Throwback Thursday review: Enchantimals Jessa Jellyfish review

It's the Moon Girl again, and it's the day before Valentine's Day.  Y'all know what that means, right?  It means absolutely NOTHING, though this past anxiety wave has changed my mind about spending my life as a spinster.  Pets are great, but one can't exactly have an intelligent conversation with them, and in ten to fifteen years they're in the ground and I'm alone again (naturally).  My animals are all pretty young, thankfully, but as I said above I can't talk to them and expect them to answer back.  Therefore...I, RagingMoon1987, do solemnly swear to find the man God has intended for me before I turn forty!  Does that sound like a good goal to y'all?  Seeing as I'm thirty-two now, I reckon I've got a bit of time to get that goal accomplished.  That being said, here I go with anthro dolls again!  I love anthro dolls; they just don't seem successful with children, and yet they're always interesting.  Y'all might think that Twilight Sparkle, Usaggie, Pepper Parson, and Freya would be enough for me, but when's the last time any of y'all saw a doll that had a JELLYFISH theme???  Meet Jessa Jellyfish and her pet, Marisa.

Now would be a good time to warn y'all that I took invertebrate zoology in college and loved every second of it, so this post will be chock full of geeking out and tangents.  Now that that's out of the way, Enchantimals are another doll line by Mattel, and as far as I know they're a stand-alone line with no ties to Barbie, Monster High, or Ever After High.  They closely resemble the Forest Pixies in Ever After High's Dragon Games line, but they're otherwise not related.  The dolls themselves appear to be these strange little beings that are half-human and half-some other critter, and they always have a pet in tow that is fully the other critter in question.  Doll and pet have a special bond, and the two usually enjoy doing certain things as a pair.  Jessa and her cnidarian companion Marisa enjoy floating and making wishes on shooting stars, for example.  Doesn't sound much like something a jellyfish-themed doll would do for grins, though I doubt that "stinging the bejesus out of friends as a prank" would've gone over with consumers.  Furthermore, floating is more like something I'd expect from a Portuguese man o'war than a jellyfish.  But according to the package, floating and wishing on shooting stars is how these two spend their time.

Usually I like shooting stars, but here lately they have been harbingers of family tragedy rather than granters of wishes.  The tattoo on my leg suddenly has a whole new meaning now (it's a shooting star, with a rainbow tail no less).  Anyway, I never saw any Enchantimals that are half cat (that would've been a must-have for me), but I've seen many of my other favorite animals represented.  Rabbits, foxes, hedgehogs, skunks, pandas, elephants, they've all been there.  Okay, there are dolls representing some of the big cats (lion, tiger, and cheetah), but I never those in stores.  Of the ones I have seen in person I was most tempted by Fluffy Bunny due to her coloring (she's butter yellow with green hair).  I have my other favorites of course, like Peeki Parrot and Ekaterina Elephant, but neither of them are as original as Jessa.  Dolls with a parrot or an elephant theme aren't common, but toys are.  But toy jellyfish?  The only toy jellyfish I can ever remember seeing was Goochy, one of my favorite Beanie Babies.  Indeed, Goochy was one of my favorite Beanies because he WAS a jellyfish, and a tie-dyed one at that!  Oh yeah, DollZone also had a jellyfish doll available once...as an EVENT ITEM that I'll never get my hands on unless one comes up for sale on Den of Angels no, she's off-topic on DoA due to insufficient jointing, so she'll never turn up for sale there.  Aren't we just la-de-da!  LuMu was adorable though, one of the most original ball-jointed dolls I'd ever seen, and I hope one day to own her (oddly, that link takes one straight to Den of Angels).  Anywho, I've always been fascinated by jellyfish despite (and perhaps because of) the fact that certain species can be very dangerous, and it thrills me no end to see a mass-produced doll depicting such a creature...even though Jessa and Marisa look pretty innocent.

