in a secular fashion, and that's not very helpful or empathetic, but the movie still has a desire to speak for the choice to keep living.
Miss Argentina might have been another doll I could directly pair with a Living Dead Doll, as she died by cutting her wrists like LDD Jezebel, but I was not surprised to see her "little accident" omitted from the doll design for reasons of good taste.
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| Miss Argentina with LDD Jezebel. I put black wristbands on her because her painted detail on the back of her arms is pretty grim. |
Miss Argentina is less realistic and viscerally unsettling than Jezebel's depiction, but I still think this omission is an appropriate bit of restraint. Mattel is too big to risk that kind of PR stink, anyhow. Even if it wasn't risky content to portray, it could also be a matter of visual logistics, because the forearms and hands can rotate independently, and that could make the wounds look placed incorrectly with certain poses.
It's interesting to think of what Miss Argentina's story may have been. Did she choose her end because she lost a pageant? Was the pageant lifestyle unfulfilling even for a winner? Did she compete in an international pageant and end it all because she was only Miss Argentina and not the global winner? It's not hard to imagine the psychological damage a pageant could do to its competitors. Being told to place all your worth on superficialities only to face the hollowness of it all can be nasty.
Miss Argentina's hair is a violent neon red-orange color that's really hard to photograph. I had to edit all of the pictures to match my eye, because the camera wants her hair to be redder. It's an exaggeration of her beehive curls and bangs, with a bigger puffball shape and thicker bangs.
The curls look pretty loose and thin, but the hair feels soft. If there's any product in it, it's minimal and it seems like the curls are largely holding their shape by themselves. The bangs are soft too, but have definite flakes of product in them. I might need to take a wet comb to them wet to tidy that.
Miss Argentina's skin displays some of the vibrancy of the film's undead stylization, being a saturated shimmery blue-green tone that perfectly contrasts all of her red tones while also bouncing around with the orange and purple elements. This character's palette is actually really fun and appealing.
The faceup isn't too wild. Miss Argentina has wide pinkish-brown eyes with iris texture and sparkle reflections, and subtle pink and blue eye makeup. She has thick dark eyebrows and lips which match her hair color with an orange tone.
I really like the dark cheek contour adding dimension and ghoulishness to the doll.
The head has a 2025 mold stamp. I don't know if it's a sculpt edit or a fully bespoke head design.
The earrings are symmetrical purple sparkles with Skullettes.
Around her neck, Miss Argentina has a plastic piece replicating her leafy-shaped collar, which was wire and fabric in the film. This piece has a sparkle texture across it and is slightly translucent and hard to photograph for displaying the texture.
The piece simply clips around the back of her neck and has a back projection on her shoulders, but the clip strength is firmer than the fit. The collar can shake and wiggle around once clipped on. Tucking the back projection of the collar under the elastic band of the cape helps to stabilize its position.
Miss Argentina's collar piece did not cross over her anatomical collar at all, but this works well. It reminds me a lot of the fantastical harlequin collar for Ever After High's Courtly Jester, which worked similarly, just with a cutout for a ponytail in back and a gold chain-sculpted element that was meant to hold it closed with a pin in front. Mine broke when I had the doll, so I tucked one of the tails on the chain sculpt into the hole instead.
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| My bygone Jane Boolittle trying my bygone Courtly's outfit--collar left open, but the gold piece was meant to close the front. The pin side is visible still in the collar where it broke. |
Miss Argentina's cape works just like the Skullector Bride of Frankenstein's by having an elastic loop that slides around both arms from behind, ending up tucked under the arms.
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| The Bride's cape loop. |
Miss Argentina and the Bride's dolls have other vague similarities. Both have curly updos, both have the capes, and both have no proper names. Miss Argentina is like all of the color the Bride lacks!
The cape pattern features some abstract patterns, including some that acknowledge the compelling cosmic undercurrent to the Beetlejuice mythos. In this world, ghosts end up on Titan, a moon of Saturn, if they try to leave their haunting grounds, while the title ghost's actual name is Betelgeuse, a star in the Orion constellation. The case worker Juno is not seemingly named for a celestial body, but her name adds to the odd classical-cosmic elements of the worldbuilding. Miss Argentina's dress features identifiable icons of the planet Saturn, sci-fi antennae, Skullettes, sparkles, the checkered afterlife flooring, and the giant predatory sandworms which inhabit Titan. The striped, nested-faced stop-motion creatures are one of Tim Burton's most famous images.
