SHE Came Home: The Monster High Skullector "Halloween II" Michael Myers Doll by Mattel

With this doll, a major milestone has been achieved: Monster High finally included pumpkins in one of its dolls!

It's weird, right? That it took this long? Monster High generally, and evidently intentionally, steers clear of any uniquely Halloweeny iconography in its dolls, but it's grown more open to embracing it as long as it's a targeted celebration of Halloween. And who better to bring in the first MH doll pumpkin imagery than a celebration of Halloween the movies?

Halloween is one of the premiere slasher film franchises, and I'll admit I've always been annoyed with the audacity of its title. It's so vague (The Babysitter Murders, the alleged working title, is much more descriptive and relevant) and such a name ought to belong to a movie that's the quintessence of the holiday, not merely a story told about events on that date. Like, Trick 'r Treat is worthy of the title Halloween. That movie is the holiday. (And a Skullector doll of Sam would be great!) But Halloween was originally intended to earn that title too by being an anthology series where every movie was related to the holiday with a different narrative. That ultimately never worked out thanks to the monster success of the first film.

Halloween (1978) is a film by horror legend director John Carpenter, who also composed its massively iconic theme tune, and happens to be what most horror scholars consider the first true, pure, classic slasher. That's a mighty important honor. The film is also arguably the slasher at its barest essentials and is very simple and perhaps less impressive in the decades since its premiere. Notably, the kills are far less flashy, lurid, or creative than most later slashers, and there's minimal plot and character development. It's not much of a story. The film's threat is Michael Myers--as a young boy, he murdered his older sister Judith on Halloween and was taken away. Years later, now grown, he has escaped institutionalization and returned to his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois, and is on a killing spree. Teenaged babysitter protagonist Laurie Strode is one of the two most prominent final girls in horror, appearing in nearly as many films as Michael himself, and being one of the most recurring protagonists in the genre alongside Scream's Sidney Prescott. (Poor Scream. It used to be the horror franchise that had never fallen, and then the studio derailed and ruined the seventh film for unjust political motives.) Halloween has four Michael Myers continuities, but most of them feature the Laurie/Michael enmity at their core. Jamie Lee Curtis played Laurie in the first film as an unknown (despite being, definitionally, a nepo baby by both parents, including being the daughter of Janet Leigh who played Psycho's famous shower victim). Curtis has played Laurie in most of the character's cinematic appearances thus far, with the character aging alongside Curtis. Laurie's only film appearances played by someone else are in the Rob Zombie duology, which are remakes and feature Scout Taylor-Compton in the role.

The reason Halloween never became a full anthology series is twofold--first off, the first film got a direct sequel rather than the 1978 movie being a one-off. Halloween II, also written by Carpenter, begrudgingly sticks to the first film rather than being a fully new story, and returns Michael to the screen and reveals that Laurie is his long-lost other sister, and she is being targeted for this reason. After II, Carpenter belatedly tried to enforce the original Halloween anthology vision by writing and directing Halloween III: Season of the Witch, a fully disconnected narrative that ended up as nothing more than a cult classic. After two films with Michael and his obvious status as a bankable villain who could headline a series, audiences were confused by a film in the series without Michael, and Carpenter left the director's chair of the series for good. All further Halloween films were about Michael Myers. I'll grant them one thing: calling the series Halloween almost certainly gave it its longevity and iconic status. The Babysitter Murders is a very pulpy title and isn't branding that lends itself to sequels very well--sequel titles would only grow pulpier and campier. For a very cheap indie film, Halloween needed the help it could get and a title with simplicity and an air of mystique or prestige almost certainly helped it.

The continuities of the Michael movies are as follows. 

