Burying Myself Deep: An Introduction to Living Dead Dolls by Mezco Toyz

Were you ever enthralled by the creepy dolls in the attic? Did you want them scarier? Then Living Dead Dolls are for you. Be warned, and sorry for the drastic tonal whiplash from the last post!

 

Also, this cover photo is deliberately the least illustrative of the posts I've done and doesn't show every subject because the subjects of LDD aren't the most inviting of faces.

While I'm not going to get too explicit here, content warning for...just, generally a lot. I will be discussing shocking and potentially distressing topics these dolls dabble in, as well as naming some distressing topics they don't for the sake of context. This isn't family-friendly horror media and it has the potential to really upset people, sometimes for reasons I completely understand. 

A collector toy brand created in 1998, the Living Dead Dolls are a very acquired taste, and perusal of their catalogue is not for the young, squeamish or timid. The brand serves as a R-rated horror parody of small classical childlike playline and designer dolls like Madame Alexander...and boy does it go there, taste and tact be damned. Monster High is family-friendly fantasy horror, and Bleeding Edge Goths were based on the goth lifestyle and caricature more than horror media. LDD isn't photo-real by any means, nor made as disgustingly visceral as possible, but it is strong stuff. Out of recognition for the niche appeal and alienating subject matter of LDD, I'll decline to share images of the most graphically real or extreme dolls here and stick to the ones I find more gothically bloody, spookily fascinating or haunting/unreal in execution. 

If Monster High shelves would make your neighbors look at you a little funny, seeing LDDs on display in the house would make most casual visitors really worried for you--which, to be fair, might be a desired reaction. They're not for display with polite company. They're absolutely not for my mom! Weird morbid friends are recommended if you collect these. A spooky mood is recommended for reading my posts on them.

As a twisted parody of classic innocent dolls, Living Dead Dolls are childlike in design and come in distinctive coffin packaging and feature death certificates instead of adoption papers or birth certificates, and depict eerie, gory, violent, gruesome, or monstrous figures with macabre stories, sometimes with removable body parts! Many of the dolls reflect a Gorey-esque sensibility of child mortality, while others are monsters or villains, reflecting an antisocial performance of darkness common in goth counterculture. The dolls have little poems and backstories about their deaths or otherwise macabre natures, and released in several small series, which increasingly featured themed unifying concepts. LDD also licenses and has many original-character dolls not tied to series, and many of their doll releases have come with variants that change their design, color scheme, or even glow in the dark! I always personally admired how often LDD played with the format and construction of the dolls to paint a stronger picture, so lots of them feature unique manufacturing novelties to make them special--like Isaac, a scarecrow doll with a tall floppy plush torso and limbs to sell the idea best! Additionally, LDDs very often featured hidden details for collectors to discover, and I admired the way that encouraged people to take them out of packaging and enjoy them as toys. There's a real sense of fun and passion visible in all the ways the dolls have been pushed to surprise and innovate.

Why Living Dead Dolls Really Might Not Be For You

Bear with me, because I might end up making you despise this brand in this section, and that's not my mission. I'm not coming here at all to tell you how to interact with this brand, because that's up to you. There's just a lot to lay out on the table for an honest discussion, and a lot of concerns within the LDD output. There's much that I personally have to acknowledge and square away.

As a shock-goth counterculture fixture, the brand goes beyond the boundaries of edginess quite frequently, creating some genuinely distressing or tasteless things in its pursuit of shock horror. Violence, mental illness, Satanism, and general misanthropy are all on the table of horror aesthetics here so there's something to push a lot of buttons. Nothing feels intended to be truly offensive or aggressive and it's mostly done in good fun within the dark space. The dolls are either wry or glib or intentionally extreme just to explore that, but I get no impression that the people behind the brand are actually monstrous or antisocial, and all of the collectors I've seen have seemed to be friendly, sweet people too. Devoted horror fans usually seem pretty nice and intelligent and capable of separating fictional atrocity from reality. Still, the brand carries a lot of the ignorance and tastelessness that counterculture edginess is known to have and I don't blame anybody for taking it seriously and washing their hands of it. LDD can alienate a lot of people for good reasons and the brand really is by the horror fans for the horror fans.

There's a lot I don't love about it. Just for aesthetics, I personally don't go for the dolls that are too far removed from a classic doll, like those which have the screaming face mold, and typically don't like the ones which look mutilated myself. Minor injury or blood without wounds are fine, but more significant brutality can feel either too real or too try-hard, though there are several cases where I respect a character design without necessarily wanting to have it. I do find a lot of the designs pretty striking and fun, and there is a good sense of humor in a lot of the dolls-- just sometimes, the dolls might play too lightly with matters in ways that can come across as genuinely callous or triggering, particularly in reference to deaths by suicide or to real tragedies and historical criminal incidents. I don't like that kind of thing. There's also some awkwardness with some designs due to the child template of the doll bodies, both in terms of brutality and age discrepancy with the theme. While child mortality is a staple of horror and Gothic media, some of the childlike dolls who met their end make me uncomfortable or are just too visceral for me to want to own, and there are a few occasions where the fashion corresponds to mature adult styles that clash with the dolls.

I've also noticed that the dolls are also overwhelmingly white or White-coded on the most part, possibly because the designers didn't want to create negative implications by featuring people of color in the situations the dolls are usually in? I don't know. But anytime a Living Dead Dolls character is explicitly non-white, they're also foreign. The only clearly Black LDD is a voodoo witch doctor who turned himself into a zombie with his own magic. He was an early entry and probably a misstep, but there were definitely neutral/equitable ways to do more Black and other non-white non-foreign dolls in a horror context, and attempts should have been/can still be made. I want to give LDD the benefit of the doubt that the lack of diversity is due to walking on eggshells, though I can't claim either way what's up. 

Oh, and the very brief and small Fashion Victims fashion doll adaptation/spinoff had an extremely sleazy first wave of dolls that felt like they were meant to be sold at sex shops. The characters were adults and depicted as such, but the grotesquely booby proportions, skimpy vinyl clothing, and packaging copy and images were shockingly objectifying and Fashion Victims Series 1 felt like it was designed, manufactured, and shipped entirely one-handed. Series 2 of the Fashion Victims redesigned the dolls wholesale and toned things down more to a much less filthy pinup tone, but that first series was a really ugly showing and I would really hope it was from a horribly misguided attempt at expanding the audience (to include aughties perverts?), or that they were meant to be ironic gag gifts, rather than reflecting some serious misogyny from the brand creators going mask-off. Regardless, I just know no women handled the first wave of dolls in the creative department, and they didn't feel designed through the lens of camp. That first wave did the optics of LDD absolutely zero favors.

I will say this--there do appear to be some boundaries to keep the tone (successfully or not) more like lurid fun and better suited to the doll form. None of the main LDDs are written as explicitly sexual adults, none of them are visually or narratively depicted to be victims of abusive relationships or sexual assault (not even the doll depicting an apocryphal Jack the Ripper victim, who's gory as hell but only invokes brutality in a slasher sense), and none of them are victims or perpetrators of realistic warfare or bigotry. There's also a clear age minimum owing to the body design so every LDD reflecting a literal child would fall in the age range of a kid who can walk and talk and make dumb choices, and so they met their end by being motivated and unaware like kids are and by not having someone caring for and watching over them. I understand these caveats do not make for a super glowing assessment of the accessibility of this brand's subject matter, but some of the worst and truly saddest things that can happen to people are not referenced, and the main LDDs, unlike the Series 1 Fashion Victims, don't ever feel crusty and perverted.

