A Twisted "Teatime" Teatime: Living Dead Dolls Series 23 Complete

Thus marks the first completion of a Living Dead Dolls series in my collection! Let's reflect!

Go here to read the first post in this series (Agatha's review), here for the second (Betsy's review), here for the third (Teddy's review), here for the fourth (Jennocide's review), and here for the fifth (Quack's review), and here for the photo story.

This series was important to me because...well, look at the blog title. If I haven't impressed my love for tea by now, I don't know what I'm doing wrong. But the tea party concept allowed LDD to invoke multiple archetypes. The series has layers with the tea concept, the individual designs, the theme of classic toys, and the potential in-universe drama between the characters. I had a lot of fun leaning in by creating personalized tea settings and tea servings and menus. Here's just the settings I built for the cover photos.

I'm lucky to have a house with an abundance of entertaining and tea tableware, including five unique teapots I could use so every setting had a different pot. I think Teddy's setting wasn't quite what I wanted it to be with the forest idea due to the fabrics and space I had available to me, but all of them are distinct and attractive.

Then, the menus and teas. There's Agatha's bare-bones overloaded Earl Grey:

Betsy's goopy red berry tea and biscuits:

Teddy's honey-drenched excess of tea and the daunting overlarge scone:

Jennocide's super-sour lemon, lemon, and lemon tea with half-eaten digestive cookies:

And Quack's weird, childish, and mildly gross chamomile mint tea with mushrooms, the kind of serving nobody sane makes.

And here's a compilation of the menus in a group. I loved designing the template, assigning a color to each, adding teatime damage onto the "physical" menu, and writing the wry text.

Of the tea serving extravaganza, I think I'm most proud of what I put together for Jennocide. The jokes behind the tea theming amused me the most with the idea of acidic lemon and eaten digestive cookies working great for a doll killed by acid that ate almost half of her face. I also thought the physical plating of her tea serving was the best, and the tea was very tasty and successful--only the cookies felt out of place with that tea in terms of texture and flavor. I think the tea I liked the least was actually Teddy's, just because that scone was so large and I was eating it after a nightmare of cleaning a massive honey-spray spill. The tea itself was fine, but the treat was functionally a punishment. Agatha's tea might have been the next least pleasant just because I don't like tea without milk, and then Quack's, which was only bad because of the mushrooms. Betsy was the second-best tea. It's a little sacrilegious to say the fruit teas were the best, but I devised the black and herbal teas in ways that made the experience uncomfortable on purpose. A good serving of Earl Grey the way I like it tops all of these. 

With these, I also had an offhand gag of a server's glove interacting with the scene that turned into its own through-line of this project--I'd created this entity of a mysterious tea master (as dubbed by reader Bitty) and decided to subject his pristine glove to increasing torments at the hands of the guests.

It was fun devising a themed glove damage for each character--except Agatha, who keeps pristine.

And it all comes full circle for the tea master by the end of the story, where he tidies up and puts the dolls to rest.

Now, let's talk about the dolls properly.

Series 23 is a series of interesting faces.

Each doll has something going on. Agatha is the perfect porcelain eyeless antique. Betsy is the most LDD-classic face, but she has freckles and nearly-colorless heterochromic eyes to set her apart, as well as beautiful blended sunken eye shading. Teddy is very basic, but haunting. Jenn has a really cool paint job that mixes a slightly fancier classic LDD face with a dissolved skin effect over illusionistic airbrushed bone contour. And Quack has the only textured sculpt, with skin bumps, and a very stylized quirky kooky face with a big smile and spiraling eyes. They do all feel like different types of old toys even within their face paint.

The dolls also have great costumes. Agatha is a Victorian servant, Betsy is a girl playing dress-up in gaudy chic, Jenn is a classic old dolly, and Quack and Teddy emulate vintage plush with their animal suits. And I think the costumes help tie things together a little because two dolls have fancy hats with rosettes and two dolls have fluffy onesies, allowing for a little cohesiveness in this series where every character is their own art style.

In evaluating my own experience, there are three modes of ranking here. In a ranking of character designs, I would go like this--from left to right, best to least.

I don't dislike any of these designs. These are all very good! Quack is at the top because look at her. Okay, that's useless commentary. Quack is at the top because I find her very charming and cheerful and authentic to vintage toys. I love her visual complexity in the plush costume concept, and she displays just as well with her hood down due to her amazing messy hair. Teddy is at the low end just because he's simple enough to feel a little disappointing, and his costume forbids him from holding his teacup accessory. Of the two animal suits in the series, Quack has so much more appeal to me. Betsy is second-lowest just because her look is designed to be more gaudy and modern, and it's successful and she has great features with her hair and face, but she's not totally my aesthetic. 

