Happy Halloween! Care to celebrate here? This is a review of witch dolls who exemplify the Halloween spirit--spotlighting two unrelated characters and brands, who are comparable exemplars of festive aesthetic...and a couple of dolls shared before had to come in too.
First up--I needed to get back Casta Fierce--the mainline witch character of Monster High's G1 cast, and also the G1 cast's representative of the Halloween aesthetic--both distinctions she held exclusively until the debut and eventual doll release of her brother Spelldon.
I've always had mixed feelings on Casta.
The attraction and the positives will be obvious to anybody who's read this blog long enough: I love witches and have a major affinity for the classic Halloween witch, though I've become a little warier about how its depictions are executed given the history of the iconography. But having her in hand back then when I was a teen...I wasn't all the way there.
Casta Fierce was Monster High's first overtly Halloweeny doll, breaking the taboo on Halloween imagery that the brand followed otherwise. We only get pumpkins and purple/green/orange/black palettes for explicitly Halloween-themed dolls to avoid the brand feeling seasonal at large. 2026 gave us our second Halloweeny original character in the brand (Spelldon, Casta's shared-aesthetic younger brother) as well as our first dolls with pumpkin imagery (Michael Myers and Halloween Skullector Draculaura). As the first Halloweeny doll, Casta Fierce is a green broom-toting witch decked out in black, purple, and orange. She's also tied into Greek mythology by being the daughter of one of the first sorceresses in documented cultural storytelling: Circe. That all sounds great, right?
...but why is she Beyoncé?
Yeah, Casta Fierce's whole thing is that she's a musician. (She and Catty Noir are never seen interacting, but it can be no coincidence that the G1 brand's two pop stars were a black cat and a witch!) Her broom is a mic stand. She wears a stage costume, and her hair bump and her name are direct references to Beyoncé. She's got the name of Beyoncé alter ego Sasha Fierce (to Casta's detriment; "Casta" does not sound clever or appealing to me) and wears the hair from the "Single Ladies" video. Like Circe, Casta transforms people with her magic, but only when she flubs her lyrics during performances. Her male fans at MH want that to happen to them! This character theming...did nothing for me. I'm not swinging a bat at the Beyhive or anything; I just had no personal attachment to the artist that would give Casta intrinsic appeal. There were other issues. My personal copy of Casta had a really unstable doll stand that wobbled and tipped over all the time, and I found her dress to be horrendous. It's skintight and caked solid with purple glitter that made it unpleasant to the touch and pretty immobile. But a Halloween doll is a Halloween doll; I love a witch and I love a big-sister MH doll, and I thought there was more and better I could do with Casta today. With Spelldon on my shelf and the 2026 Witchy Wonders spotlight, Casta's return to my collection was imperative. I'd already considered bringing her back last year, but I could skip her then. I couldn't now.
Back then, as a teen with significant remaining ignorance, it completely sailed over my head that Casta being based on Beyoncé meant that Casta was a Black character, but to present-day me, that's obviously the case, and the design of her brother further makes it clear. She was not voiced by a Black actor, with Kate Higgins in her role. Higgins also played G1 Frankie. She's a capable singer (and went on to perform Pauline's Super Mario Odyssey songs), but I can't imagine Mattel today using a non-Black actor for Casta. At least, I hope they wouldn't.
In acquisition order, Casta was actually the second doll I got for this post, but was the first I knew I needed.
Casta's original packaging was a feast for the eyes, but getting Casta complete for cheaper was more important to me than getting her in factory state, so for my second and current Casta, I got a loose copy with her stand and all accessories/costume parts.
I'm pleased to say Casta II's stand base is much more stable than my Casta I's, which pitched her backward all the time and didn't sit flat very well.
I took poorer photos of her box ten years ago, when I got my original copy in 2016, all for a blog that never launched.
Casta's diary booklet, which I still own from my first copy, is just full of moodboard-style artwork with her song's lyrics overlaid--no narrative diary text.
Here's Casta with her brother at last. I was surprised to find that none of their coloring is the same exact shades except for the black and silver.
I knew Spelldon's hair colors were different from his sister's, but Spell is lighter and yellower in skintone than Casta, who's more vivid and had more blue in her green. Even their costumes' oranges and purples are different. I kind of like that. They look like siblings but not like oddly-similar opposite-gender twins or a gender-flip duo of a single character. Spelldon's coloration might have ended up with subtle differences just because the design process didn't involve eyedropper color-picking shades off of Casta, but it still works, and there's no reason Spell's colors should have matched Cadta's exactly.
Casta's factory hair is meant to be pushed into a G1 Frankie-style bouffant and gelled, but I found it the factory work be a bit too square and stiff, and it doesn't live up to Bey's rounder shape or the shape in the cartoon. My new copy's hair is deflated and seems like it's been trimmed shorter just a tad, and might be fried and damaged at the ends regardless. The hair is black with an orange and purple streak right next to each other in the front.
