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hat_plays_dollsYeah, I know I just posted the Vampire Kitchen, I do things all at once or not at all, I'm terrible that way. I was actually going to review Pharrah MONTHS ago-- but the thing is, I got her in September somewhere. I live in California in the Bay Area, and right around October... seventh or eighth, the North Bay kind of... caught fire. A lot. We're all fine, we were fine, the fire was ten, fifteen miles away, but it burned so much so that wasn't, you know, that comforting. Anyway, Pharrah got shoved in a suitcase with the rest of my Monster High stuff in case we had to evacuate. ... Because if we'd had to evacuate, we had enough warning to pack up anything we'd be distraught living without (which shouldn't be dolls, but one, I have brain chemistry issues and dolls do help with that, some, and two, it's not like I wasn't prioritizing the actually-vital stuff, like the cats and important paperwork and clothes and heirlooms from my grandmothers and backups of files. If I'd failed at Car Tetris, I would've left the dolls first). Eventually I had the spoons to unpack, so Pharrah was freed, and then there was a 'spend $100 on toys, get $25 off' deal at Target when we were out Christmas shopping for my niece and nephew, so I got the rest of the de Nile kids (the same day Cartwheel had a 20% off deal for DC Superhero girls, so I got the Bumblebee to put on a Clawdia body to be the Andromeda to my BYBY Deuce's Perseus I'm a nerd and they're not ready for prime time yet) and after I got all my Insurance Nonsense straightened out, I rewarded myself with Monster Family deboxing and a big ol' photoshoot.
So here we go.
Pharrah de Nile is a Target exclusive and she's super-adorable. Like most of the Monster Family kidlets, she's around five inches tall, but instead of wolf ears she's got hell's own high ponytail, in black and purple. She comes with a game board with two pieces and a golden die, a thick gold-ribbon molded headband, a scarab amulet necklace, cherry-red shoes, and a pink printed satin dress.
Pharrah's dress is half-printed, which doesn't bother me too much; mine has a crooked belt, which bothers me more. As always, though, I prioritized level eyes over things I could fix.
Of all the de Nile kids, Pharrah's clothing style screams "Egypt" the least, partly because she seems to like bows... but a little bit because of that bright candy pink.
I couldn't see Pharah's lips at all in the package, as her ponytail had flipped up over them, so I count myself lucky they're okay. They're a little pale for her skintone, but if I get tired of that, I can fix them. Pharrah has a REALLY pretty face, despite the sketchy quality (like a drawing sketch, not a crumbling warehouse) that hits all the MF kids due to the very pointilist painting technique they use. I've got more closeups of that later.
Pharrah's hair is just... hilariously long, for a kid her age. It's also definitely not totally saran-- I think it's either a higher quality nylon than I have EVER felt in doll hair or a nylon/saran blend. It's stiff and holds a shape but it's still smooth enough to feel soft, and not so stiff that it's out of scale on such a small doll.
Pharrah's outfit doesn't come with a lot of accessories, but she does have a very nice scarab amulet. In fact, her more Egyptian motifs seem to be scarabs and pyramids.
See? Pyramids, and something that looks like a stylized version of the snakes in an old Snakes And Ladders game.
And scarabs! Congratulations, Pharrah, you are so far the first and ONLY Monster Family kid to have Real Shoes.
She likes bows.
Pharrah's game is kind of nifty-- it's not a historical game, and in fact its pieces are recasts from Manster Game Night (and I kind of wish they'd used different colors so you could add more pieces to whichever game, but whatever). I don't know if you start at the pyramid in the center or finish there, but--
The board itself is a pretty reasonable map of the Lower Kingdom.
The table bit of the board might have some faint decoration or they might be mold lines. It's certainly not as awesome as Sandy's high chair.
The die is a gold recast of the Manster Game Night dice, and mine has a bit of flashing on it that I haven't trimmed off. I'm definitely painting this because it's next to impossible to read because of all the swirls in the gold plastic. (The black and pink thing is a Draculaura shoe, for scale.)
That's not everything I want to say about Pharrah, but I want to say the rest in context of the rest of her family, so!
