Friday, July 17, 2015

Queen of the Dark Forest review..




Queen of the Dark Forest has arrived and she is a very stunning doll! Unlike her predecessor, Lady of the White Woods, I immediately de-boxed her. I set up a little forest dio for her in this shoot. Warning- she is a hard doll to shoot because of the darkness of her costume, she gets alot of glare because of her skin tone and the fabric has a fake dragon skin gloss/sheen to it. So it does reflect a bit and that head dress/crown and neckpiece also reflect light too. So you may need to get some shaders in there when working with her. 

Here she is in still in the box. She comes like the others with a clear plastic piece so you can display her.




Her dress is done in a Anne Boleyn style with the furred sleeves, and underneath there is a plastic skirt around her model muse body to keep the dress from staining. The dress has snap closure! 

very bad photo of her shoes, which are really remarkable.

*I am using a poppy parker stand, she has the cheapo plastic Mattel stand, which I hate. I did not take it out of the box, I do not use these stands as they do not help the doll stand very well. I like Integrity stands better.

Her crown, neckpiece and staff are made of molded plastic but the staff appears to be flimsy so be very careful with it, it bends too easily in my opinion. 

Her arms bend at the elbow and her wrists bend, but her legs do not, same old same old- model muse legs, articulated arms. Mattel needs to start giving us a FULLY PIVATOL DOLL FOR $100!! That's my biggest problem with these $100 dolls. I don't care about the collector people who just want to display a mannequin- you need to get with the program if you haven't already arrived to the W club and don't know what you're missing in articulation and ability to pose. (ok rant on articulation over, LOL)

The outfit is extremely nice, and much more nicely done than Lady of the White Woods which I was afraid to take out of the box. Lady of the White Woods had better shoes. But now some more pics...






6 comments:

Phyllis said...

She is very nice, but I agree with you about half articulation. If I am going to spend that much for a doll, I definitely want articulation. I mean they already have the means to make the articulated Pivotal body, so why not do it????

I did not get any of this series, but I might have if they had the pivotal, fully articulated body. Instead, I have been buying IT dolls!

Lisa Neault said...

I agree. I don't know why Mattel is so SLOW to get with the program. The articulated dolls sell like hotcakes- look at Frank Sinatra and Elvis barbie. People were scooping them up even when they went on sale, the same for the hunger games katniss. And the haunted beauty series and this forest elf series are so exquisite on the face molds, to put them on half articulated/half model muse body is so lame. You just want to shake the designers and Mattel. Then when you go to order the doll, she is on backorder. It happened with lady of the white woods. Mattel still has not learned the art of pre order- they keep calling it 'backorder'. My opinion is if I am a socalled member of your 'club' and I am supposed to be able to order a 'direct exclusive' then I don't care if it is a platinum edition, I should have the ability as a member to order that doll- hence the problem with the recent platinum doll because their site crashed. Preoders would have bypassed this problem when signing upfor membership. You just order the doll then get her several months later, like the W Club.
I guess Mattel will learn, but very very slowly....lol...

Farrah said...

Wow, she's a gorgeous doll...her costume along is amazing. As soon as I saw her, I thought the same thing about how she's probably tricky to photograph, but you've done a great job! Yeah, I would be irritated about the limited articulation. The only Barbie I have in my collection is a Grace Kelly Barbie and I was so disappointed about her horrible articulation (she can't even move her elbow or wrists!) Hopefully they will get with the program if we all complain enough.
Great review!

Muff said...

I love her costume! She has this dichotomy going on. Her outfit makes her seem like a bad guy, but there's something in her face that looks so happy. Maybe she's happy about being bad, lol.

Sarah Sequins said...

She's gorgeous! I love the blue eyes with the dark hair. It's too bad she's not fully articulated, though, at that price. I recently saw some inexpensive Walmart exclusive dolls that were fully articulated. I think they were under 15 dollars, too. :/

Lisa Neault said...

Muff. I know what you mean. She reminds me a bit of Queen Maub in the Merlin movie. Happy one minute, bent on destruction in the next. She makes me want to make a whole room scene dark and mysterious for her complete with throne and minions. lol...
Sarah are you talking about the deluxe fashionistas?