Tim Burton and sci-fi are a match made in heaven...I just wish he told good stories with it. Mars Attacks! is wonderful on a visual sense, but I think it was his first movie of several that really struggled with scripting and cohesion. If Skullector ever does the Martian Girl and/or another Martain, I might flip. (I did say G1 Gil's helmet sculpts would sufficient for the design, though Mattel would probably mold a new bubble anyway.)
Under the cape and over the dress, Miss Argentina's identifying pageant sash is present. It's a simple printed white satin ribbon sewed closed into two tails on the hip.
The sash has no closure/opening, but can slide down her body to take it off.
It's fun when licensed characters add new demographics to Monster High. Skullector gave us our first Korean MH doll, and now our first Argentinian one!
Under the sash, Miss Argentina has a dress that closely imitates the purple paisley strapped sweetheart piece from the film. Here, the straps are clear decay-prone elastic, while white durable straps would have actually been screen-accurate, and a pleather frill has been added to the waist while the paisley pattern is altered to have ghost and cobweb motifs.
I really could have done without the pleather. Visually, it works, but this is not likely to age well. If it peels in the future, I might just cut the stitches to have the dress without the ruffle, which is more film-accurate anyhow. Not sure I care to try repairing or preserving the material here.
Under the skirt, Miss Argentina has the first of two identical fishnets in this doll set.
Miss Argentina's shoes match the shape and texture of the collar, but are more close in color to the pleather frill and hair.
The object heels of the shoes depict one of several shrunken heads seen in the afterlife, attached to bodies, and a shark.
In the first film, a man is seen in the waiting room with the shark that killed him stuck on his leg, implying the two died together.
I'm sure that's the main reference here, but a shark death is also used to work Charles Deetz (Lydia's dad) into the second film. His actor Jeffrey Jones was disgraced during the long gap between films for pedophilia-related crimes, so he was written into the sequel as a pathos-free shark fatality who lost his entire head and most of his upper torso, allowing him to appear in the afterlife as a character played by a body double with a voice actor dubbing him.
Miss Argentina has red fingernails.
My first photos with the doll were staging her dressing room after winning her flowers, literally. I did follow the dark side of her story by framing the moment as a grim contemplation with a knife in the vanity drawer, perhaps showing the moments before she took her last living actions, or else, on a less harrowing note, this could be her quarters in the afterlife where she ponders what brought her to the end that has already occurred.
And shrouded in her cape.
Let's cheer up. Don't cry for Miss Argentina. The rest of my photos were much lighter and just simple portraits.
I was kind of expecting Miss Argentina to be the pill to swallow to get the new bisected doll I contractually made myself need to talk about, but no. She's stunning. I love her vivid colors and her presence with her hair and cape. I appreciate her Tim Burton design sensibility a lot more experiencing the character this way, and she is believable as a cartoony undead pageant queen.
Now to the assistant!
The magician's assistant is frustrating to write about because she's such a minor character. Since she's only a visual gag, she has no canonical given name, and even less of one than Miss Argentina. She's uncredited, but a Kickstarter seeking to make a documentary about the film names a Deborah Palmer the producers spoke to as actress for the role (I'm guessing she played the top half if true). I could call the doll Deborah via transitive property, or perhaps just Maggie as a short form for "magician's assistant."
In addition to being likely murdered in an objectified position and having no known name, the assistant doesn't have the best of times in her screentime, either, as creepy Betelgeuse tries to feel up her detached legs while sitting between her halves.
Off the bat, I don't think the doll does right by her hair. In the film, the character has a short pile of curls that might count as a beehive, and spikier, more goth bangs similar to Lydia's iconic hair in the same film.
The doll has a ponytail gelled into a rolled bun with a hair wrap on the base, and swooshy tidy bangs. It's nothing like the film look.
I think this heavily detracts from the likeness to the character, and I would like to try reshaping the hair. This isn't "interpretation" to me, it's "misunderstanding".
The face isn't being aided by the hairstyle, but it might be a bit mild anyhow.
I'm not getting any gloomy or icy energy from the eyes, and I'm not hugely impressed. I do hope the hairstyle changes I implement will bump her up. Her eyeshadow has gold on top and pink on bottom, though I wish the undereye shading looked more airbrushed and red. The eyes are pale grey with star reflections, and she keeps her contouring and beauty mark. The skintone is a shimmery desaturated blue closer to purple than green.
This sculpt is also stamped 2025.
The assistant has symmetrical gold sparkle-and-Skullette earrings which are a different sculpt from Miss Argentina's.