So that's all laid out. Understand that these toys are a very "problematic fave" of mine, and if you find material in the brand objectionable, I'll probably agree with you! There's just a lot of creativity and more clean horror to be enjoyed as well. Lots of LDD is material that I don't feel comfortable with or personally won't go out for, but you can hold contrasting opinions about a work at the same time without cognitive dissonance. And with an output as varied as LDD's, you can definitely pick and choose. I don't defend what I revile, but I won't write off what I love. And some of the problems I have with LDD are hallmarks of dated 90s/2000s social attitudes and have either been addressed or haven't recurred for long enough that those might not end up repeated. I don't think we'll see any more raunchy bimbo fashion dolls or stereotypical dead emos in the future.

My personal favored Living Dead Dolls trend more goth-cartoonish, or more eerie, subtle and plausible as an actual vintage doll. (If you've seen my custom Left Out Dolls from earlier posts, which are heavily derived from the Living Dead Dolls, they display a sample horror aesthetic range I'm comfortable with for my toys.) I like poppy horror, vintage themes, or haunting, unsettling designs. If blood and injury are involved on a Living Dead Doll, a more cartoonish and poppy or haunting gothic vintage tone will make me more receptive to it. Some LDDs seem to be characterized as real creepy toys, while others just represent a character through a doll medium, though the official line seems to be that they are all literal dolls in their own little world, in a wise attempt to take the sting out of some of the imagery. I really like the latter cases where it's plausible that an LDD could be a genuine effed-up old doll you'd find in someone's attic, even (or especially) if it's beyond the bounds of a "normal" scary old doll. 

LDD History, and My LDD History

The brand originated as handmade customs by friends Ed Long and Damien Glonek, before the two met Mike "Mez" Markowitz and he joined the team and made LDD a staple of the Mezco Toyz collectible empire he founded. The original lineup of Living Dead Dolls was Sadie, the brand mascot (a scary goth girl), Sin (a devil-themed lookalike to Sadie), Damien (a boy transparently based on Damien Thorn from The Omen), Eggzorcist (an Easter Bunny-costumed girl strangled by a hoodie drawstring) and Posey (a girl who was buried alive, died, and rose from the grave). 

Compilation of the Series 1 dolls by blood-stained-hands on DeviantArt.
Left to right--Sadie, Eggzorcist, Posey, Damien, Sin.

All of these dolls have had later rereleases in different editions, and Sadie, as the face of the brand, has had the most doll releases. She appeared alongside rereleases of the other Series 1 dolls, but also had the unique distinction of appearing multiple times in the standard series (she appeared in Series 2 as a "schooltime" edition, the Deadly Sins-themed Series 7 as the personification of Sloth in pajamas, and Series 28 as the birthday girl celebrated in the "Sweet Sixteen" anniversary concept). Not every Series 1 character was in the first group of handmade customs that started the LDD concept, and one other character was in the handmades without being merchandised, a doll named Candy Rotten. She was absent from the released dolls until finally getting a doll in Series 35 which commemorated the brand's 20th anniversary. LDD still hasn't updated their website archive with proper photos of the Series 35 dolls so I don't have a good picture of her.

The dolls underwent some evolution. As production became more professional, the outfits switched from felt to more fancy fabrics and had better quality, and articulation improved a little starting with Series 9 to change every swivel joint out for a ball-and-socket joint. 

Another major release format for the brand was Resurrection. The Resurrection series were reimaginings of older characters (which could include LDD originals who debuted outside of series) and they had inset glass eyes to make them fancier. The designs could be very similar or radically different compared to the originals, which left a lot of variety in the Resurrected takes. Resurrection series had variants as well, leaving each character with a minimum two Resurrections, technically, and those variants could be very different from each other as well. Resurrection series were mixes of disparate characters, so they were not reproducing the character lineups of previous series, and several Resurrections were standalone dolls not in a series. The last main series of LDD characters to date, the anniversary Series 35, featured mystery dolls of the Series 1 cast and Candy Rotten obtained at random in each case. These mystery dolls also had Resurrection-style glass eyes, and were new designs, so those essentially served as additional Resurrection editions for the four Series 1 dolls who were Resurrected already. None of the S35 dolls had variants.

LDD stopped doing regular series of new original characters ages ago, and had their last Resurrection dolls not long after. The brand has been pushing out licensed characters as their only product for the past few years, which made me wonder what the future was. 

My Living Dead Dolls phase was partially intertwined with my inaugurating Monster High phase in my teens. There was a small overlap, but I got into LDD later in my MH phase, and LDD kind of transitioned into my post-MH fixation and took over as my interest after G2 wrecked Monster High's appeal. It made some sense, too, as, despite the child mold of the dolls, LDD was the "big-boy" horror doll that served as a tonal step up from MH and was perfect for a young horror fan defining his interest in the genre and learning just how creepy he liked it. Mind you, all of this LDD phase which I'm going to discuss was sustained without ever purchasing or actually owning a Living Dead Doll. I wasn't empowered to be an online buyer then and they weren't easy to get any other way.

I dove into LDD out of casual curiosity. I might have been alerted to their existence through TBP Emily's review of an old and literally-moldy Frozen Charlotte, but I know that wasn't the only place I heard of the brand. I forget the inciting spark, but I remember using high school study-hall hours to look at the archive of dolls on the website, and then I really got obsessed through the video reviews made by Joshua Lee on YouTube. He does very descriptive in-hand ranked discussions of the doll collections and effortlessly showcases their manufacturing intricacies and ghoulish little secrets, which skyrocketed my appreciation for the dolls' craft and creativity. His videos are just about the best possible collector's resource to be informed about what the toys offer. 

I'd already been teaching myself art practice and drawing skill using MH models, so LDD fan art was kind of the next phase of growing as an artist, as my LDD art was more adaptational and done with the idea of drawing the characters outside the uniform child-doll art style of the toys. I remember devising a new drawing technique during this drawing era--sharpening a colored pencil and then rubbing the dust left in the sharpener over the page for a smudged, foggy effect! The LDD art holds up a lot better than my old MH art as a result of the growth the MH art had given me, and I can recognize a lot of points of further growth in these pieces, even as I see lots of things that mark them to a lower skill level. (Turns out, horror atmosphere and gore are excellent visual challenges for pushing your rendering technique!) LDD also offered several visual styles in the dolls that pushed me to try more art styles in my pieces here. I think today, I've developed a passion for style mimicry and having multiple visual styles to deploy, and LDD might have helped to unlock that in my art. 

Teenage-me's LDD fanart. I also drew fan Resurrection designs for a few dolls, but these are all of the official designs I drew. The logo on the coffin piece was traced.

On the rare occasions I did see LDD in stores, my impressions were they felt smaller in-person than I'd expected, and the dolls I saw weren't must-haves. I was tempted by the Resurrection-style reimagined Beauty and the Beast set (my drawing just right of the coffin in the above photo), but they were more expensive than I could afford at the time, and found in a shop too far away to reliably return to on a day I could afford them.

Not having any of the dolls didn't keep me from feeling like the brand had formed a small part of me, though, and there are still some I covet...I just need more disposable money! While I've shifted opinions to want or not want several LDDs, one opinion has remained firm: if I could have any single Living Dead Doll, it'd be Series 31's Thump, an eyeless boogeycreature with a high-collared buttoned coat obscuring its face.

Official LDD photo of Thump.

From my teen LDD fan art archive, a drawing I made of Thump. The poems are what the doll was written with in its packaging.