• Halloween (1978), Halloween II, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers. The latter two films give Michael a supernatural cult backstory and clearly characterize Michael as something more than a mundane human, while II merely suggested something supernatural to his nature. Halloween II was written but not directed by John Carpenter; the first and third Halloween films were the only ones he directed, with III belonging to no continuity but its own.
• Halloween (1978), Halloween II, Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later, Halloween: Resurrection. This continuity returns Laurie and Jamie Lee Curtis to protagonist role for the third movie in the timeline, but she dies at the start of Resurrection, a widely-panned film that focuses on dated 2000s pop culture and celebrities.
• Halloween (2007), Rob Zombie's Halloween II--a remake duology by Rob Zombie. This is the only Michael continuity not to feature the first Carpenter film thanks to the remake thesis, and is the only continuity to not feature Curtis--while she was decades too old to have played teenage Laurie for the purposes of the remakes, she also did not get an alternate role or a cameo in these films.
• Halloween (1978), Halloween (2018), Halloween Kills, Halloween Ends--This line cuts out Halloween II and thus Michael and Laurie are not related in this continuity, as Carpenter, overseeing the 2018 film, regretted the second film introducing that idea. Jamie Lee Curtis reprises her role again as an older Laurie in a sequel trilogy that explores her psychology after living over five decades waiting for Michael to return, and how Michael has warped the town. Curtis has declared Ends to be her final turn in the role of Laurie Strode. John Carpenter had oversight and made contributions to the sequel trilogy, but the films were directed by David Gordon Green. 2018 was the best-received film of the trilogy and is seen as one of the best Halloween films, but the writing of Kills and especially Ends saw a decline in audience reception. Green went on to try making a similar sequel trilogy to The Exorcist (1973), but the first film, The Exorcist: Believer was so poorly recieved that the trilogy died then and there. In retrospect, the success and quality of Halloween (2018) looks more like a fluke given the greater proportion of David Gordon Green horror films which notably disappointed. I wouldn't hand him another horror franchise after his track record.

Michael Myers as a killer himself is interesting...kind of for how boring he is. He's nondescript but haunting in his garb, he never speaks but is scarier for it, and he has no indication of anything remotely like a personality--he is essentially a human vessel for pure evil, with no charisma, anger, or other feeling. His psychologist Sam Loomis saw nothing within Michael but darkness, spending, as he put it, years trying to help, and even more years trying to keep him locked up. He's often not even supernatural--just oddly durable. Michael is also iconic for his costume--he wears a grey or bluish workman's jumpsuit and a positively eerie full-head mask with a white unpainted face and brown rooted hair. 

An action figure of Michael.

The mask itself was a modified James T. Kirk Star Trek mask and has gone through its versions, but what remains is its cold expressionless visage, perfectly suited to an unfeeling killer.

Weren't we talking about Monster High?

Yes, well, at SDCC this year, Mattel made an unprecedented move and appeared to unveil the Skullector drops for the rest of the year, give or take one or two possible surprises (such as the Buffy set, which was rumored before SDCC and revealed only after). I really liked the transparency and excitement, and I was really surprised to find myself so drawn to Skullector Michael Myers.

It's an atypical pick for Mattel--they've typically skirted the slasher genre in their licensing picks. They have Chucky and Tiffany, but those come from the point in the Child's Play franchise where camp fully stepped in. Us is a slasher movie throwback, but it isn't indulgently gory and Mattel handled the adaptation with the gravity of the film's poetic themes. Halloween is a franchise which has featured breasts and blood, and MH Michael has both a legit weapon knife and unambiguous blood imagery in a way that I don't expect from Mattel. Previous dolls have gone light on the blood and/or restricted the weapons to jewelry references, not actual props.  It's possible Mattel heard of Jakks Pacific encroaching on their territory with the Doll Haus of Dread fashion doll line licensing cosplay-esque dolls for horror franchises Mattel has avoided, and they decided to snap up Michael before Jakks could, given that Halloween is more akin to the franchises Doll Haus of Dread has pursued thus far. The 2026 Universal collection at Walmart, for the same price point as DHodD, might also be a competitive response to Jakks. (I do hope Doll Haus of Dread hasn't locked Mattel out of the franchises Jakks adapted, because I'm sure I'd prefer Mattel's Skullector take on nearly all of them.)

I was also frankly surprised to like Skullector Michael at all, given that I never watched a Halloween film firsthand and in full, and never had any interest in the Michael Myers character. But the doll looked great, mixing mature and fun in a nice way--not turned garish like Coraline or the Sanderson Sisters. I was also fairly impressed by her accessories. She had a few jewelry dangles, chrome-silver plastic accents, and a frankly awesome pumpkin purse...and her shoes turned object heels into something special.

I had reservations about Michael still. Again, no prior attachment to the franchise. I was also getting a pit in my stomach at the fact that it seemed highly possible, if not certain, that Mattel completely whiffed yet another opportunity to put a big tall imposing character on a big tall imposing body. While Michael looks like she has stature in some pictures, her description states that her height is below big-sister size, and her not being tall enough would really dent her appeal. Michael's first actors weren't hulks, sure, but it would be nice to have her taller. There was no way to really know before she dropped, however, and merely being aware of this possibility tempered things some. Better to spoil myself with the realization before than to be blindsided when I get her. With the resignation that this doll was probably the wrong body type, I still went in after polling on Tumblr and getting a majority "yes, please review her" response from respondents.