When I went to check old photos of my original Casta, I realized Casta II's hair might not have been cut after all. The length is about the same. I feel like I remember longer hair, but that's evidently a distorted memory. This tended to be about as long as most dolls in the brand went, anyway. Bonita Femur was noted and exceptional for her ankle-length ponytail.
Casta's suffering the typical G1 problem of a neutral or serious face in doll form when the character is exuberant and personable in the other media. This might be part of why I struggled with her--she needs to have more spark.
See how much a little lopsided smirk would help?
I'll admit, the stony face gives her more of the untouchable vibe of Beyoncé, but the smirk edit is more in tune with Casta as portrayed as her own character. What I like about modern Monster High is that it's broken out of stoic model blank faces when appropriate, even on G1-style dolls. Spelldon proves as much. I might have to try a minor lip repaint.
My Casta's face has several blemishes and apparent paint errors, but her intended details are all there. She has harsh black eyebrows and heavily-lidded eyes with golden and purple eyeshadow, while her irises are purple with golden zigzag starbursts in them. Spelldon's eyes are plain purple with no extra iris detail. Casta has a golden makeup mark under her right eye, perhaps suggesting a claw scar, and she has a beauty mark on her face above the left corner of her mouth, interpreting a witch's wart glamor-style. This is a detail all three G1 witches (Casta, Create-a-Monster, and Spelldon) feature, and all in the same general placement as well.
Speaking of the Create-a-Monster Witch, this was my first opportunity to compare their face molds. I'd suspected previously that Casta was a remold of the CAM head, and since I can now confirm they share a 2011 stamp, I think this is true. To the eye, I felt like their profiles looked a little different, but Casta was molded years before her doll release (2014), and the only logical explanation would be that she used the original witch mold.
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| Lips repainted black on my CAM head. |
I'm curious how the mold date could remain the same, though, since CAM heads are produced in such a different way that different molds, and re-molding to turn CAM sculpts into rooted sculpts, must be required. CAM dolls have these wig cap disc inserts that must require alternate casting between a sculpt's CAM and rooted equivalents.
Casta's head is very squishy. I remember my old Casta having limited neck articulation, and the same is true for this copy. The squishiness of the head doesn't make it easier to move.
Casta's earrings are symmetrical silver starbursts that I think are meant to be fully abstract, but somewhat resemble the heads of medieval maces.
Casta's costume feels very stagey, befitting a pop star, but again, there's some disjointed ideas. Casta feels like a classic pop girlie, but she's trying to be goddess diva Beyoncé, but then this shoulder cage makes her feel very metal in a way totally unlike her music or persona. Honestly, if Jakks Pacific has locked Mattel out of making a Hellraiser doll themselves, I'd recommend this shoulder cage as a piece for any customizers who get impatient. It fits the vibe of the Cenobites if not any specific details of the Hell Priest "Pinhead"'s canon look.
It's a cool piece, and it's a fun effect encircling her puff sleeves, but I feel like it doesn't quite wrap around and enclose the top of her costume in the way it's trying to. The piece is springy plastic with four pin closures--two on the back and one on each cuff encircling her upper arms.
Under the cage, Casta has a shrug piece with a glossy pleather center covering the front and back of her collar, and sheer orange puffed sleeves. The piece velcros open in back.
Now, this current era of doll collecting has seen me reunited with several old friends from my teenage collection. But this is my reunion with my worst enemy from that collection: Casta Fierce's dress.
I've considered this the worst piece of Monster High clothing ever made. I found Casta 1's piece to be caked stiff with that purple glitter gradient, unable to stay in place on her chest, and struggling to close in back. I think I can retract the glitter stiffness criticism. I realize the material is more flexible than I might have remembered. I don't like glitter, and some of Casta II's has worn away on top, but the problem isn't the glitter. I do prefer how Spelldon has gradient print and foil sparkles, but the glitter is livable. The real problem is just how goddamn tight the dress is. The velcro doesn't begin to hold it closed. This is just improperly sewn.
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| This is the resting fit of the dress: open. |
The stand clip tears this baby right open, guaranteed. She cannot be clipped in and velcroed shut at the same time. I don't like how the dress presses against the contour of Casta's hip joints often, either. And the tulle hem is not nearly as flouncy or voluminous as intended...and the belt acccent is pleather. Stop me; I could go on for days. Opinion not improved! The only other Monster High costume piece I might dislike as much would be Kala Mer'ri's belt. That's the hardest piece to put onto a doll in the MH catalogue (to my knowledge), but only because of the wearer. It actually fits a standard mid-teen doll body fine, and was evidently reused on Betelgeuse's first Skullector doll quite nicely. Kala's belt makes me mad, but Casta's dress has a laundry list of issues in comparison, while Kala's has just the one.
On Casta's right arm, she has a detached net sleeve and a metallic purple studded bracelet.
The other arm has no sleeve, a second copy of the bracelet and a chrome silver one as well.
