'Haunted' River Styxx

Way back at Christmas, I was given Vandala Dubloons as a gift, and then the Haunted dolls kind of disappeared from my area until very recently. Their return happened to coincide with a 50% off sale at Toys R Us, and so I grabbed myself a River Styxx! Of course, she wasn't the only doll I got with such a good sale, but she was the only Haunted doll I picked up.

Speaking of Haunted, I bought the movie on Tuesday, and I really enjoyed it! Now that I've seen it, I need to pick up Kiyomi and possibly Porter as well...and maybe Getting Ghostly Twyla and Rochelle...sigh. Monster High knows how to hook me, I always want all the dolls after I see the movies. What did you guys think, if you're seen it?

But this post is all about River Styxx, the adorably spooky daughter of the Grim Reaper, so let's get to it!

I like the look of these Haunted boxes, with the embossed chains on the front and the kind of blurry edges of the art. Very ghostly! However, I HATE getting the dolls out of these things! They're harder to open than the old boxes AND the new boxes with more tabs and things tucked behind and inside...it's pretty miserable. So, I am very glad these boxes are only being used for Haunted, since the newer boxes are so easy to handle.

And here she is out of the box, with all her stuff. She is adorable, honestly. So cute!

She comes with the same stand as Vandala, the super cool floating chain stand. I love these stands, and I would love to have a few extras for my Spectra dolls, since I like to display her floating and these make is so easy!

And since River is the daughter of the Grim Reaper, she wouldn't be complete without a staff!

But of course, her's is super cute, with a big, purple bow on the top, and chains wrapped around and floating off the side. The staff also has a handle, and River can in fact hold it! You have to position it just right so her arm doesn't flop over, since the bow makes it pretty top heavy, but it's not too tricky.

And now onto River herself! I love her pastel colour scheme; she looks like a Lisa Frank dream! The addition of the sheer, black Reaper cloak is awesome too, as it kind of tones down all those pastel colours and give River a bit of a spooky edge, without totally taking away from her look. I especially like the hood!

The cloak is kind of huge, coming down to the floor in the back, and spreading out pretty far on either side. I love how big it is, and that it doesn't feel like an afterthought. It's a real centrepiece of her outfit! The hood doesn't have a hole for her hair however, so you do have to carefully position her hair around her face to allow it to velcro around her neck.

Without the cloak, River is just pure cotton candy cuteness! I think it helps that she's on the shorter body; I just always find the smaller dolls so cute! I know some people really don't like the shorter body, but I actually love it, both for the purposes of diversity in the line, and also just because anything that's a bit smaller than usual is twice as cute! :P

River has a very sweet face, I think! Her eyes are large, and they're pretty unique. The irises are blue, and then on the inside of her pupils, in addition to the usual reflection dots, there are circles of iridescence. It was kind of hard to capture this in a photo, but in real life, as you move the doll around these spots catch the light and really give her a ghostly look! I also like that the ghost characters all look different. Vandala's face is done very softly, with translucent pupils, while the colours on River's face are much more solid. It makes sense, because even though they're both ghosts, they're different types of ghost, and that's the kind of detail I love from Monster High!

River also has a mouth painted similarly to Skelita's, with the lines on her lips representing teeth. Her nose is also painted a darker purple than the rest of her skin, to make it look like maybe it's not there, like a skull. Also, her skin is sort of shimmery and translucent, especially if you hold it up to the light. Very cool!

Her outfit is a simple skater-style dress with a pastel tie dye pattern, overlaid with a shimmery pattern of skulls and bones and all sorts of other things. It is SO cute, and I would totally wear this dress! Over top of the dress she's wearing a large light purple belt made up of chains wrapping around her waist. In the centre, there's a bow made of chain links with a skullette in the centre.

If you turn her around, there is a large chain bow on the back of her belt, with lots of chains dangling from it. This piece is not attached to the belt in the box, but is just off to the side. There's a hole in it, and the peg on the belt is extra long for it to attach to. I love how the chains look like they're floating!

She's wearing translucent blue boot that kind of remind me of Victorian style booties. They have what could be buttons or holes for laces going up either side, and come to a slight point at the toe. Much like her belt, her shoes are wrapped in chains that fasten at the back in a big bow.

You have to take the bows off in order to remove the shoes, and I think the boots still look pretty cute without the bows.

River is wearing a bracelet on each wrist. A blue bow on her left wrist, and a mint green chain with a dangling skullette on her right.

Her necklace is a pale pink bow on a chain, with a teeny skullette dangling off of one side of the bow. Bows and chains everywhere!

As I mentioned, River is on the short body, but that's not the only unique thing about her body! Her forearms and lower legs are see-through, and you can see the bones in them! Advertised in big letters on the box is "visible bones!" and I can't get over how amazing that is as a selling point in a toy geared towards young girls. Awesome!

In her legs, you can see both the tibia and the fibia, and there's a surprising amount of detail in the feet as well.

Her arms have the radius and the ulna (check out me remembering grade school anatomy!) and her hands have the bones painted onto them. Honestly, I think it would have been amazing if her whole body was like this! Like Skelita's body encased in translucent plastic? So cool!

What's also interesting is that her hands attached differently than usual! Normally, the peg is on the hand, and it pops into the forearm, but because if the bones inside, the forearm ends in an external ball joint with an attached peg. That peg than slots into the hand. This actually gives the hands a slightly different kind of movement as well, but it doesn't impede posing at all. It's just different!

And there is the adorable River Styxx! Isn't she just the cutest Grim Reaper ever?

I wouldn't necessarily WELCOME her, if she was the one to bring me to the other side, but it would certainly be easy to follow a cute pastel goth girl with a confetti canon than a skeletal man with a scythe and a bony, beckoning finger!

Of the two dolls I have from the Haunted line, I think River might be my favourite. She's one of those dolls that just makes me so happy to look at, from her sweet, smiling face to her magical, pastel dress. She is anything but grim!

What do you think of River Styxx? And have you seen Haunted yet? I loved it, and I already can't wait for Boo York, Boo York!