Skullector Michael is themed and licensed specifically to the second movie in the franchise, Halloween II. This is where she gets her bloody eye streaks and the hospital implements and imagery in her presentation.

There are a few licensed Monster High dolls that went straight to a sequel instead of a franchise's first installment. The first Universal Monsters partnership in 2022 used Bride of Frankenstein to depict both famous monsters from the Frankenstein series (link to revisit post here) and a different doll based on the first film only just arrived this year (link to that one's revisit here). Another "Bride of __" horror movie was loosely used to depict an iconic lady character with the Chucky and Tiffany set depicting the possessed doll forms of "Chucky" Charles Lee Ray and Tiffany Valentine--Bride was the fourth movie in the Child's Play series and was Tiffany's introduction. The Chucky and Tiffany Skullector set isn't actually branded under any single film, nor under the Child's Play label. The box only uses the characters' names, but the two characters first shared a screen in Bride of Chucky and the backdrop in their box is derived from a specific scene in the film--Tiffany's death as a human.  We also got a Gremlins 2: The New Batch doll of Greta Gremlin, but no dolls from the first movie (though a doll of transformed Stripe doesn't sound impossible).

Halloween II is written as an immediate sequel to the 1978 film, taking place later on the very same Halloween night and depicting the aftermath of the first film as Laurie is taken to recuperate at the hospital and Michael follows her there. The film is more lurid and gory with its kills than the preceding film ever was, which makes it all the more surprising II was the film the MH team chose--and that they actively leaned into its bloody reputation.

The photography on Michael's box has a slight yellow tint.

The back shows Michael lurking at the hospital. I think the HMH logo on the wall is kind of serendipitous. It could read as "Haddonfield Memorial Hospital", the actual name of the setting, or "Halloween [x] Monster High".

I'll admit I was nervous to take the sleeve off the box. Photos of in-hand Michaels were circulating which made it look like her screening was botched or altered since the promo photos and giving her a wide-eyed quality that wasn't advertised, similar to G3 signature Nefera or Netflix Morticia. I was relieved to see my doll felt, to me, basically the same as the stock photos in terms of her facial character.

Here's the sides of the inner box.

The back mocks up an edition of the local newspaper. Michael's masculine name is used as the headline, but the copy below is ungendered and only abbreviates the character's name to "M. Myers" and "Myers", similar to how the 2026 Universal dolls avoided acknowledging the plainly obvious gender-flipping of the doll's design. The text does not gush about her fashions or details at all, which many Skullector boxes do.

An opportunity was missed to refer to her as "the Shape" in this text. I don't personally quite understand or like that title for Michael, but it very much is a thing.

Here's the backdrop out. The scenery is a hospital hallway with some cobwebs and Skullettes added.

Certificate and stand parts are in the usual places.

Here she is unboxed.

I think this doll strikes such a great balance. She feels mature, serious, and deluxe by Mattel standards while not being too dark and dull. This is a doll who throws bright pumpkins and red blood in but doesn't feel loud and childish. I think the pumpkins actually contrast her blue jumpsuit perfectly.

Michael being feminized is interesting, because it almost suggests that this version of the character has some sense of self-concept. To accessorize and do makeup is a performance of a kind, while the canon Michael is so devoid of feeling and his look feels nothing but utilitarian. He has an attachment to his mask, but it's not designed to feel like an intentional crafted choice--it was just on hand. His masculinity is present as a threat and the Freudian readings of knife stabbings and female victims are definitely there, but it never seems like Michael really cares about himself as a man, exactly, because he isn't offered any interiority. Simply having the killer be a glam diva as a woman adds personality. 

Is this stereotypical? Yeah. A female Michael deserves to be just as cold and unconcerned with her looks as male Michael. In truth, I don't think there would be any meaningful difference in how Michael carried herself if she was a woman. Is the doll still rocking it? Oh, absolutely.