Alrighty, so my fascination with jellyfish is why I picked Jessa as my Enchantimal of choice, even though I like Peeki Parrot's coloration better.  Now that that's out of the way, Jessa and her half-breed friends are small dolls, being about six inches in height, a perfect size to join the Peanut Gallery.  Pardon the reused picture; setting all those dolls up and getting them to look straight is a pain in the posterior.

Here's how Jessa compares to Glori and Longlocks...

...and just for the heckuvit, here's how she looks with my go-to MH and EVH dolls, Clawdeen Wolf and Justine Dancer.  Some schools of thought believe that Enchantimals were created to replace these lines, but if so they failed fairly miserably...kinda like my picture failed miserably at capturing the beauty of Justine's plastic.

No one can replace the Monster High dolls, period.  Anyway, Enchantimals have/had hair in a wide range of colors, textures, and styles.  Lorna Lamb sports an off-white Afro-type hairstyle like Dandelion's, for example, and Jessa sports a straight side-part style with blunt ends and no bangs.  It's a little kinked from being in storage right now, but the kinks will hang out (I hope).

When her hair is lying straight it falls midway down her back, and the fibers are soft and smooth like the hair of most Mattel dolls.  In warm conditions Jessa has aqua hair all over, but when placed in cool water (or air) her hair develops darker blue streaks. 

That must be what the brush and the bowl are for, to paint in stripes.

These came with Jessa, but I wasn't really sure what they were for at first since Marisa can't fit into the bowl.

The bottom of the bowl has two little starfish, by the way. 

After a bit of digging around I learned that the bowl is indeed meant to hold a small amount of water, and the brush is dipped into this water to paint streaks in Jessa's hair.  I've seen items like this included with dolls before, so I should've been able to put two and two together.  Anyway, Jessa has (had?) two aquatic Enchantimal comrades (Clarita Clownfish and Dolce Dolphin), and they have this color-change feature as well.  That earns Jessa some brownie points with me, because I used to love color-changing stuff when I was a little kid.  However, changing colors is more of a cephalopod trait than a cnidarian trait.  Cnidaria and their lookalikes in the phylum Ctenophora are more likely to be bioluminescent, meaning that some species glow (check out this gorgeous jelly for an example).  On the other hand, cephalopods (squid, octopi, and the like) are highly known for their abilities to change color at will, though I can name one species of octopus that does look like it can glow.  I don't know for certain if the blue-ringed octopus's namesake rings are bioluminescent, but they sure are bright!  This kiddie website insinuates that they do indeed glow, but don't quote me just the same.  Don't tangle with the blue-ringed octopus, by the way, as their bite is both relatively painless and deadly venomous.

I warned y'all that this post would be full of tangents!  What can I say, I think marine invertebrates are fascinating.  Down to Jessa's face now.  Remember that I said I preferred Peeki Parrot's makeup to Jessa's?  Well, Jessa is not too shabby in the face so maybe I should just shut my own face.

Okay, I've seen better paint, but I've also seen worse.  My main critique with this paint should be pretty obvious from the above picture, but here's a closer look at the dots under Jessa's eyes...y'know, just so I can pound a point into the wood a bit more.

Yes, I noticed that one eyebrow is higher than the other, but that doesn't bug me too terribly.  Try to pick these dolls out in person though, so you don't end up with wonky eyes.  I ordered Jessa off of eBay, and my doll's eyes are indeed slightly wonky.  My main beef, however, is those danged pixels!!!

Never, and I mean NEVER have I seen doll paint like this!  The eyes are a lovely three-tone mix of indigo and blue, the eyeshadow is painted to look (I assume) like seaweed, and the eyelashes are nice and thick, but the large size of those pixels blurs the overall effect.  It looks alright from a distance, but...I just don't like the size of these pixels.  Jessa's blush looks particularly odd with this speckled effect.

Rather strange considering the solid painting of the eyelashes, and this mouth too, for that matter.  I love Jessa's lip color, red with a slight shimmer, but notice that it looks like it's been painted twice and the mold shifted in between paintings!