Here's Lux de Nile, Rameses's heir and a pretty good-looking kid, with a few minor issues. Lux, like all the de Nile kids, is a Target exclusive, and comes in a three-pack with big sister Cleo and baby sibling Sandy (does Sandy have a gender? I have heard nothing). Like Pharrah, he stands about five inches tall, because they have the exact same body mold.
Also like Pharrah, Lux has black hair with purple streaks, though his is molded in a spiky updo and tied with a removable gold-bandage headband. Like Pharrah and Nefera, Lux has violet eyes and a gem under his left eye.
My Lux's lips are a disaster, forgive him. I was looking for good eyes. I can and happily will repaint lips, but wonk-eye is forever. This Lux isn't perfect, either, but the rest of them were... let's... let's go with 'uncanny.' Crooked eyes, eyes too high, eyes on the cheeks, it was a disaster. So there's your first caveat about the three-pack-- it's going to be a challenge to find one where all three dolls have acceptable faces. You might want to prioritize.
Lux wears a red top with horizontal patterned stripes, and shorts with hieroglyphs in fantastically Egyptian colors. I'm glad to see a de Nile wearing true red and lapis blue!
Shirt and shorts are separate pieces and fully printed. The shirt velcros in the back while the pants have an elastic waistband.
Though Lux does get shoes, they're pretty basic slip-on sandals.
They do have a tread, though, that's always nice.
Lux's hair is sculpted as a separate piece and glued on. As with Fangelica, I do need to do some cleanup work on Lux.
I also have to see if I can fix this. I'm pretty sure it's a badly-wiped glue leak from when his hair was attached, but it was impossible to see in the package, between how his head was turned and the tail on his headband, and this. This is one of the perils of a multi-pack, especially one made in Indonesia. The quality control is seriously slipping.
This I don't mind so much. That's an indent from Lux's headband that'll pop right out with ten minutes in a heating pad or a long dunk in hot hot water. Since I plan to shade his bandages anyway, a hot soapy bath is already in his future.
And okay, this one doesn't show you the highlighting on Lux's hair very well, but it does show the sculpt. I actually dig it? It's like Seth Ptolemy's, but not too like it, and it looks boyish and easy while still looking finished.
The three-pack comes with another Sandy, this time with a more Egyptian onesie and a clear blue bottle. Sandy is still Sandy, petite and awkward with five points of articulation and a hard-plastic head you can't take paint off of.
Single-packed Sandy on the left, three-pack Sandy on the right. They're SUPER similar-- I thought even their onesies were cast in the same purple plastic, but my camera disagrees. They also seem to have slightly different expressions on their shiny little faces, and their nemes bonnets are different shades of gold.
Sandy is still a disaster, and was not my focus for this purchase. I think everyone would understand if you replaced Sandy with one of the Babysitters Inc Skipper babies that are showing up now-- some of them have about the right skin tone.
From behind! This time, three-pack on the left, two-pack on the right. As you can see, they use different plastic in the torsos: the butts don't match.
Sandy's translucent turquoise bottle is very pretty, but hard to photograph. It's the same mold as the purple one that came with their high chair; I think Weredith has one just like it but I haven't gotten my hands on Weredith yet.
Cleo de Nile is fully-articulated, unlike most of the multi-pack 16-adjacent sisters. She wears a simple comfy minidress (half-printed, purple on the back) and strappy sandals and... that's it, which is barely an outfit as far as Cleo de Nile is concerned.
The front of her dress is the same purple, teal, and hieroglyphic print as Nefera's Scream and Sugar pantsuit-- on the front. On the back it's solid purple.
Her shoes are turquoise recasts of her Picture Day sandals, and predictably, I can't wait to paint these.
Cleo also has a gold drink cup-- a recast of the cup first seen with Ghoulia's scooter, I think-- and a blue fleecy burp rag. I wasn't sure if it was a blanket or a burp rag at first, but it's a long, narrow rectangle that isn't big enough to wrap Sandy up in reasonably; it's a burp rag. And I guess that (and the fact that everyone in this set comes with some kind of drink) explains why Cleo is wearing shoes and a shirt-dress she can have a servant throw in the wash. Something probably already got spilled.
Hey, I forgot detail shots of Lux's apple juice box! Undead apple on the front...
Wrappings on the back.