To depict Michael's masked look, the doll does the easy, sensible thing and molds her head in the white color of the mask. While yes, technically, Michael's full-head mask covers his neck and has a flap/edge encircling the neck as such, that could look really clunky on a skinny-necked fashion doll, and this was the only way they were ever going to do it. Michael's unmasked adult face is only shown once (in the first film, where he just looks like some guy) and to design an unmasking feature for the doll would not be easy--an alternate head would be required, and nobody cares who Michael is if he doesn't put on the mask. The mask having rooted hair also makes this the easy choice, since the doll head can be rooted like normal.

Michael's mask hair is a blend of dark brown tones, swept back just like the films, but feminized with its long length and wave. The top is gelled into its backward sweep. The fiber is the current standard "could be better" saran.

I think Michael's mask face comes across perfectly. The stark white color contrasts the flesh tone visible on her neck and hands, and the head has sculpting to look like a mask, with prominent brow ridges.

Michael's face is well painted. Her brown eyes are shadowed over with grey to reflect the dark hollows the mask can create, sometimes leaving Michael looking eyeless in the right lighting. Tan and muted blue eyeshadow surrounds the eyes. Glittery blood trails from each eyehole, adding some drama and surprising gruesomeness to the doll and matching injuries dealt to Michael in the second film. I'm not as wowed by the glitter application as I was on 2026 Dracula, though, and one speck got stuck in the lips and had to be picked away. The eyebrows are painted but faded to evoke the unpainted face of the white mask, while the lips are black and sharp. I'd argue painting the lips at all misses the point, but they do look really good. If I had an expendable spare Michael, I'd be very tempted to wipe her lips and evaluate the results, but I'm not doing that.

The detail was so subtle and slick, I almost didn't even notice it, but Michael's wedge-shaped eye reflections are not actually the standard shape for MH dolls. They have a little notch taken out to turn them into kitchen knives!

The dot eye reflections with the knives could also be an oblique reference to the jack-o'-lantern in the 1978 film's opening credits, where the right eyehole (our view) and the nose, with a cut into the mouth, are carved to very loosely resemble Michael looking left with a knife held in front.

Bad sketch of the visual invoked by the carving.

Michael's head does have a nice extra detail to cement its portrayal as a mask--folds of the rubber mask are sculpted on the back of the head!

It is remarkable how effective the design is at feeling like a mask. It doesn't feel merely like a different-colored head put onto the body. I think part of it is also that the bottom lip of the head socket is a bit more pronounced than the "seamless" design the dolls usually go for?

The rest of Michael's body is a skintone I don't think we've seen in the brand before. It's a light flesh tone which has a greyer hue than the human colors the brand tends to do.

Michael has two silver chain earrings which are rigid, but have clip-on charms at the end which do swing. I wonder if, in the MH universe, these are pierced only through her mask, or also through her earlobe underneath. On her right earring, the dangle is a pumpkin with a sculptural skull carving which evokes the Halloween II poster, and on her left, it's a blade which might be a scalpel or just a skinny knife. 

Michael's most famous weapon is a kitchen knife like one might use to carve a pumpkin, but she gets a full-size one to represent that. Jack-o'-lanterns aren't hugely narratively relevant to Halloween, but they're a major part of the aesthetic cultivated by the franchise, down to the original poster and the opening credits for the 1978 and 2018 films.

The earrings are cool, but it can feel a bit like they were made for a larger doll. They hang pretty low and brush Michael's shoulders. The silver coloring is not vac-metal chrome, but it's more metallic by far than pearly cast plastic.

Michael's jumpsuit is the synthetic material that several recent dolls have introduced to Mattel's output, and is colored a muted dark blue. In the films, the costume looks this shade in certain scenes, but the more accurate color would probably be dark grey. 

I think this color choice is vital to this doll's success, however, given the contrasting pumpkins. Though I am partial to a grey/orange pairing myself, the blue is the perfect decision here, and it's not so saturated it feels obviously inaccurate or out of tone. The material is the waterproof woven synthetic that's been popping up often in Mattel's recent output, and the suit is one piece. The sleeves have gathered cuffs while the legs are bell-cut. The suit has velcro down the back but isn't stitched closed above the waist, and the "belt" section is part of the suit and the same material.

An "M. Myers" nametag with a bloody backdrop is printed on the left breast, and glittery blood patches decorate the suit too. 

Again, this is pretty surprising from Mattel, even after Adelaide Wilson's shirt seemed pretty explicitly bloody too. The glitter keeps it fun and fantasy in the same way Adelaide's cartoon blood silhouette tamed her costume down, but I'm not mad to see them courting the grimmer side of horror.