Oh, by the way, did y'all see the little star printed under Jessa's right eye?  It too is pixelated, but I can overlook this because starfish are supposed to be rough in texture and the pixels create an illusion of this texture.

At least I assume this is supposed to represent a starfish, though it also fits well with Jessa's fondness for stargazing.  The star's presence does make me lift an eyebrow though, provided that my first guess is correct and that is indeed a starfish.  Starfish and other echinoderms can be a problem for cnidarians...and vice versa, as it turns out.  I knew that crown of thorns starfish were a tremendous pain in the posterior for coral (another cnidarian, believe it or not), but I didn't know that jellyfish and sea anemones were perfectly capable of turning the tables on some echinoderms!  I would've thought cnidarians would leave echinoderms alone due to the ever-present spines on the latter, but then again spines probably wouldn't bother a brainless critter like a jellyfish or a sea anemone.  There, now we all have learned something new.  But anyway, certain types of echinoderm can be dangerous for cnidarians, so...better have a doctor look at that star on your cheek, Jessa.

With another science lesson over I'm gonna try to give y'all a glimpse of this vinyl, something I don't often do in reviews.  With the possible exception of Felicity Fox, whose plastic is rendered in a semi-natural pink shade, all Enchantimals are some sort of trippy fantasy color, and most of them appear to have a light shimmery sheen to their vinyl.  Jessa is a soft, sandy orange color that can look like a deep suntan in some lights, and I find the shimmer layer fitting for a sea-themed doll, as it makes her vinyl look like beach sand.

Unfortunately I think it might be this shimmery coating that contributed to the rough texture of Jessa's head.  That's not a huge deal and may have in fact led to some ease in painting (it gave the paint something to hold onto), but I thought I'd throw that out there anyway.  In general I'd give this paint a B- if I were grading.  The colors are nice and there are no huge paint gaffes (the off-kilter mouth is not visible at a normal distance), and there are even some cute touches here and there (like the starfish), but the large pixels wash out the colors and blur the details.  Maybe these colors are SUPPOSED to look washed out???  Animals and detritus in the sea can get sun-bleached if exposed to the elements for long enough, but somehow I doubt that's the effect Mattel was going for here.  Strangely, the Enchantimals that I've seen at Wal-Mart do not have this pixelated effect, not even the cheapies with the swimsuits painted on.  Oh sure, their paint is pixeled, but not to the extent that Jessa's is.

Y'know, this doll's coloring reminds me of someone else.  Sandy brown skin, blue-violet eyes, shiny red lips...I remember who it is!  Jessa's coloring looks a little like Charlie Lake's!

Jessa and Charlie provide an interesting study in contrasts, as Charlie's paint is less elaborate but much more vibrant and precise than Jessa's is.  Keep in mind that both of these dolls are Mattel products.  But then again, Charlie cost twice what Jessa did...or she would have if I hadn't had to pay shipping and handling for Jessa!  One clearly got what one paid for when one bought an Enchantimal!

Before I move on to the body I want to chat a bit about the molding.  First and foremost, I wish that Mattel had kept the tradition of unique ears alive.  They did that with Monster High dolls (Lagoona Blue and Kjersti Trollson are just two examples), but Enchantimals have less fancy ears.  Oh sure, if the animal in question is some critter with pricked ears like Felicity Fox and Sage Skunk, or long ears like Bree and Fluffy Bunny then the ears are quite noticeable.  Birds and other critters...well, they just got your basic rounded ears like Jessa did.

Once upon a time Mattel's odd little monster-child and animal-hybrid dolls all came with specialized head molds (of which the ears were a part), but in the case of the Enchantimals there's a lot of repeating.  I can understand why as sharing head molds drives the cost down a bit more...but then again cute little details can help offset the cost of production by drawing in both kids and adult collectors alike.  I wish Jessa's head had some little details like that to make her special, but as of right now there's nothing to make her stand out aside from her sparkly orange skin and her blue hair.  But then again...how would Mattel make Jessa's head look jellyfishy without taking away the cute factor?  They couldn't have added gills (jellyfish don't have external gills like a fish does) or a ton of tentacles (tentacles would've been VERY hard to mold) so maybe in this case I can cut Mattel a little slack for simplifying the mold on this doll.