Undoing its coat reveals a painted design of a cavernous maw splitting its torso open, with the eyes of devoured souls peeking out and corresponding to the buttons of the coat! 

This is an accurate depiction. The doll has all of this painted flat over the normal sculpts, though.

Thump looks like a creepy antique, but it's also wonderfully grim and freakishly weird in a nightmare sense without feeling exploitative or horror-trite, and I love the visual mystery of the odd coat covering it up so conspicuously. I might have to finally get it before this year's Halloween. Not at all like I need a single additional spooky decoration, but I do need this thing.

If I could pick any two dolls, it'd be Thump and Resurrection X Tessa. 

Official LDD photo of Res X Tessa.

Teenage me's drawing of her. Tellingly, she and Thump are my first two LDD portraits!

Tessa's story was that she was a tattletale kid who had her eyes put out to stop her from spying and telling secrets. Her Resurrection doll is more palatable to me by being framed more like an adult high-society gossip with an incredible silver dress and orange hair. The best part? Well, Resurrection dolls have glass eyes to distinguish them, but Tessa's signature is that she has no eyes...

...so hers came disembodied and you could pop them back into her head!!!

Even though this doll has a no-touch structured hairstyle, I've always adored her color palette and that trick to make her fit the deluxe-eye Resurrection format is pure LDD creativity. The original Tessa introduced a gouged eye sculpt around her empty sockets, but her Res dolls use a clean hollow-eyes sculpt--Thump before her also used it but I don't think it debuted the sculpt.

So the reason I'm here finally engaging with LDD properly (geez it took me long enough, in my lifetime and this post!) is because I heard of new LDD through my subscription to Joshua Lee and overlooked it--another Sadie redesign; okay; big deal...and then I looked twice when he uploaded an update on one cool detail he'd missed and then I looked at the Mezco website and got super hyped upon realizing the sheer scope of what this "Return of the Living Dead Dolls" line actually entailed in terms of upgrades/changes. My decision was absolutely instantaneous--I had to get in on the Sadie doll because she was just that exciting. I entered a short waitlist and got into the preorder phase the day after, and about a week and a half later, learned she had shipped!

But I felt a review of that doll, if it truly represents a new direction for the brand (or even if it's a temporary new style or a staple side line) required some prelude and investigation into what LDD fans have been used to. Even if I wasn't already fond of LDD, I wouldn't feel right not experiencing the more traditional dolls. I feel so familiar with LDD that I'm not a fake fan for not having owned any...but I still needed to know more authentically what I was discussing.

So who to look at first? While Thump is my go-to pick, it's a little too expensive on offer to get just for this purpose--that has to be a doll for a special occasion with its own post if I get it. I also didn't find it to be especially representative of the LDD baseline style due to its big differences in visuals, and I wanted a doll with more contrast to Sadie's color palette to illustrate some of the range.

Because LDDs are an ill-advised avenue for casual curiosity, I knew my selections had to be something I felt very confident I would enjoy and keep around. If you buy LDD, your picks should be dolls you truly want deep down in that little pit where your soul had before you signed it off to Satan last Friday. These are commitments.

From the pickings that fell within the bounds of reason (which, for the purposes of "casual LDD acquisition", has to be a scarily generous range of sub-$60), I found myself drawn to Faith, the drowned doll from Series 8. I'd always enjoyed her plausibly antique look and odd green color which could read like a weirder take on aged dolls. I really liked her, but she did have the drawback of being a Series 8 doll--which was the series just before the LDD articulation upgraded and found its longest-running body design. Faith was good enough to acquire and I figured she'd actually be a good illustration of the "first-generation" body...but I wanted reference for the "second-generation" body too. That doll could come loose...but my choice there ended up roping me into a third doll as well. 

Typical.

Here, I landed on dolls from the unlicensed Wizard of Oz specialty line where existing LDDs were cast as and redesigned to depict twisted Oz characters based on their pre-existing themes. I found a good offer for the Oz edition of Purdy, a girl with an exposed removable brain who plays the Scarecrow in this line...but the brain to complete the doll came with Dr. Dedwin as the Wizard. He was a character exclusive to the Emerald City variant set who also included the heart for the Tin Man and the courage for the Cowardly Lion. I really folded on the matter because Purdy as the Scarecrow was one of the only loose acceptably-priced dolls that I actually wanted, and I just couldn't have or review that doll without the brain. Purdy's detachable brain was always one of my favorite LDD design features. Besides, they'll easily make a great Halloween scarecrow and mad scientist out of context. I certainly have use for both. I'm aware having Dedwin will entice me to get more of the Oz set, and I might actually get the Bride of Valentine as the Tin Man doll at a later date because she reminds me of the Madame Alexander Oz dolls a lot. It's a relief for myself that she wouldn't be able to arrive before Valentine's Day, though, because I'd probably have ended up getting her too if she would. 

None of my LDD choices for this project were dolls I had officially wishlisted or drawn portraits back in the day, but I liked and wanted them enough today. Tastes change and you work with circumstance.

Living Dead Dolls are in limited-enough release quantities that it I feel it is a privilege to own any one of them. I will not endeavor to alter or customize any product from this brand out of respect for their rarity and status as something closer to artist pieces. These are take-it-or-leave it dolls. If I dislike or abhor a certain aspect of a doll, I suck it up and roll with it or I turn the doll away.

Faith was ordered complete with her box, not mint-sealed--only the former matters to me for this brand. The packaging of the LDDs is a huge appeal and a part of the collector experience, so I needed a classic coffin to show off. There's something just so pleasing to me about a horror doll that comes in a coffin. These are not playline dolls, but I love when the box feels like an accessory you can play with. LDD might be the only toy brand where I value the box so much as part of the product, both because they're reusable and because the theme is absolutely wicked. 

The LDD coffins originally come shrink-wrapped and feature two lids--an opaque cardboard lid to cover the doll for storage, which is placed on the back, and a transparent plastic lid that fits over the box and under the cardboard lid to serve as a display window. Faith was boxed up for me by the previous owner with the opaque lid on. It was really something magical to open the mail package and see that coffin inside. 

I beheld it with true reverence because LDD has festered in my heart for years and now I finally had one in the decaying flesh!

It was even better seeing it stood on my desk.

The opaque coffin lid has the LDD logo printed on in metallic silver. 

Turning the box lets you see some of the coffin-handle printing on the sides, which is more visible when using the shorter clear lid for the boxes. I think the handle decoration basically got dropped after a certain amount of series, and it wasn't originally on the boxes to start with.

The back features more text about the brand and a repeat of the silver logo, and does a little more to broadcast the mature horror tone of the dolls by featuring bloody imagery. People seeing these new would have the freaky dolls to tell them that upfront, but if you saw the boxes fully closed like this, the back would be a better clue to just how dark and frightening the brand can be.

The off-white text is not glow-in-the-dark.

I don't think "Creepy Doll" and "Death Certificate" are nouns that have any reason to be capitalized. It's not 1734 anymore. Maybe it was an attempt to emphasize the words, but all-caps would be better for that. The slogan "Because deader is better!" is still in use.

Here's the lid pulled off a little to show the printed handles.

Pulling the lid all the way off, I was worried I hadn't gotten the plastic lid, but it was just wedged inside the cardboard one. Also inside the cardboard lid is a grey-on-black negative illustration of Sadie, Posey, Damien, and Sin, which is a wonderful and unnecessary touch. 

Sadie is drawn with a widow's peak her dolls have never had.