Around her waist, Michael has a faux-studded black vinyl belt with hanging static chains and a few more dangle charms--a second pumpkin (exactly the same piece as the earring charm), a hatchet, and a syringe, all related to Michael's killings.

I think this is the most swinging charms on a single Monster High doll.

I never thought femme Michael would be a "more keychains than purse" kind of lady, but maybe she would be.

Michael's hands have faux fingerless gloves made of mesh. They don't actually enclose any of her digits.

Under the jumpsuit, Michael is wearing a cropped tank with more explicit bloody imagery. This layer of clothing was hardly necessary because her coveralls...cover all, but I appreciate this being here.

As mentioned, Michael's boots are something special. From the front, they're just stompy work boots with tall platforms.

The heels, however, are the VHS tape and sleeve of her own movie, Halloween II. The sleeve piece features the real cover art on one side, and a grainy downscaled designer drawing of Skullector Michael on the reverse.

The printing and detail are great. Even better? These are removable miniatures and the tape slides into the sleeve just like the real thing! The tape properly clicks in too so it won't fall out.

Amazing. The only thing that would make this better is a way for Michael to securely hold them--at the least, a finger loop on the sleeve piece would be great. I can see a loop on both pieces being distracting and spoiling the pieces as miniatures. It was very difficult to get her to hold these pieces for a photo.

I actually really like the meta idea of the licensed dolls having their movies' physical media as accessories, and would be open to seeing more takes on the idea. Michael has object details everywhere--earrings, belt and shoes, and yet the shoes end up being fantastic, with the removable-accessory aspect being a great feature.

The VHS parts fit into the boots by just pressing into rectangular fitted hollows in the vinyl. The sleeve piece has a wider slot than the tape piece so you can't get it wrong.

The tape and sleeve can be assembled and loaded into the right boot in one piece, which would leave the left boot empty. 

I'm all about the object heels being more than gaudy shoe parts. 

Michael's body is the mid-teen size. Netflix Morticia used the big-sister body just recently, so it hasn't vanished for the second time. Why is Mattel so reluctant to use the tall adult body when there are several characters who would benefit and just don't? 

Her head is also nearly immobile, tilt-wise.

Michael has an actual honest-to-God slasher weapon as an accessory in the form of a chrome silver handheld kitchen knife. 

This is pretty major given that Mattel seems to have a taboo about giving their dolls weapons. It also looks kind of stupid with its very awkward bracket handle, and the lack of paint on the handle is strange, as well as the woodgrain texture. Mattel will not give us gripping hands and while part of me sees this as part of the camp of fashion dolls, I'm also kind of frustrated that this couldn't be given any better of a display. Why do they refuse gripping hands? Is this part of some toy grey area where they'd have to be licensing the dolls as action figures? Many dolls have gripping hands, but fashion dolls seemingly go out of their way not to. DC Super Hero Girls had gripping hands, but those dolls were touted as an overlap of action figures and fashion dolls, and straight action figures were featured in the product line, so maybe fashion dolls really must, by technicality, have loops and handles on their accessories instead? Then again, Mattel currently has the KPop Demon Hunters license which includes both dolls and action figures, but the doll portion isn't given gripping hands. I know LEGO isn't allowed to make Minifigures series for its Star Wars license because Hasbro has locked down Star Wars action figures, and selling LEGO minifigures of Star Wars characters by themselves is considered to encroach on that exclusivity deal. Maybe there is an outside limitation, but I do think that's ridiculous. I'm not sure a NECA collector and Skullector collector are seeing a Michael Myers from either brand as a substitute for the other. Let them both grip their knives realistically.

Michael's purse is directly based on the Halloween II movie poster, like the charms on her jewelry: a pumpkin carved sculpturally in front with a skull that's mostly realistic but takes its proportions from the classic Skullette.

Realistically, the carved skull would be yellow flesh, since the orange surface can't be carved like this unskinned, but it looks like the poster.

The plastic of the purse is rigid and the stem handle can't easily hook over the doll's wrists. Her hands either need to be squished in or popped out. I wish the handle was a bit taller/had a bigger gap above the top of the bag.

The pumpkin has a slash in the top that the knife fits into as storage, looking like the pumpkin has been stabbed! This is excellent, though I almost wish it let the knife sit more at an angle.