Body talk now.  Again, when Monster High was a young line their bodies carried the same amount of detail as their heads, and they had a high amount of joints as well.  Again, not so with most of the Enchantimals.  Some of these dolls come with larger pets and thus have jointed knees so that they can ride said larger pets, but Jessa is sadly not one of these dolls.  She has the traditional five joints (neck, shoulders, hips).

Posing is only great at the shoulders since they're ball-jointed.

The other joints only have rotational movement, typical of the vast majority of Mattel's dolls.  Jessa can turn her head...

...and she can sit and do front-to-back splits.

Importantly, Jessa can't stand on her own, either with shoes or without.  I wouldn't expect Jessa to stand on her own without shoes since she's got high-heeled feet, but Miss Emily pointed out in her Enchantimals review that a doll's ability to stand on its own usually attests to a well-constructed product.  NOT ALWAYS, since I've got lots of nice dolls that can't stand on their own, but in the case of a child's toy like Jessa the inability to stand says quite a bit about her engineering...or lack thereof.  For the record, Calypso can't stand on her own either, but my old Kelly dolls can.

Indeed, I used to balance my old Kelly dolls on the top of a fencepost while I played in the back yard.  It only took an errant ball or a gust of wind (or a perfectly tossed pebble from my smart-a$$ father) to send them tumbling off, but they could stand on the uneven wood surfaces that were the tops of our fenceposts.  Maybe I'm nitpicking, but to me this just shows what Mattel's dolls once were, and what they've become.  I highly doubt that the target audience for these dolls will give a rattling toss whether their doll can stand on its own, but for collectors this is significant that the Enchantimals can't stand.  Even as recently as the Monster High line the dolls could stand on their own with a little bamboozling...or a lot of bamboozling in C.A. Cupid's case.

Whining over, Jessa does have cute feet, regardless of whether she can stand on them or not.  She has little ankle bones visible, plus the customary five toes on each foot.

They look a lot better from the side than Betsy Bubblegum's feet do.

The knees are unjointed and straight, and the seams are smooth.  The arms and hands are very much the same, with smooth seams and no joints.  The elbows are slightly bent.  The fingers are all visible, but they're all molded together except for the thumb, probably to make molding easier.  The molding isn't as crisp here as it is on the feet.

The torso is the most interesting part of Jessa's body...at least visually.  This is where the majority of her clothes are painted on.

The details of this paint job are nice...or they WOULD be if they weren't so cotton-pickin' pixelated!  Yes, pixels here too!!!

I also think I got a doll that wasn't fully dry yet, as Jessa's paint appears to have run some.  Miss Emily's Sage Skunk had that problem too, and I saw a few other Enchantimals in stores that had sloppy bodices.  Compare this paint job to Calypso's painted blouse, which is pixeled but not as blurry...

...and to my Color Reveal Barbie's simple but smooth bodysuit...

...and to the crisp, precise lines of C.A. Cupid's painted lace gloves and stockings.

Again, this shows what Mattel has become, and the Color Reveal doll also reveals what they can still be if they're paying attention.  Yes, the Color Reveal doll's bodice is simple, but even simple paint jobs can run if they're moved before they're dry.  I know that these Enchantimals are supposed to be kid stuff, but dang it, so were Monster High dolls and their paint is fabulous...or it was during their early days, as y'all saw with C.A. Cupid.  I had been thinking that Mattel had stopped caring about any doll that wasn't Barbie, but look at Charlie Lake and her Wild Hearts friends!  They're nice dolls, and they cost...oh, they cost about the same as a Barbie that ISN'T a Fashionista.  They too are intended for children, but they're miles ahead of the Enchantimals, especially in the paint department.  This shows me what the Enchantimals could have been; I'm not even through with Jessa's review and it already feels like Mattel regarded her line as an afterthought!