Around her neck, the assistant has a detached maroon net collar with a velcro attachment. I think this could have been cut smaller to cover less of her torso, but it works fine.
The assistant's top has more clear elastic straps (ugh) and maroon satin material with net trim on the bottom and a frill which faces upward on the bustline.
On her right wrist, she has a gold chain bangle with a Skullette symbol. She has red nail polish too.
On the legs, she's wearing shorts that match the top and leave no gap between pieces. The legs have the last net trim.
The tights are identical to Miss Argentina's, and the shoes are translucent pinkish maroon with more net texture and object heels of a magic hat and the saw which cut her apart.
The doll's purse is designed to look like a copy of the Handbook for the Recently Deceased. Or would that be...Handbag for the Recently Deceased? Pocketbook for the Recently Deceased?
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| I kind of wish they did change the text to "Handbag" here. |
I can see where the Beetlejuice fatigue comes from, because the Handbook was already represented in Skullector more literally with the first Lydia doll having a prop depicting a straight-up copy of the actual book (the copy given to the deceased Barbara and Adam Maitland). However, seeing as the Handbook is a standard-issue text provided to all decedents in this universe, the design showing up in multiple dolls makes some sense. I'm not in love with this purse idea, though. A straight reissue of the book prop Lydia had would be nicer.
Now for the moment we've all been waiting for--how is the magician's assistant built? Well, I couldn't keep from learning the moment I began unboxing, and it is something else. This is absolutely not the Corazón body. This is actually the first Monster High doll I can consider to be unambiguously gory, as in directly depicting a visceral mutilation...within the brand's cartoony and clean restraints.
Yeah. Not only is she bisected, but it's jagged and the lower body is filled with red inside. It's a close match to the visual in the film.
The upper body also has a spine as the connector pin, like Cora did.
Sick.
Here's the assistant as she's never been seen before--in one piece!
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| Like seeing your teacher at the grocery store--a whole new context! |
This outfit does not highlight the torso seam, nor is there any difference in color, so the magician's assistant looks a lot tidier and less obviously bisected when assembled compared to LDD Viv, whose bloody cut is right on display.
Without the clothes, the assistant still clicks together pretty seamlessly along her ragged edge, so it's still not super obvious. Here's the two bisected MH dolls next to Miss Argentina as a neutral sculpt.
Beyond the shape of the cut, the assistant and Corazón have other differences. The assistant is actually cut a fair bit lower down--since MH dolls are so leggy, a cut where Cora is bisected would not be near the middle of the assistant's height, so shifting it down makes the cut more of an equal divide.
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| The torsos aligned to show the different cut shapes and heights. |
This lower cut on the assistant means her legs cannot use a Monster High stand clip on their own, though. Cora's legs and torso both contain the thin part of the torso, so they can each use a clip, as her special stand allows.
The assistant's legs thus can't plug into the clip on the couch, only the torso.
The spines are different, too. The assistant has one less vertebra with horizontal projections since her spine is emerging from lower in the torso, and her spine is placed more accurately in the back of the torso while Cora's was more centered. There is no red inside the assistant's upper torso.
Cora had no literal viscera whatsoever, though the red fringe of her terno dress's top half evoked the dangling entrails of a manananggal monster.
The magician's assistant also, naturally, has no wing socket in her back, while Cora did.
Here's all three bisected horror dolls compared.
Viv is the most visceral, depicting internal organs on her lower-half connector tube, and she's the only one who can rotate on her connection point--Cora and the assistant's cuts are designed to strictly align their bodies in one position. All three dolls feature an internal spine detail, though--Viv's is on her connector tube's back.
I think it has something to do with the different body mold and logistics, but the assistant's hips have a slight bump when turning them, as if the hips fully straightened are more of a set position that the legs have to be pushed out of. Miss Argentina's legs move smoothly with no catches, as I expect from MH dolls. Both dolls have bumps in their knee hinges when moving out of straightened pose, which might be a measure to strengthen the knees and keep them from flopping and buckling. I had recent experiences with Skullector knees being loose or weak, and weak knees were common in the original G1 dolls, so I can appreciate if they're being deliberately made sturdier.
The assistant's couch display looks more like a couch section, with no side arm. The clip in the back is not viable use on a stand pole, and is just for this couch, and the assistant's torso can only sit on the right (our view). The clip is too low to be able to hold the assistant in one piece. Only her detached upper half can use it, not her full body (nor any other standard-sculpt median Monster High body).
The assistant can use the couch as a one-piece body if she's not bothering with the clip.