The purse also opens with a side hinge, as if Michael really needed it, but I appreciate the additional functionality. The clasp works just like G1 Lagoona's signature/13 Wishes fishbowl purse. The knife doesn't go into a closed sheath, just the hollow inside. The VHS tape pieces could fit in the bag.

The hinge is just folded plastic.

This is a doll with a lot of tactile features.

To fix Michael up, I had to extract and fully replace her neck peg after no amount of cutting around the joint was able to free its motion enough for forward/back tilt. 

It's the season to officially start cooking with pumpkins and eating autumn, so I needed to get on making roasted seeds and pumpkin bread immediately, but I thought I'd kill three birds with one stone by first using the small pumpkin as a take on the famous opening-credits example from the first Halloween. I mildly "yassified" the carving by changing the eye to have a flowing hair silhouette for girl Michael and gave the other eye lashes and the mouth a lips design.

With some photo editing, I composed Michael in the background and imitated the look of the credits.

I usually go for a reference to the movie posters in these Skullector sessions, but neither Halloween (1978) nor Halloween II feature Michael directly in the cover where it would be a meaningful move to use the doll and/or her accessories to restage those images.

Despite the Illinois setting being clearly established in the first Halloween, if you know anything about Illinois and California, you'll be able to tell which you're actually looking at onscreen. (Fun fact: Outdoor school locker "hallways" are extremely Californian and utterly foreign to Midwestern experience where lockers are indoors because we have, you know, cold seasons.) Fortunately, I can provide an authentic Midwestern autumn to my Michael doll like later entries did. An authentic hedge for her to stand halfway behind? Not so much. I had to roll up a grass pad and edit it larger in post, and alter the foliage colors in post too.

Another iconic shot to imitate was Michael pinning Bob to the wall with his knife, tilting his head as he gazes at his handiwork. I didn't have a complete expendable doll body that I could bore a hole through for the knife, so I used a male BJD-style body with missing body parts.

I took another photo to tie in a few images from the first movie--Michael pretending to be the murdered Bob using a "ghost" sheet and Bob's glasses, Michael putting his sister Judith's gravestone on a bed, and the unusual sight of a lit jack-o'-lantern placed on a nightstand (who does that?).

Here's a loose take on the famous shot of Laurie in distress as Michael's face appears in the doorway behind her. Maddie Hatter had decently similar hair shaping, so she got to be the Laurie of this photo.

Michael's face is increased in size with an edit.

While this is an appealing Skullector design, the character is made to be shot in low light and film grain, vaguely seen like the Boogeyman she's often described as.

There are certain characters that I think are easier to photograph for in the medium of cosplay, and certain figures easier to photograph in the medium of dolls. A fantasy princess might be easier to shoot in doll scale given the relative inaccessibility of castles and palaces at human scale, but Michael Myers is far easier to get photos for with a human cosplayer because doll-scale suburbia or hospital scenery is surprisingly difficult to stage with the required accuracy and detail. As such, Michael is one of the Skullector characters I can't claim to be able to photograph to the level I want to.

She's still a really nice design. 

I love that Mattel went more serious and scary with her design, indulging in explicit blood imagery and turning out a surprisingly grounded and mature look for Michael while popping in color with the first pumpkins to grace a Monster High doll (in release order). I think the thought put into making her accessories multi-purpose, with the knife storing in the purse and the heels being detailed VHS minis that assemble together, is fantastic. I'd love more physical media props for these licensed dolls, and the VHS molds could be easily reprinted. (They don't even have to be attached to the costumes for future cases. VHS heels being a unifying standard would not be the right choice.) Michael even has an unnecessary extra layer with her tank top. The doll is pretty awesome.

There are several sticking points for me. While Michael doesn't have to be a towering giant, I can't see how this doll wouldn't be improved by the big-sister body, and I wish Mattel was more eager to use it. The neck articulation of new dolls is absurdly deficient and continues to go unaddressed. Michael's accessories are also more awkward than intended. The knife doesn't look very real, perhaps on purpose, and the bracket handle doesn't flatter it. The knife also sticks straight up and down in the purse in an odd way and the purse itself is hard to get around the doll's wrists. Lastly, the awesome VHS pieces aren't designed to be held by the doll. 

I'm going to be glancing at Doll Haus of Dread pretty soon. It's possible the brand could provide a competitive quality in the experience, handling, and display of the dolls that Mattel is currently struggling with. But Mattel can't possibly be worried on a visual level. Doll Haus of Dread has nothing on the design appeal of Skullector.