This is just my previous seven S23 posts all edited together into one long saga with tweaks in prose for flow, and some changes influenced by hindsight coming in. This cut of the project, as a linear marathon, will not be the journey through months of discoveries that the original posts were, so part of this is written with a retrospective lens, as if I had written these reviews and published them all in one go rather than doing them gradually first. If you're curious, take a look at how that's shifted things, because I found it interesting to edit myself. But that's really all there is to this one, so feel no obligation to read again in this form. Just wanted to have the work available in one.
Introduction to Series 23
I've admired many Living Dead Dolls, but mostly I pick and choose from collections which ones I want. I generally lack the completionist impulse as a collector, and yet I found one series I'm getting everyone in. This is the first of those dolls.
If you have any familiarity with the LDD catalogue, it should be no surprise to readers here which specific series compelled me to collect a whole set. It's a dolly tea party series!
Living Dead Dolls Series 23, with the theme of dolls having a tea party, is the series that feels like it treats the toys most like toys. One of the dolls is cracked like porcelain, and two are dressed in plushie costumes, and the dolls come with tea accessories, making this series feel the clearest on the idea that the LDD universe's cast are twisted literal toys within the story. I find that concept immensely compelling, and I think the series feels extremely strong as a group. I fully believe them as a spooky assortment of toys in a tea party. The series also strongly pushes a collect-them-all element which really got me in.
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| LDD photo of Series 23. Left to right: Quack, Betsy, Agatha, Teddy, Jennocide. |
I decided I wanted to have this series collected not long after I decided to purchase Living Dead Dolls for the first time, but this wasn't a project of any urgency or time pressure, so I decided to let myself collect the group slowly. While I strive to collect LDDs complete anyway, these dolls have small necessary extras that make it easy to end up with missing parts unless the dolls are bought sealed. I guess it's moot, though, because these dolls are more often sold mint or complete. Because they're mostly big-ticket dolls on the aftermarket and I liked the idea of extending this in a non-linear blogging series, I chose to dip in and get a Series 23 doll once a month, with my policy being to open them as I get them. This series originally spanned from March to July as such! I think that gave me a fun mix of bonding time with the dolls and also of anticipation and a fun feeling of progress by not getting them at once or closer-together. That also contributed to the higher production standard I gave these reviews--each doll got their own elaborate background setting to photograph them on to mimic a tea scene personalized to them, plus other creative indulgences you'll see soon. Had I gotten these dolls and saved them up in a batch, I'd have been run ragged trying to do the personalized scenery, because each doll ended up with a very long photo setup and takedown for my efforts.
I also decided to clear a shelf to set the dolls up together as a way to further this and build up the target and create a stronger sense of progress. That's a lot of space to sacrifice, but it's worth it.
Like most series, 23 consists of five characters. Here, it's Betsy the rich-lady hostess doll, Agatha the servant doll, and three guest dolls. While it might have made the most sense to bring Betsy in first, Agatha was by far the cheapest on offer and I figured Betsy could wait a little longer for after birthday money comes in. Besides, the narrative implies Agatha's going to have to set up this whole event, and I really like her among the group. I never wishlisted any Series 23 dolls in my original LDD phase, but Agatha would have been my pick of the group then, too. Let's begin!
Old Lace and Arsenic: Agatha
The concept of Agatha is that she's an aged doll turned spiteful and jealous toward the pretty new toys around her. She's also implicitly a domestic servant, and is stated to have hatefully sabotaged the brew at the tea party. She's a resentful plotter, and who wouldn't be, in a role of servitude? I think it works for her to be the first doll, angrily muttering as she sets the stage for a tea that will go very badly.
Agatha came mint, but fell on the lower end of full-size LDD prices. Factory-sealed condition isn't ever a requirement for me, but these particular dolls must include all of their pieces for the Series 23 collection to work, and I need at least one coffin. More on that later.
As it stands today, LDD offerings which are complete to my standard (doll, certificate, coffin, accessories) are more likely than not to also be mint-sealed. Opened LDDs, even with their coffins, are pretty often missing a piece or two I value.
Series 23 stood out to me packaging-wise for being the first coffined series I'd collected from with a different tissue color from the pink my first-acquired coffined dolls (Faith, S1 Sadie, and Hush) had. Series 23 has a whitish tissue, which suits a fancy table setting really nicely, and flatters black-and-white Agatha quite well herself.
Agatha was the latest-released series Living Dead Doll I'd gotten at that point in March (now surpassed by S33's Carotte Morts as of the publication of this compilation post), so I was interested to see what changed about the coffin since Series 8. First, I noticed Agatha's coffin shrinkwrap was the kind of soft thin plastic you can stretch, different from earlier series' rattly stiff shrinkwraps.
Agatha's coffin has no handle decoration.
The back of Agatha's box was different from previous coffins I'd seen, with the latest before I got her being from Series 8. I was struck to notice that the red print had been metalized at some point between S8 and S23, making it harder to photograph. The text just under the LDD logo has also changed to red. The phrase "creepy doll" is back to being properly lowercase like with the Series 1 boxes, but "Death Certificate" is still in caps.
The box shows a change in domain names for the website--back in Series 8, Mezco was located at "mezco.net", but by Series 23, it had changed to "mezcotoys.com".
The Series 23 chipboard includes a photo of the whole gang, with the included doll being picked out with more definition.
Agatha's chipboard poem reads:
A broken doll with a broken face
Left in the corner unwanted, disgraced
The time has come, at the table she's placed
Just don't tell anyone that the tea is laced
Here's a rhythmic rewrite.
Broken and old, ashamed of her face
Left in the corner, unwanted, disgraced
Time for the party, to table she's placed
Don't let them know that the tea is all laced.
Agatha's coffin backdrop slid out easily and the tissue stayed in order when repacking it. The twist ties were really tangled at the back, so I resorted to cutting them. While I tried replacing the twist-ties with pipe cleaners when I first got the dolls, by Agatha, I already decided to give up on the pretense that I'm going to twist them back into their boxes when the dolls are packed. I didn't bother to salvage or replace the wires. If the cardboard lid is on, there's no problem with laying them to rest unbound.
I did notice that the tissue seems to be ever so imperceptibly pink, though. You might not be able to tell, but there's just a whisper of pinkness to it.
Agatha's death certificate was bundled with her accessories. The certificate design is no different from others seen here before.
Agatha's death date of December 16, 1773 is the oldest of this series--and she died on the day of the Boston Tea Party! While that's a very appropriate joke, her age also happens to place her as a relic of the Georgian era (which preceded the Victorian era). The Georgian era happened to be a very big time for tea beyond the American colonists' famous protest, since it's cited as the time period during which tea truly became a British cultural staple, leading into the protest later, and Harrods of London even features the Georgian Room as one of its fixtures to have tea. I've visited! (I loved the tea, and hated the tea sandwiches on the merits of my own tastes as a kid.) It's fairly likely Agatha is English, but I think I like to think of her as Scottish myself. Maybe my childhood viewing of Downton Abbey and its Scottish housekeeper character Mrs. Hughes have gotten to me.
Her death certificate poem reads:
Agatha was once a shiny new doll,
But age and decay she did befall
And now neglected and collecting dust
She views all other dolls with utter disgust
And a rework.
Agatha once was a shiny new doll
Glorious days she no longer recalls
Sitting neglected and gathering dust
Gave her a bitter undying disgust
Then I took Agatha out.
But first--because this is is such a special series and so resonant to me and my habits, I decided to be extra extra. For this Series 23 project, I have devised and prepared an off-kilter themed tea serving to drink and eat while I work with each doll. I even have a perfect mini black teapot and a skull-and-crossbones infuser for the purpose!
One of my favorite recent movies is the satirical horror comedy The Menu, so I've deliberately chosen to channel its unhinged dinner presentations and concepts through an old-fashioned lens. I put a lot of thought into personalizing the teas to the characters with a horror twist, so I hope you enjoy.
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| Yes, I made personalized menus. |
Earl Grey is classic, and also my favorite, making it a good choice for such a traditional tea-themed doll who I love. The unstrained element of the tea is done to make it a little more uncomfortable and foul for a horror theme, but also suggests Agatha couldn't be bothered to make it nicer in the "not paid enough to do it" sense, or that she's indulging in her own misery and feelings of oppression by making her tea worse for herself so she can be willfully unhappy.
This dining-experience aspect is so fun to work on, and I'm loving the result. The table settings and tea themes will change from doll to doll as I zero in on their aesthetic and concepts.
Now, the doll.
Agatha is made to look like a cracked porcelain antique, and is also made to look like she lost her eyes with her sockets being blacked-out. Her austere black dress indicates that she would be a servant, likely the housekeeper and head of the female staff in an estate, or just a maid in a smaller household. Because she doesn't have a white lace cap or apron, she seems to occupy a role of maturity and seniority as a servant--compare her to Series 25's Gretchen, who is dressed as a scullery maid in an apron and cap. Same servant system, different ranks. While Agatha is literally meant to be an old toy, her social role in the dolly tea party is of the resentful servant sabotaging the brew--and evidently, she got creative because two of the guests are suffering different tamperings!
If Agatha was an old estate housekeeper, she'd most likely be addressed as "Mrs. [surname]", regardless of whether she was married, but few LDDs have been addressed in that manner--I think it's only Mr. Graves and Ms. Eerie (not released in any association with each other) who are named that way. Perhaps Agatha's name is a sign that Betsy's is a smaller, more nouveau-riche household, where Agatha may not have subordinates and would be more likely to be called by her first name. Absolutely, this is overthinking.