Casta's right hand is in more of a gripped/clawed shape. It's not an actual gripping hand, but it is sculpted so her microphone looks more natural when it's being held with its discreet handle that slides between her fingers.
Casta wears spiky buckled symmetrical boots that match her purple bracelets.
Casta has a broomstick which is also her mic stand, with a clip on top for the microphone. The stand has no handles for Casta to pose holding onto it.
The ribbon and witch belts tied around the stand reference Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler's habit of tying scarves to his mic stand. So I guess Casta is...the sheer concept of a musician, untargeted. The orange belts are actually one ribbon tied with a buckle on each end, and the black fabric piece has no buckles.
The microphone matches her spiky aesthetic and her boots, and resembles a sorcerer's scepter with the claw-and-orb design. A little T-bracket on the side slides between the fingers of her flexed right hand quite nicely.
As mentioned, Casta is a big-sister doll on the adult femme G1 sculpt, which earns her some instant points with me. I love the stature and presence of the body type. Casta wasn't always canonically a big sister to match the fan name for her body type, but Spelldon's debut turned her into one!
Spelldon looks way taller than his elder sibling thanks to his platform boots, but the G1 boy body at base height is about on par with the big-sister dolls anyhow.
I spent some time working on Casta's hair. It felt like a lot got pulled out in the combing, and there wasn't a whole lot densely rooted to re-tie the bouffant with, but I got it working. I also used a thin paintbrush and acetone to clean her facial marks. I tried to give Casta neck surgery to improve her head articulation, but results were a bit limited. It's better than before, though.
To fix Casta's dress, I ultimately resolved to remove the velcro closure altogether and make it a lace-up. I took some embroidery cord, cut a long piece, and tied a needle to each end to lace it through in a criss-cross, with the bottom getting tied in a bow. While doing the bow is annoying, the lacing tightens the dress well and suits the piece aesthetically.
I might consider this modification for other clothing pieces--even as a stylistic improvement in cases where the laces would simply make sense on the cothing.
I did also implement that tiny smirk repaint.
I also thought it would be nice to fully take out my CAM witch, who I named Alice Kazamm. I haven't really touched her since 2023 in the early days of this blog, and once she went into storage the first time, she didn't come back out. That wasn't fair.
Alice needed some cleaning up upon resurfacing, and I saw room for tweaks. I like all of my restyle ideas for her, but I wouldn't implement them the same way today.
When I put Alice together initially, I came up with the idea of extending her dangerously high hem with a second copy of her dress trimmed down to the skirt and slid up her lower body. That worked...but now I felt confident in the ability to sew the second skirt on so the costume was one piece that needed no fiddling to align it all.
I had also repainted her hands and forearms like elbow gloves, and while I sealed them with gloss, I decided to wipe the paint and recolor the pieces with dye instead, which would hopefully be more durable and clean, and which had the ability to dye the hinges too. I also dabbed glue on her elbow pegs to tighten their rotation.
Here's Alice re-tidied.
I had to make a concession to Casta's music theme because it's her whole thing, but a concert scene was an endeavor I had limited means to stage well. I got her broom standing to stabilize her by shoving magnets and putty into the brush so she could lean on it, and edited in effects and blacked out the scenery.
I put the crowd of mansters clamoring for Casta to transform them off to the side, while Spelldon and Valentine and Venus are with the ghouls. Val didn't end up visible in the composition, but Spell has his arm around him to his right.
And Casta had to fulfill her obligations as an older sister: embarrassing her baby brother by pulling him onstage and shouting him out to the crowd.
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| Val approves! |
Here's a portrait with all 3 G1 witches.
And a couple with Alice.
Casta's dress couldn't be less amenable to broom transport, but I got my favorite picture of her by posing her on her broom anyhow.
This one isn't bad, either.
And here she is mimicking the cover of her namesake album.
I do like Casta more this time around. Being able to get her dress in a better state helped, as did the minor repaint to animate her face a little. She's still not the witch for me, and this copy's hair feels messier than the old one, but I respect her more.
The next witch doll that delivered quintessential Halloween vibes is one I've never owned before: Scary Godmother!
This is an indie doll of sorts, being crowdfunded and developed and released in the mid-to-late 2010s, and proved to be a complete one-off release with no doll line to her name.
Scary Godmother is not an IP I grew up with or was very familiar with, so this doll was actually the first I heard of it! It certainly made an impression, though--this looked like a very cool doll.
The source material this doll is based upon is an all-ages narrative franchise created by comics artist Jill Thompson and spans comic books, at least one picture book, and endearingly early and unpolished CGI cartoon TV specials. (The first special is surprisingly charming--it's nothing surprising or deep story-wise, but the animation style, writing, directing, and comedy all demonstrate real talent and skill.) The stories feature the titular Scary Godmother herself, a fairy godmother figure from a land of Halloween spooks, resembling a classic Halloween witch with bat fairy wings. She's a unique magical being who, in her backstory, was discovered to be equally fairy and witch, and thus she is called Scary Godmother as a unique name and title that befits her personally unique classification. She has no other proper name, and when mentioned without being addressed to her face, is most often called "Scary Godmother" directly with no "the" in front, so I'll follow suit. There's at least one instance of Scary Godmother also just being called "Scary" for short.