If I'm ranking for quality and experience in handling, the dolls shift significantly.

Here, Teddy is at the top because he had the fewest issues as a doll (despite his review session causing the most frustration). His joints were all in good condition, and his hood was lined and thus left no stains on his face, allowing him to be cleanly displayed bareheaded. He's wobbly on his fabric suit feet and can't hold his cup, but he had no blemishes or defects with his construction. Jenn is next after him. Her red dress really seeped pigment into the lace and her body, and it's distracting, but her joints were good. Agatha is after her because her right hip is a little loose and her hair doesn't comb smoothly, plus her copies seem to consistently have a paint flaw with a thick grey strip under her chin, but she's pretty solid. Quack is below her because she has some egregious staining from the sides of her hood which puts a damper on her bareheaded display, and I find that inexcusable. And Betsy is last because her hip joint was stuck, twisted out of her body when I tried to move it, and had to be glued back in. I also find her the hardest to stand due to her feet and shoes and balance really wanting to tip her forward, and her hat isn't snug. She was the most frustrating to handle. 

And yet this is a doll I was surprised to like so much! Betsy is a hidden gem of a doll despite placing low in both of these categories, so that should speak to my opinion of Series 23 overall.

In terms of overall personal ranking, this is what I decided on.

It was truly a razor's edge between Quack and Agatha here, but I ultimately decided to put Agatha at the top. She has some sentimental value to me for starting this journey and carrying me to a complete series, and I can't argue with the classic porcelain doll, Victorian antique, and tea theming the doll exemplifies. She's very "me". Quack is just so appealing to me that she gets to number two by only a small margin, but loses big points for her staining. Betsy is number three because I clicked with her character archetype and the surprise factor of how unique and fun she was boosts her a lot. I love to like something more than I expected. Jenn is overall a very solid doll, and has an awesome paint job, but she's not a character I got really into, and in some way, her costume design feeling the most classic and generic for the old-toy theme can hurt her. Her having prominent stains on an uncovered part of her body also put her lower than Quack in this ranking. While Quack's stains are more severe on their own, she has a display that covers her stains and she appeals to me more even when her stains are showing. And Teddy, again, is slightly lacking to me and it's hard to unpack the resentment of his photo session being so difficult with the table setting being hard to compromise and the honey skill and monster scone giving me grief. It's not fair to put him low because of that, and he's a cool doll by most metrics...his series castmates just outshine him. Had Teddy been in a series of assorted characters with no theme, he'd be a big standout. Here, and particularly against Quack, he's a blip.

There are some ways I would improve the series as well as the dolls individually.

• Make the coffins have a unique visual design evocative of old tea tins, chipboards included. Series 20 had printed coffins and a unique plastic lid print to suit the Dia de Muertos art and theme, and those boxes are amazing. I think a Victorian tea-tin look would be easy to evoke and it'd make the coffins much more special. 
• Feature a tablecloth somewhere in the series for the assembled coffin table. Betsy would be a good doll to assign it to--give her the tablecloth and a cup.
• Give Agatha the gripping hand and teapot. She's the servant and the saboteur of the group. It makes more sense for her. I made it work with my story to have things the way they were, but my story is by no means canon.
• Give Teddy a way to hold his teacup--all it would take is making his bear paw gloves into removable mittens rather than a part of his sleeve. It'd be extra cute if they were on strings attached to his wrists like real mittens for kids that are designed not to be lost.
• Change Jennocide's name to something more tasteful and conceptually appropriate. My favorite option I came up with was Sulfur, referencing the acid which burned her as well as the alchemical element whose symbol is a major recurring logo for LDD.
• Maybe make one of the fluffy-suited dolls wear a full animal-head mask to look more like a plush. Teddy would work best in a full-body cover, and it'd be fun to see one doll who looks like a full plush toy. Quack is perfect as she is for me.
• Make a variant set. Why not? I'd love to see what would be done color- or even structure-wise that could offer an alternate take on the dolls. Maybe a sepia-toned set with "tea stained" details? Or a reworked color palette for each individual character (this would be the place for a yellow Quack, and a green cartoon-acid-themed Jenn would be cool--maybe even a polar-bear Teddy)? 

Actually, wait. Let's try that out for fun. Since LDD variant sets are typically just palette recolors with maybe a few breaks in formula for different fabrics or paint choices that can change the set, I kept things restricted. I decided to go for an individual design for each doll, rather than a themed palette for the set. I used tracings of photos of the dolls in these reviews as my bases.