Okay, back to Cleo. Adventures In Babysitting Cleo is about as natural-look as she ever gets, with minimal pink eye shadow, understated coral lips, and her usual heavy black eyeliner. Her joints are fugly, but at least her hands are graceful?
Cleo's hair is razor-cut nylon in black, with blonde highlights in a nod to her Signature Classic MH look. Sadly, the nylon of her hair is a stiff, crunchy-feeling mess, and the razor-cut was done the budget-friendly way of 'flip the doll upside down, cut her hair level, and turn her rightside up.' It's an easy route to layers, but if you try to put it in any other style you're going to need heat, and the uppermost layers are pretty darned short.
Here's Babysitter Cleo unfairly compared to my customized Cleo-- well, not THAT unfairly, actually, they're both on the reboot body, mine's just got her bandages shaded and is wearing her Skull Shores head. (Her bangs are kinda flattened from being packed because potential evacuation.) It's... it's just SUPER clear here that Reboot Cleo looks a lot younger than Classic Cleo in the face, but to get to that more age-appropriate look, some of what makes her Cleo has been aesthetically lost.
This one's even less fair. Here's the Not Quite SDCC Two-Pack Cleo side-eyeing both these other girls. She's on the Classic body, no bandages, sway back, and her painting style is pretty much a perfect midpoint between Classic and Reboot-- she's got the narrower eyes and no top lashes of Classic MH, but the soft brows and sweeter mouth of the reboot. Babysitter Cleo is really pretty, but for me there's something missing.
Okay no LOOK at this. Yes, the arms are turned different directions, that's the inside of Custom Cleo and the outside of Babysitter Cleo's right arms, but-- the forearm is shorter and thicker, the pegs are absolutely too big for the sockets, and? while Custom Cleo's lower arms are made of a semi-soft vinyl, Babysitter Cleo's lower arms are made of the same material as her legs and upper arms-- either an ABS plastic or a harder, hollow vinyl.
Initially I thought this joint thing was some kind of mistake that happened with Venus's joint plastic, it cured differently and they tried to pass it off as a feature rather than a bug, but this is deliberate and it's also bad engineering. Not cool, Mattel. Not cool. There's got to be a way to make the arms non-removable (if that's your New Thing) that doesn't also make them look like bootleg versions of themselves.
But now that we've looked at everyone individually, let's look at some of these dolls together! Pharrah and Lux here are... just... really probably twins, look at them. And Pharrah's game board comes with two pieces, so that's ideal for her and Lux to splay out and play a game while someone else juggles Sandy.
You can also see the balance in their outfits-- Pharrah has a necklace, thicker headband, and heavier shoes, while Lux has two sewn pieces and Pharrah's dress is only half-printed.
Pharrah and Lux have painted fingers, but not painted toes. ... It's on my to-do list.
Since I had Fangelica handy, I swapped hers and Lux's shoes, and... yeah. Lux and Pharrah's feet are the same width as Fangelica's, but the length... Not so much.
And here you can see the totally undressed de Nile probably-twins, showing off that their bodies are exactly the same and as thoroughly bandaged as the CAM Mummy Girl.
See, here's that pointilism-newsprint look, I don't know why the Monster Family kids have this, but everybody who isn't Sandy does. Pharrah's gem is a star, but it's hard to tell in an extreme close-up.
Lux's gem is a triangle-- well, probably a very shallow pyramid. Also in this shot you can kind of tell that Lux (and Pharrah) have a subtle gold shimmer in their skin, which is always spiffy. And it's subtle, not even as pronounced as Signature Nefera's.
I'll fix it, Lux, I promise. You poor kid. At least your eyes are okay!
While my single-packed Sandy had some wandering black paint on one eye, the three-pack version has a blob of gold from I know not where. Fixable if I can color-match the skin, but still annoying.
So here are ALL the de Nile kids! Fun note, I didn't realize Pharrah is trying to do her hair like Nefera until I got them all lined up in this shot. Sandy doesn't look as bad in company but still needs their eyes toned down, and I'm sure we're going to see Nefera again before too long. Somewhere. Lux and Pharrah look too much like her.
Now, okay, I did add some paint to Nefera's signature look, because there was more red in her webisode model than on her doll-- but I color-matched to the webisode, not to Lux. And you can see that his shimmer isn't as pronounced as hers, but it does help his little baby features stand out.