The studs in the couch are Skullettes.
The clip can push out from the back to let another doll sit on the right cushion, though it leaves a hole.
I wish the assistant's spine peg projected upward from the lower torso, because it's awkward having the upper half sit on spine-point. She won't fall out of the clip, but she'd feel much more stable resting on the cut edge of the torso. The SDCC Whisp doll used an upward peg for her modular lower body swapping. I guess the assistant simply has no upward spine peg because there's no spine poking out in the film prosthetic.
Miss Argentina was basically perfect, so no work for her.
The assistant, however...
I took the assistant down to boil her hair and put it in as many curlers as I could muster. I boiled from a pot on the stove and used an ice bath after to try to really lock in a shape. After drying, I cut the ponytail band and squeezed the curls into a beehive with lots of glue saturating it to hold it in place, also combing out some side locks to frame the face and cutting the bangs. The hair is messy and some glue got where it wasn't meant to in the side locks and bangs, but it looks alright, and more on-model than the factory hair. I also reconsidered and added glue into the side locks after some of my art photos because that tidied the hair more and kept it in place. I put a little glue under the bangs to arrange them better, too, and I did cut one chunk of beehive off the top to shorten the hair a little more within reason. You can't tell. To counteract the weight of her piled glued hair, I put some superglue around her neck ball and let it cure while the head was off to increase the friction of the joint when the head went back on.
With the costume, I cut the collar netting into a smaller ring so a line between collar and top was visible. The doll costume not preserving that missed the whole point of the collar. When I snipped one of the elastic straps on her top by accident, I went ahead and fully removed them. The costume has no losses with them gone.
Here's the hair fix and the collar trim.
I could do something like this for Miss Argentina if her curls get too unruly, but I wasn't compelled to do that before such an event. I'm comfortable for now just knowing there's another approach for such a time as it's needed.
This hair work was a major improvement, but I still wasn't sold on the face. I tried lowering the lids, but that interfered with her painted eye reflections. I eventually landed on the eyebrows being far too thick for the accurate likeness, so I used some careful acetone to wipe some off the top edge and narrow the brows. I think this was the answer. If it's not the perfect likeness to the actress, it's definitely the right step to click the face together and give her a little attitude, and I do see the character far more in this edit. The cheek shading got partially wiped as I needed to clean some of her face, so the lower edge is a bit sharper and unblended, drag-style. Not a problem.
With the hair and face and collar edits together, she feels like a premiere Skullector design and rises out of being the "B" doll to Miss Argentina. She has way more personality and looks more accurate and worthwhile as a doll.
She even looks great clicked together now! I did not see anything in the doll's assembled look previously. With the makeover, the assembled doll looks intentional and complete.
I should not have had to put this much work into this doll, but I love her now. She was so boring and generic-feeling in factory state, and did not seem to care much about capturing the assistant's actual look. A novelty body should not preclude a strong design interpretation. My assistant is an altogether awesome doll. Mattel's is a weak one with a cool gimmick.
I made some of the final edits (hair tweaks, brows) after taking several art photos, so for the very best ones, including the cover shot, I went back in post and digitally edited her hair and brows a bit to reflect my final product. Not all of the art photos have these tweaks and thus show the makeover at stage 1--the first hair pass plus the collar.
I brought the dolls to rewatch their movie.
I sprayed the box's insert backdrop matte to use it as a photo staging backdrop because the shape and print looked good enough to put the couch back into for some pictures. I cut out the counter window so Miss Argentina could be placed behind it.
Only after spraying the insert did I notice this plastic bracket panel in the right-side wall. I checked the earlier unboxing photos, and there was nothing held in this piece. I have no idea what its purpose was.
The cover photo was an early shoot, but took an age and a half. I wanted to stage a real waiting room of the dead, while highlighting Miss Argentina at her counter and the magician's assistant on her wall right below. I used one of the foam-board walls from my LDD Alice hall set and bent it in two directions to create a zizag, repainting it and making a cutout for the window, attaching trim and a counter. Miss Argentina is not the only reception counter in the film, but she is here. I brought in some other furnishings and constructed "extras" for the scene of other dolls and parts--a boy doll with no head and a missing forearm and a mauled shirt, an Inner Monster "scalped" model in a vintage dress, a Grady Sister with M3GAN's severed face in a more modern dress, and my Create-a-Monster Witch doll with a skeletal Inner Monster torso. To create the sometimes absurdly long "take a number" tickets, I typed some random strings of numbers, duplicated them and printed them on the long side of paper sheets, then cut them out and picked random fragments for the shorter tickets.
