Posea Reef

Hello World!

This is the first entry of a blog in which I would like to analyze dolls more than describing "how cute they are", because if anything, a doll can be cute but can also be done in a good or bad way. I decided to start with Posea Reef, my newest doll. Here she is:

 

What can I say about this lady? Well, the first time I got her out of her box (an epic battle, let me tell you), I....didn't exactly know what to do with her. I mean, look at her. The only part that's more or less free it's her head. The rest is all trapped in coral and seaweed:

Usually when I get a new doll, and manage to fight my way through her package, the first thing I do is test her extremities, how they behave, how well she can pose, etc. With Posea? I just put her in front of me while asking myself "Mkay....where do I start?":

So I started with her hair. I was kind of expecting the famous hair product Mattel loves to put everywhere but...I was surprised, honestly. Her hair has not a single drop of it, and in fact, is quite soft:

I was so mesmerized by her hair and its color, that I didn't realize I was moving her head up until her earrings started moving on their own:

So apparently, giving a doll long, nice, soft, omgoshIwannatouchit! hair with a pair of big, complicated, with a lot of holes and pointy ends earrings it's a good idea! So good I was constantly putting the little things back into their ear-sockets. Amazing.
Don't get me wrong, the earrings are...they are okay, but the ears? Those are quite amazing:

I was surprised to see ears like this, considering Mattel is more on the side "lets not complicate things way too much, lads". I like her ears, quite a lot. Sadly, that, and the hair, is pretty much all I like about her. Now you may be asking: why did you buy her?. That, my friends, is an easy question.
I'm one of those who upon discovering a collection I like, I kind of feel like I should have all of them, or at least, all of the items that come with the part of the collection I want. I already have Kala Mer'ri and Peri/Pearl, and so I felt I had to have Posea as well. And there she is.

So, back to our lady. Her face. Is it me, or does she look older than sixteen?:

I can't help but see a woman around her twenties, not a sixteen years old teen. If I have to say something about her face that I like about is both her eyes and freckles. Those are cute:

Now, lets move down and...okay, I can't just ignore this mess here. As you can see, Posea is covered in coral and seaweed (sorry for this slightly dark photo):

They're both made of soft vinyl, and I'm sorry, but I have to say this. Everytime I touch the coral in Posea's body, I feel like touching plastic minced meat. It just looks like that. Minced meat that doesn't look good to eat.

So! Once you take the mince...sorry, the coral out of her, you can see her outfit. It's a sleeveless shirt, with a creatures pattern that for some reason makes me feel uncomfortable. I don't know why.

Before we go further down, I would like to stop for a moment and talk about Posea's skin pattern. Her skin is covered in little molded dots that create a beautiful pattern all over her upper body. That's another thing I like about her...if it wasn't for the fact that they pinch like leetle needles:

I'm not even kidding. These things pinch, they actually hurt if you hold the doll without her shirt on. It's not a huge pain, but just imagine a kid holding her and pinching his/her little hands with Posea's body. Even her arms have those:

I mean, come on, this isn't something that should pass quality control. I can only imagine someone in Mattel saying "Oh, these things pinch a little bit, but in life you must teach kids everything. Sell her". I'm getting pinched by my own doll.
Sigh.
Moving on to the hands, they're webbed:

Nothing really interesting about them, moving on.
Next thing on the list...seaweed!

Now this is kind of the special part about Posea. I guess she has some sort of communication with the little critters under the sea (heh), so her tail is covered in seaweed and different creatures. Don't get me wrong, these right here look quite good. I specially like the snake that runs up her tail. My only question is....why are they all dead? I'm not kidding, all of them are the remains of those creatures.

So Posea pretty much gets creatures tangled in her seaweed, and since she has poor memory, doesn't realize they're there and poor little things die of starvation.

You know, for kids:

As you may know, each ocean Monster High doll has a part that glows in the dark. In Posea's case, what glows are her creatures. This is kind of odd to me, because the other dolls have something in their bodies glowing, but Posea doesn't. And those creatures are not attached to the seaweed, they're just held in there by clear rubber bands, so the moment you lose them, bye bye glow in the dark.

However, they glow in different colors:

Once you manage to take that out, you can see Posea's tentacles:

They're stiff, almost impossible to move, and nothing new knowing that Kala already has tentacles, four of them, with a lot more poseability:

I won't talk in deep about her articulation because it's quite the same as other Monster Highs, at least in the arms and hands, but I'll say that for some reason, Posea's articulation are quite stiff. A lot more than other dolls of this line (heck, from any line) I've seen. Why is that I'll never know.

Bottom line? I find this doll in the collector's realm more than in the child's play realm. While I was trying to pose her and test her articulations. I found myself struggling with her a bit too much for my taste. As a kid, I would have probably left her on a shelf and move onto another doll, like Kala or Peri/Pearl.

Mattel did a lot of great design choices in other dolls, but this one is not one of them. Sorry Posea, you get the thumbs down.

So! Next time I'll review Peri/Pearl! I want to leave Kala for the last of these three because she's the one I have less troubles with, and because I really want to talk about the first siamese doll in Mattel's history.
See ya.