Lone Wolf (Monster High Clawd Wolf)

Checking out the doll groups on flickr is always dangerous, and while I've always considered it lucky (for my wallet at least) that I hadn't fallen for the Monster High dolls it was probably only a matter of time before one caught my eye.

It was a boy wolf doll that grabbed me, and a quick google showed him to be "Clawd Wolf", the brother of the girl werewolves that I've seen so much of.  Unfortunately he also seemed to be harder to find and more prone to doubling in price on the secondary market, and I was on the verge of giving up when I happened across a listing that didn't have much of an increase over the retail price, and thus did the wolf make his way here (along with his vampire girlfriend, who came in the set).

Since it was my first time buying a Monster High doll, I was excited to see how they were packed - and I have to say I was impressed.  My general experience of unpacking kid-aimed dolls has been of needing to cut through piles upon piles plastic tabs and layer upon layer of sticky tape, but this set surprised me - one layer of plastic and some minimal tabs and soft elastic.  Brilliant!

The clothing is decent - well cut with good use of colour, and I like that the stands seem to work reasonably well with these dolls outfits (although I understand that that's often not the case with this line).   I'm neither impressed nor disappointed with the accessories - I feel like they'd be quickly lost in a play situation and yet they're not really detailed enough for display pieces.  Still, they're a nice touch and certainly work with the theme of the set.

The pose-ability of these dolls is well-known, but even so I was impressed by how expressive the arm movements make these dolls - they really do have an extraordinary level of pose-ability.  I'm also quite fond of the paint work on the eyes - they're much more detailed than I'd expected.

A final surprise was the hair on Draculaura - it's much softer than it looks in the box!  I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with her (she's not really to my taste), but the hair makes me tempted to keep her and turn her into a project doll!