With Agatha, I took the sepia idea and put it just to her, making her look more aged and antique with brown tones that also suit the colors of a tea drink. Her skin is now yellower like an old composition doll, rather than porcelain, and matches her hair to make her look more artificial. Her dress body changed to brown, but the other costume colors did not change.

I think this is a fun dustier, more disused take on antique dolls that also suits the tea theme well. I'd love a copy of Agatha like this.

For Betsy, I kept her in the vein of the little-girl terror with a more pink and blonde cute little angel color palette that's undermined by her cruel brattiness. I wanted her a little more like the image of the rosy golden precious classic dolly to see how she'd look.

For Teddy, I went ahead with the polar bear look, changing his suit and skin to white. While his blue face paint would suit a frigid design, it might be too similar to icy Frozen Charlotte, so I switched his paint to a bloodthirsty red and also made a departure to add fur stains in red too. 

I think this could be a fun winter holiday horror doll, but he does feel the most removed from the classic-toyroom look out of the variant palettes I devised. The other option would have been a black bear suit, but that wasn't as interesting. I think this variant concept is more compelling to me personally than the real Teddy.

For Jenn, I tried some vibrant acid-green and yellow combos, but they felt too comic-book or sci-fi and didn't suit the classic toy design. I ultimately ended up giving her a black hat with a white rosette, black lips, and a Victorian-green dress and eye. Her hair changed to dark brown, and I made her arms cast black, a stylistic break, so the variant looks gloved. Her facial wound is changed, with a darker burn so the skull inside can look red and soaked in blood, which looks gorier and more dramatic while also contrasting her new green coloring.

This doll could be stunning if she were real, and would put up fierce competition with the canon Jenn.

And for Quack, I went with a yellow duck suit and more saturation and primary tones. Her skin is flesh-toned, her suit is yellow with a red belly, and her hat and half of her leg stripes are light blue. The bill and hat print and legs still use red, though with this color scheme, I threw more to the red by deciding not to make the belly blue. It would be if I was following the direct swap of all the greys with blue. Quack's cheeks are redder and I switched her eye spirals to a darker blue and made her hair ginger.

I don't prefer this to the real design and could probably pass on this if these variants were real, but I think this makes sense and feels true to classic toys in its own way.

I'm happy with my play in this concept. I think I kept them feeling like a plausible mix of old toys and made some interesting looks. I'd seek out four of five of these dolls for sure, and could fall in love with this Quack too.

Back to the possible changes, ending on my last idea:

• Change the table leg design to have clips around two sides of the top and bottom coffin corners so they can't move around. The clothespin-style pegs are able to rotate back and forth like levers, making it possible for the coffin table to collapse if pushed around. 

Like so.

(The only problem with this idea is that the coffin shape is irregular, so two table-leg bracket molds would be needed for the designated two corner shapes the legs would go on, and that could confuse buyers (and make it a lot harder to complete a set of legs when only two dolls have one shape!) The single leg is weak, but the table is an extra gimmick anyway, and you can source any doll you want to recoup any legs you've lost.)

I did find the collection gimmick with the table rewarding, though, even when I hit a stumble when Jenn lacked her table leg. I think the table is the best series collection gimmick LDD ever did. The Series 13 bad-luck charm assembly creates a really nice item, but it's not there for the dolls. The Series 15 spirit board is a great idea, but only the planchette is a substantial piece--the four board panels split across four of the dolls are just rolled poster paper. I think the Series 23 tea table is very clever for reusing an established element of the packaging (the cardboard coffin lid) and it provides a great piece of set dressing for a cast of characters united in a single scene.

So.

Series 23 will not be the only series of Living Dead Dolls I complete, but I only intend to complete very few. I'm on track to get the last Series 6 doll (probably next month) and Series 5 will end up completed due to my personal interest in three dolls and investigative interest in two of them for the uncomfortable-LDD roundup post. I also want to do projects with the Series 30 and Series 31 collections next year. I'm not otherwise compelled to complete other series, though there are a few sets of individual releases who were designed as groups to consider (the other two witches of the Three Sisters trio, Rose and Violet the Twisted Love dolls, Rotten Sam and Sandy). 

The rest of my focus on LDD this year will be on assorted roundups I can make room for, the uncomfortable roundup post, and building up some acquisitions for some important holiday events later this year. I want to do the celebrations big on the blog this year. 

And so Series 23 has been put to rest. (I will be re-cutting all of these S23 posts into one entry later to consolidate it for a different reading option.) 

This was a great time. I loved the amount of work I put into each post and had a lot of fun indulging in the aesthetics and stories of the dolls, who are a very strong collection indeed.