The doll aims to be a high-quality translation of Scary Godmother as illustrated by Thompson, and I can't resist an appealingly stylized witch doll with good articulation. I was always fascinated by her, and indeed, this is a doll I've always wanted a really detailed review of, but I haven't seen it. The closest I've gotten didn't get as thorough as I really wanted, so...sometimes if you want it done, you do it yourself!
The box is narrow and close-fit around the doll, wasting no space (which I like). The shape and decoration of the package is made to look like Scary Godmother's haunted house on the Fright Side, the magical spooky realm she inhabits, and the art is rendered in Thompson's hand-drawn style.
The top of the box has a pointed "roof" and attic window shape, and has the age recommendation of 14 and up despite being labeled an adult collector doll.
The roof of the house box blocks Scary Godmother's hat from view, but she's wearing it.
The logo on the front of the box is the traditional Scary Godmother branding of text framed by cobwebs, which is preceded by the text "your very own".
It reminds me a bit of the Elf on the Shelf concept of "take this character as your companion", but I vastly prefer this doll. I'd be on board with adopting Scary Godmother as an Elf on the Shelf-tier tradition. She's certainly a prime Halloween decoration.
The doll is credited to Jill Thompson Creations LLC. This really is an indie product! The box is marked with a 2015 copyright, but I'm not sure what the full funding and development and shipping timeline for the doll was. I don't know if she shipped out around then or was later. She must have been--I only got into dolls in 2016 and I was alerted to the Godmother being dropped as current/upcoming news then, not something that had already happened. The only review of her I've seen, which does a good overview and doesn't indicate she was a late acquisition, was written in 2018.
The side of the box to Scary Godmother's left has some side window cutouts noting the presence of Scary Godmother's ghostly cat familiar, known as the Boozle, who is not visible while the doll is packaged. Fascinatingly, we get to see Thompson's more natural expressive rendition of the Boozle's 2D model in the window, while an on-model illustration of the physical 3D figurine is featured just below to showcase what the Boozle you get will look like.
The opposite wall illustrates the "couture accessory" bags included in the package, also hidden from view. Only two of three are depicted.
The back of the box shows a large window with Scary Godmother's young human friend Hannah and Scary's "broom-mate", Mr. Skully Pettibone.
Skully is incredibly flamboyant and camp as part of a gag of him being the Fright Side's resident "skeleton in the closet". I happen to think this is hilarious, and not at all mean-spirited. It's not hard to profile most of Scary Godmother's social circle as a queer friend group, and I think it's all done in good fun.
The text copy under the window is written in an enthusiastic anonymous voice, and a small bubble shows a Thompson illustration of Scary Godmother. The text is a great style.
In the basement window, we get a glimpse of the many-eyed furry monster under the bed, Bug-a-Boo.
The mainstay friends of Scary Godmother's who are omitted from this box art are werewolf Harry (who is just...the worst) and the vampire royal family--Count Max, his wife Ruby, and their preteen son Orson. Despite Max being named for Count Orlok portrayer Max Schreck and Ruby being named for blood red, the names "Max and Ruby" combined always make me think of the fluffy rabbit characters from another children's series. Orson is also named for Orlok.
Jill Thompson's 2016 signature confirms that she illustrated the whole box. The six is ambiguous and could also be read as a 2, but 2016 is the most logical date for the box art to have been finalized if the doll project was copyrighted the year before.
The bottom of the box has more credits for the project, and confirms Thompson was hands-on in all aspects. I love to see it, and I think it comes through in the product that Scary Godmother's creator was involved in this doll.
The box has a price sticker from a prior seller. Scary Godmother did not cost this much at her original direct sale, but I'm not going to call it a deeply obscene inflation. She has the art-doll quality.
Nowhere on this doll was I able to discern the toy's site of manufacturing. The box states no region or country, and the doll doesn't have any stamps disclosing this either. Very strange. Are you even allowed not to disclose that?
The box is easiest opened from the flat bottom side, and pulling out the tray reveals the full kit--Scary Godmother, a doll stand, three fabric Halloween bags she can use as a purse (or for trick-or-treat), and the Boozle. The Boozle is in front of Scary Godmother's legs and the bags are in a packet taped on the "floor" panel. Scary Godmother's doll stand is disassembled with the base strapped behind her and the pole propped up in position like it will be when she uses the stand.
The backdrop is purple with spooky wraith patterns, and the backdrop has cutouts where the side windows on the outer box are. This reminds me a lot of the classic Arklu Lottie doll boxes.
On the positive side, Scary Godmother's packaging uses zero plastic tags. On the negative?
...I have never encountered this many twist-wires on a single doll.