It's also possible, but also very possibly a stretch to think, that Agatha is named after Agatha Christie. Tampered tea sounds like a murder-mystery plot and it's a stereotype that "the butler did it" is the solution in mysteries, though Agatha is not a butler and it wasn't a conception Christie created with her works. Domestic staff being the murderer is also not actually a common plot twist in mystery fiction. I don't know if Agatha Christie was the basis for the name at all, and it's just as likely she's not. Just throwing it out there.
Agatha's hair is strawberry blonde and parted to her right, with a wavy shape that feels pretty timeless and age-neutral in a good way. She can be read as a bitter old lady or a cute little doll. The hair comes tied to her neck for packaging with an elastic band around her head.
After being taken out, the hair can take the right shape. The ends get caught on the comb, likely because they're pretty sharply shaped for a flipped wave at the end, but the hair is okay. Not too thin, and not really unpleasant.
Agatha's vinyl color is an off-white tone with a subtle yellow-grey cast, which does a great job at looking like aged porcelain. Pure white would have been too on-the-nose and cartoonish. The matte vinyl color also masquerades well as bisque porcelain. I love the look of this color, and it's the best choice, but for other reasons, I'm slightly disappointed it isn't pure white. Stark-white Betsy is the doll with the teapot in this series and has a gripping hand for it, and I had hoped her arm could swap onto Agatha because I thought the servant and saboteur deserved to hold the teapot more. I won't know for certain until I have both, but I'm suspecting a swap won't work after all.
Agatha's face also features very fine cracks. On her forehead, there's a localized impact shatter, and her eyes and mouth also feature spidery cracks coming out, which go down to her neck, which has another localized shatter point.
While a clean hollow eye sculpt would be used on later dolls (I still haven't figured out who debuted it), Agatha does what more LDDs do and implies empty sockets just by blacking out the eye region with paint. Dimensional hollows would be better, and in that regard, Agatha is weakened by being released before that sculpt debuted, but the visual works just fine from a distance. Her eyes are ringed with subtle purple airbrushing. Agatha has no eyebrows, and her lips are very glossy black. The fine cracks and vague expression make her very spooky, and I like the choice of strawberry blonde hair to ground her more plausibly. A purely black-and-white color scheme would feel a bit too goth and stylized for a doll meant to be a real antique. The hair is the perfect choice to make her more plausible. Agatha's expression isn't defined in any particular way, but I can definitely read her as cold, aged, and hateful with her expressionless cracked face. Agatha is one of those eyeless dolls that feels like she can see you, rather than looking blind.
Agatha's dress is really beautifully made. The torso features a shirt-style collar over a white lace section composed of ruffled panels, and a black bow sits at her neck above a row of tiny sewn buttons.
The rest of the dress is all black. The sleeves have puffed shoulders and frilled cuffs, and the low hem of the dress has a ruched section frilling the bottom. The dress has no waist seam or gathering, and it covers all of her body except her head, neck, and hands.
The dress is very well-tailored to Agatha's body, so it doesn't slide off very easily, but it can be removed without splitting any seams.
Agatha wears the LDD pointy-boot sculpt debuted with Series 2 Lizzie Borden. She has no socks, so the shoes rattle a little. It's absolutely the right sculpt for her, though.
Because all of her body is covered, Agatha's cracks don't continue beyond her head. The dress has unsurprisingly created stains on her body. There's also one thick line on her neck that looks like a paint error. Fortunately, it's not gonna show up when she's dressed.
Agatha's two accessories are her teacup and a small peg.
The teacup is a brownish dark-washed piece shaped like the upper part of a human skull, inverted. It couldn't be made from a real skull with its proportions to her, but the aesthetic is killer.
The inside of the cup is sculpted with swirling liquid, which is painted a dark bloody red.
At first, I didn't think the dolls were capable of holding the cup properly, because my experiments with shoving the handle onto their hands only found a suitable gap on the third and fourth fingers of the hand, which made for a really unnatural grip.
But seeing the LDD photos again, I realized the handle can be squeezed over the index, middle, and third fingers of the hand sculpt for a much better look.
I had resigned myself to the cups being props for the tea table rather than handhelds, so I'm delighted to see the dolls can hold them. Betsy has a gripping hand for her teapot, though.
I think it would have made more sense to give Agatha the party's teapot rather than one of the cups, given her design as the servant to the tea party. I think she would be distributing tea and wouldn't be permitted to sit at the table and partake herself. Unfortunately, her vinyl color not being pure white in-person suggests she's quite a different color from Betsy and the two won't be able to swap arms and look right.
Now what's that little plastic peg about? Oh, it's just the second reason I felt compelled to collect the entirety of Series 23. Each of the four "guest" dolls has one.
This looks like a piece of nothing at first, but these pegs are table legs--and they slot onto an opaque coffin lid from any of the dolls.
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| The cardboard on this lid isn't thick enough at the top and bottom corners for the peg to attach tightly there. I can play around with different lid copies and leg positions later on when I have all four pegs. |
Collecting all five dolls not only gives you a compete tea set, but a complete tea table to stage the party at! It's such a brilliant use of the LDD coffin packaging for play/display, and incentivizes completion in a really rewarding manner.
I had finished Agatha's tea by now. It's not how I take my Earl Grey, and the lumpy leaves weren't delightful, but it was certainly serviceable. I'm sure I'll be fine after drinking it...
Agatha being such a classical creepy antique doll gave me lots of fuel for pictures.
I'm so glad Series 23 was released so firmly after the second-gen LDD body, because her ball joints give her a really meaningful physicality. She can stoop over and tilt her neck in an aged way that sells her character so well. I like to pretend her neck joint has broken so she can't hold it straight very reliably, though I think Agatha is probably at her most cunning, malicious, and dangerous when her posture straightens up!
Then Agatha surveyed the beginnings of the party room. I cut and glued patterned paper to three cardboard panels and have those just propped up between the shelves and some books. Fortunately, the horror setting doesn't demand perfection. The doily is under the coffin table, and a hand towel makes a good rug, though that part will only be on the shelf while I'm doing these photos and reviews.
Overall, I'm pretty delighted with Agatha. She's a beautiful faux-antique doll with a simplistic, pure creepy charm. I love how she really works as a nasty old maid just as well as a sweet little doll, and I was pleasantly surprised by the display offered by her articulation and her teacup. Agatha does feel like the tea doll in a series of tea dolls, and I think she was really meant to, given her status as a domestic servant who died at a very important time for tea. That makes her very special to my tea-loving soul. My only real critique with her is that she wasn't designated the teapot, and I worry that she can't properly steal it due to the reality of her vinyl color.
Agatha is ready for the rest of the party.
It's going to be a terrible tea.
The Hostess with the Leastess: Betsy
Betsy was always going to be early in this project, and because she wasn't the first, she had to be the second.
Within Series 23's tea party concept, Betsy occupies the role of the hostess. If Agatha is the most thematically connected to tea itself, Betsy feels like a classic archetypal "tea party dolly" for playtime, representing a girl in fancy dress-up clothes. Under the lens of real dolls being set together to play a toy teatime, Betsy would be the avatar of the little girl playing with everything, while within the fiction of the tea-party play itself, I see Betsy as the very young heir to her mansion and servant Agatha (perhaps done by killing her own parents--wouldn't put it past her). Agatha is old, bitter, and traditional and would deeply resent being shackled to an underage upstart as her mistress, so that's exactly what I think the scenario is. I also see Betsy as all the snips and snails and puppy dog tails that little girls aren't supposed to be made of. I think she's a demanding absolute brat who sees her party guests as her playthings and wants everything exactly as she says. I think you'll understand where I'm coming from.
Here's her coffin. She came sealed, but I unwrapped the box after the cover photo. Betsy has a fancy hat which, as positioned in the box, covers her eyes.
Her chipboard uses the same group photo as Agatha's did, but it's panned further over to the left. Agatha is in the portion that's cut off on Betsy's chipboard, while Betsy was on the portion cut off on Agatha's. (You see why I'm framing them as bitter rivals?)
Betsy's chipboard poem reads as follows:
She's the host of a most murderous party
Where every guest must fall
She asks that you come early, don't be tardy
Laugh, drink, die! Have a ball!
Here's my very loose rewrite.
She's the host and has the most
If "the most" is "malice"
Don't be tardy to the party
--It's madder than in "Alice".
Betsy wanting death at her party indicates the very juicy idea that she and Agatha are running competing agendas at this gathering. Agatha hates how she has been rejected and outdated and wants revenge, so she's tampered with some tea...but Betsy might just be pure evil and has enacted her own murder plots. Whatever will happen when she discovers her plans have been hijacked???
Manners stories like Jane Austen's work have a reputation for being dry, but they were so popular because there's a lot of intrigue and drama in polite society. And I think there's a lot you can read into this tea party cast in a similar vein.
Betsy's hat introduced me to a new variant of packaging in LDD. Dolls with big hats like these have different cardboard trays that are cut off at the top third, and the space for the head and hat is filled by a plastic tray to cradle it.
As such, the tissue is split, too. The tissue under the plastic tray is a separate piece stuck to the bottom surface of the coffin, while the rest of the tissue is attached to the cardboard tray that's elevating the doll. It was a little sticky and ruffled when pulling things out, but the doll tray came out, and the hat flew out of the tray, not being affixed to anything.