Here's the clear lid on the box and the opaque one on the back. Faith was wrapped in bubble wrap, so we still can't see her yet. Unintentionally, that raised my anticipation! 

And here's the clear lid removed. It features the slogan "I'm dead. Pure evil. I sleep with the worms.", which is used in the first-person plural for the overall brand, as well as spiderweb printing and a Mezco logo. This lid design was what I based the logo drawing I made in my teens on.

That's the alchemical sulfur symbol drawn in the top middle--LDD uses it as a motif a lot, and some coffins feature it.

In the very bottom left corner, the plastic lid delineates the LDD target audience: "for spooky kids ages 15 and up". If we're talking about moral aesthetics, I'd probably posture about 15 being a tad too low...but I discovered LDD at sixteen and I think I turned out alright. Children often access forbidden horror media very early and that can inform how they interact with the genre for the rest of their lives--some take a shine to it, others don't. Really, the more significant audience target is the demographic of "spooky kids"--the people who will really click with these toys and/or not get terribly upset by them. Well, I know the dolls found one of 'em. I'd been a spooky kid all my life and went through an extremely belated realization!

And I unwrapped Faith and repacked the box to better illustrate the display she would have had new.

Seeing this on my table in front of me was incredible. I never felt burned by not owning LDDs before, never felt like I was denied or deprived of them or anything...but it was very cool to finally have the doll in display mode in front of me, to finally own this.

Faith doesn't totally fill the coffin, but the box doesn't feel excessive for her, and the space is useful for dolls with large hats and the like. The LDD box had to be one-size-fits-all, and I don't think any dolls released in different packaging would be unable to fit in the coffin, either. 

Inside the coffin, crossing over the legs of the doll, is a folding printed panel the LDD community has termed a "chipboard", which just slots between the tissue and the walls of the box. I don't know the etymology of calling it a chipboard, and the use of the term might be improper, but that's what stuck. The chipboard displays the name of the doll and their series, as well as a graphic and some text displaying a poem about the doll. In terms of packaging, Faith was actually a fortuitous choice because the Series 8 dolls reverted to the chipboard style used for series 1-4, with this particular style of drawing depicting the dolls on the chipboard. The chipboard design is not completely identical, but the drawing, along with the use of pink tissue in the box, feel like deliberate evocations of the Series 1 packaging. She can demonstrate the first look of the boxes in that way! 

Faith's chipboard has an illustration of the character struggling in water, and the Series 8 chipboards have imagery of blood swirling in water. Notably, Faith is clearly drawn as a doll with jointed arms and a stiff pose the doll could do--she's not drawn as a human girl. Like I said, the line between LDD as characters and literal toys is shaky and this is a case where the brand seems to be enforcing the concept that the dolls should be taken more literally as toys in a fantasy horror realm.

Most Living Dead Dolls have two poems, with the chipboard poem being separate from the one in their death certificate inside the box. Carnival freak-show Series 30's chipboards only had sideshow-poster illustrations, but no poems, and I think there are cases of chipboard poems but no death certificate poems. The LDD poems usually don't hold any metrical consistency and don't always have solid rhymes, meaning that despite their efforts, they don't scan right with a good rhythm or roll off the tongue, and that frustrates me as someone who learned and enjoys poetry. If you're going for rhyme and pattern, the product should read aloud effortlessly. Still, I like the choice to use verse as exposition about the dolls rather than prose, because it evokes headstone epitaphs or memorial poetry to play further on the death theme.

Here's Faith's chipboard poem:

She'll ask to go swimming with you

But if you do, be very careful

Faith likes to watch others turn blue

Inhaling water by the mouthful

And here's me trying to rewrite it to flow better for reading aloud.

She'll ask you to go swimming

But if you do, be careful

Faith would like to see you blue

And sinking with each mouthful

I've heard there have been releases with chipboards attached inside one wall of the box, so the other side can fold out and open more like a gate around the legs. That wasn't the case for Faith's, which inserts with the same length on both sides and just pulls out. You'd have to hold one side down to take out just one end of the chipboard. Maybe later series changed to an attached "gate" mechanic. 

Empty, you can see a strip of ancient adhesive on the tissue, and holes where wire would have tied around the doll's neck and each ankle. 

The tissue is over a cardboard insert which lifts out for the owner to undo the wires when these dolls are new. The tissue didn't lift right off the cardboard when I pulled out the insert, which was good, but I didn't poke around and try to see how it was attached! I want it where it is and if it stays in place, I'm happy with it just doing its thing! As you can see, the tissue color for Series 8 was pink. It plays really well off of Faith's green body.

Also inside was a small plastic sleeve containing a ClubMez promotional flyer that's certainly well out of date, and Faith's death certificate, printed on glossy paper and tied with a ribbon wrapped around like you would do with an elastic band. This little sleeve would have been hidden behind the coffin insert when new, so you'd find it when untwisting the wires holding in the doll.

The ribbon slides right off the end to unroll the certificate, but I couldn't slide the loops back around, so I undid the ribbon and did a simple tie when I wanted to re-secure it. 

The certificate itself is very tightly-rolled, so I had to hold it open. 

Faith died on July 20th, 1932 in the early afternoon. Here's her death poem.

Faith blindly believed

She could swim across the lake.

As it turned out

This was a grave mistake.

Quickly her limbs grey weary

The water did turn bitter.

But swallow it did she...

Such a little quitter.

Here's my rewrite.

Blindly Faith believed

She could swim across the lake.

Little did she know

It would be her last mistake.

So quick her limbs grew weary

The water gulping bitter

Her vision went so bleary--

She died a little quitter.

I'm well familiar with lake swimming, and love it, so I resonate with Faith. Swimming is about the only workout that appeals to me and I'd absolutely love to live with an accessible body of water to swim in! No plans on drowning, though. I don't test my limits.

I like the way the two poems are used. The chipboard tells you who the doll is, and the death certificate tells you how they met their end. Not all LDD characters are dead and/or human, so the death certificate loses a bit of resonance for them, but the idea is nice. It's a really nice gimmick for collecting, too. It's always fun to have dolls with a story feature inside the box.

Faith's deathdate is her most questionable and perhaps objectionable quality in my mind--it's the exact birthday of actress Natalie Wood, who would later die by drowning in adulthood with suspicions of foul play. I can see this reference as a goth attempt at tribute, particularly since they had the good sense not to give Faith and Wood the same date of death, but I think it could still land as callous or mocking all the same. As mentioned, LDD doesn't display much or any sensitivity to true tragedies and Faith is not the only doll who references a famous person's death in a way that feels a bit icky. I don't think all celebrity references in the deathdates are bad--not even all celebrity death references if the celebrity's death wasn't horrific, but the ones which reflect true-crime incidents or gory tragedy feel really icky.

The "foot" face of the coffin discloses that LDD is produced in China. 

Double-wide LDD coffins exist for releases of two-pack dolls, and look and work the same except for the wider shaping. 

The LDD website has photos of the handmade original custom dolls before LDD was officially produced and put on the market, and Posey's photo is the most interesting to me because hers displays a preliminary version of the coffin packaging. The shape is about the same and the internal tissue is similar, but the text on the lid is a totally different lettering and "Living Dead Doll" is in the singular, suggesting the brand name might have been conceived in the singular or that it was a mockup written just to refer to her. 

Photo from livingdeaddolls.com.

In the singular, the brand name sounds more like "Living Dead Girl", the title of a Rob Zombie song which would have been very new while LDD was in this development phase--if Ed Long and Damien Glonek really started in 1998, then the name could have come later out of inspiration from the song which released in '99. Of course, the name also easily homages the classic zombie film Night of the Living Dead as well. 