Here's a basic shot of the waiting room.
I probably sat with this set for about an hour trying to get the perfect shot, playing with the lighting to ensure the dolls in question were highlighted among the group. Here's some of the ones I didn't select which I still liked.
This was the base I picked.
I made some digital edits to add scenery and color behind Miss Argentina, replace the desk-sign text with accurate graphics, and layer a semi-translucent corrugated shutter over the cardboard pieces I made for more convincing effect. I left the rest of the window trim untouched, not finding improvements when trying to put digital composites on.
And to think I never needed the "extras" in the room anyhow, because I did a two-layer cutout effect where the extras were so I could tese the LDD reprise in this review too!
Here's a few more photos in the room.
I had an idea for a simple hall portrait with the assistant lifting her top half off. This was fairly simple--I just stuck a pin through the back of the foam-board wall and the back of her head to keep her top half up, and balanced the legs in her posed arms.
I had great fun posing her disconnected around a chair.
I'd love a tasteful plush lounge piece in doll-scale, but the bed/chaise I made for Garden Mysteries Twyla was the next best thing.
Here's some abstract pieces themed on the sawing.
The magician's assistant was very excited to meet Viv, as she never thought there'd be another doll in her exact situation. Viv felt the same. Which came first in reality? The assistant existed in media first, but Viv beat her to the doll game!
The two tried swapping halves for fun, but it's not in any way auspicious. The ladies can only practically be whole with their own pieces.
Dolls Divided, The Third Half --or-- The Sawdessy
Of course, the assistant needed a saw box. I built with Corazón as a model while I waited for the set to arrive (oops). It was a bit of a mistake due to the unexpected difference in the two dolls' cut placement.
We never see the magic trick that killed the Beetlejuice character, so the design could be whatever I wanted within the aesthetic. As with Viv's, the box is sized such that the magic trick could only have ended in a murder, as there is no possible way to have put two women in the trick the way it's supposed to be staged. I constructed this very much the same way as I did Viv's box, with rough-cut poster board. Rough edges and wonky angles were fully permissible for a Tim Burton look. I added arm holes for this version and because the legs are so disproportionately long in this brand, I have them sticking out with the knees just bent down, since a platform to support the legs would be much longer than on Viv's box. For even more cartoony appeal, I had all parts of the body unsupported and coming out of circular holes, even the neck, since I can easily pop off the assistant's head and put it back on once her torso is situated in the box. I popped off her head during hair boiling and trimmed down the neck peg so the head would pull off more easily without risking stress to the peg and neck. The neck-peg discs are wider than they used to be, and harder to take out of the heads even with the flange section cut off the top.
The holes in the box actually do a great job of holding the body pieces in place, which is a bonus. To clean up the look of the holes, they're covered with rubber washer rings on the outside. To make sure the wheel legs could hold the box sturdy without support panels under the head and legs, I tried cutting some dowels at an angle so I could have legs sloped out at the ends of the box, extending the footprint and improving balance that way. I had to extend the legs taller than these dowels, so I employed some LEGO tube connectors and glue. I painted the box with stripes and an artsy blood effect intended to read as a design on the box rather than literal gore, keeping with the MH tone.
I began to feel that there was no chance of me putting the doll in the box without breaking the box's legs off, though, so I revised my design. I needed to essentially separate the assembly into a two-part rolling table and the two-part box sitting on top of it as removable pieces that could be loaded with the doll before laying the occupied halves on the table.
That would let me lift out the box halves and load the doll into them with all the finicky procedures necessary, then put the box halves with doll on top of the rolling table with no risk to the wheelie legs snapping off during manipulation. I removed the legs and cut cardboard pieces to be the tabletop, and glued LEGO right-angle panels on the pieces to provide a tray-style assembly for the box halves to nest into in a way where they couldn't come unaligned. The tabletops got attached to the legs instead, and labeled under the boxes to more quickly match them to their halves of the saw box (themselves usefully distinguished by the cutouts!) I glued on hinges like I did before for Viv and it was done before the doll arrived, with some inaccuracies in the body measurements. My fault for assuming the two bisected dolls were cut in the same spot. The halves of the box can't come closed to make the sides meet "whole", no matter how I fiddle with the assistant's pieces. Oh, well.
When testing the doll, more adjustments were needed to account for her weight tipping the boxes out of the trays. I built new hook assemblies to hold the inner ends of the boxes down so the legs and head couldn't tip them out.