The underside of the doll tray has a folded-over flap to cushion the back and prop it up, and it encloses the twist-tie on the neck. This piece was stuck by an adhesive strip that's lost its stick, so it easily folded up to give access to the tie.
The coffin repacked pretty easily.
Now I'm prepared for the unboxing process with Jennocide (horrible name), who also has a fancy hat in this series and will have the same setup.
Here's Betsy's certificate.
She died on January 8, 1988. None of the other dolls in the series died this day, indicating their first deaths were all irrespective of attending the party, and that they died again (somehow) during the event. Betsy's deathdate doesn't appear to have any thematic significance, but it does work with her visual aesthetic. She doesn't feel like a very traditional old-fashioned fancy dolly, and an eighties time period makes complete sense for her. Only her name feels older. I'd expect a doll named "Betsy" (which is a perfect name for a fancy doll) to look more like a toy from the 1950s.
Her certificate poem says:
After all her guests lie quite dead
Little Betsy was feeling so fine
Until one by one they arose
On a feast of her flesh they did dine.
This poem is very messy to me, including a mix of tenses between the first two lines. Here's a rewrite.
After her guests were all dead in the ground
Betsy was glad as could be.
But then the graves all started to turn
And the guests had themselves a "die" tea.
This definitely paints a clear picture for the end of this story--and I do plan to map it all out in photos when everyone's here.
Alright, time for Betsy's tea serving. Since Betsy is fairly generic in basic concept, I landed on her bloodlust as the driving theme.
I liked this for Betsy because the blood imagery was spooky, and the excess of jam allowed me to make the serving a little nasty on an aesthetic level. I also think Agatha would very much bristle at the suggestion that fruity drinks can be considered "tea", making it a perfect choice. The cookies (strawberry) do have jam centers as purchased, but the color was paler and more orange, so I covered them with cherry jam from a jar at home. That was the point of the gag, anyway, so it worked out. If I'd seen any around, I might have also given her a jelly donut. That'd be fairly classless and tacky to suit Betsy as the spoiled child who knows little of tradition, and that'd be something capable of oozing its jelly. Ah, well. I work with what I have around me.
Betsy came with two elastic bands wrapped around her to hold down her hair and boa.
And here she is fully unpackaged.
Betsy's look clearly evokes that of a child playing dress-up to be a grand lady, with a hat that looks oversized and a feather boa that looks like it came from a costume chest. The feathers themselves strike the perfect tone of something a kid would find fabulously glamorous and mature, and which an adult tea party group would find horribly gauche. I'm slightly reminded of Pippi Longstocking's failed attempt to participate in a grown-up tea party.
The color of the feathers is that frustrating tone I've also observed in Monster High Operetta's skintone, where you could get away with calling it either pink or purple. It's a very weak purple if that's how you see it, though. I've chosen to color-code Betsy as pink with her menu, teacup, and the staging of her review table. The color of the name on her chipboard agrees with me.
LDD hats like these are made of a thin plastic that's been lightly flocked on the outside.
The hat isn't so thin that the material wobbles, but I've been forewarned that these hats are very delicate and prone to cracking. I'll handle this with care.
Betsy's hair is ginger orange, and entirely uniquely among LDD, it's crimped!
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| This is a big reason the eighties timeframe makes total sense. |
No other Living Dead Doll has hair crimping, and while Betsy's could certainly be more thorough and puffy, I appreciate the effect. Her hair has some waves, and I don't think it's just from being pressed under an elastic--the shape is intentional.
Her rooting isn't fabulous, but the hair lays well to cover any bald spots when combed.
It's a little messy, but I'm not going to risk ruining the crimping by washing it.
Betsy's vinyl color is white, which I think is a fascinating choice set against her colorful hair and feathers. It's a very cool look. I also find her face surprisingly striking.
She's got very classic LDD facial design going on with her eye shape and her harsh brows, and she has nearly-colorless eyes that are heterochromic--green on her right, grey on her left! It's so easy to overlook because her eyes look white from a distance, and it's such a distinctive trait to throw in. Betsy also has pink-colored freckles that complement her red hair, and I think the only other LDD to have freckles was nursery-rhyme Jill (of "Jack and" fame). Maybe Toy Box Philosopher Emily should have chosen this doll when she looked at LDD way back when, because redheaded freckled Betsy is sporting Emily's favorite look!
So that's crimping that's totally unique in the brand, a rare use of freckles, and heterochromia done for non-Frankenstein reasons. Betsy's design is way more interesting than it needed to be for this role, and I love that she has these funky little features going on to set her apart.
Betsy's eyes feature grotesquely beautiful blended red and purple smudging to sink them in, and she has undereye creases like Lottie's to suggest something has taken its toll on her...maybe one of the tampered teas. Betsy's lips are thin and very dark red. While I think she's very cute and LDD-classic, Betsy is not a sweet little girl with this face. This is a bossy, evil kid.
Around her neck, Betsy has a long feather boa that matches the string of feathers on her hat. Both can shed little pieces of feather fluff. The other LDD with a boa piece like this is Series 5's Hollywood.
Betsy's dress underneath is two fully-attached layers--white cotton under floral black lace sewn to the edges. The neck is wide and the dress is sleeveless, and a fully-attached pink ribbon belt with another rosette trims her waist. The style is technically timeless, but I can see this as an eighties fancy dress under the lens of Betsy's deathdate.
The back of the dress is very tight and the velcro doesn't fully fasten because of it.
Betsy wears the LDD sandals in black.
There were two problems with Betsy's legs. The first was most serious: moving her left leg up revealed that the motion was not the leg on the ball joint, but rather the ball joint peg rotating and tearing out of its socket. I was eventually able to twist the piece out entirely, and I put superglue in the socket and pressed the leg back in. After that set, I was able to move the leg on the ball joint correctly. I wonder why that happened--was it age or was it manufacturing issues? I think the leg was probably a bit too tight on the ball joint, which meant the energy when I tried posing it transferred to the joint peg itself rotating and tearing the adhesive in the socket.
I noticed Agatha had a loose right hip, and I worried the same thing had happened to her, but I was able to spin her leg in a circle multiple times without it falling off, indicating that it's simply just a less tight ball joint. I'm slightly perturbed to have found my first truly broken LDD in Betsy, but it was an easy, easy repair, so no harm done.
The other issue is that Betsy's shoes and feet are both not quite flat, so at a normal pose, she's on tiptoe and wants to pitch forward at any opportunity. A lot of fiddling needed to be done to get her balanced without doing an entirely ridiculous hip thrust. I don't know if part of this issue came from repairing her leg, because she seemed okay out of box.
I've mentioned before that Betsy is the doll in the tea party with the pot, and if you thought the teacups were cool, you ain't seen nothing yet!
The teapot is shaped like an upright complete skull with a handle coming out of the side and a spout on the other side shaped like a bent spinal column! The end has a small indent to indicate a hole.
Betsy has a gripping hand to hold this, and she's my first classic LDD with one. I believe this sculpt only featured for the right arm, and it features a loose fist shape that bar-shaped objects can clip into. This sculpt debuted with Series 12's killer clown Cuddles, and allowed her to hold a machete. None of the dolls on the pre-S9 swivel body had gripping hands, since Cuddles, being from S12, was a ball-joint doll.
The grip is a little wobbly because the thumb on one side is much less than the fingers on the other, so Betsy holds the pot more tightly when it's pointed forward and her fingers can wedge inside the loop of the handle. She can still hold it sideways so the skull faces the viewer, though.
And if the wicked teapot sculpt wasn't cool enough, the lid comes off, Betsy can hold it in her other hand, and inside the bloody mess, an eyeball has been sculpted bobbing on the surface!
Joshua Lee opined in his video reviews that this might be the best Living Dead Dolls accessory, and it's hard to disagree with that assessment. The display in her hand and secret sculpting under the lid are already incredible, but what truly seals it for me is that Betsy can hold onto the lid separately. That's just great.
Here's Betsy with Agatha, who has one of the teacups. You can see their skin colors are not the same, so my dreams of swapping arms to give the servant the pot won't pan out.
Furthermore, the gripping hand cannot hold the teacup, and the flat hand cannot hold the teapot. Betsy can hold both accessories, but Agatha can only hold the cup.
I can see it making sense for Betsy to have the pot, though, as the domineering brat in charge of the party. I doubt she would really let her servant do the parts she thinks are fun.
Despite her G1 LDD gripping hand, Betsy doesn't hold the Series 1 Sadie knife much better than G2 Return Sadie does. It's still precarious and the handle still feels too short.
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| Not a tight grip. |
I wonder if S35 mystery doll Sadie has the same knife sculpt, because she has a gripping hand and a knife paired together.
Betsy can hold onto Lottie's umbrella with the gripping hand, and it works pretty well and is secure--she just can't hold it above her head due to the short pole, and it gets in the way of her head even when it's held to the side for the same reason.
But Betsy's other hand can hold it the same way Lottie does, and this works fine. It also matches her dress well.
Here's Betsy being a selfish pig with the teapot.
And I started playing with the tea accessories and her hat's brim.
I discovered when lighting her from below that she becomes absolutely terrifying--I'd thought of her design as pretty modern, but you can't tell me this isn't a quintessential haunted doll when photographed this way.
It's her pale eyes--they look like they're glowing under this setup!
Here's Betsy throwing a fit.
Other viable titles for this post would have been "Tea is for Tantrum", "Putting the Tea in Tyrant", and "Tea Pain"!