Well, that's the packaging. And I adore it. Something extremely charming about LDD is that, even though they've shaken up the color and printing of coffins and chipboards from release to release, the overall packaging design has been remarkably constant. A Series 1 box is not far removed from a Series 35. I think it also proves that Mezco and the LDD team nailed the design immediately. The coffins are clean and attractive, morbidly delightful, and very easy to use, landing perfectly in the collector niche of packaging design with an iconic dark twist. The tissue lining is very clever and cost-effective for useful padding and evoking a coffin interior, and the clear lids and cardboard lids are great options for display and storage. Possibly my only complaint is that the clear lid doesn't feel that secure. Because there's nothing holding it to the box, it gets stuck inside the cardboard lid and can fall forward when standing the coffin up as a window box for display, which I think a lot of collectors want to do. I might presume to make a small alteration by putting a tack in through the top and/or bottom of the clear lid and the box as a way to pin the pieces together for storage and display that will still allow for relatively easy removal. Maybe that wouldn't work. Perhaps a string tie or tiny wire twist going through two holes? Maybe I'm overengineering in my brain and I can suck up just pulling the damn plastic lid out of the cardboard one. That's actually easiest. 

I think LDD might have turned me into a stickler for box collecting, because the packaging is so worth keeping with this brand. It makes me even happier that my choice of a loose doll was a doll who never came in a coffin, because having confirmed my love for the coffins, I'd be really sorry to have any doll without theirs! I love these boxes (of course, "to death". With this topic, that goes without saying).

And now, finally, here's Faith. While she's not really antique, she is the oldest doll I've ever brought into my collection--in September, she'll be a full twenty years old. I was four when she was new! But dang, she still looks good! 

Well..."good".

Faith is a very very simple doll, as befits the concept of a vintage swimmer, so she's just two pieces. I still think she's still really cool.

LDDs are vinyl and generally have rooted hair. When they do, that hair is pretty much always rooted specifically for the hairstyle the doll was designed with, with no wiggle room for restyling--updos or ponytails commonly are root just around the edge of the scalp and tied back to keep the style tight and sleek and maintain a proportional amount of hair coming out of the tie so there aren't massive ponytails and the like. These aren't play dolls, so that limitation is fine. With Faith, her hair is long and dirty blonde, and steeply parted to her left. Because this doll is meant to look waterlogged, her hair was reportedly treated or selected to look especially slick and glossy. You can't totally tell with this copy, since her hair has been untouched for a while and got a bit tangly at the ends. It's also rooted very thinly, which is acceptable for a corpse in aqueous decay, but I don't think sparse hair was the intention with her. LDD was known to have very weak rooting on loose-haired dolls for ages, and Faith is just one of many victims. The hair texture today does show the doll's age, but not in a manner at all incongruous with her intended visual design.

Here she is combed.

Later, I'm going to take some pictures with her hair actually wet (or dried after falling in a wet shape), because that's something you can't replicate without dunking her, but shinier hair is a really neat idea for this concept. 

I could try to treat her hair with boiling water to improve the texture and de-snarl the ends, but that honestly feels like it'd be counterproductive in her case.

[I did boil the hair just at the ends later and it got really staticky and floaty, so don't do this!]

Faith's skin is also made to look like the result of a bad extended dip, with her color being a really pretty and spooky pale green and having blotchy paint work reflecting algae and decay. Her face is the most detailed part of her, which is standard for LDD...and the reverse of Monster High, where detail is strongest on the body! On her face, Faith has big clumps of algal lake scum, which are painted over actual texture on the sculpt, and she has bluish deathly veins which also resemble cracks. I'm not sure if Faith's bumpy sculpt was used before or since. It could be the textured head Posey and a few others had, or it could be something made just for her. I don't think the texture is from paint, though. It's in the mold, and I'm not talking about decay this time. It's unusual for LDD, since texture on the head like this usually depicts illness or injury related to the skin, not a textured substance clinging to the face. I like the way the algae has varied dimension this way.

Faith's other face paint displays a fairly typical LDD faceup. The two common eye shapes are ovals or almonds, and Faith has the latter. Her eyes aren't as outlined as many other LDDs, though, with her irises not having a black outline and having a stylistic shaky, smudged look that makes her look a little dirtier and more hand-painted rather than cartoony or factory-precise. Her irises are also slightly uneven and make her gaze look unfocused. This may be intentional or just a variation in production. Around her eyes, she has opaque grey rings inside wide grey smudges to sink her face in, and her lips are a really dark green-grey. Her eyebrows are more saturated than her hair, but they're in the right range. Her facial expression is a lot more intense than I had expected it to be with those piercing eyes and measured brows. My read on a drowned doll was that she would be more innocent or tragic, but this really is the face of a doll who wants you to drown! All the same, you can still read a lighter, sweeter energy in this face. It's very compelling.

The stylistic feature I associate most with classic LDD is extremely arched thin eyebrows that are very diagonal. We'll see something like that on Dedwin as the Wizard. I do like that LDDs come in so many different art styles, though. There's nothing strictly holding them all together, which increases the variety and "something for everyone" range of designs.

While pre-Series 9 heads can't be the same exact molds as those that came after, the face sculpting is the same across most LDDs. There are many variations on the LDD head/face sculpt, including...

• Whatever Faith has, which may be unique or not
• A strained open-mouthed face for screaming or snarling characters, sometimes used for ghosts as well as vampires or frightened/angry personae
• A ripped-cheek face with the left facial skin made to look torn away from the mouth, exposing some left teeth. Obviously only used on gory characters. 
• A stitched-lips face used very little, only on silenced singer Siren and scarecrow Isaac if I'm not missing anything
• A stapled-cheek face to depict a slashed mouth on both sides that got closed up. Used on the distasteful doll Dahlia (based on sensationalized murder victim Elizabeth Short) and Misery
• A bumpy-head sculpt for more decayed or sickly characters, debuted on Posey; possibly what Faith has?
• A pitted-skin sculpt used on Grace of the Grave to depict more severe plague illness
• A wicked little toothy grin sculpt debuted on Beelzebub and later used on Bea Neath
• A clean hollow-eyes sculpt used on Thump and Res X Tessa, though I wasn't able to confirm who actually debuted the sculpt because I don't think it was Thump?
• A new stitched-mouth sculpt with thicker, crossed-over laces, used on Ella von Terra
• A head sculpt with short pointy devil horns, debuted on Sin and used on other demons since
• A gnarled pumpkin head sculpt, debuted on the Headless Horseman. It was removable on him, but I don't know if it was on Jack O' Lantern, the later doll that reused the sculpt.
• A more detailed sculpt with mismatched eye sizes, a diagonal cut between the eyes, and an open mouth with a lip cut. Debuted for an SDCC Jason Voorhees doll reflecting Friday The 13th Part IV, and has been used for original LDDs Menard and Wurm.

And I'm not mentioning everything. There's a lot of variation, but usually the sculpt is built around the same face.

You wouldn't know if you saw her before any other LDDs (oops), but Faith's whole body is uniquely glossy in finish to make it look like she's come out of the water. The rest of her body has a more subtly splotchy green paint job that blends pretty well into the more detailed head. 

It's not the thickest, smoothest varnish on the head, but I think it works perfectly well. I've always loved the tactile feel of gloss varnishes, so Faith is nice to hold. 

The gloss and paint are really cool effect, and I think her unique body production also works to give her the look of a strange waterlogged antique toy as well as a caricature of a drowned person. This could just as well be a literal doll you found in an old pond after decades. 