Cleo, I'm sure, thinks Pharrah has other, better, less evil sisters to look up to.
Okay, so, on the whole, I am glad I got all the de Nile kids. Yes, Lux has some issues but they're probably fixable, yes Sandy is a hot mess but at least they don't take up much storage space. Pharrah's a cutie and everyone's clothes and accessories are great and blend well into the whole-family grouping. I want more clothes for them. And shoes. Lots more shoes.
I will say, do not order these dolls online if you can't exchange them in person if they're disasters. They are disaster-prone. Don't buy them on eBay if the seller doesn't have actual pics of the dolls they have in-hand.
But if you like the kids conceptually or aesthetically, do get them. What other toy line is brave enough to sell you this many tiny murdered children? Yeah, none of the de Nile little siblings are without flaw, no matter how hard I looked-- my Target has a hilariously small selection, though, so you might have better luck.
I actually suspect whoever's leading the design team on Monster Family is really fond of Classic Monster High-- the kids look just as good if not better with the Classic versions of their older siblings than the reboot versions, and there are details from tiny easter eggs (Frankie & Jackson's gingerbread man in the Vampire Kitchen) to genetic decisions (Lux & Pharrah's violet eyes and shimmery skin) to pre-reboot non-doll characters getting dolls (hello, Kelpie!) that smack of acknowledgement, of continuity, and of wanting to produce something Classic MH fans can enjoy even if they don't like most of the reboot. (Monster Family, after all, isn't in direct competition with Barbie. With Chelsea, maybe, or Skipper, but Chelsea and Stacie and Skipper (and Kelly and Krissy) fade in and out of prominence all the time.)
So I find them fun from a design standpoint, with great accessories, sadly factory-flaw prone, and from a storyline standpoint?
Yeah, no, I write way too much fanfiction to be a purist about that. I think this is great storyline fodder. Look at Pharrah, trying so hard to look like her glamorous big sister Nefera with her high ponytail and her gold eye shadow. Look at Lux with his little serious face, he was supposed to be Pharaoh but now there are video games and friends to play with and that might be worth the trade-off. Look at Cleo, all this time talking about her "big sister Nefera" because in her head, anyway, in her head she's been making room for her little sister and her little brother and her baby sibling. Look at Sandy, look at all the people Sandy has to love them now. Look at Nefera... well, I'm sure she's very proud to be the first of five again instead of the first of two, anyway.
... Okay I want a Rameses de Nile doll now, that's a thing that can happen, right? We got Dracula. We got Kelpie. Two-pack with Nefera? Game Room play set with Lux & Pharrah mk II? Collector-only two-pack with Dedyet? I would like the whole ridiculous family please. I would like to give Rameses his babies back.
Nefera says: Don't lose your teeny tiny accessories! They're expensive to replace.
Like what I do and want to help me feed my cats, but don't need anything I have for sale on eBay? You can always support me on Patreon or throw some change in my tip jar.
So here we go.
Pharrah de Nile is a Target exclusive and she's super-adorable. Like most of the Monster Family kidlets, she's around five inches tall, but instead of wolf ears she's got hell's own high ponytail, in black and purple. She comes with a game board with two pieces and a golden die, a thick gold-ribbon molded headband, a scarab amulet necklace, cherry-red shoes, and a pink printed satin dress.
Pharrah's dress is half-printed, which doesn't bother me too much; mine has a crooked belt, which bothers me more. As always, though, I prioritized level eyes over things I could fix.
Of all the de Nile kids, Pharrah's clothing style screams "Egypt" the least, partly because she seems to like bows... but a little bit because of that bright candy pink.
I couldn't see Pharah's lips at all in the package, as her ponytail had flipped up over them, so I count myself lucky they're okay. They're a little pale for her skintone, but if I get tired of that, I can fix them. Pharrah has a REALLY pretty face, despite the sketchy quality (like a drawing sketch, not a crumbling warehouse) that hits all the MF kids due to the very pointilist painting technique they use. I've got more closeups of that later.
Pharrah's hair is just... hilariously long, for a kid her age. It's also definitely not totally saran-- I think it's either a higher quality nylon than I have EVER felt in doll hair or a nylon/saran blend. It's stiff and holds a shape but it's still smooth enough to feel soft, and not so stiff that it's out of scale on such a small doll.
