Mattel won me over with this one, if a little begrudgingly. She's just enough novelty and fun, and I appreciate a colorful doll for the summer mood. She's my Young-hee for the year.
I'd have loved to do a Skullector clowns double-feature with Pennywise (who is also a killer clown from outer space), but there's not a chance of that happening without a rerelease of Pennywise, which I can't count on. I can only cross my fingers that maybe the Welcome to Derry phenomenon or even the potential re-cut of the films which director Andy Muschietti spoke up about and said he wanted to put into motion (again) would provide incentive for Mattel to rerelease their first Skullector piece. I'm a big fan of Muschietti's IT universe, and Skullector Pennywise is a good doll even though she's a genderbend.
But enough about clowns. Let's talk about Klowns!
Killer Klowns from Outer Space is a 1980s sci-fi horror comedy film that places itself intentionally in the company of old B-movies, deliberately emulating and satirizing the cheesiest sci-fi monster films of the 1950s with its plot. The story, as the sensationalist title suggests, involves alien beings who resemble circus clowns landing their big-top UFO and wreaking mayhem on a sleepy town with myriad cartoonishly gruesome methods of killing that turn clown and carnival imagery into something morbidly bonkers. The film is overtly campy and goofy, chiefly with the hideous Klowns being treated as if they easily pass for human entertainers, and has so much genuinely whimsical fun with its imagery and horror elements that it's hardly a truly scary film. Sure, it's bloody, but it's a clown horror that never forgets to be funny. Honestly, Killer Klowns might be my favorite take on the clown as monster, since the film gets so genuinely imaginative and silly with it, though the fusion of circus aesthetics and midcentury sci-fi is also a bizarrely successful novelty. (The film also has a really fun original theme song.) In this film's universe, it's implied that human clowning was inspired by a prior visit of the Klown aliens!
Perhaps I should have expected Monster High to get in on it. Despite having no sequels, Killer Klowns' kultural kachet has been rising in the past ten years, going from a relatively obscure kult klassic to a more widely-marketable movie with a recent official video game inspired by it, and it's lighthearted and goofy enough for MH to sign on. There are over a dozen distinct named Klowns in the film with recognizable traits, though I'm not surprised to see Shorty as the Klown of choice. He tends to be the most iconic.
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| Action figure of Shorty. |
Of course, Mattel's Shorty is a girl. There are two token female Klowns in the actual movie, but they're there as a pretty trite, if not icky gag, being just as ugly as the others with literal balloon breasts, while two lecherous dudes end up in their lair and get handled by them offscreen (they come back covered in cartoon kiss marks), so I'm honestly more in favor of a girl Klown doll being a gender-flip. Shorty's more famous, anyway. There's some potentially divisive design choices, but the doll still carried forth the alien circus kitsch and had some fun novelty sculpts and features. Heck with it. Who cares if I'm not really able to photograph her in situ?
Shorty's shipping box surprised me with a warning not to open or put on a shelf until July 3.
This is the kind of thing retailers are presented with to stop received product from being stocked on the store floor before its sell date, but Shorty was an order-only doll who outright shipped to her buyers before the date, so I don't know why an embargo warning was present. Was she planned to be a longer-term preorder who would ship later but just wasn't, rendering the box warning void? Did Mattel have to send a "disregard" notice to the warehouse after the Shorty boxes were printed, or did somebody mess up and make Shorty an earlier release than intended? Very odd. I just opened her when I got her, but admittedly stalled on finishing this review a bit since there were other things to do anyway.
Here's the doll box. The box sleeve design does a good job of adding in a bit of kitschy aesthetic to the doll, who wouldn't suit a simple artistic portrait on plain black.
Here are the sides of the external sleeve.
The back artwork references a lethal pie-ing scene from the film.
With the sleeve removed, Shorty can be viewed. Her backdrop art is the hangar in the Klowns' circus spaceship which contains the cotton-candy cocoons the Klowns feed from.
Here are the sides of the internal box.
The back copy on the box swaps the letter "C" for "K" often as a gimmick, and that's something you have to be quite careful with lest you end up with triple adjectives that start with the letter!
Here's the backdrop slid out.
And the doll unboxed.
Skullector's version of Shorty is...a lot. Gender flip aside, she makes a lot of choices that are hard to make up my mind on. I think her look exaggerates the clownish theme to heights of some kind, while also perhaps reading more immediately alien than the aesthetic of the Klowns in the film, playing the midcentury sci-fi aesthetic more blatantly than they do.