Twist ties are the "enlightened" move most often applied by either more collector-oriented or just plain cheap dolls, and I can appreciate when all a doll needs is, like, two or three (like classic Living Dead Dolls)...but surely Scary Godmother could have had something a bit gentler and easier to undo? Like ribbons or softer wires? This was a slow process to undo, and I was delicate with her fancy paint, so this took a long time. I guess it could have been worse--the entire back of the box could have been plastered with tape first.
Here's everything out of the box.
Scary Godmother's doll stand is a saddle cradle brace--not a full arc-shaped one that clips onto the doll's underside, but it wedges between her legs and holds her up.
The pole snaps into the base with a cross-shaped plug which can fit in two directions, but the fit is much more secure with the tall part of the cradle facing forward where the name label is. While the doll kind of wants to fall backward this way, flipping the pole makes it wobble badly in the base and I'm not sure Scary Godmother is better supported that way. I love the spiderweb pattern on the base and the green name plaque built into the front, but the plastic platform of the stand could be thicker and sturdier on top, because the top flexes and wobbles a bit when the pole wiggles. Scary Godmother's shoes are needed to make her the right height for the stand, which is not adjustable.
Here's the doll herself.
It's very difficult to translate a distinctively stylized 2D character into a 3D figure. Conveying art style and flavor from a drawing in a doll sculpt and paint job can be a challenge, and there are so so many cases where fashion dolls looks so much less charming than the artwork on their boxes. Scary Godmother, however, is an excellent translation of Thompson's art style. The elephant in the room is that her body proportions are, comparatively speaking, far more robust--the original character design in the illustrations and CGI specials is built like a Henry Selick spindly stop-motion spook (oh, for a Selick stop-motion adaptation!). The doll's proportions are quite a bit altered to make her...you know, a viable doll. She can't be made of matchsticks as a toy, but she comes as close as feasibly possible. And that face is pretty darn perfect.
The first piece of the doll is the witch hat, which is perfectly made. The brim is shaped with an interior card to make it stiff, and the cone is stuffed and has a wire to adjust its shape. The cone is a green and purple fabric with deliberately irregular striping and is the same material as the doll's tights lower down. The top of the brim is black and the underside is lime matching the green stripes.
The hat is held on with a clear chinstrap--the inelastic kind featured on some LDD hats.
The underside of the hat has some give so her cranium can fit into the cone a bit, but it's not fully hollow because the hat is stuffed.
Scary Godmother is fairly transparently a visual avatar of her illustrator and creator, and shares Thompson's bouncy red curls.
I think the doll's hair is much less tightly curled and probably less vivid than it should be. The color is about right for the CGI specials, but drawn Scary Godmother has more orangey hair. The hair is tied back with a black elastic, though I don't think this is necessary or accurate to the loose frizz she's known for. The hair also just hangs too long and blocks her wings. It should be basically above the shoulders in much tighter curls.
The doll's skintone is not Thompson's, of course, but it's beautifully done, being a pale shade with body blushing lending her more saturated green tones. The blushing style reminds me of the wave 2 LDD Fashion Victims.
The sculpt and paint of the face are phenomenal.
Scary Godmother has a long, thin nose with zero concavity; the nose comes straight down from the curve of her forehead, which is accurate to the character's established design, and also seems to be a stylization of Thompson's profile.
It's a really fun unreal profile that looks pretty elegant and lovely: witchy without some of the phenotypic stereotyping the witch nose usually evokes, deliberately or not. Thompson directly putting herself into the character design, and portraying Scary Godmother as a benevolent source of fun and kindness, also removes any concern. The doll's head shape has a small and pulled-back cranium in a fashion oddly similar to the fugly Effanbee head sculpt featured on one witch and the Queen of Hearts.
Scary Godmother is much prettier.
Her eyes are glossy with purple irises, and are shaded around with green and gold with simple black winged eyeliner, and her lips are red and painted into a smiling stylized curl. Scary Godmother looks gentle with a spark of zany fun ready to emerge, which is basically perfect.
From a front angle, she can look either manic or syrupy and vacant, but she's never unappealing, and she looks great from partial angles.
Here's the stamp on the head.
I'm not personally an ultra-fan of Scary Godmother's half-fairy theme or her tutu dress, but I don't want to disrespect what makes her unique among witches.
Scary Godmother's costume is a black bodysuit with spiderweb frill sleeves, a glittery tutu, and tights that match her hat. The bodysuit is sometimes not opaque enough when pulled tight against her breasts, but it's not the most egregious.
The skirt is a glitter shed risk, just like Casta's, which I don't love.
The bodysuit closes in back with a zipper and the skirt has two metal snaps.
Scary Godmother's little fairy wings are bat-shaped and are solid purple plastic. These come detached for packaging and have to be put in by the owner. This is pretty difficult. The suit has cutout holes in the back for the wing pegs to insert through, and the holes are finished around the edges, which I love, but it's hard to stretch and pull them correctly so the holes in Scary's back are unobstructed by the material. The pegs being circular and blunt with no tapering also makes it harder to feel when they're being inserted securely.