Pharrah's outfit doesn't come with a lot of accessories, but she does have a very nice scarab amulet. In fact, her more Egyptian motifs seem to be scarabs and pyramids.
See? Pyramids, and something that looks like a stylized version of the snakes in an old Snakes And Ladders game.
And scarabs! Congratulations, Pharrah, you are so far the first and ONLY Monster Family kid to have Real Shoes.
She likes bows.
Pharrah's game is kind of nifty-- it's not a historical game, and in fact its pieces are recasts from Manster Game Night (and I kind of wish they'd used different colors so you could add more pieces to whichever game, but whatever). I don't know if you start at the pyramid in the center or finish there, but--
The board itself is a pretty reasonable map of the Lower Kingdom.
The table bit of the board might have some faint decoration or they might be mold lines. It's certainly not as awesome as Sandy's high chair.
The die is a gold recast of the Manster Game Night dice, and mine has a bit of flashing on it that I haven't trimmed off. I'm definitely painting this because it's next to impossible to read because of all the swirls in the gold plastic. (The black and pink thing is a Draculaura shoe, for scale.)
That's not everything I want to say about Pharrah, but I want to say the rest in context of the rest of her family, so!
Here's Lux de Nile, Rameses's heir and a pretty good-looking kid, with a few minor issues. Lux, like all the de Nile kids, is a Target exclusive, and comes in a three-pack with big sister Cleo and baby sibling Sandy (does Sandy have a gender? I have heard nothing). Like Pharrah, he stands about five inches tall, because they have the exact same body mold.
Also like Pharrah, Lux has black hair with purple streaks, though his is molded in a spiky updo and tied with a removable gold-bandage headband. Like Pharrah and Nefera, Lux has violet eyes and a gem under his left eye.
My Lux's lips are a disaster, forgive him. I was looking for good eyes. I can and happily will repaint lips, but wonk-eye is forever. This Lux isn't perfect, either, but the rest of them were... let's... let's go with 'uncanny.' Crooked eyes, eyes too high, eyes on the cheeks, it was a disaster. So there's your first caveat about the three-pack-- it's going to be a challenge to find one where all three dolls have acceptable faces. You might want to prioritize.
Lux wears a red top with horizontal patterned stripes, and shorts with hieroglyphs in fantastically Egyptian colors. I'm glad to see a de Nile wearing true red and lapis blue!
Shirt and shorts are separate pieces and fully printed. The shirt velcros in the back while the pants have an elastic waistband.
Though Lux does get shoes, they're pretty basic slip-on sandals.
They do have a tread, though, that's always nice.
Lux's hair is sculpted as a separate piece and glued on. As with Fangelica, I do need to do some cleanup work on Lux.
I also have to see if I can fix this. I'm pretty sure it's a badly-wiped glue leak from when his hair was attached, but it was impossible to see in the package, between how his head was turned and the tail on his headband, and this. This is one of the perils of a multi-pack, especially one made in Indonesia. The quality control is seriously slipping.
This I don't mind so much. That's an indent from Lux's headband that'll pop right out with ten minutes in a heating pad or a long dunk in hot hot water. Since I plan to shade his bandages anyway, a hot soapy bath is already in his future.
And okay, this one doesn't show you the highlighting on Lux's hair very well, but it does show the sculpt. I actually dig it? It's like Seth Ptolemy's, but not too like it, and it looks boyish and easy while still looking finished.
The three-pack comes with another Sandy, this time with a more Egyptian onesie and a clear blue bottle. Sandy is still Sandy, petite and awkward with five points of articulation and a hard-plastic head you can't take paint off of.
Single-packed Sandy on the left, three-pack Sandy on the right. They're SUPER similar-- I thought even their onesies were cast in the same purple plastic, but my camera disagrees. They also seem to have slightly different expressions on their shiny little faces, and their nemes bonnets are different shades of gold.
Sandy is still a disaster, and was not my focus for this purchase. I think everyone would understand if you replaced Sandy with one of the Babysitters Inc Skipper babies that are showing up now-- some of them have about the right skin tone.
From behind! This time, three-pack on the left, two-pack on the right. As you can see, they use different plastic in the torsos: the butts don't match.