I also glued some coins and washers to the table on the head half to keep the doll head's weight from taking the table off one of the wheel assemblies and tilting it, and I put in a pipe cleaner tie in the top-half box to hold the torso down. The doll head is very heavy!
This was my first successful test of the box, before adding the hook to the table on the legs half of the assembly.
The Monster High body design offered more freedoms than limitations, for sure. Viv's body and articulation meant her limbs and head could not be enclosed by individual apertures, and Viv's arms needed to be raised above her head for the visual to make sense, since they would be cut by the saw along with her waist if they were posed any other way. The Beetlejuice doll can enjoy arm holes in her box, as well as leg holes and a head hole. The leg articulation also allows the knees to tuck down and dangle to shorten the box, and that has the added benefit of adding some sassy animated energy to the severed legs!
Here's photos of the Viv box I built before to compare. This piece no longer exists because I didn't have a good storage space for it and it felt too fragile to keep. The Viv piece was a lot simpler and needed platforms below her head and feet to support her because I hadn't thought of angling legs outward to support under the protruding body parts. The Viv piece is relatively realistic, though, as it's no good for a person to have her head sticking out of a box with neck support, so the real rigs have space to rest the head. The Beetlejuice box is allowed to be more cartoony and unrealistic.
I think the Beetlejuice saw box, rough as it is, is a superior prop build to the Viv one I made,
And I didn't stage a single photograph with it.
I grew too frustrated by presuming with the wrong body model and messing up the measurements. What good is a magic trick/murder trick you can only photograph completed? You need the "before" and "after", the action of separating the flush halves into two cadaver parts. I started building a second take with slower, more careful foam cutting for more even edges, but I gave up when the holes turned out as rough as ever and I felt the improvements would be too slight for such a lengthy rebuild. If I'm doing a rebuild, I want a 2.0, not a 1.0.1. I'm pondered what the best outcome for refined saw boxes would be. 3D printing could offer the best precision for sizing the box and cutouts and legs in ways that could just click together for tidy assembly...only I have absolutely zero 3D modeling experience and my access to a 3D printer is through a public library, and I don't know the extent of what a single print job can produce there. For a trial-and-error process, that sounds clunky. I quite like oven-bake clay and could see myself having some success with that, but precise edges are harder to achieve, and rolling it evenly without a press table (which I don't have) is a nightmare.
Then I realized my answer was staring me in the face. I used LEGO parts for the wheels of both assistants' boxes. Why the hell didn't I use them for the whole things? LEGO is a language I intimately understand, and it removes all measurement and uncertainty from the equation. Rather than cutting parts to shape, I find the shaped parts and put them together, and can guarantee precision and symmetry because LEGO is genuinely brilliant engineering.
I got completely derailed by this, but in the best of ways.
I wasn't sure the parts existed to make my Beetlejuice design in LEGO, so I first tried to see if Viv could get a new box of LEGO parts. It didn't feel right to have her back in conversation with no rig to ride in, and messy or not, I liked her having a box as an option. My intention was not to treat it as a regular rebuildable LEGO model or to have it look like LEGO with the artifacts of stacked parts. I've previously held LEGO to be sacred; I have stopped idolizing the company and see the pieces as very useful materials to use in other crafts now. I was ready to alter the pieces with sanding and paint after they gave me the precise base I wanted so it would look more like a traditional model kit than a LEGO build. I was delighted to easily make a box for Viv to fit into. I followed her original box's template pretty darn closely, only changing some colors around. I didn't attempt to bring the design closer to my Beetlejuice box in terms of a lack of support platforms or angled legs. I used a pole to create divided leg holes she didn't have before, while I used arches on the top half as cutouts to frame her emerging head and arms. She fits in the box perfectly, and it meets flush.
That curved wall is so elegant. Makes the box feel like a grand piano!
Zombini was used as a model to get the right height for the legs. The tan tiles on the ends and inside the box are used to look like wood paneling, and their texture and gloss were kept. The tan color also balances the starkness of the red and black theme of the dolls and looks like the tissue of their coffin, which, in the present day, is off-white. The lids halves are hinged, and the walls of the white section are glued together.
With Viv's model being so promising, I commenced with a LEGO take on the Beetlejuice box. This one was able to rock the paneled look of the assembled LEGO parts and the gloss, since it felt more glitzy and modern.
Here's the build!
For this design, I eschewed all paint since the parts could do the color-blocking for me and shakier painted designs could clash too much with the starker shapes and colors.