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| The cutouts after being stretched by the wing pegs. |
I'd have preferred holes where the wings fit in only one secure orientation where it was easy to feel when you had the positioning right, and a taper to make them easier to push in would be nice too. Maybe the holes had to be shallower for the right engineering. Or maybe the move is to unzip, poke the wings through the costume, and then plug them in.
Under the tutu, there's a heart-shaped patch on the butt of the bodysuit.
The material of the tights is neither scratchy nor soft. The tights aren't super floppy off the doll. Removing the bodysuit before removing the tights doesn't really seem feasible, and they just slide off the hips together, though they are separate layers.
Scary Godmother's shoes are perfect witchy heels.
Scary Godmother presents a rare example of a highly-articulated doll body sculpt that is also a bespoke character sculpt and a total one-off. No doll before or since has had this body, and with no associated doll line, it's a doll type unto itself.
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| Scary Godmother next to a Made to Move Barbie. |
For all the thickening her body parts underwent for the purpose of practical doll engineering, her final proportions are still very effective as a stylized spindly character. She really does look like a horror creature and nothing at all like a Barbie, who she both towers and gangles over, and this body is quite effective at capturing the silhouette and physicality of the much skinnier cartoon character.
Scary Godmother has a small doll head (between Barbie and Monster High size) and large hands, which is a combo I always enjoy--it makes for a very expressive surreal figure. There's also something about the doll's character that leaves me with no doubt that a significant level of hand-sculpting was involved in developing her body molds. This doesn't look like a doll who was primarily 3D-modeled, even though this character has been 3D-modeled in the past.
If it was guaranteed that Neil Gaiman never saw a penny from it, I'd love to see a doll built like this depicting the second form of the Other Mother in Henry Selick's adaptation of Coraline. That character design is one of my all-time favorites ever, and proportions like the Scary Godmother doll could do her pretty good justice. That's a character Monster High probably has no chance of doing right despite the default skinniness of Skullector dolls. Scary Godmother's doll holds herself like a stop-motion monster and her proportions feel more impossible than any MH doll, let's be honest. Only a doll with this sensibility could acceptably turn the second-stage Other Mother into a doll. And MH committed a crime against Coraline herself with their faceup choices, so my opinion of their capability with that film is in the gutter. I also don't think anything that could give Neil Gaiman more royalties is worth making right now, much as I adore Selick's film.
Scary Godmother is like many fashion dolls in that she has very long legs, though unlike most fashion dolls, dolls are not her debut design medium!
This doll's articulation is above average, though whether she's on par with or below Made to Move Barbie is difficult to determine. One gets the idea Scary Godmother's team looked to the design of highly-articulated (pseudo-)BJDs, which is to say, the type of fully-hinged all-plastic doll bodies I've upgraded several pieces with for better articulation. Actual BJDs are resin and elastic-strung. The sculpt stylization on Scary Godmother is more akin stylistically to some "true" BJDs. I think that's a wonderful instinct. (Made to Move, on the other hand, is influenced by action figures.)
Scary Godmother's head is good at spinning and can tip up and down and a little bit side to side, but it's not the best tipping articulation I've seen.
Her shoulders are standard good rotating hinges, while her elbows do something I've personally never encountered before by presenting a rotating double joint. The lower end of the joint piece has a screw in it, which must be part of a rotating peg assembly that means Scary Godmother doesn't need an extra joint below her shoulder to spin the whole arm. The double joint turns within the upper arm socket. Unfortunately, the double joint doesn't flex as much as a Barbie example, so there's more of a gap between Scary Godmother's arm pieces at the tightest bend. I'm thinking maybe the "non-turning elbow and rotating upper arm" solution has an advantage. The end of the elbow hub attached to the Godmother upper arm piece has less room to bend than a non-turning hub would probably offer. I like the novel exploration of the double joint without a rotating upper arm, but I don't think this idea wins out over the other system.
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| The same pose as the previous picture, but with the elbow rotated. |
Scary Godmother is undeniably expressive with her proportions, and her arm posing is better than a typical fashion doll's.
Scary Godmother's hands are like a pseudo-BJD doll's in that the rotating hinge wrist pegs are a separate piece from the actual hands. This lets the hands turn 360 degrees on the wrist piece, and allows the wrists to bend up and down or side to side, something Mattel dolls almost never do.
Most Mattel dolls have the wrists as part of the doll hand and they only bend up and down, while the original River Styxx had the wrists attached to her forearms and her hands rotated on the hinges, but the hinges themselves could not rotate. The Scary Godmother joint system has a bit more versatility than River's hands.
Scary Godmother's torso has two ball joints--at the bust and at the waist. This really excited me, but ultimately, these don't add a mind-blowing amount of articulation. The rotation of each piece is perhaps the most impactful, but the pieces don't bend her forward or side-to-side too too much. This doll is no closer to a hugging-the-knees sitting pose than the majority of fashion dolls.