The doll is also very blacklight-reactive, which I believe is at least partially intentional. It's only a shame they couldn't cast her head in a white vinyl that glowed alongside her body, because her makeup lights up like a neon sign while her head is dull next to the rest of her. That feels like an oversight. The doll hair not matching the fur hair in glow is also disappointing.
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| I think the blacklight makes the sheer sleeve/cuff costume material look super unearthly! |
In the film, Shorty has green hair, and is mostly bald on top with a single vertical tuft in the middle of his dome. He has a ring of hair around the back of his head which is flared out, and also has a low short ponytail, Founding Fathers-style, on the back. The doll's hair is quite a bit more yellow-toned than it really should be, and interprets the style with three ponytails in a ring around the side, plus a tuft of...troll hair in the top middle.
The troll hair is attached to the popcorn hairband, which just clips around the rooted ponytail.
I kind of feel like the rooted ponytail chopped short and tied vertical would suffice for the same effect, without the troll hair, especially because the troll fiber is a different texture from film Shorty and the rest of the doll, but part of me likes the zaniness of it.
A troll doll wouldn't be too bad at playing a Klown, actually.
The rooting is one zone on the top front, and two more for the side ponytails, which isn't quite accurate. There should probably be four zones to have the top ponytail completely vertical and a back ponytail hanging straight down, and the sides of the hair shouldn't be their own ponytails. The fiber is polypropylene, and it's not very tidy.
I think there may be ways to improve this doll's hair, but I'm so torn between wanting to take her down a more accurate path and wholeheartedly enjoying the official design. I think this doll is liable to break down and age poorly, and that may give me license to try restyling her. I can editorialize under the pretext of a doll rescue, so maybe Shorty will come back to the blog! If her hair gets worse, I can probably reroot her with a more accurate color and style that still fits the femme reimagining.
The face is surprisingly successful. The Klowns in the film are deeply grotesque creations of prosthetic puppetry, and while maybe the doll could have gotten a little more ugly and messed-up, her likeness with her face paint and her giant ears is pretty strong. I think the face paint and mold captures the big cheeks and wide mouth well.
Shorty also has a bulbous Klown nose, though the doll's is more human-shaped than the spherical nose in the film.
The noses turn out to be the Klowns' Achilles' heels, as popping the noses makes the Klowns explode.
The pink of the cheeks and connected lips is more neon on the Skullector doll, while the eyes are more designed, with bright green irises contrasting yellow sclerae, and more of a clearly reptilian influence. Shorty's clown makeup replicates the asymmetric blue shading around the eyes (though the asymmetry is much subtler on the doll) and includes the lavender eye shading color, though I could have done with some white space between the makeup colors for the more clownish, less glam idea. Shorty has exaggerated eyelashes in doll form which are bulbous in shape. She also has two-directional sharp teeth over her lip paint, reminiscent of Venus McFlytrap or Honey Swamp. The teeth are painted in a yellowed color.
The ears on this head mold are massive. They remind me of a non-pointy version of Kjersti Trollsson's ears, though I think Kjersti's are still larger.
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| Old photo of a bygone Kjersti I used to own. |
The two biggest ear sculpts in this brand both belong to short girls!
Shorty's head feels a little too squishy, perhaps, and paired with her expectedly stiff neck joint, this makes her head move very little.
Shorty has asymmetrical object earrings in lieu of asymmetrical object heels. Are we witnessing a new approach? Did Mattel get sick of people complaining about the shoe designs and moved the idea up the body to do earrings instead? I think it might make more sense here, honestly. Gozer, the Skullector after Shorty, has object heels again, but earrings wouldn't suit them as well.
The earring on Shorty's right side is a model of the Klowns' ray guns, which is pretty detailed and well-painted for its size, on both sides as well! The "chain" is styled as popcorn.
On the other side, the earring is a single cherry.
In the film, the Klowns toss slapstick cream pies which are capable of dissolving the people they hit, and one such victim is reduced to a pile of blood and cream before a Klown places a giant cherry on top. That scene is depicted in the box art. I feel like G1 Ghoulia could also wear this earring. Cherries are her thing.
Shorty's costume has been pretty radically reinterpreted, and might lean more toward the "alien" than "clown" side of the character this way. I loved the film costume, so I don't think any improvements are made here, but it's fine.
The blue collar is made sci-fi metallic here, and the red bobbles at the edge have been turned into red Skullettes embossed on the surface of the collar instead. The collar has a tab that closes it in the back.
