6 and 6 for 6: Living Dead Dolls Series 6 Complete

After all these months, Series 6 is complete!

This wasn't a set I aimed to collect at the start, but I had no argument against any of the dolls, and learning of their Halloween theme after so long being familiar with them sold me even more. As such, they became an unevenly dispersed feature within my LDD roundups between April and September. 

Series 6 has the themed concept of the 666 "number of the beast" which inflates the series size to six dolls and includes a pet among them, but I still consider them more of a variety series. They are also technically a Halloween series, but still form an assortment. Possibly because of their Halloween vibe, the series is also one of the most accessible and family-friendly in tone, with no blood at all in the designs. Scars, veins, stitches, and blisters still feature, but nothing too shocking or edgy, and there's a general use of color and contrast in the series that feels poppy and light-hearted. 

In terms of innovation, there's not too much. We got the first LDD animal sculpts here, and Hush's rat would later be reused for the Nosferatu set, colored black. Revenant debuted LDDs cast in glow-in-the-dark plastic, and was probably the first LDD overall with glowing features. Isaac features a soft body connecting his plastic head, hands, and shoes, though his innovation was a one-off for effect and never got repeated or emulated by another LDD.

In terms of quality, each doll had their issues and none felt spectacular. Here's my ranking--left to right, best to worst.

I put Isaac at the top since he had nothing really detrimental or unpleasant about him. My copy has a mistake where his two (different) left hand sculpts are on the opposite side they should be, and has an odd errant piece of straw sewn in one of his wrists, but these are very minor things, and the rest of the doll looks good.

I put Hush right after Isaac. She had some really weird discolorations and grime under her clothing, but she cleaned up fine and her flaws aren't really shown. She's wobbly on her feet, but not the worst.

Jinx comes after Hush by a small margin. She looks good and stands firmly, but her hair is not rooted especially well, particularly in the bangs, where gaps are easily visible. The hair texture also isn't fabulous. It's fine, but not the smoothest. 

Revenant is after Jinx. Her outfit had yellowed patches, though this could be the fault of her previous owner. Her costume also stained her, and her molding has internal flaws made visible by her translucent plastic. What really lets her down is her fried snarled hair ends. She'd have such gorgeous hair without that problem. She's also a little wobbly.

Dottie Rose almost got the bottom spot just for the egregious issue of my copy having a mismolded left leg that's physically shorter than her right. She can stand, but she has to lean, and such an error is exceptional and frustrating. The neck strings of her halter dress are also unfinished fabric that frays. However, I'm sure another Dottie copy could be much better, and maybe come in the top three of this category, so in my individual experience, I was unlucky, but overall, a Dottie Rose would probably lack that problem. 

Calico comes last. Her yarn hair was not very tidily arranged in the section glued down to her scalp, leaving notable gaps that demand her hair gets all swept behind her. Her dress also left notable stains, and her fabric material is fine at the moment, but I know it's subject to cracking and peeling and I dread that. I think it could have been made of pure plastic if the texture was really important to them; something like the costume Gabriella wears in Series 18. I can't trust this vinyl faux-leather type.
Calico's issues in the dress are serious concerns inherent to any copy of the doll, so she's in last place.

Character design is a very competitive category here. There's really no losers.

Isaac comes first, mostly for being such a delightful surprise. He's just a fantastic spooky scarecrow with his patchwork and stitching detail, and his great autumnal dark color palette in entirely warm tones. He's piercing and frightening and yet oddly adorable, and his more mobile soft body gives him a literalist scarecrow charm that I think is extremely charming. I liked him so much more than I expected to.

I think I have to put Hush after him, and it was hard to bump her down a spot. She's still a hauntingly beautiful creepy doll with a great paint job and a gross and terrifying vibe with her matted yarn hair and sewer rat pet. I think I'd like her just that little bit more if she wasn't suggested to have angry eyebrows within her face paint design. They blend into her vein detail, but once you see it, you notice it, and I prefer her looking a little naive and scared.

Dottie Rose comes after Isaac. I think her look is very striking as a ghoulish chic 1950s lady, and her palette occupies the more newly popularized aesthetic niche of pastel Halloween in a way that feels prescient. I have nothing bad to say about her design. Hush and Isaac just impressed and surprised me more.

Calico comes right after. She's just so strange and bold in such an arresting iconic way. Her colors don't quite go, but they do. Her simple outfit can be plain, or it can be perfect. Her hairstyle and platform sandals give her a confidently weird stature that makes her a very charming glam Frankenstein type. I had initially restyled her with more clothing pieces, but I think looking at her again sold me more on her simplicity. And you can't beat that killer patchwork body paint. 

Jinx is right after Calico. She's very sweet and classically Halloween, and lands in the niche of cartoony pseudo-1960s dolls I love, right alongside Sadie and Lottie.

Revenant goes after Jinx. She's a very solid kitschy Halloween ghost decoration with her own retro charm and all the nostalgia of cheap plastic glow toys from my childhood. She's very effective and charming, but she just feels the least inventive in the group.

And my overall experience ranking.

Dottie Rose is at the top because I love her character design and she gave me the best photo session of the group, with some really fun surreal and haunting and challenging setups to tell the story of a woman who lives in a bright suburb while keeping to the darkness of her own home. 

Isaac is after her for being the most pleasant surprise, and I loved playing with him and taking his photos. 

Calico is in the middle because she gave me some fun creative challenges and is such a striking doll. 

Hush comes after her because she's a beautiful doll I love--her photo setup was just a bit beyond me. 

Jinx is after Hush because she's sweet and I got good work with her, but she didn't light me up like the other dolls.

Revenant is at the end because her photo session was the most challenging and least rewarding.

Here are my favorite pictures of each doll, in review order:

And one last ranking, unique to this series-- pets!

Calico's pet Muzzy can't be beat. It's an incredibly sculpted and well-painted fusion of multiple different animal and creature types with great texture and personality. Revenant's pet Carrion is second-place just because a pet vulture is so cool. Isaac's Ole Crow is after that because it was a great presence in his photos. Dottie Rose's Hun was a bit harder to work with, but a brutal poodle is a fun idea. Hush's pet Shriek is after that because it's not so dynamic, and Jinx's Hellcat is last because its factory paint job gave it a lot of pale shading that ruined the effect of the black cat theme.

The dolls also have a lot of thematic links between them.

• Dottie Rose and Hush both use a black/white/pink palette and their pets each participated in their deaths.
• Hush and Calico both have full-body paint detail and yarn hair.
• Calico and Isaac both have stitch theming.
• Isaac and Revenant both have bird pets.
• Revenant and Hush both have veining detail.

And there are other minutiae shared between the dolls, but these are the more interesting ones!

So that's Series 6 complete! I'm definitely going to save them some room during Halloween decorations, and they can join their more explicitly Halloween-themed LDD compatriots as decor. I don't see myself completing too many more "variety" LDD series (Series 14 might be the only one I'm thinking about), but it was fun to see how they all work together.