Faith's only clothing is her one-piece vintage bathing costume. It's all striped and has a "skirt" section that starts at her mid-waist and hangs short. It feels authentic to old bathing suits, and it also works alongside the reading of Faith as a literal vintage doll. I'd say the costume might look more pristine than I'd expect, though. I'd have expected some green muck staining her suit. LDD is not shy about stylistically dirtying hair or clothes for effect.

The stripes of the skirt don't line up perfectly with the stripes of the body on my Faith's costume, but they don't on the official LDD photo of her, either.

I think this doll could have easily capitalized on the swimsuit to make a parody of the classic original Barbie, but she's just wearing a striped suit because that was the style, and is reflecting a style a couple of decades older than Barbie (at the least) since Faith died in the 1930s.

The back has velcro to close it.

One thing I've always appreciated about LDDs is that their clothing is usually designed to be removable. There's something deeply unsatisfying to me about dolls that are sewn into their clothes even if I never want to change their outfit, and the removable clothing allows LDD to do its best trick by inviting the fun of horrific discovery with details hidden under the costume! There are a few dolls with neck pieces between the head and torso that couldn't be removed without popping off the head, and some with affixed prosthetic hook hands that don't come off will have shirts or dresses stuck on their body (unless you can pop the arm out and slide it out of the sleeve, which usually isn't doable). I wish those exceptions didn't exist and that all LDDs were designed with easy-dress outfits, but of course that level of care isn't necessary at all for collectibles that aren't meant for fashion play.

One concern of Living Dead Dolls has always been staining from the clothing, and while I hadn't really expected it from Faith because of the coloring of her costume, she's got a few stains from some black. 

While this is disappointing, it's not intrusive and everything is covered by her clothes. While LDD hides things under clothing sometimes, the dolls are never meant for play, or for display without their clothes, so stains are not a big problem here.

Faith is a rare case of a special paint job applying to the entire body, likely because her clothing covers much less. For her, it's not a waste of detail to finish the entire doll with the paint job. Interestingly, some gaps indicate that all parts except her head had been cast in white with thin green going over them. Her head looks like it was cast in pale green, explaining why its color isn't blotchy like the body. The more extensive paint work on Faith might also be her way of bridging the gap in content that her lack of costume pieces or accessories creates. With the fancy paint and gloss finish, she can have a competitive amount of craft even with such minimal clothing, and wouldn't feel lacking for production value in her series.

The Living Dead Dolls body sculpt is childlike and unisex, and seems to depict a shape between the ages of three/four and seven. The waist is narrow in the middle and the arms and legs are a bit chubby, while the torso has a bit of protruding tummy.

I think it's typical for LDDs to have underwear painted around the waist, but Faith does not have this. I suppose it makes sense, since underwear isn't worn with a bathing costume, and it might have been too much to produce given that her torso is already fully-painted. It also might have been confusing to figure out if the underwear paint would go under or over the gloss varnish and if either would make visual sense.

Unlike fashion dolls, the usual fare at TT&T, LDD head sculpts include the neck. This might be accurate to the kind of child dolls LDD parodies, but it also gives Mezco the advantage by letting them extend painted detail further down. Some LDDs get oozy, and the drip paint can run longer when the neck and head are one piece!

The "first-generation" (my term) LDD body has simple articulation--rotation at the bottom of the head/neck piece, and swivel rotation at the shoulders and hips. Some first-gen LDD bodies had wonky uneven leg stances, which the second-gen bodies could work around by spreading the stance with their more mobile joints. My Faith isn't rock-solid on her feet, but she never feels like she's going to fall over, either. She's stable. This first-gen posing isn't much, but it does suit the classic-doll body template of the toys, and for LDDs like Faith who can pass as antiques, it's all you need to create a creepy tableau!

The dolls also have holes in each palm, allowing them to hold accessories that have small pins on them. Faith has nothing, but it's fine to have this functionality across the board, rather than treating it as an exception.

Other LDDs have had gripping hands in a vertical (like to hold a knife) or horizontal (like to hold a trick-or-treat bucket) orientation. 

LDDs are ten inches tall, making them shorter than most fashion dolls, but they have overall larger bodies part-by-part. I'd never held one before, so I didn't know how substantial they would feel, but I think the LDDs feel very pleasing and satisfying in terms of size, proportion, and heft. They just feel right. They might have looked too small when I first saw one in person, but they feel proper having handled one now.

I wasn't sure which of my dolls would be closest to LDD, but perfectly, it's a Left Out Doll that feels closest (which is to say, Rainbow High dolls.)

I was actually surprised to see how much smaller L.O.L. O.M.G. was. I'd underestimated LDD after my impressions long ago that they were tiny. Obviously, LDD and Rainbow High have nothing in common in terms of proportion and frame, though. 

Rainbow High Junior High is smaller than LDD.

The only other doll I have that's designed more classically in a child mold is the China Girl, who's much larger, much more articulated, and designed to look like an older child than the LDD sculpts are.

They are both glossy and vintage-looking. But gosh, Faith looks malevolent next to the China Girl!

I'm obviously not going to investigate clothing swaps here. I want to honor the dolls' designs and LDD is definitely not something you can frivolously source clothing pieces from. But I'd guess male fashion dolls would be more equipped to wear LDD on the whole due to the wider torsos required. 

I decided to take Faith for her own photoshoot in water, and it had to suit her horror vibe. I don't have any lakes nearby, nor ponds I could feel anywhere comfortable bringing her to...but I do have a hole if I dig one, which can be filled into a puddle! I knew this was a risky move for doll care, but a little mud never hurt anybody, and Faith promised not to kill me if I did this for her. I'm pretty pleased with the grotesque atmosphere.

Don't worry, LDD fans! Faith was not exposed to mud for very long and rinsed right clean immediately after. She's unstained and just as gruesome as she started--not more.

Lastly, I re-wired her box to allow myself to tie Faith back in securely. I decided for my purposes to have the wires facing outward so I didn't need to remove the backdrop and inconvenience myself or risk damage to the tissue paper. First, I routed the wires backward and twisted them to secure them to the backdrop, and then bent the ends back out of the holes so they'd face forward for the doll to use.

The wires secured to the backdrop, tied backward before the tails went back through to the front.

The re-wired box, ready for burial.

Honestly, these wires are a little stiff, so I switched to white pipe cleaners and didn't bother with locking them behind the cardboard this time. They're not as visually subtle or attractive, but the doll will never be displayed while wired in--that's purely for the potential of storage. Otherwise, she can stand in the window display loose. And pipe cleaners are very easy for me to use.

Besides, the dolls looking bound and strangled is truly what they desire. They love this kind of thing. They're Living Dead Dolls. This is enrichment for them.

I also decided to commemorate my return to LDD by drawing a new portrait and seeing how I do with it now. 

This wasn't the most time-intensive piece I could have done, but I'm happy with it. I decided to draw Faith as a doll this time, rather than a human. I tried to draw a full-page image, but every attempt at the background made the piece worse and worse, so I resorted to cutting out the figure and the parts of the composition that were successful. 

I think Faith was quite a dark horse for the brand. I'd always noticed her, but never felt so strongly about her. But now that she became a good option to get started with LDD, I'm going to say she was a wonderful choice. Her visual design strikes me as essentially perfect. No change would improve her cohesion. Execution-wise, my only gripe is that her hair is rooted a lot thinner than feels intentional, and that it should have either been more dense or more clearly designed to look sparse and thinned. Overall, she's grim, she's evil, she's sweet, she's vintage, she's photogenic, she's repulsive...she's absolutely compelling, and she shows off a really neat formula-break novelty in the brand's doll design with her glossy element. I'm glad to have been formally introduced with her as the first on the slab. I had faith, and I'm honored to now have Faith. 