The stand pole doesn't like the collar very much and presses against it and pushes it up. That feels like an oversight.
The costume is a scary pleather two-piece that looks great for now but is almost certainly waiting for disaster. The ribbed red striping of the film costume has been reinterpreted as a wavy stripe and star pattern on sheer sleeves and ankle cuffs, while the yellow body is left unadorned.
I hope the peeled fabric could dye yellow nicely in the inevitability of its deterioration. With the puffy wrinkled gathers of the pants, I don't realistically think the pleather could be sealed or reinforced with a brushed-on application, so I'd accept the peeling and then dye the base fabric yellow as my means to fix this costume.
Around the bare waist, Shorty has a popcorn belt with a green star in the middle. At least all of the green of this doll is consistent even though it's all the wrong shade.
The pants have a ribbon strap sewn inside to keep them from pulling up too much. This is a case where I wouldn't mind the midriff gap being closed, though!
The shoes kind of defeat the purpose of the doll's name because Shorty's name refers to the Klown's height, which the doll replicates with the little-sister body type...and then the shoes lift the doll to the standard mid-teen height. Odd. I like her a lot when her true height is reflected, and I think it was a mistake to make her shoes tall, but I can't say I dislike the shoes, either. They're made to look like balloons, with very bulbous blue bodies and tall red balloon-animal platforms with a heel-less look.
Monster High has done a very similar shoe concept before for Freak du Chic Honey Swamp, who had a balloon motif in addition to a clown/marionette theme.
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| Photo from Christina Articulates. I owned this Honey, but have no documentation of her shoes in the old photos I saved. |
One of the things that really sold me on the Shorty doll was the hands. Shorty has two sets, and I honestly cannot choose a favorite.
She comes wearing her bare hands, which are awesome. The Klowns have distorted hand shapes with knobbly stubby fingers and only four digits, just like a cartoon, and the doll imitates that beautifully.
Four-digit hands were also seen on Skullector Jack Skellington, also per cartoon convention. I get sadder by the day that I let Jack go. Selling the Nightmare Before Christmas duo was right at the time, and I don't miss Sally, but Jack was a great novelty sculpt with a lot of character. I'd love Mattel to reuse the molds for Santa Jack so I could get that body back, and if any solo Jacks from the set that exists pop up, I might have to move things aside to get him back that way.
Shorty's most famous scene in the film is when he comes across a biker gang in an alley and they antagonize him and one man destroys his clown trike. He puts on boxing gloves and literally knocks someone's block off when the glove arm extends out cartoon-style, decapitating the biker with a punch. As such, merchandise of Shorty usually features the gloves or has them as an alternate pair of hands, and that's just what this doll does!
I'm pleased that wrist hinge joints have been engineered into the glove hands so Shorty can pose for boxing properly.
The Klowns don't really speak English and they mostly just babble alien gibberish, but they sometimes mimic English pretty well, and Shorty can clearly be heard saying "put up your dukes" in the boxing scene, so it's good that the doll can actually do so. The right glove's hinge needed to be cracked into motion with flat-grip pliers, though. I also feel like the lower edges of the hinge could have rounded corners so you don't see the sharp angles when the hub of the hinge turns.
Shorty has a drink as an accessory, which is modeled after the Klowns' sustenance. In the film, they use their ray guns to conjure cotton candy cocoons around their victims, which look like pink sacs that they hang on rails in their spaceship with black hooks. The faces of the victims can be seen in the sacs when torn open, turned red and bloody as their bodies are liquefied inside like a spider's prey. The Klowns then drink the victims with the use of giant silly straws. All of that imagery has been replicated with this handheld accessory, using a Skullette instead of a human face, and making the silly straw spell Shorty's name!
Very cute. A single finger loop, sized for her bulbous digits, is provided on the back.
I wish the Skullette detail was picked out with red paint, but maybe that's too explicitly gory? In the film, the cocoons torn open show the faces of the victims unmarred but completely red and wet as if breaking down into the fluid the Klowns slurp out.
The fatal flaw of this doll is the weakness of her joints. Her elbows and wrists spin too freely and her wrist hinges are also loose. This means the weight of her drink or gloves make her very difficult to pose. It's not right.
I tightened Shorty's joints. I dabbed glue onto her elbow pegs before inserting them and moved them around so their rotation was tighter. I did the same with the wrist pegs and stuck glue into the hinges with an X-Acto blade with glue on it slid between the hand and hinge parts. Only after this joint tightening could I match the "drinking" pose.