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| Okay, the side lean is actually pretty good--it's just not very curved. |
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| Belly piece and bust piece twisted opposite directions. |
It's not just the blushing effect that reminds me of the Wave 2 Fashion Victims--the side torso contour with concavity around the breasts is also fairly similar.
The cut of Scary Godmother's bust piece creates a strange skinny ribcage look to the doll with its edge contour in the front, and I don't know how intentional that is. This lady's drawn/animated body could be folded into a clarinet case, so it's possibly deliberate.
Here's a look at the wing holes.
Scary Godmother's hips swing forward to a tidy 90-degree sitting pose and can do perfect side-splits, but the cut of her torso's hip sockets prevents the legs from swinging backward to any degree. The knees are double-jointed, and kneel beautifully, but have no clever engineering to give her lower legs rotation like her arms or Mattel dolls do. Scary Godmother's legs are too long to kneel on one knee.
The knee joints also struggle to hold themselves in a pose, with the double hubs not having enough friction to resist the lower legs' weight. I've also found this issue with Gooliope and my Haunted Mansion Werecat (forthcoming). My smaller dolls with double knees lack this issue. Maybe large dolls don't play nice with double knees, or manufacturers aren't clocking that the bigger dolls need higher friction than normal. Sounds like simple physics to me, but what do I know?
The doll's ankles are just like the hands--rotating hinges with independent feet that can use the hinges in multiple directions.
So, Scary Godmother has more torso and hand and foot articulation than Made to Move Barbie, but her elbows don't flex quite as much, her hips don't swing backward, her head is harder to move and likely has less range by design, and her knees cannot be rotated. Scary Godmother might be the winner over, or a different equivalent to, MINNEE, though. Like MINNEE, her hips can't swing back, but she has more torso, hand, and foot articulation. The only things MINNEE has over Scary is the smoother, wider head articulation and the rotating legs, while MINNEE's more realistic proportions give her a few poses Scary can't achieve. Handling-wise, I prefer MINNEE. The dolls' joints have better consistency and friction. MINNEE dolls don't have the unusual artistic character of Scary Godmother, though, and thus far are engineering marvels without being aesthetically compelling.
Compared to Frightfully Tall Monster High, Scary Godmother has roughly the same advantages and same deficits as when she's put alongside Made to Move. Frightfully Tall has no ankle joints, giving Scary Godmother a more impressive boast compared to her matchup with Made to Move, and Scary has the double-directional wrists and ankles that Mattel dolls lack, but everything Made to Move Barbie does better than Scary Godmother, Frightfully Tall shares.
While Scary Godmother may not be the best-articulated or sturdiest of the high-tier doll schema I've handled, her sculpt and proportions give her a physicality nobody else can claim. She's an artfully weird figure, expressionistic and dynamic in a very special way. She reminds me of the experience I had posing Monster High's Jack Skellington.
I guess the "stop-motion spooky" body type is the kind of thing I see as a fascinating figure model.
The body paint isn't perfect and there are some nicks and flaws. Scary Godmother's left thumb nail also has a faded, non-glossy paint application that doesn't match the rest of her manicure.
The Boozle is a really cool figurine, depicting the ghost cat with semi-translucent black coloring.
The Boozle's legs which turn into curlicues are really well done, though I'm not sure what the loop on its back is. Maybe to hang him as an ornament or to use fishing line so he can "float"? I like the size of the figure, which is pretty large...but it smells like the worst chemical plastic and it was sticky out of the box. I wonder if it degraded in storage. This thing needed washing and airing out. While the product doesn't disclose, the Boozle's chemical smell is a potential indication of Chinese manufacturing.
Scary Godmother's bags are really cute. I adore fabric doll purses.
The three designs are a skull and bat open bag and a pumpkin purse with a satchel flap.
The skull bag is white felt with pleather applique for the face, and has a pair of satin ribbon handles. The inside of the bag is lined with pale pink satin, which is great.
The bat bag is super soft grey felt with little red bead eyes and black wings, and has a single black ribbon handle. The bag is unlined.
The pumpkin bag is objectively the best in my book, and the only one fit to be Scary Godmother's purse. It's orange satin with an applique face, and the flap opens with a metal snap closure. The strap has metal jump rings between the handle and the loops sewn to the bag, which are both made of textured green ribbon which looks like vines.
I spent the better part of an hour loading Scary Godmother's head with curlers so I might improve her hair texture and raise her hair silhouette up better and more accurately so her wings weren't obstructed.
More issues revealed themselves when primping the doll post-curl. For one, pulling out her curlers pulled her head off...and the neck peg with it. Like some pseudo-BJDs, her neck peg is apparently not fixed within her torso's neck socket and just pops into place, so pulling the head off can take the peg. I tried in vain to extract the peg from her head and pop the doll back together in the right order, but the inevitable happened and the peg got lost inside Scary Godmother's head, unretrievable. So as to what the full shape of it was, or what the peg's true articulation mechanism or potential was, I'll probably never know. I replaced the peg with a LEGO Technic ball glued right on top of the neck--a white one to blend in. This wedges tightly in the bottom of Scary Godmother's head, though moving her head too quickly or too far will pop the head off in a second. The socket wasn't designed to sit on top of a static ball joint, but I'm happy with the result--and I like that it makes Scary Godmother's neck just that much longer, making her proportions look even more accurate to the source character.