And here's the tearoom with its second attendant added. Betsy does not come with a table leg, so the table remains in the state we left it in last. The other three dolls will add the remaining three legs. I think it makes sense for the hostess not to have a table leg, and it fits the idea of her being a horrid little tyrant, like she's forcing everyone else to build the table for her!
I'd since consumed Betsy's tea serving, and I think it was pretty successful. I was kind of improvising with the tea blend. I mixed Earl Grey and raspberry tea, and then added some Celestial Seasonings "Red Zinger" for color, but the taste was pretty nice, being fruity with enough of a black-tea bite. The cookies with jam were also tasty.
The Series 23 posts are raised in "production value" by the staging I've chosen to do with the tea-table setups I'm photographing in, and it's a chaotic, lengthy process to set up and take down alike as I run through my home scooping up tablecloths, tableware, and other props to put things together. It's hectic and complicated, and I'm so glad I'm doing it because I've loved the effect of giving each of these reviews its own custom character-coded backdrop. Being from a tea family and an expert entertainer of a mother, there's no shortage of cups and cloths and treat stands to use, so I'm lucky to be able to pursue such variety to really go all-out for these dolls!
I was surprised by just how much I ended up loving Betsy. I'd pegged her as the likely least favorite on the basis of her less antique aesthetic, but I really love her colors and vibe in person, and she fully illustrates the concept of a mean little kid strong-arming a tea party to her every whim. I also love that the designers chose to give Betsy so many unusual and unique traits to set her apart in the doll line, when that really wasn't called for. She's much richer for it. While I thought Betsy would have been in my collection mostly for obligation, I now feel like I'm going to end up genuinely loving every S23 doll because I'm very fond of her now. She's every nightmare little girl you've ever encountered.
A Beary Hungry Guest: Teddy
Teddy is the first Series 23 doll representing a guest invited to the party, since Betsy is the lady of the house and hostess, and Agatha is a servant. Teddy is also one of two dolls in the series dressed in a fuzzy animal costume, with the other being Quack, who dresses as a sailor duck. This is the reason Teddy is the third doll of this blog series specifically--I didn't want to have both animal-suit characters in a row, so Quack will be the last doll, with Jennocide coming between the two as doll 4.
While this animal costuming does feel authentic to vintage toys, who would sometimes wear animal suits (or sometimes be plush toys with creepy plastic faces sewn in), this could also be LDD's way of suggesting that the dolls are standing in for what would be full plush entries in a real tea party of mixed toy types--i.e., because teddy bears are a whole other toy medium from a Living Dead Doll, their best way of representing that classic toy is to dress a doll in a teddy bear suit. LDD did something similar with Rotten Sam and Sandy, LDD parodies of Raggedy Ann and Andy who were typical vinyl dolls with unique rag-doll face paint and yarn hair. One or both of them would easily work as extra Series 23 characters.
Teddy and Quack fetch the most expensive aftermarket prices in the series, with Teddy coming second to Quack.
This Teddy came mint. I don't think every one of my S23 dolls will be sealed, as I've seen some copies of Jenn complete and open. She looks like the second-cheapest doll in the series, but that doesn't mean a lot because there's quite a gap between her and Agatha.
Teddy is described as a zombie who will eat his party companions. My take on him, due to his teddy-bear theme and zombie nature, is that he's a greedy, hungry, selfish, difficult little boy, but not with any malice or intellect behind it like Betsy and Agatha. He's just an innocently selfish child who's neither especially nice nor cruel. He's one of those kids that's generally a big nuisance, who touches and takes everything, and is hard to like or put up with despite knowing he's innocent.
Teddy's chipboard codes him with the color blue by the text on his name, which matches what I was thinking for him. While his table setting took on a green woodland theme because I couldn't resist it, blue was the color I had in mind as his signature.
His chipboard poem reads:
It's a tea party and Teddy was ecstatic
He found his bear costume in the attic
However, Teddy was a zombie, ya see
So he ate some kids and drank some tea
This poem feels a little lost and unfocused to me with the way it's phrased. How about:
The call to the party made Teddy ecstatic
He fished out a bear suit from deep in the attic
But Teddy was hungry--a zombie, you see
So he ate up the guests as a snack with his tea
There was nothing of note about Teddy's unboxing. Here's his certificate.
Teddy died on September 1, 1985. There isn't any apparent thematic link behind this date. The most famous thing to happen on that day was the discovery of the sunken Titanic wreck, but that has nothing to do with this doll.
His certificate poem says:
Teddy got bit by an odd kid on the playground
Teddy got bit by an odd kid on the playground
Winds up the kid was dead but still walking around
So now Teddy is also a zombie boy
Dressing like a bear is what he enjoys
And a rewrite.
That little bear Teddy bumped into a kid
The kid was a zombie- you know what he did
Now Teddy himself is a walking dead child
His costume will tell you he's hungry and wild
Because Teddy required so few photos to look him over, I ended up doing most of the pictures before I assembled the tea. Probably a good call this time, due to a slight disaster that befell me later. Still, the serving comes first as usual.
My plan was to get multiple scones, but my local bakery solved the excess requirement by instead having massive scones. Just one was too much! It also led to the fun staging of the teacup having to sit on top of the scone.
However, during this session, I suffered a catastrophic honey explosion that soured my mood a bit. The way the lid on the honey bear is shaped, it screws on facing backward, so I loosened it for the cover photo to face it forward and forgot and splattered half a bottle of honey when it fell--not in my workspace or table setting, but it was still horrible and I wasted a good half hour cleaning it up as best I could. I felt sticky for the rest of the setup, and eating the scone had to take place separately. The massive lump felt like a punishment for my negligence after all of that. I had only expected it to be a chore. Oh, well.
Being far beyond done with honey definitely resulted in the assembled tea being less gloppy and uncomfortable than I had first envisioned it.
Here's my second photo of the tea setup with the doll and mysterious server (though I also like reader Bitty's description of the role as a "tea master!")
While I had sacrificed one of the cotton gloves to dip into Betsy's red tea and stained it, I was ready to write it off and use the clean glove for the rest of these posts...and then I paused and rethought when a brief Instagram interaction with Bitty brought up the idea of keeping and using the stained glove as a prop. I was inspired, and concluded that it would be far better if the posts led to the progressive destruction of that one glove instead, as if the series is taking its toll on the server, guest by guest! I did ultimately end up faking this, though, as I had thrown the first glove away and it had gotten dirtier after that. The stain also looked blue, which, while genuine, looked unrealistic coming from a red tea, so I grabbed the new glove and stained it with watered-down paint. Teddy here has added some fierce claw damage now too!
I also had to take pictures of the scone pre-honeying (and pre-disaster) just to show Teddy going over the moon with it.
Here's Teddy unboxed.
Teddy's bear suit makes him very novel and it does feel advanced and fancy, but the visual execution of the doll feels deliberately spare, making Teddy the least visually complex doll in the series. It's an interesting combination of craft and simplicity.
Since it's covering him almost completely, the outfit comes first in the discussion. Teddy is wearing a brown bear onesie with simulated claws, and has a separate hood with bear ears that leaves his face uncovered. It's clear from the claws that Teddy is intended to be a tad more realistic and reference scary real grizzly bears, because if he was purely dressed as a plush teddy, I'd expect clawless paws--and maybe a lighter belly, too. I think the choice of fur texture also suits a grizzly theme well. While I've seen and owned teddies with fur that's a little longer and rougher like this, it looks less tidy and doesn't feel fluffy and sweet, so it works great. The fur is still very soft.
Here's the top of the hood. The little bear ears have black fabric inside, and the face cutout is pretty circular.
The hood falls over the shoulders a little and has a squarish shape once the twist-tie around the neck from the packaging is removed.
The paws of Teddy's suit have black fabric bear claws, and the feet have black fabric pads underneath.
Because Teddy doesn't have plastic shoes, his stability when standing is pretty low. That just happens with soft-footed LDDs.
Here's the back of his suit. The back velcros open.
The suit does not have a tail.
Teddy was sheddy when I took him out, but there wasn't too much loose fluff.
Teddy's hood pulls right off his head with no fasteners or closures, and is lined inside.
The suit portion is not lined.
While the designers could have given Teddy a full-face fabric bear mask to make him look more like an actual teddy bear toy, I like the cutout option to make his LDD nature clear.
The other way they could have done it would be to give Teddy a plastic bear mask that would cover his face and "complete" the hood, giving him a two-part head covering. I can see why they didn't, though, since the plastic LDD masks are thin and fragile, like the hats, and a mask would look the best if it was inside the hood rather than out. That'd be hard to wrangle. The other dolls also don't have anything like that and tea parties, even in a child's playtime, aren't typically full masquerade, anyway. Return Eggzorcist has something like that going on, though, with a bunny mask and a bunny hood (both have ears, though; I hope the order worked so I can talk about it!). Maybe Teddy could get a Return doll made that way.
The next Living Dead Doll to have an animal-onesie effect after the Series 23 dolls is Beelzebub in Series 25, who wears a housefly costume as the demonic Lord of the Flies.
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| It's hard to tell, but this doll debuted a creepy toothy grin sculpt. |
Resurrection-variant Hush also has one, being dressed as a rat.
Both of them could also easily be put into the Series 23 tea party alongside Rotten Sam and Sandy. The first character with an animal onesie was Series 1's Eggzorcist, though most of her dolls don't give her a plushie effect. Teddy himself would get a different animal onesie (not plushie-styled) when his concept led him to be cast as the Cowardly Lion in the Oz doll line.