Sandy's translucent turquoise bottle is very pretty, but hard to photograph. It's the same mold as the purple one that came with their high chair; I think Weredith has one just like it but I haven't gotten my hands on Weredith yet.
Cleo de Nile is fully-articulated, unlike most of the multi-pack 16-adjacent sisters. She wears a simple comfy minidress (half-printed, purple on the back) and strappy sandals and... that's it, which is barely an outfit as far as Cleo de Nile is concerned.
The front of her dress is the same purple, teal, and hieroglyphic print as Nefera's Scream and Sugar pantsuit-- on the front. On the back it's solid purple.
Her shoes are turquoise recasts of her Picture Day sandals, and predictably, I can't wait to paint these.
Cleo also has a gold drink cup-- a recast of the cup first seen with Ghoulia's scooter, I think-- and a blue fleecy burp rag. I wasn't sure if it was a blanket or a burp rag at first, but it's a long, narrow rectangle that isn't big enough to wrap Sandy up in reasonably; it's a burp rag. And I guess that (and the fact that everyone in this set comes with some kind of drink) explains why Cleo is wearing shoes and a shirt-dress she can have a servant throw in the wash. Something probably already got spilled.
Hey, I forgot detail shots of Lux's apple juice box! Undead apple on the front...
Wrappings on the back.
Okay, back to Cleo. Adventures In Babysitting Cleo is about as natural-look as she ever gets, with minimal pink eye shadow, understated coral lips, and her usual heavy black eyeliner. Her joints are fugly, but at least her hands are graceful?
Cleo's hair is razor-cut nylon in black, with blonde highlights in a nod to her Signature Classic MH look. Sadly, the nylon of her hair is a stiff, crunchy-feeling mess, and the razor-cut was done the budget-friendly way of 'flip the doll upside down, cut her hair level, and turn her rightside up.' It's an easy route to layers, but if you try to put it in any other style you're going to need heat, and the uppermost layers are pretty darned short.
Here's Babysitter Cleo unfairly compared to my customized Cleo-- well, not THAT unfairly, actually, they're both on the reboot body, mine's just got her bandages shaded and is wearing her Skull Shores head. (Her bangs are kinda flattened from being packed because potential evacuation.) It's... it's just SUPER clear here that Reboot Cleo looks a lot younger than Classic Cleo in the face, but to get to that more age-appropriate look, some of what makes her Cleo has been aesthetically lost.
This one's even less fair. Here's the Not Quite SDCC Two-Pack Cleo side-eyeing both these other girls. She's on the Classic body, no bandages, sway back, and her painting style is pretty much a perfect midpoint between Classic and Reboot-- she's got the narrower eyes and no top lashes of Classic MH, but the soft brows and sweeter mouth of the reboot. Babysitter Cleo is really pretty, but for me there's something missing.
Okay no LOOK at this. Yes, the arms are turned different directions, that's the inside of Custom Cleo and the outside of Babysitter Cleo's right arms, but-- the forearm is shorter and thicker, the pegs are absolutely too big for the sockets, and? while Custom Cleo's lower arms are made of a semi-soft vinyl, Babysitter Cleo's lower arms are made of the same material as her legs and upper arms-- either an ABS plastic or a harder, hollow vinyl.
Initially I thought this joint thing was some kind of mistake that happened with Venus's joint plastic, it cured differently and they tried to pass it off as a feature rather than a bug, but this is deliberate and it's also bad engineering. Not cool, Mattel. Not cool. There's got to be a way to make the arms non-removable (if that's your New Thing) that doesn't also make them look like bootleg versions of themselves.
But now that we've looked at everyone individually, let's look at some of these dolls together! Pharrah and Lux here are... just... really probably twins, look at them. And Pharrah's game board comes with two pieces, so that's ideal for her and Lux to splay out and play a game while someone else juggles Sandy.
You can also see the balance in their outfits-- Pharrah has a necklace, thicker headband, and heavier shoes, while Lux has two sewn pieces and Pharrah's dress is only half-printed.
Pharrah and Lux have painted fingers, but not painted toes. ... It's on my to-do list.
Since I had Fangelica handy, I swapped hers and Lux's shoes, and... yeah. Lux and Pharrah's feet are the same width as Fangelica's, but the length... Not so much.
