Wow, November was a tough month. Despite my light box and Vitamin D, I'm having a hard time coping with the gloomy weather. I'm trying to get back on track for December.
On the Ever After High (Monster High) message board that I read, I saw that the EAH Tri-Castle-On set was on sale at Target. This was a three-doll Target exclusive set, based on the webisode where EAH students compete in the Tri-Castle-On competition. The Apple White/Raven Queen School Spirit two-doll set is related to this set; Apple and Raven cheer on fellow students at the Tri-Castle-On events. I
blogged about Apple and Raven back in May. I wasn't really interested in getting the Tri-Castle-on doll set originally; however, with the sale, each doll ended up costing just over $7 each. At that price, I decided to buy it.
I was going to blog about the whole set at once, but there will be close to 30 pictures, considering there are three dolls and accessories, so I decided to blog about each doll individually. I'll try to get all three doll reviews up reasonably close in time. Today I'm going to start with Lizzie Hearts.
In keeping with her lineage, being the daughter of Wonderland's Queen of Hearts, Lizzie is the winner in Hextreme Croquet. Lizzie comes dressed in her croquet outfit, which she also wears in a different webisode where she encourages Apple and Raven to settle their differences with a croquet match. The doll also comes with her croquet mallet, which resembles the flamingo from the Alice's Adventures in Wonderland story, but is gold, with a black beak. Unlike any other EAH dolls (that I'm aware of), Lizzie has unusual eyes in that there is a white heart highlight in each pupil. Fellow Wonderlandian Kitty Cheshire does have eyes that look like cat eyes, but that is because of her cat lineage.
Lizzie comes with earrings, but they're not very impressive. A little paint would probably perk them up. She also has a large gold ruff around her neck, and ruffs around her wrists, with her hands painted black to resemble black gloves.
Her shoes are the usual mile-high heels, but they do resemble tennis shoes. These could also use some paint to bring out some of the details. The heel appears to be a heart, if it was really squashed.
I never planned on getting a Lizzie Hearts doll, because for me, she never measured up to her webisode character. On screen, the heart around Lizzie's left eye is a scarlet red, which contrasts beautifully with pale skin and what look like bright green eyes.
On the doll, both the heart and her eyes are more subdued colors, and she just doesn't look as pretty. I'd be tempted to try to paint that heart a darker red, except I'm not sure I could manage to successfully paint around (or repaint over) her eyebrow and eyelashes. Still, I'm not sorry to inexpensively add her to my collection.
I realize that I haven't mentioned her hair. She has a large piece of red hair coming from the middle front of her head, which is twisted around her face, and joined into a rubber band in back with the rest of her hair. I plan on removing the croquet visor and redoing her hair a little, now that I've reviewed her.
This is a good place to review Lizzie's pet hedgehog, Shuffle. Shuffle is for sale individually, along with a few other EAH pets, like Apple's pet fox, Gala, and Maddie's mouse, Earl Gray. The packaging for the Tri-Castle-On set shows a hedgehog being used as a croquet ball, as in the Alice book, although the hedgehog just looks like it's taking a fun slide on its back.
Rest assured that real hedgehogs are not used in the Ever After High webisodes, nor are real flamingos used. Lizzie's mallet does look like the one her doll comes with, but regular hard croquet balls are used for all the matches.
For Dragon Games, Mattel came out with a small line of baby dragons that matched up with several of the girls. Unlike those dragons, the various pets that were produced next are bobbleheads, including Shuffle. They're still cute, if not exactly all true to size (Earl Gray is as big as the other pets.)
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| Aren't I sweet? |
I managed to pose Lizzie holding Shuffle in her arms.
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| A girl and her hedgehog |
The Tri-Castle-On dolls are a weird mix. The outfits are not very elaborate, since they're for participating in sport. Lizzie's dress does have two prints, and faux princess style seams. Her plastic accessories all have a nice amount of detail, even if they could use some paint to bring out some of those details. Lastly, the three dolls all came with stands! I believe the three-doll set originally cost $50, and though the dolls may have been worth it from the point of view of how much they cost to produce, their outfits aren't exciting. I found it hard to get good lighting on the big box that the set came in, but would you have paid $50 for this? Not meaning any sarcasm here.
As a comparison, Disney Descendants currently has a
four pack of dolls out that retails for $60, and is on sale right now for $50. They don't look anywhere as detailed as our EAH trio. I'd love to see sales figures on the four-pack, and a previously released DD four-pack. I personally prefer EAH. :) Do you have any thoughts on Lizzie, multiple packs of dolls, or Disney Descendants versus EAH?