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| I'll try not to need him. |
Under the hood, Teddy has hair, which is short and brown and side-parted. It stays in shape well and doesn't feel gelled, but maybe that's just years of hood-hair keeping it in shape!
I think his Oz doll is bald.
Teddy's face paint is extremely simple, and the least complex of any LDD I've had yet.
His eyes are blank white with blue outlines, and lighter blue airbrushing surrounds them. More blue smudges appear on the rest of his face, and his lips are washed in with dark paint to define the sculpt. No brows. It's very classically spooky and works for a zombie character as well as a creepy old toy from a haunted tea party. The face is a bit like S1 Damien's, but a bit more haunting due to the lack of brows and subtler paint. Teddy is a pale flesh tone.
Here he is undressed. There's nothing wrong with Teddy's hip joints (hooray!). He's just standing kinda wonky here because the log blocks are not so stable and this is how I had to get him to balance.
Teddy has a teacup and a table leg.
He can't hold the cup with the thick paws of his costume. I think it would have been cute to make them as mittens with strings attached to the sleeves so they could dangle and leave his hands bare to drink tea. Or else also throw in like, a napkin or something so there'd be something he could hold? Quack has uncovered hands, so she won't have this limitation.
Here's a few more pictures. My breakfast tea supply currently comes from a giant can of bags which I bought because it was beautiful and could be a great storage vessel once emptied. Teddy saw only paradise. It was also a chance to use a bluish paper backdrop that aligns with him and honors the blue coding he's been given.
This has become my new Instagram profile picture. I think it says everything about what I am and what I do here.
Here's both LDD teddy bears together. Teddy doesn't hold Return Sadie's bear super well, but I made it work.
And here's a collection of teddy bears. This isn't every teddy I have, but it's all ones that match Teddy's classic look. I like the staging and lighting here making Teddy pop out, almost like an impostor--it's a game of "find the evil toy" that's very easily figured out!
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| Three bears who are licensed merchandise are here. The large round cream bear is an I Love Lucy replica bought at the Lucy-Desi Museum; Teddy from Mr. Bean, a Beanie Baby bought at Harrods of London, is in front; and the eponymous Little Bear (from my favorite books/cartoon for a time in childhood) is just to the right. |
Here's the tea room now. Two legs isn't enough to stand up the table, but it's progress! Teddy's position might not be permanent, but it's good for now. It's important that Betsy be in the middle and Agatha be symbolically behind her as the lurking evil in this series. Maybe Quack will be to Betsy's left so the two fancy hats aren't standing together, and Jennocide will be on the other end.
So that's Teddy! I'll be honest, I think I like the doll more than the experience setting up his tea this time. I'd wanted the setup to be more horizontal but the space (my desk) wasn't quite long enough and the log blocks don't show through as well in the cover as I'd hoped. I had a blue teapot I wanted to have alongside the brown one, but that wasn't possible to stage without creating total clutter. I also wanted the base fabric to be dark brown, but I don't have anything in that color, so I'm not sure I'm satisfied with his tea table. The honey catastrophe was also a real damper on the mood, and that tipped my irked feelings with this session into the outright negative.
But the doll himself is really nice. He's simple but he stands out as unique and cute and charming. He's got an old-fashioned creepiness to him but also an innocent childlike quality and his novel costume is really nice. I wish his accessory worked better with him and that his stance was sturdier, but he's a very cool doll and he gave me a lot of inspiration. While it was a nightmare in execution, designing his tea was the most fun I've had so far since the bear concept gave me so much to work with!
There's ultimately not a ton to talk about with Teddy because what you see is what you get, and he's not immediately making a run for the top spot in the series. I do also feel pretty certain I'll like Quack more than him. But what you get with Teddy is not weak or disappointing. He's just a good little bear.
Burned at Teatime, But Not How You'd Think: Jennocide
Yes, that is her name. Yes, I heavily disagree with the choice. Just making that clear. I'm being a descriptivist and honoring the character's official name but I find it poorly-chosen for its inappropriate glibness and its irrelevance to her concept.
Warning for surreal doll gore.
Of S23, Jennocide is our second outside guest invited to the tea party (Betsy and Agatha presumably come from the one household, which is hosting), and she feels like the most classic "tea-party dolly" of the group to me for her straightforward fancy vintage look.
Jenn died after being given acid in her cup, which splashed and ate away the right side of her face. This is done with a really neat paint job in a really gothic kind of gore that works for me, and there's a great distressing surrealism invited by her framing as an authentic old doll for a tea party. It's always disturbing and weird when bones and guts exist under the surface of a seemingly inorganic being, and an old doll having blood and a skull is quite alarming.
Which brings me back to her name because it has nothing to do with her. It's just a grim twist on "Jennifer" the way she uses it. Acid is hard to make a name pun on, but what about Corrhoda? Dissolivia? Flora (as in "hydroflouric")? Best of all, she could have just been called Sulfur as a nod to sulfuric acid and the sulfur/brimstone sigil spread across Living Dead Dolls imagery.
While I still find it distasteful myself, there is a character I think Jennocide's name could have been better-applied to: Onyx from Series 28, who's designed as a frilly supervillain with an eye patch and a ray gun. Someone seeking world domination fits the name better. Or S14's Jasper, who earnestly tried killing the entire human population...but it amounted to only killing herself because she was under the delusion that everyone else only existed within her mind and thought if she went, everybody did. Jasper's intentions make her one of the most objectively evil characters in the brand, and Jenn's name would suit her.
Also, you can't say her name aloud in conversation in any positive statement without looking really bad.
Jenn came opened. Her doll tray is split into two parts with a plastic cradle on top for her hat, just like Betsy.
Her chipboard color-codes her with dark pinkish red through the highlighted colored text, matching her dress.
The poem reads:
What happened to Jennocide was a tragedy
There was acid in her cup instead of tea
Some say that is what dissolved her flesh clean
But if you ask me I say it was just the caffeine.
I love the absurd punchline of this poem, but the rhythm needs work.
What happened to Jennocide, none could foresee
Splashed up with acid instead of some tea
She screamed as it burned out her flesh nice and clean
The hostess said "Pipe down! It's just the caffeine!"
Here's her death certificate. She died on December 26, 1974.
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| I hope she at least had a nice Christmas, if she celebrated. |
I wasn't able to find anything significant about this death date.
Her poem here reads:
A long slow burn with a venomous liquid
Once it melted her face she had died
But it is impossible to keep a good doll down
And she arose from the dead as Jennocide.
And a rewrite:
Corrosively burned by a venomous tea
It melted her down to the bone and she died
A doll done injustice can't stay in the ground
She rose from the dead, the grim Jennocide.
While LDD reminds the audience the dolls are literal dolls on several occasions, it makes natural sense in a series themed around tea-party toys for Jenn to be referred to as such. This poem also seems to confirm that she was probably named Jennifer before the accident because it sounds like she took the edgy name after death. It's also indicated as such that Jenn's acid mishap occurred before this gathering that S23 represents. The dolls all have different death dates but are vaguely alluded to as dying during this party as well, so I think Jenn's burn would be from her "first death". I want to make it so she gets disfigured during this get-together, though. That'll just demand some very specific camera framing in the storytelling.
For Jennocide, I thought of the most acidic possible tea pairing that wouldn't pose any harm to me.
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| My favorite plating so far of these servings. The lemons didn't like to stay, though. |
In addition to Teddy's claw swipes and Betsy's bloody berry staining, Jenn's tea has created lemon burn holes in the tea master's glove!
There was a version of this table setting and tea where I went more ham on the lemon imagery, but I think what I had to work with turned out just right. The tea serving might end up being my favorite of all. I think the plating is great and the joke about the digestive biscuits is my best gag so far of any of these thematic tea bits.
Here's Jenn out of the box. While she had been removed from the backing, the elastic bands strapping down her hair for packaging were still present and dyed by her dress.
And with her hair loose.
Jennocide has a fancy white hat with some similarities to Betsy's, though the two are different shapes. Jenn's hat has an upturned rounded brim in front with more of a cylindrical top-hat-style cone, though the rosette on the front is almost, if not completely, identical to the one on Betsy's hat.
The shape of Jenn's hat is more snug. Betsy's likes to tip forward or fall off. Like Betsy's, the hat is thin plastic with white flocking. I think the rosette should be more centered, but this copy's isn't.
Here's the two grand ladies.
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| Jennocide may be less of a presence, but she's got much more class and taste. |
Each suits her own hat best, but here's a swap.
Jenn's hair is black, long, and wavy, and feels pretty nice. After combing out, it gained some volume. The hair also plays into Jenn's big design feature--her acid burn. The splash didn't only get her skin, but it obviously got some of her hair, too, as her hair is rooted with a big arc around the burn that pushes her hairline far back in that spot. With her hat on, you don't notice her burned-out hairline!
Jennocide's face has a stark half-and-half effect with the clean left side and the bloody burn line and bare skull on her right.
On her left, she has a pretty typical Living Dead Dolls cartoon eye and harsh swooped brow. She has a bold black makeup wing on her eye, and her iris is royal blue. The eye outline is subtler than old LDD eyes, and the two eye reflections are also not typical, but they make the eye look even brighter and add contrast. I think it's meant to look like an inset glassy doll eye. (It'd have been great if any S23 doll had gotten a Resurrection to have a real inset eye treatment! Eyeless Agatha wouldn't be able to partake.) Jenn's nose is mostly intact, and her mouth is untouched, where she has wide red lips. What's left of her skin is very pale, but not at all stark white or grey.