I do enjoy the LDDs you can describe as "rotten" with the utmost sincere affection. Faith is one of those dolls. She's like my little demon child.

Now for Scarecrow Purdy, who arrived the same day as Faith and thus very nicely followed my arranged order of discussion. The doll line he and/or she was from was called "The Lost In Oz" because another Series 8 character, the enigmatic The Lost (yes, that's her name) was cast as Dorothy. 

Poster artwork for The Lost In Oz line. I definitely want the Tin Man and probably the Witch, but heck, I'll probably end up getting Dorothy and the Lion at this rate, too.

The dolls are unlicensed and ostensibly based on the books, so Dorothy wears silver shoes...but the Wicked Witch's black hair, green skin, and two eyes are clearly derived from her depictions in the MGM film and Wicked. In the book, minimal description was given to her, but she was said to have only one eye that let her survey the entire country of Oz, and green skin was attached to the character through the MGM film.

The Lost In Oz dolls didn't have coffin boxes, and instead came in rectangular window boxes like licensed LDD Presents dolls--we'll see the packaging with the second Oz doll. They didn't have chipboards or death certificates or poems, either. The overall aesthetic of the line is a little tamer and a fair bit less realistic, with faint allusions to gore...and a flat piece of felt to depict a very cartoony roadkill Toto being pulled on a leash. Oh, LDD. 

I'm not actually an Oz superfan, and my enthusiasm for Oz is far far less than that I have for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but I've always adored the iconic characters all the same. It took me until very late in my childhood to watch the MGM film, and I only read the book the other year. My favorite Oz property is probably the film Return to Oz, an intense practical-effects dark fantasy blending the first two book sequels. But the classic characters are just so interesting and charming on a visual level alone that I've always admired toys of them.

Here's Purdy. Or is it the Scarecrow? Her? Him?

The syntax is a little confusing because these dolls are two characters in one--original LDD cast members and the Oz folk they're playing the roles of (think like the Monster High Scarily Ever After line). I think I'm going to land on referring to the overall dolls as the character cosplay, and refer to the doll playing the role when those details are relevant. When we're looking at the clothing, it's the male Scarecrow, but when we're looking at the face, she's the female Purdy. For the Scarecrow and Tin Man, the possible gender discrepancy between character and "actor" add more confusion. I don't think any written material for this line was produced, but the Bride of Valentine is billed as the "Tin Man", suggesting the Oz characters' genders are all the same as the source material regardless of the characters playing them in this doll line.

Purdy was a Series 9 doll, and her original concept was that she was a girl who had a traumatic brain injury, and died in the hospital after the top of her head was opened up to relieve the swelling, continuing to roam the hospital undead with her brain on show. Her debut doll had her bald sans cranium with the brain out, while her variant had short hair under the dome-cut and a red, black, and white goth color scheme. Her Resurrection doll is more like the Series 9 variant, being black and white and having similar hair, and that doll hid the gory stuff under a sleeping cap. You know, to make her suitable for polite company! (The Resurrection variant had blonde hair, no hat, and a different outfit.) Because she introduced the brain feature, Purdy is cast as the Oz Scarecrow, since his greatest desire was to have a brain. That's why it's Purdy in this role and not the actual LDD scarecrow, Isaac (who I mentioned above). As part of the gimmick, though, this is the only doll of Purdy's to not include the brain--an effective ploy to sell the Wizard. That ploy worked on me.

Purdy's name being so extremely Southern (it's accented dialect for "pretty") is also well-aligned with a country scarecrow costume!

The Scarecrow is not the only Living Dead Doll to have a cloth mask over the head (the first would be Angus Littlrot and his sack hood), but he is the first to have a fabric mask with a face design fully covering the doll head, making the doll look more like it might be stuffed. There still hasn't been a fully-plush mainline LDD, but I'd love to see one. The Scarecrow's hat is sewn to the burlap mask, and some of the black seam peeks onto it if the brim isn't turned down. The hat portion is a thick fabric woven in distinct lines and some attached rope encircles the brim. The hat also has a slight point. All of the Scarecrow's clothing fabric is intentionally distressed with fraying and holes to make him look more weathered and scary. I don't know how much of LDD production is mechanized (very little might be), but I could see this tattering being something that had to be done by people.

The front of the mask has sewn button eyes and black shading around them, as well as a drawn-on black stitch-frown design. I would have appreciated real stitches on the mouth too, but it's not really necessary. 

This kind of spooky goth rag-doll face is always endearing to me.

The Scarecrow's outfit is a blue denim overcoat over denim overalls and a checked blue farm shirt, paired with dusty brown boots in the classic LDD sculpt. I appreciate that the coat and overalls don't look like exactly the same fabric. Real straw is used at the ends of his arms and trouser legs. The coat has decorative buttons down both sides, and is not sewn to meet or close in front, nor does it have any closure. 

In addition to the distressing, the overalls and coat have intentional stains to dirty the look more.

One of the things you'd never know from pictures of the complete doll is that the straw at the Scarecrow's wrists isn't attached to the coat--it's actually on removable elastic cuffs with the straw sewn in. These pieces are very delicate due to the straw, but I was able to remove and replace them without incident. 

Taking the cuffs off lets you see the vinyl color of this doll-she's a dusty tan shade. This is a one-off for Purdy just to make her look more scarecrowish--her other dolls are greyish or stark white. I think this body shade would also do well as one option for making more LDDs of color.

Here's a shot of her her hands and more of the Scarecrow's coat detail.

Once I had started handling the Scarecrow, I became nervous because I noticed the right arm wasn't moving up and down properly, feeling loose and wiggly. When I took the coat off, the arm dropped right off into the sleeve of the shirt, detached. Mild panic began to set in. Was this a broken doll? 

Before we get to solving that harrowing mystery, more notes on the clothes. For one, the coat has small shoulder pads sewn in to bulk up the silhouette.

And the shirt is actually long-sleeved! That's so uncommon for dolls with coats, but the construction here all works out so the shirt isn't impossible to remove, and it doesn't get stuck while pulling on the coat!

The overall straps don't cross over as an X in the back. The pocket on the chest is functional. 

And before the shirt comes off, the mask. The bottom is wrapped and tied with a small rope, which can be unwound. 

If there was a good way to make it removable without damaging the knot, I feel fairly certain that the designers would have had this rope fashioned into a noose shape like they did with Eggzorcist's drawstrings. But then again, they might have ruled that out after establishing it as a visual signature of Eggy, since they might not have wanted to get people thinking that she was the character in this costume.

The mask still can't be pulled off yet, since it's tied down at the back with white thread. This is very conspicuous, which communicated to me that it's intended to be cut by the collector to allow the mask to come off, and is just an extra aesthetic/security measure for packaging. The mask will hold its shape and tie tight again after it's been loosened and pulled off.

Snipping that thread let the mask come right off to reveal Purdy's face. 

As ever, Purdy's head sculpt has a sliced-off hollow dome with a cavity that her brain will fit into. 

The original Purdy's head wasn't fully painted inside, but did have some streaks of blood red dripping in.