The next issue came when dressing her back up--the zipper of her bodysuit came out of one side of the slider when pulling the costume up her body, with nothing keeping the bottom from fully separating and the sides of the zipper from opening. I was eventually able to rethread the zipper while the bodysuit was on the doll, but it seems like her hips are just too wide to be able to pull the bodysuit up her body without the zipper unhooking on one side. Later, I fixed up the bodysuit by dotting some glue on the very bottom of the zipper as well as adding some black stitching to pull the fabric around the zipper end tight. After that, I could very slowly, carefully pull the bodysuit back up the doll's body to redress her without the zipper disconnecting. I also glued some slivers of plastic into one of her knee hinges to increase its friction and allow her to hold her leg up while standing with that leg bent backward, but that ultimately didn't work.
I start to forget the problems again when looking at her all done up again. The recurled hair has a good silhouette, though her wings aren't really any more noticeable than they had been previously.
Despite her very stylized design, my favorite pictures with Scary Godmother were outside in the natural autumn scenery.
And despite me generally preferring this doll's profile to her front view, this actually ended up being my very favorite picture of her:
Here are a few more portraits.
I'm not exactly sure where my standards for Scary Godmother ought to be. She's an indie project with BJD art-doll ambition, which makes it difficult to say whether I should expect more from her or find her deficits understandable for a doll by people who don't normally make dolls.
I'm disappointed with Scary Godmother's joints--less the articulation (though there are places that could be even better) and moreso the friction. The knees not being able to hold themselves bent is a problem all too common in double-joint dolls, but it really never should be. Scary Godmother's neck peg being able to pop out and get stuck within her head piece was also a problem. I think her sculpt and likeness to the character are strong, though the hair shaping and neck seem slightly off-model. Fixing the neck with a flawed substitute actually improved the proportions and articulation at the cost of a more stable connection. The hair was able to recurl well, but should have looked the way I got it from the start. I'm not happy with the bodysuit zipper being so fraught and able to come off the track merely by dressing the doll (heaven knows how she was put into the costume the first time!) and the Boozle's stinky plastic and sticky texture were very unpleasant. The doll stand could also be much sturdier.
All the same, the art-doll quality has been achieved in a remarkable way. Scary Godmother is a visual 9.8, if not a ten. Her face is so striking and has such a stylized and unique quality that's all Thompson but elevated to the medium of a fancy doll. The body blushing and shaping and posing all add to this level too. There's no doll like Scary Godmother. Her look, art style, and physicality are entirely her own. I'm also impressed with the witch hat and pumpkin purse and shoes. The doll presents very well--she just handles worse than she ought to.
It's very clear that the makers of the Scary Godmother doll knew what to do to create a high-end collectible art doll, but it's also clear that they were people who had never made a doll before. Let me be clear--for a first and only product, this is extremely impressive on an artistic and engineering level. Somebody with expertise or who made some very close study was involved in shaping this doll, and I wouldn't expect an indie doll by non-dollmakers to be nearly this good. I just feel like the manufacturing lets her down in a way that a higher budget, or greater experience, might have prevented, because she doesn't feel on the level of more established art doll products.
For the cover photo, I loosely staged Scary Godmother's Halloween party on the Fright Side, mimicking elements of her living room from the cartoon specials. I rigged Scary Godmother to be "flying" like she often does with a wire around her waist punched through the wall board and tightened, and put Casta singing across the table in the foreground while the other MH witches enjoy the party's treats.
Out of these four dolls, Spelldon and Alice might actually be my favorites, which feels like the wrong takeaway. I thought I'd like Scary Godmother more than I do. She's beautifully sculpted and painted, but I get bothered by her facial expression sometimes reading oddly, and the quality of the doll was not up to par with her joints weighing themselves down in the legs, and the neck joint popping out and getting lost in her head. The hair texture not feeling right and the wings barely being visible are also frustrating. She's a fascinating, beautiful doll, but doesn't back herself up as a satisfying photo subject. Casta, meanwhile, is perfectly fine, and my opinion has improved a bit since 2016. Fixing her dress with a lace closure and getting her hair shape more accurate while adding personality to her face also helped. She's still not lighting my world on fire, and though Spelldon is so very similar, he somehow ends up more appealing. Alice was nice to revisit. She deserved that much, and I still like her a lot as an interesting witch aesthetic the way I revised her.
This is my last entry in Witchy Wonders, though I'm sure you know this isn't close to my last witch-themed review. The conclusion post will be following! Again, a happy Halloween to all, and to all a good fright!
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