I'm going to go off on a tangent now and briefly discuss the Color Reveal doll that I've got.

I've chosen the name "Erica" for this doll, after a genus of flowers that are mostly pastel-colored.  I haven't reviewed her since my blind bag posts are not popular, but if y'all want me to do a full review of this doll, please let me know and I'll do it.  I've seen plenty of reveals on YouTube but no reviews, and Erica's body is different enough from a Fashionista's body that I think a review might be a good idea.  But...I'll leave it up to y'all.  I will note that Jessa's waist has a lip on it to keep her skirt from riding up, and Erica's does not.

It annoys me when these skirts ride up, so Jessa gets some more brownie points there, even though the uneven waist does look odd when not covered by clothes.  Speaking of that skirt, in direct contrast of the bodice, the skirt is made out of fabric.  It's your basic bubble skirt with a very busy fabric and some added frippery!

Very cnidarian in appearance, I must say!  The waistline has a small ruffle of pink tulle and a VERY substantial elastic hem...

...while the bottom hem is gathered and has these yellow and pink streamers that dangle like jellyfish tentacles.  I only showed two, but I think there's eight all told, four in each color.

These are subtly sparkly and they hold wrinkles like mad, so it's hard for me to get these looking neat.  No worries, I guess, since a jellyfish's tentacles are always tangled on themselves anyway.

The fabric itself is quite lovely, consisting of starfish and seashells in soft watercolor shades.  I wish I had a blouse in this fabric, LOL.

For shoes Jessa wears these cute translucent purple wedge heels.

Once upon a time, when I was young and attractive and had an ankle that had never been broken, I would've worn shoes like these.  But sadly, that part of my life is over.  Anyway, the shoes have glitter molded in, and the heels have subtle little tentacles molded onto the sides, but the details are not painted.

Again, once upon a time Mattel did bother to paint these details, a point proven when one looks at the old Monster High shoes.  However, I will note that MH shoes are substantially larger than Enchantimal shoes.

Like Dawn's old shoes, Jessa's shoes have holes in the soles...but unlike Dawn's old shoes these don't accommodate a stand.

Enchantimals didn't come with stands, which is a shame because a little stand would've at least provided some display value.

Regarding jewelry Jessa wears a headband and two little bracelets.  The headband is made of the same plastic as the shoes, and it has a huge jellyfish on it.

Hmmm...looks a little like Cnidaria Rex minus the crown and robe (LOL).  Anyway, this thing doesn't have any painted details either, but like Betsy Bubblegum's crown it fits nicely on Jessa's head...AND it can be turned one way or the other (Betsy's can't, due to the back of her crown being hollow).

Right then...Jessa's headband stays on relatively well, but her bracelets had to be rubber banded to her wrists.

They still stay on pretty well without the rubber bands, though I'd recommend removing these before giving this doll to a child...if there are still children who want these dolls, that is.  Regardless, these bracelets are made of the same plastic as the shoes and the headband, but in yellow, and they're designed to look like jellyfish tentacles.  They look a bit more like octopus tentacles to me.  That's a cute little outfit though, one that makes Jessa's identity as a jellyfish girl a bit more obvious.  There's definitely more of a theme here than the outfits on the first wave of these dolls (they all had colorful but rather generic prints on their skirts).  I'll even add that Jessa's skirt is hemmed (the first wave didn't have hemmed skirts).  I just wish it were a full little dress, and I wish that the details on Jessa's shoes had been painted.  Painting small shoes wouldn't have been easy, but I've seen doll companies paint details on items smaller than Jessa's shoes.

Since Marisa is a big part of Jessa's life, let's look at her.

Biologically speaking, Marisa is not anatomically correct, as a jellyfish's mouth is always located under its bell, not on the side, and any existing eyes are located on the perimeter of the bell's lower edge.  But dolls are not restricted to the confines of worldly laws, so let's just move on.  Marisa is my second favorite Enchantimal pet (the elephant is the first), as her face exudes such delirious happiness.  Her paint is smooth and free of cracks and pixels, like Jessa's paint COULD HAVE BEEN!!!