On the right, a big line of bloody burned flesh surrounds the hole left by the acid. It's technically not actually stated this was a splash wound, but if she'd drank from the cup, she'd look much worse and this wound wouldn't make sense. Jenn would have no mouth or throat if she'd ingested, and that's probably the least of it. Then again, we all know dolls can't actually drink at their toy tea parties, so maybe it was always going to be a splash wound and Jenn just aimed wrong over her eye instead by mistake. The red paint is partially spray-like and pointillistic, and I'm guessing no two Jenns' paint jobs will look exactly the same because of this. The skull inside this line is bony-colored and features an empty dark eye socket--the right eye was destroyed. The socket paint overdraws the LDD eye sculpt for a more skull-like shape. The skull also features a really nicely airbrushed curve of bone contour coming off the eye socket, and it's remarkably effective at depicting dimension that isn't there.
It feels like you could brush the skull with your fingers and feel the ridge, but Jennocide has the normal LDD face sculpt. Nothing new. Makeup artists are all about contouring illusions for beauty, but this girl is demonstrating how you can use them for horror!
Similar features would be employed for the Resurrection variant doll of Chloe, who has skull-like decay paint and a hairline that deliberately shows some asymmetric forehead. Maybe the two dolls will meet and be friends someday.
Jenn is my first one-eyed LDD, but she won't be my last, I'm sure.
While Jenn has a harsh eyebrow, I'm still inclined to view her as a pretty innocent victim of the tea party. She looks more confident and pretty than mean.
Here-- (I can't believe my brain went this direction) I graphed it. I decided to plot where I think each Series 23 character would fall between the axes of being horrified by the events of the party and innocence/kindness.
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| I'm aware I'm a nerd, but nothing has ever made me feel more like one than this. And I hate math! |
So I think Agatha would be the least innocent and the least horrified by the party because she planned for the guests to die and hated everybody there.
Betsy would be just as malicious as Agatha, but by contrast would be very horrified to have her plans for the party subverted by Agatha, because she's a demanding brat who's used to everything following her whims and she'd want the guests to die her way.
Teddy wouldn't be horrified by the party because he's stated to prey on the guests, and is about in the middle morally, because I see him as childishly selfish and mindlessly zombified, but not necessarily cruel by nature or intention.
Jennocide is the most innocent and most horrified by the party. I have no evidence for her being a nice person, but the writing really seems to frame Jenn as taken completely off-guard by a horrific injury, so I think she was the biggest tragedy. She looks more like she's done with everything and maybe getting her nerve to fight back after what happened to her, not like she's truly malicious.
Quack strikes me as the most gentle and naive, and is far too gone to the substances she's ingested to be at all worried about anything going on around her.
Jenn is wearing a pearl necklace, a feature which was seen earlier on Series 5's Dahlia with a longer string of beads.
I've worked with a Dahlia behind-the-scenes already for a later project, so I can report that neither doll's necklace is removable without popping off the head. For Dahlia, on the swivel body, that operation is lower-risk than it would be for Jennocide, whose ball joint could pop out instead of the head if I wasn't careful. I didn't find it worth trying on either.
I forgot that Series 28's Ruby also has a strong of pearls, and I think hers is the same length/size as Jennocide. I've heard Ruby's are on an elastic string.
Jenn's dress is very classic-dolly with lace for the collar and trim, and it features a wide skirt with a high waist and puffed rounded sleeves. The color is a dark red with just a bit of pink/violet hue, and it opens pretty far down the back.
The dress caused staining on Jenn's arms since they had been touching the skirt for so long in the box. Dear lord, Mezco, couldn't you have done something about color fixatives at all? If you're dyeing most if not all of your own fabrics, then why not make sure it sticks?
Under the skirt, Jenn has a pretty short and small mesh petticoat as a separate piece, elasticated around her waist. Her painted underwear matches her dress.
Jennocide's socks are knee-length, which is an uncommon length for LDD, and she has standard black Mary Janes. The Mary Janes have the common problem of being too loose around the feet, even in socks, which means the doll can wiggle inside them and her weight wanting to pitch forward isn't at all counteracted by the shoes because she can lean forward within them. It's not too hard to pose her hips right so she won't topple, though.
Jennocide has a skull teacup like the others.
While I wanted to make her left-handed for a change, her story makes it make more sense that she'd be a rightie, whereupon the splash of her acid cup landed on the same side. Even if Jenn had been a leftie, I'd assume post-death that she would avoid risk to the intact half of her face and keep her cup to her right afterward.
I was dismayed to discover no table leg after opening the box and double-checking. I messaged the seller just to verify that it was supposed to be missing and it was on me for not catching that, and yep. On me. I'm bumping into a couple of spots recently where I'm noticing missing LDD pieces a bit too late--more on the other soon. Unlike that other upcoming case, though (which I don't regret because there was an attractive novelty in that listing), the remedy for the tea table is a bit less of a hit to take. While it still requires buying a doll I don't need and cannibalizing a piece, Agatha goes pretty cheapish still in some parts, so another copy of her with the table leg wouldn't be too painful. And if her neck paint and hip tightness are better than the first Agatha, that could even replace the copy I have. I just don't relish buying a doll as busy work. Ugh. I could see how the table works with three legs and maybe makeshift a leg myself while completing this blog series, and then relegate the task of replacing the leg to a later date with holiday gift money to waste on the extra doll. I just worry Agatha's prices might rise by then.
Alternatively, I could find some round-ended clothespins and paint them black and replace the LDD pegs altogether because there might be options that feel tighter and more stable than what LDD provided. Or find a central one-leg column solution for the tabletop rather than corner legs. Part of me would still like to have a full set of official legs, but giving up on that is a lot cheaper!
Perhaps this suits Jennocide's vibe as the out-of-place doll in the party. Maybe she's the nicest of them, but also pretty rejected in this circle of characters, such that she isn't really wanted there, gets ragged on for not contributing a piece of the table through an honest mistake, and gets no sympathy for the acid mishap. Is Jenn trying her best to be friendly with people she should avoid at all costs? Is she put-upon and prone to misfortune?
Jennocide's tea was really nice, but I'm a freak who enjoys lemon juice straight, so many other people would find it a challenge. The tea definitely was tart and stung a little, but it was tasty. A LDD Jennocide tea might be just what the doctor orders when next my throat is sore or I get a cold (knock on wood that if I get sick, that's all I get this year...) Maybe the simplicity of lemon only, dialed up a ton, was what made the tea so successful. Jenn and Teddy's teas have been kind of easy rides for me, but oh geez I'm gonna make myself question things with Quack.
The cookies were a great joke but not necessarily a good pair for the lemon tea itself. I love digestives, but they're best with a black tea that has milk and sugar.
Now, some portraits.
And the group together so far.
I wish there was progress made on the table here. I might bite the bullet and get the cheapest table-leg-bearing doll I can early next month so that can be corrected before Quack rounds off the group. I just don't know if I can bear it otherwise. I'll see how I'm feeling. Even if there are better alternatives to the LDD legs for standing the coffin lid, the semantics of at least having all four are important to me. It's an "if not sooner, someday" thing to address.
And that's Jennocide! (and that's still a yikes!) And...this might be tantamount to heresy, but it's looking like Teddy is gonna end up my least favorite of this series. There's nothing wrong with him and he's not a bad doll, but he's simple and he's giving less in my book. Quack also promises to be everything he does but with more detail and personality. Jenn, meanwhile...she's gorgeous. Yes, her dress is stainy, and my choices got me an incomplete copy that will see me shelling out at some point or another for extra to get the table leg she lost. I don't like those. But the doll is otherwise wonderful. She's got one of the most mesmerizing and cool paint jobs of any LDD (she's right up there with Hush for me now on beautiful scary faces that just fascinate me) and I love how her hair plays into the gore with its unusual rooting. Her hat looks good and fits well, and her hair is pretty nice. She's very classical, very surreal, and very Gothic, and has a pretty fun outlandish gore design that sets her apart and brings some blood into the series in a fun way. I also like her facial personality for what survived. She's got the cartoony LDD retro glam on point, but with a bit of extra elegance and brightness that makes her face look fancier and more antique than dolls like Sadie and Lottie. I think she and Agatha have been my two most smooth experiences in this series so far. Betsy required leg repair and Teddy's tea setting caused a honey disaster I had to clean up. I gave myself time setting up for Jenn and didn't let myself feel rushed or frantic, and there were no roadblocks or interruptions to the process where I had to divert into fixing or cleaning something. Hooray for that!
If Agatha is the art of tea and Betsy is every horrible tea-party playtime tyrant, then Jenn is the perfect classic tea-party dolly guest...gone terribly wrong!
Duck, Duck, Her Goose is Cooked: Quack
The final doll of Series 23 is Quack, a loopy-looking doll in a fuzzy sailor duck costume whose tea was implicitly drugged.
I liked Quack's oddball charm and detail, and she was planned as the finale of the collection for a while. I expected to like her a lot, my ideas for her worked as a cap to the doll reviews, and it made sense with her being the most pricey in the aftermarket.
Quack came opened but complete--fully complete, table leg and all. I made sure this time. Quack is highly valued and low...ly sold, but that fortunately resulted in her scant offerings all looking complete and her cheapest listing not lacking any necessary parts.
Here's her chipboard.
