Shadow High Series 2: Karla Choupette
August something, 2023.
The Rainbow High doll line is well-known among adult collectors for their high quality doll fashions. Rainbow High's spinoff, Shadow High, is my favorite due to their more alternative stylings. Karla is no exception, clad in a menswear-inspired top with a tie tucked into a pastel pink mini dress. She has thigh-high black legwarmers with zipper details unzipped at the ankle to show off her boots. She sports "SH" embroidered fingerless gloves and has silver hardware on her outfit to complement her silver dangly chain earrings.
Her accessories include a black fan with a tassel with "Shadow" written in silver across the leaf. She comes with a makeup palette, brushes (a few of which were bent out of the box), a smartphone and case, as well as a doll stand, mini clothes hangers, and pink comb.
She's a really lovely doll. She has a strange, pallid skintone, which I find compelling. I like her white eyelashes, too. The doll's outfit comes with as many details as one would expect from Shadow High, but unfortunately one of the tiny silver buttons seems to have fallen off my doll's dress.
By now, these dolls have started to go on clearance and are more than worth it at the marked down price. It was a bit sad to see these dolls shelf-warming for a lot of this year. They don't seem to be very popular with children. Unfortunately for us weird grown-ups, the Rainbow High franchise seems to be heading back towards a more kid-oriented direction.
The Rainbow High line has its origins in a now-defunct brand known as "Poopsie Surprise." The line which featured bigger 15" dolls with similar looks to the Rainbow High series. The line's gimmick involved slime-- the characters were adorned with clear plastic clothes, and slime could be fed into the clothes' linings to fill them up with slime. Other toys in the line were animals (unicorn babies?) that pooped out colorful slime. Rumors suggest that future Rainbow High releases will feature pets based on the Poopsie Surprise animal designs, and the dolls may have some more slime-compatible features. Personally, the slime dolls are not something I am interested in, but if kids enjoy that, I hope they have fun with the new toys. It seems like many kids have good experiences with the tactile feeling of playing with slime, and may have an easier time with the simpler fashions of the reboot.
I can only hope that Shadow High persists, considering the new direction for the franchise. A series 3 is on the way, and previews of the doll designs are uninteresting to me, though the quality appears to remain good. Shadow High's peak, in my opinion, was with the Halloween Ball dolls. Both Rainbow and Shadow High characters were featured, and they were highly detailed, interesting designs in premium boxes, retailing for $35 each. I could see how something like that would be attractive to adult collectors, but daunting for a parent shopping for toys for a kid. Even Shadow High's very beginning (Series 1) was interesting because it was very bold: entirely monochromatic designs. Every doll was greyscale, having monochromatic clothes, skin, and hair. I can imagine that these dolls were unappealing to children, and they quickly moved away from the greyscale to fantasy colors, but I had never seen anything like it before. Their outfits were all quite edgy for playline dolls, and the concept was quite novel. I would love to see more striking concepts like this in the Shadow High line. We'll just have to wait and see what happens.