Her left tentacle is molded into a hook to accommodate the streak-painting brush.

Regarding size, Marisa is a small figurine, about the size of an L.O.L. Li'l Sister.

The two Li'l Sisters are Li'l Boogie Babe and Li'l Soul Babe, and I think Boogie and Marisa could become pretty tight with their similar sizes and smug expressions.  I kind of wish they made Marisa in a larger size, in fact; she'd make a great paperweight at work, and I know that smile would bring a lot of comments from patrons.  In short, I've criticized the addition of pets in past lines, but in Jessa's case I think they're necessary.  Marisa and the other pets help make a little more sense of the line, and they help identify what animal the doll is supposed to be.  Indeed, if I'd found Jessa running loose I probably would not have identified her as a jellyfish doll.

Regarding clothes sharing, the only doll I can name as a potential donor is last week's doll, Betsy Bubblegum.

These two have a few interesting similarities.  <name them>  However, Jessa is taller and a little curvier than Betsy, and I now have my doubts about clothes sharing.  Betsy wouldn't have a complete outfit anyway since Jessa's outfit is only a skirt.

And indeed, poor Betsy looks just a little ridiculous in no blouse and a skirt that's too big for her body.  Betsy's dress looks okay on Jessa, but it's too tight for the Velcro to fasten.  For what it's worth the two can share headgear, and Betsy can wear Jessa's shoes...

...but while Betsy's boots look like they fit Jessa, they're really too short and too narrow.

With that settled, it's time to wrap this up.

BAD
*Facepaint is cute and could've been great, but the pixel size is distracting.
*Paint on the bodice isn't great either; it looks like it ran some after the doll was moved.
*Small parts are a choking hazard, especially those bracelets.
*Can't share clothes with any of my other dolls.
*Can't stand on her own, and lacks a stand to help with this.

GOOD
*Hair changes color, always a plus in my book.
*Semi-original, as there are few other dolls in the world that depict jellyfish.
*Colorful
*Easy for a child to play with, provided the child is old enough to know not to stick crap in their mouths.

Based on the generic cuteness and the vague theme of this line, and on the hit-and-miss quality I'd skip these if I were a serious collector, and they're not must-haves for a child's toybox either.  They're good for games of make-believe and look cute in dioramas with other small dolls...but then so do Chelsea dolls and miniature Sparkle Girlz, and both of them have better paint and hair.  The Sparkle Girlz also have real clothes, none of that painted on crap that can look bad if not done right.  Like the Yummi-Land dolls of last week, there's just not much about the Enchantimals, and I recommend skipping them.  They look cute, but there's a lot of sloppy shortcomings and a lot of silly gimmicks that plant this doll firmly in the "cheap toy" category.  Keep in mind that Yummi-Land DIDN'T have these shortcomings; Betsy's clothes were real instead of painted on, her facepaint lacked pixels, and she came with a stand.  I wasn't in love with Betsy at the end of her review last week, but having compared her to Jessa my feelings have mellowed somewhat.  Marisa is superior to Susie, though.

I believe that many consumers (parent and child alike) felt the same way that I do about the Enchantimals, because new waves never came in and old waves languished in toy isles before being moved to the discount section.  Given the fact that the Enchantimals came on the heels of the once-very-popular Monster High dolls, and the fact that they offered nothing new or innovative to the dolly world, I can see why these weren't popular.  Oh, and get this: the Czech Republic recently had problems with counterfeit Enchantimals that were ridden with phthalates...just lovely.  I think the Czechs dealt with this problem quickly, and I didn't order my doll from the Czech Republic anyway, but it still helps to know that this happened to them.  But regarding the Enchantimals...unless you want a small, stiff doll with a vague association to your favorite animal, don't bother.  If you want a cute doll that works well with dollhouse games, stick with Dawn or Kelly/Chelsea or Strawberry Shortcake, or with the Shopkins Shoppies and their small pieces of home decor. 

Much love,
RagingMoon1987