I do like Shorty looking short, so for that to be an option, she can wear some blue G1 Twyla shoes to stand shorter without disrupting her look too much. The G1 little-sister feet and shoes are different from the mid-teen feet and shoes, so swapping shoes with little-sister dolls requires shoes from someone else with that body type.
Here's Shorty with Young-hee, matching the bright summery vibe.
It sucks that the review I wrote for both Skullector robots last year was meant to celebrate the new works in their franchises releasing the same day, only for both new installments to disappoint audiences! I still enjoy the dolls and find Young-hee a pretty, cheerful piece.
The first produced photo I shot for Shorty was actually an appropriation of another Klown's scene. One of the best gags in the film comes when the Klown called Slim performs a ridiculously impossible shadow-puppet act, with his stubby eight digits somehow casting the silhouettes of absurdities like a sexy woman or Washington crossing the Delaware onto the brick wall behind him, all until he conjures a shadow T. rex which actually devours his audience. I gave the shadow-puppet gag to Shorty here, and I'll kick myself if there are any future Skullector Klowns, including Slim. It wasn't too hard to figure out the perfect impossible shadow puppet to composite into the scene.
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| Stay tuned to learn just how I got the pose of that familiar silhouette... |
Next, I worked with the popcorn gag. One of the more baffling and concerning facets of the Klowns comes when they scatter popcorn, which seems to be eggs for them which produce...larval Klowns which look like miniature fanged heads on reptilian worm stalks. I turned Shorty into one of these Klown larvae.
The head was already easily removable from my efforts to mobilize her neck peg more. The stalk is just wire wrapped in pipe cleaners, secured to the handle of a mug buried in the popcorn.
I also tried Shorty in a striped mug, where the wire is just balanced inside.
Here's the full Shorty reveling in popcorn...like I do!
I have to admit, the popcorn affinity gives me a certain kinship with this doll. I have Madeline Hatter to personify my tea side, and Shorty for my popcorn side!
Then I needed to go back to the bricks and shoot Shorty's "knock my block off" scene. Here are some simple portraits of her putting up her dukes.
Then the Headmistress came into play yet again, as a capable individual with a head that can be knocked off. I rigged a LEGO tube wrapped in pipe cleaner for the extendo-glove, and was able to get Shorty and Bloodgood's body stood in situ, but the head simply had to be photographed separately and composited in.
Next, I shot an homage to the pie scene. My mini baking tins came in handy again, and I filled one with some clotted cream that wasn't being used for anything else.
For the victim, I took the bald head and arms of the Create-a-Monster Blob (who I call Oozie) and stuck them in a mountain of cream with the pie tin on top. Oozie looks more like the red-faced victims of the cotton candy and has no bones to melt down to like the film's pie victim, but I didn't have an idea for replicating the cocoon visual, and Killer Klowns directly invokes The Blob (1958) with its opening scene (and, perhaps, its lively theme song!). Holding Shorty mostly offscreen with her earring just right made for the perfect pose for the Klown.
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| This is my favorite photo in this post. |
I don't have the setup to replicate the interiors of the Klowns' spaceship, but I courted some of its funhouse vibe for the cover photo, where I leaned into the blacklight look with some paper accents. Having one hand be the boxing glove and posing the hand with the drink carefully let me hide that Shorty's face glows less than her body. I do wish the straw on her drink popped under the light, though! Her name is hard to make out.
To fix that, I just drew on a neon highlight in post.
Here are some colorful portraits.
I've definitely grown to love Skullector Shorty as her own thing. She's way over the top and makes several departures from the film design, including the shoes which defy her very name, but she has an iconic clownish sci-fi spirit in her own way and is just a ton of fun, which is exactly what you want. She bodes poorly for upkeep, but there are ways to adapt to potential damage to her design which could bring her look closer to the original film character design.
The doll has some clumsy aspects. The hair is messy. The factory arm joints aren't tight enough to support the accessories or boxing glove hands. The neck is stiff as usual. While blacklight seems to be invited by her design, it's not fully considered and certain aspects which ought to pop under the light don't. Her hair and body ought to have uniform reactivity, and her straw should be bright too. Maybe the design wasn't seeking UV display after all, but the face paint and the amount that does glow would suggest blacklight is encouraged. This is one of the clumsiest Skullector dolls I've encountered. She's lucky she's so charming after all that!
Maybe I won't be done with Shorty. Maybe I'll have to overhaul her when she falls apart, or else I'll get the means to shoot better film-homage pictures with her. But for now, I'm satisfied. She's a pretty kool kollectible.
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