Purdy's expression is close to her original doll, with her eyes rolled up as if mentally vacant or looking up at her exposed brain. The original Purdy had permanent gauze around the edge of her head which was stained red for gory effect, but this one has less organic-looking brown paint around the edge with no fabric and not even a fluid dripping design. I think they could have been cute and used more burlap to replace the bandage. I'm not totally satisfied with the paint here because it looks kind of vague. What does the darkened color depict? It kind of looks like nothing except what it is--paint dragged around the edge of the head.

The rest of Purdy's paint really captivates me and fits a haunting vintage-scarecrow design. Her sclerae are a saturated yellow unique to Purdy in this edition, and her eyes look like they're floating in black sockets surrounded by large indentations. Her lashes look more like exaggerated stitches. Her mouth looks distressed like fabric too, and seems to be oozing. I think this face paint does a great job of looking like spooky scarecrow makeup, more akin to the stage-play tone of the Oz movie costumes. I'd almost say this doll could be a complete scarecrow without the mask, if only the hat was its own piece. You could even have the mask open at the top to display the brain while the burlap face is in use, giving you more display options. Purdy in scarecrow makeup in the hat, or the cloth Scarecrow with the brain showing would both be good. Still, it's fair enough that the hat is attached because it would be harder to secure otherwise, and LDD fans are going to want to display the Purdy part of this doll while also showing off her gory signature feature.

I don't think that black mark is meant to be on Purdy's nose, and it is a bit distracting. There were also errant black specks next to her left eye, but I wasn't able to get them off with very careful acetone rubbing. All of the paint might be under a sealant that locked in the errors. Oh, well. At least I learned the paint work is well-sealed! And it's not beyond belief an old scarecrow would have some of these blemishes. I'm honestly surprised she wasn't designed with triangular paint over her nose, as a triangle nose is a consistent visual trait of the Scarecrow going back to the famous book illustrations.

The rest of Purdy's head has some smeary, streaky brown to make her look more dirtied.

Purdy's head-cavity sculpt is most used on her, but is not fully exclusive to her dolls, as it was later reused for the zombie Southern belle character Goria in Series 22, who hid her own exposed brain under a huge sunhat. Blood streaming down Goria's face served as a clue to follow the trails up and check under the hat. Part of the reason I like this Purdy is because I vastly prefer the brain LDDs who have something to cover up the whole gag. It's much more fun as a sick little surprise.

And I might be off calling the head a "sculpt". It's got some irregularities to it that might well indicate that it's a typical LDD head that's been machine-cut open at the factory to modify it after molding. It looks polished enough, but this could be a literal slicing job rather than a specially-molded head. I don't know for sure. That could be wasteful, but making another mold might be more costly. I don't know. I feel like LDD have done this brain gimmick enough times to have justified a mold if this effect isn't already produced by one.

I guess with this Purdy's skin and paint looking so scarecrowish under the costume, you could interpret the concept of LDD's Scarecrow as being a corpse who was dressed up and put in a field, though it still could be that this is literally a fabric scarecrow who's being implanted with an organic brain.

Now, I have to get the rest of the costume out to assess the arm problem. 

The boots had to go first. They're slightly rigid, but came off okay. With no socks, the boots rattle a little around the feet. Inside, there's black, suggesting they're not cast in this brown color and were sprayed on a black cast (the most common color for these pieces). There was no evidence of paint rubbing onto the doll's feet.

The overalls pull off okay, but you have to be careful sliding them down the feet due to the straw on the ankles. The shirt has an elastic that goes between the legs to keep it pulled down for redressing, which is something close to what I implemented with my doll Chatterine McCall. This kind of feature means the shirt has to go on first when redressing.

Opening the shirt revealed the arm problem was a minor annoyance. The shoulders are the most classic ball joints you could imagine, and the arm had just popped off harmlessly. It easily squeezed back on. 

This arm dislocates pretty easily,  and that's a flaw, but I can fix it even while the Scarecrow is fully dressed. Phew. Naturally, this disobedient arm was what I popped off to stage the cover photo of this post!

This doll comes with a surprising amount of pieces. It's quite detailed, and this doll is a great showcase of how far LDD craft came. 

Purdy's body doesn't have the same paint texture as her head, and she doesn't have painted underwear. While she's on the second-gen body with more movement, the shaping is all the same as the first LDD dolls.

Purdy's hands do not have pinholes in them for holding accessories, which suggests to me that this feature switched to be a selective addition at a certain point so characters never designed with accessories wouldn't have those marring the look. I'd guess then that the holes are bored in after molding rather than being built in, so LDD doesn't have to produce two alternate molds of each arm. That makes more sense to me for precision, anyway.

That brings me to another charm of the LDDs--they never seemed to totally lose their handmade custom choices. A lot of the manufacturing of LDD is obviously mechanical, but there are visible choices that feel cost-motivated but also read more like the choices of home crafters modifying toys in the way the original LDDs were made. Sawing off scalps (maybe), repainting shoes, sealing face paint, hand-tattering clothes, piercing bodies to add things in--there remains a homemade and improvisational appeal even as production upgraded and tightened down, and it brings a more personable artist touch to the factory production. I can't speak to the ethics or lack thereof in the making of LDD, but there's a humility and art mindset in the craft that feels more relatable. Becoming a doll customizer myself, and especially an edgy improvisational one with Left Out Dolls, I can find kinship with a lot of how LDDs seem to be put together.

The first added joint in the newer body is a ball at the bottom of the neck, letting the head tilt. I think this is a really meaningful addition, even if the range isn't mind-blowing.

It really suits Purdy's vacant sad/dead face and gives her a zombie appeal with the brain theme. 

The limbs are ball-jointed, with the biggest impact being in the shoulders. You can't move them in the same way as a fashion doll's rotating hinge joints. I find you have to be much more deliberate and careful posing this kind of joint (especially with this doll's dislocation penchant), but you can extend the arms outward and create more varied and expressive poses. The joints are tight and squeaky because the doll is vinyl. The leg articulation isn't the most meaningfully expanded, but it can help with standing poses. Purdy cannot sit with her legs any closer-together than Faith can.

And here's me getting captivated by the face again.

And I briefly tried out the overalls alone. The fabric mask only really works with the complete costume because that's when pretty much all of Purdy's vinyl is covered, but this looks nice on its own. This could be a standalone LDD depicting a girl who died in a cornfield and became a scarecrow.

And here's Purdy next to Faith, trying to demonstrate Faith's unique gloss finish.

Gosh, every time--Faith is just so startling!

I decided to take a few photos of the Scarecrow in his element...as best I could. My suburban patio garden is not the right backdrop, but I worked with what I could. I took two sticks and screwed them together to make a scarecrow's stake and beam and tied him on with cord.

Purdy's review isn't fully over because as a doll, she's deliberately not fully complete (darn you, Mezco, you scamps.) But I really like her even so. The costume feels detailed and intricate and nicely functional, and I love the face paint under the mask. It's so old-timey and spooky and sweet. The biggest flaws are her left arm loving to pop out and errant black paint that got sealed into her faceup. 

And would it really surprise you at all anymore to learn that this turned into a three-part project? This post got long enough, Dedwin wasn't coming fast enough, and Return Sadie was coming faster than I expected, so I decided to cut things off for this post right here. I'm sorry to delay catharsis on the Purdy Scarecrow doll! We'll talk about Dedwin and the fourth classic doll (of course I talked myself into a fourth doll) in their own post, and Sadie in her own post. Whichever comes first. Sequencing in terms of arrivals and something I might want to try with Sadie are really up in the air as I write this, so we'll play it by ear for how the rest falls into place.

If you've stuck around to read this post, I hope you enjoyed!