Quack is coded with the color red, which makes perfect sense with the colors of her costume and eyes, but I didn't go for that with her table setting. This scenery is actually on top of my bed, including a pillow, since Quack entered an endless sleep, and I went for a deliberately eclectic and messy setup evocative of both a colorful child's playroom and somebody losing their faculties to an unknown mental world. Quack absolutely feels the most childlike to me of the set, and gives me strong nostalgia for classic toys.
Her chipboard poem says:
Every tea party needs a dizzy duck
And Quack is excited to arrive.
But this play date will find her out of luck
A celebration she won't survive.
The grammar is disjointed and the first line doesn't make any sense to me. Who said anything about dizzy ducks being a staple of parties? Here's an alternate poem with the same themes.
She really was the oddest duck
The party day she lost her luck
So sweet, so gentle, she only said "Quack"
She drank her tea and she never came back.
Quack's name is obviously the onomatopoeia for a duck noise, and it reminds me of a previous LDD dressed as an animal-- S16's Squeak, dressed as a pig and named for a squealing pig sound. Squeak's costume is made to look homemade and built on repurposed pajamas or long johns and has a plastic mask, so she's not part of the fluffy-onesie club like Teddy, Quack, Beelzebub, Eggzorcist's 10th anniversary dolls, or Resurrection-variant Hush. I think it makes sense, given how very young she seems, that Quack might just be a tiny toddler who loves ducks and is called Quack because that's the only word she says--at least while in the costume.
Quack died on March 4, 1982, which corresponds to the release of the murder film The New York Ripper by Italian exploitation-horror director Lucio Fulci. The choice would make no sense without understanding that a key quirk of the film is that it portrays the serial killer character using a Donald Duck-style voice.
Quack's certificate poem says:
This little ducky got dizzy
After she drank a cup of tea
Next her limbs became heavy
And then she just couldn't see
Soon all she longed for was sleep
Heavy, eternally dark and deep.
This poem doesn't have a consistent meter, but I think it scans well enough and it's evocative. I won't touch it.
While Quack's tea was obviously spiked and it's said she's going sleepy, the substance in question is unclear. She could have been overdosed by a medication that put her to sleep forever, she could have been outright poisoned, or, going by her swirly eyes, it's even possible she got a psychotropic substance that sent her tripping...or even all three!
Because Quack is addled and substance-laden, I decided to make a tea that mixed allusions to sleepy drugging and psychedelics and all the panache of a tea brewer who's gone entirely out of their mind.
This ain't pretty.
This is a cup of chamomile tea (to suggest sleep) with mushroom slices (to suggest psychedelics) as garnishes. Also included are a peppermint and candy cane (matching her swirly eyes and stripy legs). The plate features banana slices ('cause she's bananas) and frosted Cheerios ('cause she's loopy). I'm very pleased with how I created a serving that's entirely thematic while also looking quite horribly thrown-together and thoughtless.
Quack had gotten a hold of the tea master's glove and decided to paint on it. Let's review the damage now that he's dealt with everyone.
Betsy demanded he dip his index finger in her bloody berry tea, staining it red. Teddy tore off the thumb and made gashes in the side. Jennocide's burning lemon tea ate holes in the back and took off the middle fingertip. Quack has put her stripes and some dots onto the ring finger.
Agatha is the pinky finger--clean, untouched, traditional and proper. None of that upstart nonsense. Why is she the pinky? Because it's most refined to stick one out when drinking!
Here's Quack out of the box. My first reaction is that she's absolutely stinkin' adorable.
Quack's duck suit is all one piece, and it's got more going on than Teddy's bear costume. The duck character depicted by the suit has a sailor hat, black feathers, a red bill and feet and stripy red-and-white legs. The duck and sailor imagery combined feels very much derived from Disney's timeless Donald Duck, but the stripes and sailor hat also connote Raggedy Ann and Andy to me. Quack overall feels very believably vintage, and I'd place her at somewhere between the 1930s and 1960s in terms of toy design eras she connotes.
On top, Quack's suit has a jaunty grey sailor's hat. The hat is made of a slightly stiff felt material and has red print of a sulfur symbol flanked by two stars on the brim.
For some reason, the use of the star designs makes her look like an old Japanese toy design to me. Red stars are objectively more Soviet, historically, but I can't shake the feeling of vintage Japanese toys here.
The hat is sewn down on the far end, by the side of her head, but is loose at the top end. I think a thread has come undone. This does let it be set at more of an angle, though, which I like.
Quack's hood is attached to the suit and frames her face tightly, but doesn't have the same "cutout hole" effect of the circular opening in Teddy's hood. At the top of the opening, a thin stuffed red duck bill has been sewn to suggest the face of the duck character depicted by the costume. Very fun.
Quack is stark white, and she uses the bumpy-skin face sculpt, making her the second of two dolls I got this month who I didn't expect to have it. (Next one will be posted in August).
This face is the same sculpt I've seen before on Faith and Dottie Rose, but this is the first LDD I've encountered with this sculpt on the ball-joint head mold. The bumpy face was one of the few specialty sculpts to survive the transition to the ball-joint body schema, and I'm wondering if we have Posey alone to thank for it. I believe she debuted this sculpt in Series 1, and she's had later reissues and remakes that would demand the mold be remade for the newer body type. I know Series 23 comes right after the 13th-anniversary year of the brand, during which the Series 1 dolls got remakes on the ball-joint body, so that collection with Posey's remakes might have been where the ball-joint mold of the bumpy head debuted. I also know Posey had a collection of translucent dolls with different color editions, but those might not have been before the 13th-anniversary dolls.
The only other doll I'm sure has this sculpt in the ball-joint era of classic LDD is The Silent One in Series 29, a creepy ballerina with a vague disease. Maybe one or two other ball-joint LDDs have it and I never realized.
Quack's faceup is great. Her lips are black with a red center and are painted in a stylized overdrawn upturned smile with a layer of grey shading underneath. Her cheeks are flushed while her eye sockets are shaded in black and grey layers. As an effect of her substance intake, her eyes are filled with red spirals rather than irises or pupils, and it's really striking and charming. Red spirals in horror kind of belong to the Jigsaw Killer, but it works well here, too. The other LDD with spiraling eyes was S4's Sybil, an asylum prisoner depicted as mentally vacant and/or insane. I am a little bugged that both of Quack's spirals don't meet the edges of her eye outline.
Quack has no eyebrows.
Quack might have one of my favorite LDD faces. Her look treads the line of horror shading and stylized cartoon features with the big smile and spiral eyes, and she feels properly vintage and toylike in a really bizarre way I adore.
Quack's duck suit is very fluffy and gives her a pear-shaped silhouette. The fabric feels the same as Teddy's, but Teddy's costume was body-hugging.
Quack's hands are uncovered, which allows her to hold her teacup, unlike Teddy with his suit paws forever covering his hands. The belly of the duck suit has a grey patch, and the back has a little duck tail! You can also see the padding that widens her lower torso.
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| Absolutely the cutest. |
I opted to stuff the tail with a scrap of tissue to make it stick out more.
The legs have short sections of "feathers" that transition into the skinny duck legs, depicted by striped grey-and-red tights that end in flat felt foot covers shaped like webbed duck feet. The legs are all attached to the suit. The effect is remarkable.
Like any LDD with fabric foot covers, Quack is not the steadiest on her feet. But that kind of works for her.
I like the specificity of the duck costume. It lends the look a verisimilitude that makes it feel like an authentic retro toy because it doesn't feel generic. The spooky colors also make the costume design feel more grounded and real. Had Quack been in a fluffy yellow duck suit with solid orange legs and no hat, I wouldn't have found her nearly as appealing. This suit feels like a real old plush that existed.
Quack's costume opens with velcro down the back, which includes her hood opening.
When I undid the hood and pulled it down, another stitch fell out of the hat. Oops.
I was quite disappointed to see Quack's hood left black line stains on the edges of her face. Teddy's hood was lined, preventing this, and I wish something had been done with Quack's. There was also a curious patch of what looked like pale yellow paint on her lower right cheek, and I have no idea where that would have come from.
Oh, well. She's still great.
Like Teddy, Quack has unseen hair under the hood, and hers is just incredible. When fluffed up, It's pale blonde and thin, and its texture is wavy and wispy, allowing it to form a tiny child's nest of hair that makes her look super carefree and young. It also looks like a duckling's yellow down, which I assume was intentional.
I love Quack in her hood, and I love Quack with her hood down. It's impossible to choose which looks better, because they're both so perfect with her face!
The effect of this hair is really impressive because it's not typical "good" doll hair, but it looks so spot-on. This hair supports my read that she's the most innocent and youthful of the doll series, and I suppose that could make her predicament heartbreaking, but I think it's more of a mix of unsettling and even comedic because it seems like she's completely lost in or happy in her fugue.
Quack has the typical teacup, as expected.
The two fluffy-suited S23 dolls couldn't have more different vibes. Teddy is full antique-toy horror, while Quack is much more surrealist.
I know who I prefer.
Here are some portraits. This doll gave me lots of fun ideas for trippy and strange scenes.
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| I'm extremely happy with the swirling tea set visual! |
(That's the basin I made for Lamenta repainted and filled with tea. The flamingo was the only rubber duck I had. The Ophelia vibes are absolutely intentional, and Quack was only in the tea for about three seconds before I snapped the photo and got her out and washed.)
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| This feels like a real classic 1970s-80s horror film still. |
Then Quack started to feel sleepy. Very sleepy, and calm...and quiet...