A lot of pieces here are glued for structural integrity. The legs are glued except for the 2x2 round plates which they use to attach and separate from the box, since having them removable is better for storage and some other display concepts. Most of the walls are glued as well.
This box has a different cutout scenario than my rougher take. I was able to evenly shape holes using LEGO arches at the same height, so the holes are not circular here and are not ringed in another color as a result. I also ended up with one hole for the legs rather than two. I could have inserted a vertical divider bar like I did with the Viv LEGO box, but I thought this design would be cleaner without that break in shaping.
Using LEGO solved some major problems with the design. With the first box, I had to take off the doll's forearms and head and remove her shoes to fit her into the cutouts before putting her back together, and maneuvering the forearms into and out of the cutouts when their wingspan was as wide as the box was difficult. Here, instead, I build the box around the doll! Two arches are glued in--around the right arm and the one in front of her hips, while the rest are removable to let the doll load in (sliding her arm through one hole) and then the arches build back around her so she doesn't need any disassembly (past the waist) or tricky finagling!
The doll can also use one or neither of the arm holes if she wants--the latter makes the box look like her casket!
This would be an option on the older box, too, but I realized it was possible here.
The build-in arches also solved the head weight issue. When the waist arch isn't around the upper half, the doll does wildly tip backward.
With the arch in place, her torso is perfectly held down and the studs hold strong without the body pulling the arch up and off its connection.
The leg arch does not encircle the piece because the height is too short--rather, it just encloses the legs between the two arch elements.
The doll can't click together inside the box, but she doesn't need to. If I had built the walls one plate higher, the body might have been able to do so. Ah, well. What's important is that this box lies flush together!
I used translucent red LEGO tiles glued to the sides for a blood effect.
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| The 1-plate gap on this side, between lid and top of the box, is to allow the lid to hinge open around the top-edge corner. |
The legs mix blocks and round contours with arches and wedges, and use lots of Tim Burton black-and-white contrast with shaping to look artsy and modern and goth at the same time. I like this more than a shoddy box excusing itself as "part of the aesthetic".
The weight of the LEGO bricks means the doll does not tip the box off its wheels in any direction--another problem handily solved just by switching to LEGO. No trays and hooks and tabletops are needed here!
One delightful thing I realized on accident was that the pieces of this box could be rotated and rearranged to look like a different magic trick, like a surreal body-separation cabinet or some such.
This is why the legs being removable is so useful!
This box build is such an advancement with something so simple as a switch in mediums. LEGO solved so many logistical frustrations and made a tidy box with modularity which I could control with the use or absence of glue. I had to overengineer the previous box with pipe cleaners and weights and hooks to solve the issues of the doll's heft disrupting the balance, while here, it felt like, after a couple of aesthetic compromises, everything engineered itself in the doll's favor automatically. The box is truly working for the doll rather than the doll doing the work to get in the box, and that's much better.
Then I staged the scene. Because the magician who killed the assistant is never definitively seen (an escape artist trapped in a glass lock box is seen in the second film, though), Miss Argentina gets to be the one with the saw. She's got a sparkly cape! Fortunately, LDD Zombini's saw works quite nicely with her, as the palm pegs on the handles can slide between her fingers. While the assistant's shoes imply she was killed with a one-handled saw, I don't have one of those in the right scale.
And some pictures of the assistant alone in her box.
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| This doll just feels made for classical portraiture! |
I took some dolls outside with the box for a funeral where the box is an open casket and is then buried with the legs removed.
If my boy dolls' arms were strong enough to hold the boxes, I'd have staged some as pallbearers carrying the halves to be buried. The open casket was my compromise.
And some surreal compositions using the box as a generic magic trick.
If you're a magician's assistant for long enough, you've got to learn enough tricks of the trade that you can become your own magician in time. Maybe this assistant will do so in her afterlife.
With Viv's new box, I sanded the white section and used a good air-dry clay to fill in the stud gaps under the plates and fill in other gaps so the pieces would look as seamless as possible before my paint job. The platform stayed as-is. I painted the walls and splattered blood paint on all parts of the box, and glossed the painted areas. My gloss smeared some paint pen I was using, making some parts look dirtier than I intended, but the box being sketchy is fine. I changed the side panel facing the camera to feature both dolls' names as billing while also playing into the wonderful linguistic/typographic aspect of Viv's name being a palindrome that can symmetrically divide in two like she can. I love that so much, it needed to be on the box divide itself. The original slogan, "ABRACADAVER", is on the back now, and I didn't do any illustrative body motifs on this box or include LDD symbols.