And here you can see the totally undressed de Nile probably-twins, showing off that their bodies are exactly the same and as thoroughly bandaged as the CAM Mummy Girl.
See, here's that pointilism-newsprint look, I don't know why the Monster Family kids have this, but everybody who isn't Sandy does. Pharrah's gem is a star, but it's hard to tell in an extreme close-up.
Lux's gem is a triangle-- well, probably a very shallow pyramid. Also in this shot you can kind of tell that Lux (and Pharrah) have a subtle gold shimmer in their skin, which is always spiffy. And it's subtle, not even as pronounced as Signature Nefera's.
I'll fix it, Lux, I promise. You poor kid. At least your eyes are okay!
While my single-packed Sandy had some wandering black paint on one eye, the three-pack version has a blob of gold from I know not where. Fixable if I can color-match the skin, but still annoying.
So here are ALL the de Nile kids! Fun note, I didn't realize Pharrah is trying to do her hair like Nefera until I got them all lined up in this shot. Sandy doesn't look as bad in company but still needs their eyes toned down, and I'm sure we're going to see Nefera again before too long. Somewhere. Lux and Pharrah look too much like her.
Now, okay, I did add some paint to Nefera's signature look, because there was more red in her webisode model than on her doll-- but I color-matched to the webisode, not to Lux. And you can see that his shimmer isn't as pronounced as hers, but it does help his little baby features stand out.
Cleo, I'm sure, thinks Pharrah has other, better, less evil sisters to look up to.
Okay, so, on the whole, I am glad I got all the de Nile kids. Yes, Lux has some issues but they're probably fixable, yes Sandy is a hot mess but at least they don't take up much storage space. Pharrah's a cutie and everyone's clothes and accessories are great and blend well into the whole-family grouping. I want more clothes for them. And shoes. Lots more shoes.
I will say, do not order these dolls online if you can't exchange them in person if they're disasters. They are disaster-prone. Don't buy them on eBay if the seller doesn't have actual pics of the dolls they have in-hand.
But if you like the kids conceptually or aesthetically, do get them. What other toy line is brave enough to sell you this many tiny murdered children? Yeah, none of the de Nile little siblings are without flaw, no matter how hard I looked-- my Target has a hilariously small selection, though, so you might have better luck.
I actually suspect whoever's leading the design team on Monster Family is really fond of Classic Monster High-- the kids look just as good if not better with the Classic versions of their older siblings than the reboot versions, and there are details from tiny easter eggs (Frankie & Jackson's gingerbread man in the Vampire Kitchen) to genetic decisions (Lux & Pharrah's violet eyes and shimmery skin) to pre-reboot non-doll characters getting dolls (hello, Kelpie!) that smack of acknowledgement, of continuity, and of wanting to produce something Classic MH fans can enjoy even if they don't like most of the reboot. (Monster Family, after all, isn't in direct competition with Barbie. With Chelsea, maybe, or Skipper, but Chelsea and Stacie and Skipper (and Kelly and Krissy) fade in and out of prominence all the time.)
So I find them fun from a design standpoint, with great accessories, sadly factory-flaw prone, and from a storyline standpoint?
Yeah, no, I write way too much fanfiction to be a purist about that. I think this is great storyline fodder. Look at Pharrah, trying so hard to look like her glamorous big sister Nefera with her high ponytail and her gold eye shadow. Look at Lux with his little serious face, he was supposed to be Pharaoh but now there are video games and friends to play with and that might be worth the trade-off. Look at Cleo, all this time talking about her "big sister Nefera" because in her head, anyway, in her head she's been making room for her little sister and her little brother and her baby sibling. Look at Sandy, look at all the people Sandy has to love them now. Look at Nefera... well, I'm sure she's very proud to be the first of five again instead of the first of two, anyway.
... Okay I want a Rameses de Nile doll now, that's a thing that can happen, right? We got Dracula. We got Kelpie. Two-pack with Nefera? Game Room play set with Lux & Pharrah mk II? Collector-only two-pack with Dedyet? I would like the whole ridiculous family please. I would like to give Rameses his babies back.
Nefera says: Don't lose your teeny tiny accessories! They're expensive to replace.
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