Quack's tea serving wasn't as unpleasant as I feared I'd made it for myself. The mushroom part was just as gross as I expected since the context was entirely wrong and it takes a lot of cooking in oil and salt for me to like a mushroom anyway, but the rest was fine. I don't care for chamomile tea, but I think the mint candies dissolving in it made an improvement! The banana slices and cereal worked really well together, even if it's a little childish.
Quack's table leg completes the tea table, and all of the dolls can come together on the shelf!
Teddy is roaring, Agatha lurks treacherously behind Betsy, who lords over the teapot. Quack is zoned out on the floor, and Jennocide reels from her acid splash.
I really like this display. I honestly relish getting the real estate back on my shelf after all this time, but I will probably want to find some way to keep these dolls displayed with their table.
And yes, there are four legs on that table. On the side, I ordered a spare loose Agatha with her accessories to get the leg I didn't with Jennocide. The second Agatha had the same chunk of flawed grey paint on her neck, but her hip was tighter. It wasn't ultimately worth giving her the hair care to replace my original Agatha, but I did decide to keep her and strip her down as a base for a potential custom. Maybe a sixth boogeyman for the Series 31 cast? The doll probably won't be finished anytime soon if that's the context I choose, particularly since the S31 dolls are not on my plans for 2024, but that's something to work on.
The table isn't the sturdiest because the legs can turn side-to-side on the lid and collapse, but I'm happy to have it all together. Here's the full display tableau. I won't be able to use this easily as the tea room for the photo-story segment, though, so this is just for the shelf display.
I adore Quack. She's ridiculously charming with her colors, face paint, and amazing sailor duck suit, and she looks so cheery and innocent while being perfectly spooky and memorable. Her hair is a wonderful feature that makes it hard to choose how to display her, while her costume is so soft and pudgy and perfectly creates a silhouette--belly, tail, skinny legs and all. I appreciate that Quack is able to hold her cup, too, and her bumpy face is unexplained but still a welcome bit of creepy texture. I'm glad there's one S23 doll with a textured sculpt. Quack may just be one of the most darling LDDs ever made, and the character design is absolutely immaculate.
She has significant deficits when it comes to errant paint and staining. The hood is particularly inexcusable because it puts a damper on displays with her hair down, but she still looks good enough from the front for me to let it slide. Her hat was also not very tight, though I can't be sure if this was user-influenced from previous handling or from poor manufacturing.
Photo Story
Agatha slept in the tea chest, hating.
She hadn't been with the other dolls for years. She was too old and too broken. Her neck didn't sit right and her head was all cracked. She was there for some of the first and finest tea parties, entertaining all of the toys and children. But now her world was darker and more obscene, and she felt closer to tea than the toys. She had died as a doll.
The tea chest was what she knew best. None of the toys around today understood and appreciated tea like she did. It was a lost art.
Agatha had been suffering as housekeeper to Betsy, the most terrible little mistress. She was young, spoiled, demanding, and cruel. She also had no taste. She ordered Agatha around and made a mockery of whatever fine things were still around her. And today was to be a grand tea at Betsy's command.
Agatha rose and looked at herself in the serving dish. She hadn't liked what she saw for ages and ages now, but today she smiled.
Today, she was going to kill them all.
She got herself ready. There was much to do.
Agatha muttered bitter things to herself as she walked through the house and began to brew.
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| "Miss Prissy wants this, and she wants that and those too? Oh, were I to deliver a swift boot to the back of her head-" |
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| "''Polish the kettle more, I want to see my face!' You never enter the kitchen and you want to wear me shoulders to a nub for the kettle!" |
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| [Skull-and-snake kettle is homemade by me.] |
Her mistress was beastly, evil, and selfish. She was frilly and pink and horrid. She'd killed the dolls in charge of the house to inherit Agatha, and her behavior flew in the face of all Agatha held sacred.
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| "AAAAGGGIIEEEE!" |
...and she called her "Aggie". That could not be tolerated.
Agatha began to dress the tea table. The cloth was old as her, and just as worn, but it was proper and that was that.
Then, Betsy arrived.
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| "Are you done yet, Aggie?" |
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| "It's all ready on time as you've demanded, miss." "This looks like a grandma table. I wanted PINK!" "Oh, what a pity. And the guests are due any second, too..." |
Betsy grumbled. She'd felt resistance from her Aggie ever since she became the lady of the house, and she had begun to suspect she'd been tricked by her on multiple occasions.
It didn't matter. She was going to kill everybody today.
Betsy looked over the table layout.
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| "I want the teapot today! You can get the cup." "Really, miss? It's my job to serve the tea-" "You can join the party this time. I'll pour. Now shut up." "How generous of you..." |
Agatha was confused, but some part of her longed to sit at the table for once. She dreaded retribution were she to take away the pot.
Then they saw a fuzzy head.
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| "Grrr..." |
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| "Ah...Master Teddy has arrived, miss." "Grrr...." "That stupid bear act?!? Stop growling like that!" "I believe that's his stomach, miss." |
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| "There's your tea, lad-" "I don't want tea! I'm hungry!" "Aggie, feed him and shut him up. Maybe then-" "-he'll drink his tea, yes." |
Betsy narrowed her eyes. Why did Agatha seem so intent on him drinking? After all, she herself had planned on poisoning him with that cup. Agatha came back with a tin of sweets. She knew what a greedy doll wanted.
Then, another face arrived.
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| "Madam Jennocide, miss." "Ugh...Sit down, Jenn." |
Jennocide was a neighbor's doll who had never gotten along with Betsy or the others, and she honestly couldn't tell why. She was delighted to be asked to the party as a result.
Betsy just wanted her dead. She was too pretty and fancy. Betsy had to be the grandest of them all.
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| "I'm really so honored to be here-and oh! Those sweets look delicious!" |
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| "NO! MINE! ROAAAR!!!" |
All heads turned at the noise.
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| "Quack!" *giggle* "...Miss Quack has arrived." |
This was Quack. She wasn't far beyond a baby doll, and she loved her duck costume. Nobody knew her name--they just called her Quack because it was the only word she said.
Now, everybody was here.
With everybody at the table, things were quiet and tense. None of the group was warm with each other, except for Quack happily quacking and smiling. She was the first to sip her tea.
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| "Mmm....quack!" |
Agatha, meanwhile, dumped hers behind her discreetly. She couldn't drink the cup she'd prepared for Betsy. She'd prepared it to be lethal to her mistress, and it was a silly fruit tea besides. She'd never stand for it.
Betsy was getting frustrated with Teddy. He hadn't touched his cup, and what was the fun in pouring if a cup stayed full?
Teddy just kept on gobbling up the sweets.
Betsy turned to Quack to ask if she wanted more tea, but Quack was just staring there motionless and hazy.
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| "Quack, do you- Quack? Quack?" |
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| "Quaaack???" "...hehehe...quack..." |
Betsy was confused. Was there something put in Quack's tea that she didn't know about?
But then Jennocide lifted her cup and splashed the tea. She screamed as the acid inside burned off her face. She was soon dead.
Betsy laughed. Now Agatha was alarmed. Had Betsy been in the kitchen while Agatha was dressing the table? She now regretted pouring out the tea. She could have talked Betsy into drinking it.
Teddy kept eating, not caring at all about Jennocide's quick end.
Betsy turned back to Quack. She really wanted to play hostess. Quack was still somewhere else. She was rolling her head and groaning, but then started to sigh peacefully.
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| "Ooo...quack..." |
Betsy was very upset.
"Aggie, what's wrong with her? She's not doing what she's supposed to!"
"Well, you know how the little ones are..."
"No! No! She's supposed to be--never mind! Teddy!"
It was too late to offer him more tea again. He was motionless under the table, belly bulging with candies. He had eaten himself to death.
Quack was still sitting there. Agatha waved a hand in front of her and smiled. The drugs were clearly working.
Quack felt very sleepy as she entered a beautiful dreamland.
She slipped further into the darkness, and mumbled something aloud to the room, like nothing she'd ever said before.
"You're dying too..."
Then she faded.
The two remaining dolls looked at the tea party with disgust.
This wasn't how it was really supposed to go. Agatha couldn't get Betsy to die, while she knew she hadn't been the one to kill Jennocide. Betsy was alarmed to still see Agatha up and about, and she knew she hadn't killed Quack. Both were revolted that Teddy had died entirely of his own means. Betsy stormed off, leaving Agatha to clean up the table and the bodies.
By the next day, Agatha had gotten some spring back in her step. It did always cheer her to bury some dead, and she felt young and joyful again in her veil and parasol, dancing amid the three mounds.
Betsy sulked by herself in the garden with a cup of tea.
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| [Table also homemade]. |
She wasn't drinking. Seeing Agatha dancing on the graves and thinking about how terribly wrong the party had gone was putting her off her tea. At this point, she couldn't trust that the tea she had now was safe...and that was it. Suddenly, she realized that Agatha was going to kill her someday.
Betsy had inherited the house and Agatha. But she had also inherited the antique toy soldier's pistol in the attic.
*BANG!*
Betsy stood in a fugue. She remembered the feeling from the last time she had used this gun, killing the dolls who ran the house before. She didn't realize what was happening in the graves.
It was a swarm of hungry, angry living dead dolls. Betsy was beaten to death and the horde destroyed itself until there was nothing left in them.
Such is the way of the tea party. Let's sweep these up, shall we?
And here they are, bagged, and tagged and ready to serve.
May they boil in hell.
Conclusion/Reflection
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.
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.
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.
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| Like so. |
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.
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.
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