I restaged some Zombini/Viv pictures with the new box.
I like this new design and I'm glad to have a saw box for Viv again. During this shoot, the legs fell off a few times, so I did what I did with the Beetlejuice prop and glued larger plates to the top of the legs, increasing the footprint of removable studs they would attach with. While I think the gloss layer is secure, I still don't trust that the doll wouldn't get stuck somehow from extended contact and catch residue, so she won't be on display in it. It'll go in storage as a nice piece to take out.
Phew.
This waiting room set was pretty fun.
I like the willingness to focus on interesting characters who aren't major roles but are visually memorable and make for compelling dolls. I don't actually think this is a waste of a Skullector release. It's not perfect, though. Miss Argentina is a pretty enjoyable interpretation of the film design. I think her vivid colors are striking and successful. I worry about her pleather frill, and it looks like her curls can get messy if one is not careful. Her hair has gotten worse with handling, so maybe there's more product involved than I expected. The magician's assistant shows the big cracks in this release. Her unique version of the bisecting body gimmick is awesome. It's surprising having a Monster High doll who can unambiguously be described as gory, and the engineering is pretty cool. Her visual design is majorly underwhelming. The magician's assistant in the film, for how minimal her role is, has an appealing vintage glamor goth vibe to her, and the doll doesn't capture it as she arrives. The hairstyle is completely wrong and very lazy, and the face makes missteps too, rounding out all of the spooky edge the character ought to embody. She had no business having thick rounded brows making her look mild and friendly, and the ponytail bun and glamor bangs are a sorry excuse for the goth beehive the film character sports. The collar is also badly exaggerated to the point of missing what made the piece work in the original costume. I was able to fix her up to give her some pizzazz and film accuracy, but that shouldn't have been on me. Even fixed up, I would have preferred her spine connector peg to be located in her lower body pointing upward, since resting her on spine-point in her waist-grip clip is fiddly and shouldn't have to be.
I do also feel the object heels here are on the more obtrusive and tacky side, as they go. I'm lenient about them normally, but maybe it's getting to me too now.
With the assistant fixed up, I do love her. Fixing her hair and eyebrows elevated her into a beautiful edgy vintage glamor doll and makes her more than a gimmick. When I got the set, I was surprised to like Miss Argentina so much, but she's been eclipsed by the assistant (like I honestly wanted her to be). Miss Argentina is a lot of fun, but I'm less sold on her face as time has gone on and the assistant was much richer creative fuel for me. Her magic-show theme and surreal staging potential were dynamite inspiration.
I personally got a lot of value from comparing two brands' bisected magician's assistant dolls. If there's ever a third, then I know somebody is mocking me.
Viv indulges in horror and the twisted with her gory sculpting, while the Beetlejuice assistant surprised me by basically being on Viv's level, within the restrictions of Monster High's art style. Viv is more uniquely disturbing and ghoulish, but the assistant isn't a slouch, and there's a tonal element that makes the assistant more appealing, as she's less viscerally uncomfortable--and she's not unhappy. Both dolls are women in the same objectified profession who were cut apart by a man (assumedly in the assistant's case, confirmed in Viv's), but the assistant has more of a cheeky burlesque tone to it all by not being so gnarly and having a fierce confident look. Viv makes the horror all too present and painful with her blood, organs, and screaming face. The assistant has more articulation overall, and she can pose with her gimmick in several more ways. Her articulation made her an even more fun bisected doll to stage for photos than Viv in most regards, and this character captured my imagination for crazy body poses even more than Corazón did. I love Cora's dynamic doll stand and the cultural flair of her character design, but I appreciate the assistant for providing the same novelty in a more gruesome manner while also being a less fiddly doll thanks to no wings and loose hair to mess with. The assistant feels more playable and tactile, and I had fun just idly fidgeting with her pieces and clicking her together.
The assistant doesn't outdo Viv in every department. As with Cora, the way her body clicks together in alignment lends her one less point of bizarre display than Viv, as Viv is able to twist her waist at the bisection point in a very unconventional form of a swivel joint. As such, Viv has one more articulation point than other dolls with her LDD body template, while the assistant has no heightened articulation in her own doll format--just the separation gimmick. The couch is a pretty nice display piece for this doll which I never expected from Mattel, and is much less demanding to use, so she too will not be default-displayed in her saw box...but I'm so proud to have conquered the saw box challenge for her and my Viv with this project.
Okay. One last thing. Viv?
Yeah, hey. Have a seat.
Girl.
I have talked about you three springs in a row.
Are we done?
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